The chamber beyond the fractured mirrors swallowed them.
No light. No echo. No time.
The darkness was not absence — it was presence. A living thing that pressed against their skin, wrapping fingers of cold around their throats. It wasn't just blackness. It was emptiness. So complete, so absolute, it stripped away the senses until even thought became suspect.
Elara led them forward, her hand skimming the wall for guidance, though there was nothing — no texture, no resistance. Just cold. And silence.
Even the symbols that had followed them since entering the Room were gone. No flickering lights. No whispering code. Only the sound of their own breathing, tight and sharp, as if the air itself was rejecting them.
Her footfalls were a dull echo on smooth stone. Behind her, the others followed — quiet, alert, disturbed.
Harper finally spoke, her voice a tremor in the void. "Where are we?"
Coyle was the one to answer, his voice like gravel. "The heart of the Room's mind."
He turned slowly, eyes unfocused. "Where secrets come to die… or live forever."
Jace's usual smirk had evaporated. He scanned the chamber with narrowed eyes, one hand twitching near the grip of his blade. "Feels more like a grave."
Elara nodded grimly. "Maybe both."
They moved cautiously, boots scuffing the seamless floor. The air smelled of nothing. It tasted of ice. Every step deeper into the space felt like being buried.
Then—
A sound.
Barely perceptible at first, so soft it might have been imagined — the faint intake of breath. Then again. Stronger. Closer.
Not one of them.
From the shadows.
Elara froze. "Did you hear that?"
Jace raised his weapon. "It's not us."
The breath grew louder. Heavier. Then a shape stepped forward from the dark — and the darkness clung to it like skin.
It had no face.
No eyes. No mouth. No features.
Yet somehow, it looked at them.
Elara's breath hitched. "Who's there?"
The figure shifted — a ripple of distortion — and suddenly… it was her. Her exact likeness. Same stance. Same expression. But wrong. Slightly off, like a memory recalled in a nightmare. Hollow-eyed. Drained. The smile on its lips was too wide.
Then it changed again — into Harper.
Then Jace.
Then Kemi.
Each time, the mimicry became more warped. More grotesque. Twisted mockeries of familiarity.
"The hell is that?" Jace murmured, stepping back.
The air itself seemed to vibrate as a voice — not heard, but felt — pressed into their skulls like a hand gripping their minds.
"The Unseen Trial begins."
Each word felt like it was carved into bone.
"Face the reflections you deny. Admit the truths you hide."
The figure split into six. One for each of them.
And then they spoke — not aloud, but inside each of their minds. Words formed from shame. From wounds.
Elara staggered as her twin stepped closer. She didn't speak. She showed.
Visions bloomed behind her eyes like poison:
Her sister drowning — again. But this time, Elara was above water. Watching. Unmoving. Her hand remained outstretched — but she did nothing. And worse: a part of her didn't want to.
"I didn't—" she gasped. "I tried—"
The doppelgänger cocked its head. "Did you?"
Tears stung her eyes.
Jace's reflection stood over a burning village. A woman knelt in the ash, clutching a child with empty eyes. His mirror self raised a blade — and laughed. Blood sprayed across his armor like paint.
"You told them it was a tactical strike," the voice echoed. "But you knew. You wanted to see them pay."
Jace clenched his fists. "I did what I had to."
"No," his mirror answered. "You did what you enjoyed."
Harper's double knelt in chains, sobbing. "I'm sorry," it repeated again and again. "I wasn't strong enough. I let them die."
Kemi's mimic didn't cry. It calculated.
She stood in front of a console, her hands slick with sweat. Behind her, a sealed door pounded — people screaming on the other side.
"You rewrote the access code," it whispered. "You watched the clock run down. And you didn't open it."
Kemi's lips parted, but no words came.
Dorian's doppelgänger held a gun to his own head.
And smiled.
"I told you we didn't belong here," it said. "You knew from the start. You just didn't have the guts to leave."
One by one, the figures circled them, murmuring doubts, clawing at their psyches with truths sharpened by time and guilt.
The shadows pulsed. Twisted.
Shapes began to emerge.
Monsters born of memory and fear.
A great, spider-like beast crawled from the wall, its legs formed from the arms of drowning children. A serpent of screaming mouths slithered between the group, trailing black smoke.
Coyle was the first to step forward.
"Stop!" he shouted. "This isn't real! It's illusion!"
"No," Elara whispered, her voice hollow. "It's real enough. It's us."
The figures didn't attack.
They waited.
The voice returned:
"Only those who confront their unseen truths may survive."
Elara shook.
She turned to her double. "I loved her. I tried to save her. But I was afraid. I froze. And… I hated myself for it. Still do."
The double paused. Its smile faded. And it dissolved into dust.
Jace swallowed. "I did it. I butchered them. Thought they deserved it. I don't know if I regret it — but I remember their faces. Every night."
His mirror cracked like porcelain — then collapsed.
Harper dropped to her knees, facing her reflection. "I'm not enough. I know. But I still try. Every time. I try."
Tears streamed down both their faces.
The figure nodded — and vanished.
Kemi trembled, fingers trembling over her wrist.
"I rewired the lock," she said. "I calculated survival. But they screamed. And I listened. And I still didn't open it."
Silence.
"I remember their names."
Her double smiled — not cruelly — and faded.
Only Dorian's remained.
He stared it down, stone-faced.
"I should've walked away," he said. "But I didn't. Because even if we don't belong — I wanted to."
He turned to Elara.
"I wanted to believe in something."
The final reflection vanished.
And the monsters shrieked.
The illusions — broken now, untethered from the truths that fed them — twisted and howled before dissipating into black mist.
The chamber pulsed.
Then… silence returned.
Breath by breath, the group steadied.
The darkness began to thin — like fog lifting at dawn. Faint light illuminated a doorway beyond, its frame shimmering with new symbols, glowing not with threat, but invitation.
They had passed.
Not unscathed.
But not destroyed.
Elara stood, blood on her lip, hair clinging to her face. Her voice was raw.
"We made it."
Coyle nodded. "Not everyone does."
Jace leaned against the wall, eyes hollow. "We barely did."
Harper sheathed her weapon. "It felt… like it knew everything. Like it was us."
Kemi wiped her cheek, finally breathing again. "That's what made it so dangerous."
Dorian remained quiet, his expression unreadable.
Elara turned to the door ahead. Beyond it — the final layer. The true secret of the Room. The thing that had called them here, tested them, stripped them to nothing.
But now they were ready.
Because they had faced themselves.
And though not everyone had survived unchanged…
They had survived.
For now.