The Mirror Plague

The Mirror Plague
A Speculative Literary Novel of Trauma, Surveillance, and Beautiful Violence

In a city collapsing under the weight of unspoken history, the reflections begin to move first.

Glass fractures. Memory rewinds. And across Bucharest, the mirrors have started whispering.

The Mirror Plague is a haunting, immersive descent into a world where confession is currency and trauma is contagious. As an inexplicable plague spreads through reflections—changing bodies, unraveling identities, and rewriting the logic of grief—a fractured cast of survivors must navigate the ruins of a society that no longer pretends to be whole.

Elena Vaduva, a burned glassblower haunted by a fire she swore was an accident, begins receiving commissions she never agreed to—mirrors that show not faces, but consequences. Sofia, a feral street photographer raised in the churn of failed foster care, documents the city's unraveling until her own lens turns against her. A grieving police captain hears his dead daughter breathing inside his chest. A dying pastor rediscovers faith in absence. And beneath the parliament, a buried archive begins whispering old names again.

In this speculative literary epic, horror isn’t a monster—it’s a record-keeper.

Told in lyrical, visceral prose that fuses psychological horror, political allegory, and speculative dystopia, The Mirror Plague explores the aftermath of personal betrayal and state violence with unflinching precision. Every chapter cuts deeper into the city’s trauma, revealing how denial becomes architecture, and how beauty can be born from guilt when we finally look at ourselves—and don’t look away.

What would happen if a city were forced to remember everything?

What happens when mirrors stop lying?

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For readers of
Never Let Me Go · The City & The City · There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby · House of Leaves · The Memory Police

Genres: Speculative literary fiction, dystopian horror, psychological fiction, metaphysical surrealism, trauma narrative

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Praise for The Mirror Plague
"A radical work of speculative fiction—emotionally brilliant, structurally daring, and ethically necessary."
"Fuses poetry and autopsy with surgical precision. Babiak writes like he's seen the end and is offering the fragments as proof."
"A masterwork of reflection, recursion, and reckoning."

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Content guidance: This book contains thematic exploration of trauma, grief, state violence, and body horror. It is recommended for mature readers who appreciate emotionally intense, morally complex fiction.