"Hope arrives like dawn—slow at first, then impossible to ignore."
Light didn't explode so much as _fold._
It bent in layers, warping the chamber into something flatter, deeper, louder. The mirrors vibrated in orbit around Aarav—slow at first, then spinning with a speed that felt like the air tearing itself apart.
Meera grabbed the boy and ducked behind a rotating shard of reflected stone. Amar dragged Aarav backward before the light could swallow him whole.
"Aarav! On your feet!" Amar barked.
Aarav tasted dust. Stone. His own breath shaking. "I—I didn't do that."
"Don't care who did," Amar growled. "Stay alive."
The mirror that had shown Arin—or whatever wore Arin's shape—hung suspended in midair, cracks spider webbing across its surface like frost claiming a windowpane.
A voice bled out of those cracks:
_Choose…_
Aarav backed into Amar's solid frame. "I am not doing this again. Not with him. Not with… that."
But the mirrors didn't wait for him to find courage.
They shifted.
They moved.
They reorganized themselves into a ring around the group—twelve mirrors forming a perfect circle.
A ritual.
A machine.
A judgment.
Meera's voice trembled as she scanned the room. "This is an Anchor crucible. The last time anyone activated one of these was—"
"Don't," Amar warned. "Don't finish that sentence."
The boy clung to Meera like she was the only thing holding him in this world.
Aarav stepped forward despite his shaking legs. "What does it want from me?"
Arin's absence hung like a ghost between his ribs.
Meera moved to his side. "Whatever it wants, it doesn't get to take it."
The mirrors brightened.
One by one.
Each mirror showed a version of Aarav:
—Aarav as a child, staring at a cracked floor.
—Aarav running through the outpost ruins, reaching for people he couldn't save.
—Aarav sinking into a spiral staircase as the echo-spawn whispered his name.
—Aarav collapsing under fractured memories that were not his.
Then—
A mirror showed him standing atop a broken world.
Eyes glowing.
Crown split.
Hands cracking with light.
The King's shadow overlaid on his own.
Aarav's throat closed. "No. No—no, that's not me. That's _not_ me."
The mirror pulsed:
_Choose._
Amar slammed the butt of his dagger against the glass. "He _did_. He's choosing to not become whatever nightmare that is."
The mirror ignored him completely.
It only responded to Aarav.
_Choose._
Aarav clenched his fists. "I'm choosing myself. Not him."
The mirrors flared brighter—as if the chamber itself disagreed.
The cracked mirror—Arin's mirrored silhouette—glowed last.
This time, the voice didn't fracture.
It boomed.
_THEN PROVE IT._
Aarav felt the floor vanish beneath him.
He dropped—
not falling,
but pulled—
as if something in the chamber had hooked its fingers through the resonance in his chest and yanked him out of reality.
The others shouted his name.
Meera.
Amar.
Even the boy.
Their voices stretched thin and watery.
The chamber vanished.
The mirrors vanished.
Everything turned white.
Aarav landed on his knees.
And the world around him reformed into a place he had never seen—but remembered like he'd lived there.
A long hall made of black stone.
Windows opening to a sky made of ash.
A crown, broken, resting on a pedestal of cracked light.
And a figure standing at the far end.
Not a shadow.
Not a distortion.
A man.
Human.
Tall.
Wearing a cloak of shifting resonance.
Face unscarred.
Eyes heavy with grief.
Not the Voided King.
Not yet.
The man looked at Aarav like someone looking at their own past.
Aarav's breath hitched. "Who… who are you?"
The man tilted his head.
And when he spoke, his voice wasn't cracked, wasn't hollow, wasn't broken.
It was tired.
"It doesn't matter what my name was," he said. "Only what I became."
Aarav shook his head. "This isn't real."
"No," the man agreed. "It's memory."
"My memory?"
"Yours," the man said. "And mine."
Aarav stepped back. "I don't want this."
"That is why you are here," the man said softly. "Anchors don't choose what they carry. Only how they bear it."
Aarav clenched his jaw. "I am not becoming you."
The man looked away, toward the shattered crown.
"I said the same."
Aarav swallowed. "I don't believe you."
The man smiled—a sad, human thing. "You shouldn't. I lied to myself."
Aarav trembled. "What do you want from me?"
The man walked closer. Slowly. Carefully. Like approaching an injured animal.
"To warn you."
Aarav stiffened.
"And to teach you the first anchor truth."
Aarav lifted his chin. "What truth?"
The man raised a hand and pointed directly at Aarav's chest.
"Resonance is not your power. It is your reflection.
It shows you the version of yourself you fear the most."
Aarav froze.
The man's expression softened with a grief so deep it felt ancient.
"If you never face that version," he said, "you will become it."
Aarav swallowed hard. "So the mirrors—"
"—are showing your possible endings," the man finished.
"And my trial?" Aarav whispered.
The man stepped back.
"Choose the version of yourself you refuse to abandon."
Aarav tensed. "Is that all?"
"No," the man said quietly. "You must hold onto it… even when the world tells you to let go."
Aarav's pulse hammered.
"I won't become you," he whispered.
The man nodded once.
"Then fight like it."
Light tore the hall apart—
the mirrors shattered—
the temple walls rushed back—
And Aarav fell backward into reality.
Amar caught him mid-collapse.
Meera steadied his head.
The boy cried out in relief.
Aarav gasped for breath—
And whispered the truth the trial had carved into him:
"I know who I am."
The mirrors dimmed.
The chamber fell silent.
And for the first time since the fractures began,
the resonance in Aarav's chest
didn't tremble.
It settled.
"He didn't smile, but the world shifted as if he almost had."