Back inside the Trials of the Gods, Kai found himself trapped in a chamber that refused to feel real.
The room was circular, wide, and sealed, its walls formed from mirror-like surfaces so smooth they barely looked solid. They reflected everything—light, movement, even the flow of energy. Not clean reflections, not perfect copies, but warped ones, bent slightly wrong, as if the room itself could not decide what was real and what was only an echo.
At the center stood the guardian.
A humanoid statue, tall and unmoving, its body shaped from layered mirror-stone and flowing water. It did not breathe. It did not shift its weight. It simply stood there, its reflection multiplying endlessly across the chamber walls.
In front of it, hovering just above the ground, was the altar.
It was not solid stone. It was not liquid either. It looked like a mirror that had been folded inward on itself, its surface warping and bending, reflecting angles that should not exist. Light slid across it and vanished. Energy drawn near it felt stretched, thinned, like something pulling at it from inside.
Kai was pinned to the ground before it.
Pressure crushed down on him from every direction, forcing his body flat against the mirrored floor. His chest struggled to rise. His limbs refused to move. It felt like the room itself had decided he belonged there.
Then—
Boom.
The sound did not come from inside the chamber.
It came from above.
The entire palace shuddered. A deep, grinding vibration rippled through the walls, sending thin cracks racing across the mirrored surfaces like spiderwebs.
Outside, somewhere far above this hidden chamber, part of the palace had been destroyed.
Another impact followed, stronger this time. Dust—real dust, not reflections—rained from the ceiling. The mirror walls flickered, their reflections distorting violently for a split second before stabilizing again.
Kai clenched his teeth.
So the fish was finally losing patience.
Elsewhere in the palace halls, thousands of small flesh-fish swam through the air as if it were water. Their bodies twisted and wriggled, wet and glistening, their many mouths opening and closing as they followed a single direction.
Him.
They poured through corridors, vents, shattered walls, slipping through gaps that should not have been wide enough to fit anything alive. Some scraped against mirror surfaces, leaving streaks of corrupted residue behind them. Others burst through weakened sections of the palace entirely, trailing chunks of broken stone and shattered reflections.
Outside the palace, the giant flesh-fish loomed.
Its body writhed above the collapsing structure, thousands of faces layered across its surface, all screaming silently. Five massive tentacles extended from its form, each one crackling with a different elemental distortion. They slammed into the palace again and again.
At first, the palace had absorbed the attacks.
Now it was breaking.
Entire sections of mirrored walls shattered and fell away, vanishing into the flesh ocean below. The floating structure groaned under the strain, fragments tearing loose as if the palace itself was being slowly skinned.
Inside the chamber, Kai felt it too.
Not the sound. Not the vibration.
The pull.
Both wristbands pulsed at the same time.
Not the chains.
The bands themselves.
The sensation was strange—deep, rhythmic, like something tugging gently at his bones rather than his skin. It wasn't pain. It wasn't force. It felt like being pulled by instinct, the way muscles tighten before a fall you can't stop.
The pull came from the altar.
Kai swallowed, his breath shallow.
"I don't like this," he muttered under his breath, voice rough. "Every time something 'calls' me, it ends badly."
The pressure kept him pinned, but the pull grew stronger, steady and insistent. His wrists felt warm. Heavy. As if the bands were trying to drag his arms toward the floating mirror on their own.
Then the chamber doors shattered inward.
Thousands of flesh-fish poured into the room.
They flooded the space in a writhing tide, bodies twisting and overlapping as they swam through the air. Their mouths snapped open and closed, rows of uneven teeth scraping together as they surged toward the center.
The guardian reacted instantly.
The floating mirror altar rippled, and water erupted from its surface in sharp, controlled arcs. Each slice of water moved like a blade, clean and precise. Flesh-fish were cut apart mid-air, their bodies splitting cleanly before collapsing into wet fragments that dissolved before hitting the ground.
Slice after slice.
The guardian did not slow.
As more fish entered, its movements accelerated, water forming and reforming faster, sharper, turning the chamber into a storm of cutting reflections. It was efficient. Relentless.
Kai watched from the ground, half-stunned.
"So," he rasped, "you can multitask."
More fish poured in.
The guardian adapted.
The more enemies appeared, the faster it moved, water spinning around it in controlled bursts. The altar shimmered brighter, reflecting each motion, amplifying its reach.
But the numbers kept increasing.
Some fish slipped through gaps between the water blades. Others burst through shattered mirrors at the edges of the chamber, crawling along the walls, dropping from above.
A few broke through the guardian's defense.
They turned toward Kai.
His breath hitched.
The pressure holding him down loosened—just slightly.
Enough.
Kai forced his eyes open wider.
Crimson flooded his vision.
The world snapped into layers—energy lines, movement paths, pressure points. The guardian's stance. The fish trajectories. The pull of the altar. The tension in the chamber itself.
Mist bled from his skin.
It rolled off his body in thick, pale streams, swallowing his outline as his form blurred. The flesh-fish lunged—
And Kai vanished.
For half a heartbeat, he thought he had escaped.
Then the world snapped back into place.
He reappeared mid-air.
Between the guardian and the swarm.
His body twisted instinctively, barely avoiding snapping jaws as fish surged past him. Water blades flashed inches from his face as the guardian adjusted its attack, recalculating his position instantly.
Kai cursed aloud.
"Of course," he said hoarsely. "Why would it ever be easy?"
The pressure slammed back down.
The guardian turned.
And this time, it was looking directly at him.
The altar pulsed.
The wristbands burned.
And the chamber closed in, reflections multiplying, collapsing inward, as everything—guardian, altar, flesh-fish, and falling palace above—moved toward a single breaking point.
Kai hung there, suspended between forces that wanted to crush him, devour him, or claim him.
And for the first time since entering the trial, he had no clear answer which one would reach him first.