Guided by the young girl, the old Ford landed on the street, canceling its invisibility as it drove through an alley, then slowly stopped in front of a house.
"This is it!"
Chihaya Anon said, her tone sounding somewhat joyful, clearly not yet fully recovered from the excitement of riding in a Flight Magic car.
"Takuma-kun…"
Asagumo Chihaya frowned slightly, looking at Asakura.
"Mm."
Asakura also nodded imperceptibly.
Leaving aside Asakura, who inherently possessed the ability to perceive magical power, Asagumo Chihaya, who had experienced the runaway Moon Clock pocket watch, had lost the ability to use Magic, but as a trade-off, her perception in this regard was even more acute than that of a witch like Gokou Ruri who could use Magic normally.
At this moment, both of them, more or less, felt a subtle flow of distorted magical power from Chihaya Anon's house.
Originally, Asakura had thought that to find the culprit, the Magic Mirror, they might have to trace it all the way from the airport with Chihaya Anon, but now it seems it won't be that troublesome.
"Anon, was everything normal at your house when you returned yesterday?"
Asakura asked.
"Everything, everything was normal? That illusion, oh no, the strange thing didn't appear either…"
The pink-haired young girl, who had just excitedly exited the car, paused her lively movements and asked in confusion, "What's wrong?"
"Are your parents home?"
Asakura did not answer, only continued to ask.
"Dad comes back later, but Mom should be home…"
The young girl speculated, resting her finger on her chin.
"I see—" Asakura nodded, his face grim: "Then let's go in quickly."
"Oh, oh…"
Although she found Asakura's attitude a bit strange, the girl still obediently opened the door and walked into her house first.
However, the moment she stepped over the threshold, an ear-piercing static noise, like an old radio failing to tune into the correct channel, made the girl involuntarily frown and instinctively cover her ears.
And when she came back to her senses, she found that the scenery around her had undergone a drastic change.
Although from the structure of the house, she was still standing in a place similar to an entrance hall, there was no longer a door behind her. Instead, there was a huge, somewhat frightening Mirror. At this moment, her reflection in the Mirror was staring coldly at her with hollow, lifeless eyes.
Chihaya Anon shivered: "Asakura? Asagumo-senpai?"
She tried to call out, but there was no response.
Looking inside the house, the walls, which were originally covered with warm-toned wallpaper, had lost their usual cozy feeling, replaced by many mirrors emitting a cold, bluish light. In an instant, Chihaya Anon felt as if she had entered a common Mirror maze found in amusement parks.
However, unlike the amusement park facilities where one could easily find a way out, at this moment, the mirrors surrounding the young girl reflected each other like Russian nesting dolls, making it seem as if each Mirror had become an infinitely distant and profound tunnel.
An eerie and sinister feeling gripped the young girl's heart. Although it was summer, Chihaya Anon felt as if the blood in her veins had congealed, and a chilling numbness permeated her entire body, from her heart to her limbs.
"Asakura? This joke isn't funny at all!"
She tried to shout, desperately hoping to see Asakura jump out from some corner holding a sign that read 'Prank Success' or something similar the next moment.
But nothing happened.
Suddenly, a cold hand touched the young girl's face from behind.
Chihaya Anon was startled but also relieved. She turned her head, wanting to complain to Asakura or Asagumo Chihaya, but then she saw that the pale arm touching her face was reaching out from the Mirror behind her. It was the hand of 'herself' with hollow eyes but an unnaturally distorted mouth.
"Ugh…"
The young girl instantly felt as if her lungs had deflated. The immense terror even deprived her of the strength to scream, leaving her mind blank.
And precisely because of this, she was able to see that in the Mirror behind her, a 'herself' with limbs significantly longer than her own and skin revealing a sickly pale blue-white color like that of a dead person was slowly emerging from the Mirror, opening her mouth like a lamprey towards her—
And so, the string of sanity in the young girl's mind snapped. She ran frantically into the house, but in her haste, she crashed into a Mirror, shattering it and causing herself to fall to the ground.
Although her palms and arms were stinging from the glass shards, Chihaya Anon couldn't care less at this moment.
Because almost at the same moment, the distorted figures in the mirrors seemed to have come to life, and all of them simultaneously turned their hollow, utterly lifeless gazes towards the young girl. Even more, some had already begun to crawl out of the mirrors, just like the one at the entrance, attempting to become independent monsters and crawl towards her.
The young girl felt her scalp tingle, but at this moment, she had no retreat—the house door itself was blocked by a huge Mirror, the stairs were full of these strange mirrors and menacing imposters of herself, and even from the ceiling hung many enormous hands that were clearly not human, much longer, with arm parts exceeding two meters.
Although she didn't know what would happen if she were caught by these long arms, like man-eating vines, it was clear that Chihaya Anon had no intention of experiencing it firsthand.
Just as one of the long, massive hands was about to grab the girl, the braided… I mean, the Ouroboros pendant, which the girl had carefully treasured, suddenly came to life. It sprang out of the young girl's pocket like a spring, its snake head directly colliding with the terrifyingly long, massive hand, which was completely out of proportion to its size.
As a result, the terrifying-looking giant hand, instead, seemed to have been cremated, emitting a sizzling sound. Immediately after, the spot hit by the snake pendant turned black and rapidly spread. In less than three seconds, the entire giant long hand turned completely black, finally crumbling and leaving a pile of coal-like dust on the floor.
"How amazing…"
The young girl cradled the snake pendant, which had returned to her, and murmured to herself.
But then her expression turned somewhat despairing again, because in just a short moment, she had already been surrounded by those creatures that had crawled out of the Mirror, looking like 'Chihaya Anon' but actually just some kind of monster with a human shell.