Cel stepped into the maze as the first sun kissed the horizon. The violet walls stretched before him in absolute silence - not the peaceful quiet of dawn, but the muffled void that had claimed his world since yesterday's ordeal. He kept the distant spire at his back - his only reliable landmark in this reality-bending labyrinth.
The corridors yawned empty around him. Each turn revealed nothing but more crystalline passages, their faceted walls catching the growing light and throwing it back. His damaged ears caught no echo of footsteps, no whisper of wind through the formations. The maze had become a world of shadows and light, stripped of all sound..
He pressed forward anyway, relying on sight and the subtle vibrations he could feel through the soles of his feet.
The heat built with each passing minute. What had started as gentle warmth now pressed against his skin like invisible hands. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and though he couldn't hear the crystal's hum, he felt it - a pressure behind his temples that made his head ache.
A passage to his left promised deeper exploration, but Cel hesitated. The memory of yesterday's agony pulsed fresh in his skull - that crushing weight of superheated air, the resonance that had driven blood from his ears.
He turned back.
The retreat tasted like failure, each silent step toward the ruins an admission of weakness. But when the broken stones came into view, relief flooded through him. Better a living coward than a deaf corpse.
The afternoon crawled by in maddening quiet. Cel sat in the ruin's blessed shadow, watching the suns reach their zenith through gaps in the collapsed roof. The distant crystal spire shimmered like a mirage, wavering in the blazing heat. Without sound to guide him, the world felt flattened, drained of dimension. He found himself touching surfaces constantly - stone, crystal fragments, his own skin - desperate for sensation that wasn't purely visual.
When evening finally came, painting the glowing crystals in shades of deep purple, Cel rose with grim determination. The suns hung low now, their killing heat gentled to merely uncomfortable warmth. The pressure behind his temples had eased, suggesting the crystal's deadly resonance had faded even if he could no longer hear it.
This time, he would go deeper.
The spire loomed behind him as he chose a different path, one that curved away from his morning's route. The maze felt like a tomb in its absolute silence - no whisper of wind, no crack of settling crystal, no distant sounds to suggest life of any kind.
After some time, the walls began to widen, gradually at first, then more noticeably, until the oppressive weight of the narrow corridors lifted like a held breath finally released.
Then he saw it.
A lake stretched before him, its surface perfectly still in the growing darkness. But it wasn't water - the unnatural consistency was obvious even from a distance, too thick for water, too fluid for anything solid. It reflected the darkening sky with impossible clarity, as if the surface were polished metal rather than liquid.
Cel approached slowly, feeling an almost magnetic urge to approach the lake. It's surface remained undisturbed, a perfect mirror that reflected the world above with unnatural perfection.
He knelt at the liquids edge and saw himself in a chilling accuracy - his silhouette, his stance, his body - everything was as it should be, except his face. It was blank. Smooth, featureless, like the unmarked surface of polished stone. Just an empty flesh - devoid of any identity.
"What the…?"
It was as if the lake were stripping him of himself, reducing him to a hollow shell, a reminder of something he could not fully recall. His hands trembled as he reached toward the surface, as if some hidden truth lay beneath the placid crystal, waiting to reveal itself.
But before he could reach it, the reflection shifted.
The scene that formed was one he knew very well. It was a scene that played in his mind over and over again in brutal clarity.
In the crystalline surface, his younger self stood with shoulders hunched, head bowed in the stance he'd perfected through countless beatings. Lord Aldric loomed over him, face contorted with the particular rage reserved for disappointments. The man's mouth moved in fury, but in this soundless world, the visual impact hit harder. Every twisted expression, every sneer of contempt, played out in merciless detail.
The first blow landed without warning, just as it had that day. His father's fist connected with his jaw, snapping his head to the side. Cel watched blood spray from his younger self's split lip in perfect silence, the violence somehow more brutal without the accompanying sounds of impact and pain.
His hand moved involuntarily to his own jaw, phantom pain flaring as if the blow had just landed.
The beating continued. Each blow landed with visual precision- the snap of his head, the spray of blood, the way his body crumpled under the assault. His mother clutched his sister while tears carved tracks down her cheeks. Darian stood in the doorway, fists clenched but feet rooted to the floor. In the absolute quiet, their inaction felt even more damning. No cries of protest, no pleas for mercy - just silent complicity.
The scene shifted to its most horrific moment. His father's hands closed around his shoulders, hauling him upright to slam him against the wall. Then came the clawing - nails digging into the flesh around the Moon Goddess's mark.
Cel's heart pounded as he watched the scene unfold, helpless to stop it.
In the soundless reflection, his younger self's mouth opened wide in what must have been a scream of agony. The sight of that silent scream was somehow more terrible than any sound could have ever been. Cel's own back prickled with remembered fire as he watched blood well between his father's fingers.
Then, the image changed again.
His younger self, beaten and bloody, looked up from the ground, his eyes burning with something Cel instantly recognized - hatred, pure and absolute. Those eyes fixed on him now, looking through the lake's surface to meet his gaze directly.
His reflection's lips moved, forming words in perfect silence. But somehow, impossibly, Cel understood them. Not through sound, but through the bone-deep knowledge of his own thoughts.
'This is what you are.'
The reflection's face twisted with contempt.
'This is all you'll ever be.'
Cel jerked back from the water's edge, but the image followed him, growing larger as ripples spread across the surface. His younger self rose from the stone floor, blood still streaming from wounds that should have left him crippled, and pointed one accusing finger.
'Weak. Useless. Pathetic.'
"No." The word felt strange in his throat, vibrationless and dead in the absolute silence. He couldn't even hear his own voice, but he felt the movement of his vocal cords, the breath passing his lips. "I survived. I'm here. I'm—"
'Alone.' The reflection smiled, an expression made horrible by the blood staining his teeth.
'Just like you always were.'
The lake's surface began to churn. Other faces emerged from its depths - his family, the cultists, his clan members, everyone who had ever looked at him with disappointment or disgust. Their mouths moved in unison, and though he heard nothing, their words burned themselves directly into his mind.
'Weak. Useless. Pathetic.'
Cel stumbled to his feet, backing away from the water's edge. The faces pressed closer to the surface, their reflections growing larger and more distinct. His father's sneer. His mother's tears. Darian's cold indifference. The cultists' hungry greed as they drew his blood for their experiments.
And beneath them all, his own face - blank and empty, stripped of everything that might have made it human.
The violet light from the surrounding crystals seemed to grow brighter as the faces pressed closer to the surface, burning their accusations directly into his soul.
But something shifted inside him. The rage that had sustained him through torture and torment flared to life, sweeping away the crushing weight of memory. These weren't real. They were echoes, shadows, the dying gasps of a past he'd already survived.
He couldn't hear his own voice, but he felt the words tear from his throat with physical force: "I know what I am. I'm the one who lived."
The reflections recoiled as if struck by something more powerful than sound. Their silent accusations faltered, replaced by something that looked like fear.
"I'm the one who refused to break. I'm the one who crawled out of that hell and still kept walking."
The lake's surface began to calm, the faces sinking back into its depths like stones dropping into dark water. But his own reflection remained, still blank and featureless, still empty of everything that mattered.
'Then prove it,' it whispered.
Cel stared at his faceless reflection, feeling the weight of everything he'd survived pressing against his chest. He might be deaf, battered, and alone - but he was still here. Still fighting.
"I already did."
For a moment, triumph surged through Cel's chest. He had faced the worst of his memories and emerged defiant. The lake's power over him seemed broken, its accusations hollow. He straightened, ready to turn his back on this place of nightmares.
But as he stepped away from the liquid's edge, his reflection twisted, warping grotesquely in the liquid. His younger self - the one filled with rage and hatred - lunged from the surface, its hand bursting through the fluid and seizing Cel's wrist with an icy grip that cut through flesh like frozen iron.
"What?" Cel gasped, pulling back with all his strength. But the reflection's grip was overwhelming.
The surface of the lake erupted into violent ripples, its placid facade shattered. Cel's feet slipped on the smooth crystal shore as the force dragged him toward the churning lake. Panic surged through him as he clawed desperately at the ground, his fingers finding no hold on the polished surface.
The reflection's eyes blazed with malice, its mouth moving in silent words. 'You cannot escape what you are.'
Then, with a final, wrenching pull that felt like his arm might tear from its socket, Cel was yanked headfirst into the lake.