The Hollow Maze reeked of scorched breath and fractured timelines. Kael stood alone in the boss chamber—an arena of jagged obsidian and whispering echoes, each whisper sounding oddly like his own voice.
Before him, the boss emerged. A towering humanoid figure forged from shattered bone, iron sinew, and vents that exhaled clouds of scalding steam.
Its eyes had no pupils—just scorched slits leaking vapor like boiling tears.
[BOSS IDENTIFIED: MIRROR REVENANT]
[WARNING: THIS ENTITY ADAPTS TO YOUR COMBAT STYLE]
Kael didn't blink. His fists were already raw, knuckles split from a dozen battles. But something in him… surged.
"Adapt to this," he growled.
He lunged, low and vicious.
The Revenant met him mid-charge—bone blades sweeping like guillotines. Kael slid beneath, twisted, and drove his elbow into its gut. The impact sounded like metal cracking marble.
No flinch.
Then it mirrored him.
Same move. Same arc. Same brutality.
It was learning.
[ADAPTATION RATE: 42%]
Kael leapt back, panting. "No way…"
The monster's shape shimmered.
Then shifted.
It now looked… like him.
Same messy hair. Same blackened eye. Same scar along the jaw from his first fall in the Nexus.
But its smile was too wide. Its teeth—too many. Like a nightmare of himself, stretched past humanity.
His breath caught.
"What the hell—"
The doppelgänger tilted its head and spoke in his voice, "You died already. You just haven't realized it yet."
Kael's thoughts fractured. Was this real?
And then—it happened.
For a heartbeat, he saw himself… dead.
Sprawled in the obsidian crater where he first woke up. Blood pooled around his head. His limbs twisted unnaturally.
[ERROR: REALITY SYNC FALTERING]
"Am I… still lying there?" he whispered.
"This is your mind shattering," Echo's voice broke through, distant and cold. "Your first Fracture."
Kael snarled, shoving the hallucination back.
He headbutted the Revenant. Grabbed its limb mid-slash. Spun. Slammed its body into a jagged wall.
He screamed—not in fear, not in pain—but in Resonance.
And the wall cracked.
Light flooded through the seams.
The Mirror Revenant disintegrated in a flash of refracted light.
[BOSS DEFEATED. SYNC: 12%]
[RESONANCE LEVEL: 3 → 5]
[NEW SKILL: SHARD PULSE I]
Kael dropped to his knees.
Tears blurred his vision.
Because in that moment—he wasn't sure if he had won…
Or if something else had taken over.