The Harvest of Faces

In Meridian City, mirrors don't just reflect - they erase. When faces begin vanishing across the city, Inspector Aya Lin is pulled into an occult mystery that threatens to strip identity from every soul, including her own. In Meridian City, mirrors no longer return what they should. Reflections vanish. Faces blur. And those left behind collapse into husks, their identities stolen by a secret order known only as the Maskwrights.
Inspector Aya Lin has seen horrors in the city's occult underbelly before, but nothing like this. Called to investigate a faceless victim in Glass Harbor, she discovers fragments of impossible masks etched with shifting glyphs - patterns that whisper of rituals older than the city itself. As the phenomenon spreads from corporate towers to back-alley markets, panic consumes the streets. Then Aya's own cousin Mei becomes a target.
Her reflection begins to fade, tethering Aya directly into the Maskwrights' ritual web. The truth is worse than Aya imagined: the cult doesn't just steal faces. They distill souls, imprisoning them inside masks to grant their wearers stolen life and stolen power. The final goal is the forging of a Grand Mask, large enough to consume the entire city. To save Mei and stop Meridian from being hollowed alive, Aya must descend into a theater of stolen voices, confront the leader of the Maskwrights, and face the reflection that is already watching her from the cracks in the glass.
Dark, atmospheric, and haunting, The Harvest of Faces blends urban fantasy, occult mystery, and supernatural horror into a relentless short novel of grief, identity, and survival. This standalone story invites you into the shadows of Meridian City - where every mirror hides a hunger, and every mask has a soul.