[Stage Six: Mirror of the Soul – Minute 30]
The wind was no mere movement of air; it was a series of invisible, icy lashes, flaying my face and body without mercy. I stood atop a jagged stone obelisk, its surface no larger than half a meter, suspended in an infinite gray void. Beneath me lay a bottomless abyss; above, a sky boiling with obsidian clouds. My entire body was taut, like a steel bowstring drawn to its breaking point, vibrating with a frequency so high it was almost invisible to the naked eye.
In my outstretched right hand, I held "The Balance." An ancient wooden bucket, filled to the absolute brim with a viscous, dense red liquid—resembling heavy mercury or thickened blood. The rule was simple and brutal: A single drop falls = Instant Death.
The child, the "Gatekeeper," floated before me in the void, sitting cross-legged in the air as if watching a dull film. He gazed at me with emerald eyes that radiated an ancient, malevolent glint, letting out a staged, bored yawn. "You're boring, Ray... so very boring," he said, his voice a soft, childish lilt that sent shivers down my spine. "Thirty minutes have passed, and not a single drop has fallen. You are as still as a stone idol. Have your nerves died?"
I didn't answer. I didn't blink. I was a statue of flesh and absolute focus. His eyes flashed with a wicked spark. "Fine... let's make things interesting. Let's see if our idol knows fear."
"Snap!" He flicked his tiny fingers.
[First Illusion: The Dragon]
Suddenly, without warning, the black clouds above split apart with the sound of the heavens tearing. I heard a terrifying sound—a whistling roar descending from above with the speed of a falling meteor. I tilted my eyes upward (without moving my head a single millimeter). It wasn't a meteor. It was a Dragon. A gargantuan winged beast forged of black smoke and manifested shadow, plummeting toward me at the speed of sound, its maw wide enough to swallow the obelisk and everything on it. I saw the rows of serrated teeth; I saw the blue hellfire flickering in its throat.
My primal instincts screamed in frenzy: (Move! Jump! Duck!) My thigh muscles contracted instinctively to flee. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a flood. But my cold logic intervened in a fraction of a second: "This is a test of stillness... the child's rules say no movement. No touching." If I moved, I would fall into the abyss. If I stood still and it struck, I would die. It was a gamble with my life on the very fabric of reality.
I bit my tongue so hard I tasted the salty tang of blood, forcing my terrified body into paralysis. The beast closed in... it filled my entire field of vision... darkness swallowed me. Its sulfuric, scorching breath fanned my face, blowing my hair back.
"ROOOOOAAAAAARRRR!"
The monster passed right through me. It didn't strike. It drifted through my body like cold mist. It was a visual and auditory illusion, executed with terrifying perfection. It evaporated into the abyss behind me, leaving me standing there, trembling internally, my heart hammering against my ribs. But my right hand remained steady. The bucket did not spill a drop.
[Second Illusion: The Invasion]
The child clapped with exaggerated enthusiasm. "Brilliant! Truly, nerves of steel." Then, he narrowed his eyes with a greasy smirk. "But... big monsters are easy. What about... the little things?"
He pointed a slender finger at the hand holding the bucket. I felt something moving on my skin. A light, rapid, disgusting tickle. I looked at my hand. It was covered in Spiders. Hundreds of tiny black spiders, with spindly, hairy legs, crawled out from my sleeve and onto the fingers gripping the bucket's handle. They swarmed over my wrist. They began climbing my arm. I felt their tiny legs sinking into my pores. A large one crawled up my neck. Another walked across my cheek, nearing my open eye.
Primal phobia. The involuntary shiver. The urge to shake my hand was overwhelming, compulsive, and destructive. I wanted to scream, to swat my face, to hurl the cursed bucket and crush these vile insects entering my ear. (Move! Shake them off! They're inside you!)
"It's an illusion... it's an illusion..." I chanted in my mind like a mantra, sweat pouring from my forehead and mingling with the spiders' legs. "Stay still... stay still, you bastard." I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing only on the weight of the bucket. Minutes passed like years of sickening torture. Then, suddenly... the sensation vanished. The spiders disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.
I opened my eyes and glanced at the floating hourglass. [45:00]. Only fifteen minutes had passed. A quarter of the time left. I was panting silently, my body glistening with sweat despite the biting cold. I had drained half my mental energy just to remain standing.
[The Reality: Pulse of the Abyss]
The child drifted closer, floating like a helium balloon until his face was inches from mine. He studied my exhausted features, the blood on my lip, the sweat. He smiled with a mock, provocative pity. "You're good at ignoring what you see (The Dragon), and good at ignoring what you feel (The Spiders)." He placed a pale, small hand over his own chest, exactly where the heart lies. "But... Ray..." he whispered softly, "Can you ignore what is inside you? Can you ignore your own engine?"
He tilted his head and whispered a single word, with a slow, heavy rhythm: "Thump... Thump..."
In that instant, something in my physiology shifted. It wasn't an illusion. It wasn't a visual trick. I felt my heart... expand. The next beat wasn't normal.
"BOOM!" A violent, heavy, gargantuan strike, as if an iron sledgehammer had slammed against my ribcage from the inside out. My entire body jarred with the impact. My chest cavity forcibly expanded. I looked at the bucket. The red liquid rippled violently. A circular wave radiated from the center and struck the edges, nearly slopping over. "What...?" I whispered in horror.
"BOOM!" The second strike was even more powerful. My right arm, holding the bucket, jerked with the pulse. I saw the veins in my forearm bulge and swell like high-pressure fire hoses. The blood wasn't pumping; it was detonating inside my veins.
I realized the catastrophe. The child hadn't touched me from the outside. He had manipulated the Pacemaker of my heart. He was messing with my body's electricity. He had cranked the pumping force to 200%. My body had become a human vibration machine. I was my own enemy now.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" The beats accelerated. From a hammer, they turned into a machine gun. The bucket began to visibly shake in my hand. The red liquid danced frantically, rising and falling, slapping against the rim, threatening to spill at any millisecond.
True terror gripped me. "The bucket will fall... the liquid will spill..." And so, the vicious cycle began: My fear of spilling the liquid surged my adrenaline. The adrenaline made my heart beat faster and harder. The harder beats made my hand shake more. The shaking made me fear even more.
"Boom-boom-boom-boom!" My heart was drumming a war march, the sound deafening my ears and blurring my vision. I tried to steady my hand, tightening every muscle, but how do you steady a hand when the blood inside it is crashing against the walls like a tsunami? The tighter I gripped, the more I trembled. The bucket was dancing. Tiny droplets began to fly off the turbulent surface, hovering in the air before falling back in... but they hadn't fallen out. Yet.
I looked at the child. He was clutching his stomach, laughing. A hysterical, high-pitched, mad laughter that echoed through the abyss, blending with the sound of my pulse. He watched my convulsing body as if I were having a seizure, eyes gleaming with sadistic ecstasy.
He leaned in even closer, his voice cutting through the roar of the blood in my ears: "Yes... yes..." His grin widened until it seemed to split his face from ear to ear. "This is what I wanted! Fight yourself! Dance to the rhythm of your own death!"
I looked at the red liquid. A massive wave gathered at the rim... swaying... bead-like... ready to fall. And my heart braced for the next beat... the strongest beat... the one that would push that drop over the edge.