The First Echo pulled them in and Azrail felt the familiar sensation of reality shifting underneath his perception, the white void fragmenting into individual trial spaces, each person being separated into their own bubble of constructed reality.
'Personalised tests, each one tailored to what we refuse to see about ourselves.'
He thought as the white consumed everything. The white cleared. Azrail stood in a space of mirrors.
Hundreds of them, thousands, arranged in impossible geometries around him, each one reflecting not his current appearance but different versions of himself. Past lives, possible futures, the person he was pretending to be versus the person he actually was. Every reflection showed a different truth he'd been avoiding or manipulating or carefully not examining.
'Right, see truth through illusion. Find the core reality among all these distortions.'
