The restorative runes of the Midway Sanctuary worked wonders on bruised muscles and shallow cuts, but did nothing for the frayed nerves or the new, sharp awareness that hummed between the six of them. They rested in the pavilion, not quite comfortable, but bound by a shared, weary understanding. They were a unit now, for better or worse.
Justin shared out nutrient pastes from his kit. Dominic sharpened a piece of rubble into a crude dagger, his eyes constantly scanning the entrances. Ellora's spirits perched around her, watchful. Daniel sat apart, eyes closed, but Kael knew he wasn't sleeping. The air thrummed with unspoken questions.
The map, still hovering from Justin's token, showed the way forward: a narrow, spiraling path leading to a sector marked only with a strange, shifting icon and the label "Psychometric Evaluation."
"Gauntlet of Mirrors," Justin read aloud, frowning. "Old records mention it. It's not a combat trial. It's… internal."
"Great," Dominic muttered, testing the edge of his rock blade. "So we get to fight ourselves. Even less fun than fighting rich idiots."
"It tests resolve. Character," Justin said, though he sounded unsure. "If we've made it this far as a group, we should face it as one."
No one argued. The alternative was going alone.
The path to the Gauntlet was a stark contrast to the shattered grandeur of the lower spire. It became a smooth, polished tunnel of a single, dark mineral that drank the light from their glowing map token. The air grew cold and still, smelling of ozone and old stone. The only sound was the scuff of their boots and the unnerving way the tunnel seemed to swallow their whispers.
It opened into a vast, spherical cavern.
The walls, floor, and domed ceiling were made of the same dark material, but here it was perfectly smooth and reflective. Not like glass, but like still, black water, showing their distorted, shadowy reflections from every angle. In the very center of the cavern stood a single, ordinary looking stone archway, framed by two unlit braziers. Beyond it was darkness.
"That's it?" Ellora whispered, her voice echoing weirdly, layered over itself. "We just walk through?"
"Nothing's ever 'just' anything here," Dominic said, his reflection scowling back at him from five different surfaces.
As they stepped into the cavern, the braziers flared to life with a soft whoosh, not with fire, but with cool, white light. The moment the light hit the walls, their reflections changed.
They didn't move. They stared. And their faces… shifted.
Kael saw his own reflection, but his eyes in the mirror were wide with terror, his hands raised as if warding off a blow. Behind his mirrored self, the shadows in the reflection swirled and formed vague, crying shapes the children from the orphanage.
Justin's reflection showed him in tattered, noble silks, standing alone on a battlefield, his sword broken, his face a mask of utter despair as figures turned and walked away from him.
Dominic's mirror image was clad in fine, arrogant nobleman's clothes, a sneer on his face as he ground a boot heel into a struggling, blurred form that looked suspiciously like his own former self.
Ellora's reflection had her backed against a wall, Justin's mirrored back turned to her as he walked away arm in arm with a laughing, beautiful noble girl. The look of utter betrayal on her reflection's face was heartbreaking.
Even Daniel's stoic reflection fractured. It showed him not as a shadow, but vividly clear, kneeling in a circle of light, surrounded by the accusing, translucent forms of people in Inquisitor uniforms their mouths open in silent screams.
A low, psychic hum filled the cavern, vibrating in their teeth. It wasn't a voice, but a feeling, pressing against their minds: Fear. Show me your fear.
"It's pulling them out," Kael breathed, clenching his fists. His heart hammered against his ribs. He could feel the orphanage's cold doorstep, the guilt like a physical chain.
"Don't look at them," Justin said, his voice strained. He was staring fixedly at the central arch, his jaw tight. "It's an illusion. A test. Just keep moving."
"Easy for you to say," Dominic shot back, but he too wrenched his gaze from the mirror showing him as everything he hated. "Your nightmare is being a failure. Mine is being a success."
They started moving as a group towards the arch, a knot of tension shuffling across the reflective floor. But with each step, the pressure grew. The reflections began to speak.
"You left us," Kael's reflection mouthed, the orphanage shadows wailing silently. "You brought the danger. You selfish, monstrous—"
"You are not enough" Justin's despairing reflection wept, the sound echoing in his head. "Your ideals are a child's fantasy. You will fail everyone."
"This is what power is," Dominic's noble reflection sneered, his voice slick and cruel. "Crushing the weak. It's in the blood. You can feel it, can't you?"
"He was never yours", Ellora's reflection whispered, tears of crystal sliding down its cheeks. "You are a common diversion. He will remember his station, and you will be nothing."
"Murderer", Daniel's spectral inquisitors hissed in a chorus only he could hear. "Traitor. You live when they died. Your shadow is cowardice."
The words weren't just heard; they were felt. Drops of icy doubt injected directly into their veins. Ellora let out a small whimper, pressing her hands over her ears. Justin's steps faltered. Dominic's face was a mask of pale, rigid fury. Daniel had gone utterly still, his breathing shallow.
The psychic storm raged within the cavern, each of them drowning in their private horror. The pressure was a physical weight, pushing them toward their knees.
Then, a new sound pierced the psychic hum a ragged, gasping sob that was utterly, humanly real.
From a side tunnel they hadn't noticed, a figure stumbled into the cavern. It was a girl, around their age, but she looked like a ghost of herself. Her clothes were singed in places and oddly stretched, as if the fabric had been pulled in multiple directions at once. Her amber eyes, wide with panic, were fixed on nothing. In her hands, swirling in a chaotic vortex of visible distortion, was a ball of conflicting energy one half violent, joyous flame, the other a crackling tear in reality itself.
Sora Aster Valeric.
She wasn't fighting the mirrors. The mirrors were fighting her.
Around her, the reflective surfaces didn't show a single, clear fear. They showed a fractured kaleidoscope of nightmares. In one mirror, she was fully dragonkin, roaring and burning a village, her eyes full of bestial rage. In another, she was fully human, frail and forgotten, fading into nothingness as space itself unraveled around her. In a third, she was trapped between, her body tearing itself apart into flame and void.
"Make it stop!" she screamed, the words tearing from her throat. The ball of Flame & Space in her hands spasmed. A tendril of fire licked out and scorched the floor. A tiny spatial rift snapped open beside her head with a sound like tearing canvas, sucking in a few strands of her dark hair before winking out. "I can't...I don't want to see...!"
The Gauntlet, sensing her profound inner conflict and unstable power, was amplifying it, feeding the chaos back into her. She was caught in a feedback loop of fear and magic, on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown that could twist the very chamber around them.
Kael saw her, and for a moment, his own fear of the orphanage's accusation was eclipsed by a sharper, more immediate terror. He recognized the draconic signature in her flame, wild and desperate. And he felt, through Vaelthryx, a pulse of… not kinship, but recognition. "A fledgling of the distant kin, burning its own nest."
He acted without thinking. While the others were still locked in their battles, he took a step toward the spiraling girl.
"Sora!" he yelled, not knowing her name but pulling it from the fragmented introductions of the Attribute ceremony. "Look at me! Not the mirrors!"
Her panicked amber eyes flicked to him, but they didn't see him. They saw another reflection, another terror.
Her magic bucked. A whip of fire and a shard of distorted space lashed out toward him, not as an attack, but as an uncontrolled scream.
Kael didn't raise a shield. He didn't try to unmake it. He did the only thing that felt right in the heart of this fear soaked place. He reached out.
Not with a hand, but with his Sovereign affinity. He didn't confront her flame or her space. He touched the concept between them, the chaos, the lack of control. He projected a feeling, raw and simple, through the bond and into the maelstrom of her power Still.
It wasn't a command. It was an offer. An offer of a moment's peace.
The lashing tendrils of her magic didn't vanish. They stalled. The fire guttered. The spatial distortion froze, like a glitch in the world. For one precious second, her power was suspended, silent.
In that sudden, quiet void, the hold of the mirrors on her broke. She gasped, the nightmare kaleidoscope around her shattering into ordinary, dark reflections. She collapsed to her knees, the unstable ball of magic in her hands dissolving into harmless embers and a faint pop of air. She hugged herself, shaking violently, silent sobs wracking her frame.
Kael's intervention had been a lightning rod. The Gauntlet's focus, momentarily split, lessened its pressure on everyone else.
It was the opening they needed.
Justin saw Sora's collapse, saw Kael standing protectively between her and the mirrors, and the image of his own "failure" fractured. Here was someone needing help right now. He roared, not in despair, but in defiance, and turned his back on his broken reflection. "Enough!"
Ellora, seeing the new girl's utter vulnerability, felt her own fear of betrayal morph into a fierce, protective instinct. She shut her eyes against her lying mirror and focused on the real, kind boy who had defended her. "You're a liar!" she shouted at her reflection, and its image shattered.
One by one, they broke free Dominic by sheer spite, Daniel by silent acknowledgement until only the echoes of Sora's sobs remained in the cavern.
The psychic hum died.
In the new silence, the group gathered, not just as six, but as seven. They stood around Sora, who still knelt on the floor, her face hidden. The shared experience now included this stranger's raw, public unraveling.
Justin offered her a hand. "It's over. The mirrors can't hurt you now."
Sora flinched, then slowly looked up, her amber eyes darting between their faces, seeing concern, not mockery or fear. She took his hand, her own trembling. "I… I couldn't make it stop. The fire and the… the holes. They keep showing me…" She trailed off, shuddering.
"You're not the only one it showed bad things to," Ellora said softly, kneeling beside her. "It shows everyone the worst thing they can imagine."
Sora's eyes finally landed on Kael, who stood a little apart, looking drained. "You… you stopped it. How?"
Kael shrugged awkwardly. "I just… asked it to take a break."
She stared at him, a flicker of something like awe in her gaze. She had felt that moment of imposed stillness in her soul. It had been the first moment of quiet in her mind since she'd awakened her powers.
They collected the Keystones from the pedestal, Sora receiving one that glowed with a faint, warm light. As they left the chamber and emerged onto the high ledge, the two groups converged.
From a higher, more stable path to their left, another group emerged onto a parallel ledge.
Sophia Vlad Skynyrd and her cohort. They were immaculate. No dust, no tears, no shadows under their eyes. They looked like they'd taken a leisurely stroll through a park.
Sophia's amethyst eyes swept over Kael's group their dirty clothes, their raw knuckles, the shared exhaustion in their postures. Her gaze lingered on Dominic for a half second, then moved on.
A faint, cool smile touched her lips. Not friendly. Analytical.
"It appears," she said, her voice carrying easily across the gap, "that the scenic route has its… cost."
She didn't wait for a reply. She turned and led her pristine group onward, up the clearly superior path.
Dominic watched them go, his face unreadable. He looked down at the raw skin on his knuckles, then at the Keystone in his palm.
"Yeah," he muttered to himself, so low only Kael next to him could hear. "But we paid. We own the road."