It was not a battle.
It was not a lecture.
It was a mirror.
Inside the Locus Hall, beneath the gravity-spun tower of the Nocturnum Academy, the students of Class Aether-Black stood in silence.
The air was damp.
The floor was obsidian.
The ceiling, alive with runes.
Professor Thale's voice echoed above them.
"You came here thinking you would be trained. Taught. Shaped.
You were wrong."
A flick of her hand, and the glyph-bound walls peeled open.
Darkness spilled in—not shadow, but memory. Formless. Crawling.
"This is the Test of Echoes. You will face your echo—your opposite—your feared self. Survive… or be erased."
No warnings.
No time.
The students were swallowed by light.
Noir blinked—and found himself alone.
No walls. No floor. Only mist.
Then he saw it. Standing before him.
Himself.
But twisted.
Eyes pitch black.
Veins glowing violet.
Cloaked in moving glyphs of agony.
This Noir wore the Book of the Abyss like armor, and behind him… the sky bled ink.
The echo spoke.
"You wear the Book like a guest.
I wear it like skin."
Caleb took a step back.
"You are not real."
"I'm the end of what you'll become."
A wave of corrupted shadow launched forward.
Noir dodged, but barely. His glyphs flickered. Split. Reshape.
Nothing worked right here.
It was like the rules of magic were twisted.
The echo summoned tendrils of broken time. Mirror beasts formed in midair.
Each one shaped like the students of Class Aether-Black—dying.
Caleb clenched his fists.
"You are not me."
"I am what the Void wants you to be."
The glyph "Vanish" pulsed.
And Caleb obeyed.
He melted into his own shadow—dodging behind the echo's mirror frame.
Then, Observe.
The glyph chain on the echo's chest pulsed with a stutter. A weakness. Emotion.
Noir reformed.
He whispered into his Book:
"Give me a shape."
A new glyph answered.
"Bind."
Black chains erupted from the ground, coiling around the echo's arms.
It screamed—not in rage, but in recognition.
"You're not ready yet," the echo hissed.
"But one day… we'll be the same."
Then it broke into dust.
Noir stood, panting, back in Locus Hall.
The others reappeared beside him—shaken, pale.
Kael's arm was bleeding.
Selis wouldn't stop muttering.
Professor Thale walked among them.
"Congratulations. You didn't die."
She stopped beside Caleb.
"But you… I saw your Echo.
It wasn't just fear."
She leaned in.
"It was prophecy."
Noir said nothing.
But in his palm, the glyph "Bind" still burned.
And somewhere deep, the whisper returned:
"You will return to me."