The sun bled into the sky, casting long shadows across the market streets of Zarifa. The wind carried dust and whispers, the kind only a city with buried sins could tell. Jordan Joestar walked in silence, eyes hidden beneath the brim of his hat, hand occasionally brushing against the cool steel of the pendant that pulsed softly against his chest. It hadn't stopped humming since the alley fight.
And neither had the sense of being watched.
In the crowd, a man stood unnaturally still — wrapped in flowing white robes, face half-covered in mirrored glass. As people passed him, their reflections distorted strangely in his lenses. One child pointed, but the man was gone before anyone could react.
Jordan stepped into a side street, his senses tightening.
The air changed.
The temperature dropped. The warm Zarifan wind faded into silence.
Then the buildings... blurred.
They melted like wax, distorting and twisting, bending like ripples in water. The ground beneath Jordan's boots cracked — or was it shattering? He blinked, and the entire world folded like a kaleidoscope.
"What the hell…"
From behind him, a voice slid through the air like a blade.
"Have you seen a mirage, Joestar?"
He turned. The man from the crowd stood behind him, robes flowing unnaturally, defying the dead air. He raised a hand, and with it came mirrored shards, floating midair like glass blades catching nonexistent light.
"My Stand: Shatterview," the man whispered. "Welcome to your first hallucination."
Without hesitation, Jordan stepped back and focused. The sand around him whirled as his Stand burst forth.
"Dust Mirage!"
A sandstorm erupted between them, tearing through the illusion with sheer pressure. Glass cracked, and the kaleidoscopic vision shattered — buildings returned, sound rushed back, and the Mirage Man hissed in frustration, now clutching a bleeding hand.
Jordan stared him down, voice cold.
"If you wanted to test me, you should've brought more mirrors."
The man retreated into a swirl of dust, leaving behind one cracked lens — still flickering with refracted images of Jordan's past. Of blood. Of someone screaming his name.
Jordan knelt, picking it up.
This wasn't over. Whoever that man was, he didn't want to kill JoJo — not yet. He wanted him to remember something.
Or someone.
To Be Continued...