Chapter 4: The Trial of Hollow Light: The Silent Choir
The air itself hummed.
It wasn't music, not truly, but something close — a vibration that seemed to crawl under his skin, nestle behind his ribs, and thrum in time with his heartbeat.
The mirror-world stretched endlessly, corridors folding into each other like an origami nightmare.
Elias stopped walking. The echoes of his footsteps continued without him.
Then, from above, came a sound — soft, rhythmic, and countless.
Breaths.
Like a thousand invisible lungs drawing in the same air.
He whispered, "So this is the second layer…"
The floor beneath him quivered, turning liquid for a heartbeat before solidifying again. The reflections above began to move, though he hadn't. Each reflection was him — or almost him — whispering soundless words, staring into the void beyond their glassy prison.
And then they began to sing.
No, not sing — hum. Low, wordless tones that blended into the vibrations around him, merging with the hum of the Trial itself. The Silent Choir.
Their song wasn't beautiful. It was wrong.
Notes too low, too deep, vibrating through bone and memory.
He pressed his palms to his ears — it didn't help.
The sound wasn't entering through his ears. It was inside him.
> "Resonance... everything resonates…"
The words came unbidden, rising like bubbles in deep water.
"But not everything that sings, sings truth."
The realization hit him — the Trial wasn't only about fighting. It was listening.
The Aetherion in the air pulsed faintly, as if answering his thoughts. For a moment, Elias saw faint threads glowing in the darkness — like cobwebs spun between heartbeats. They weren't visible light, but patterns of feeling, vibration, memory.
Resonance threads.
He reached for one.
It pulsed — not warmly, not coldly, just alive.
And in that instant, he felt something else tug back.
The Choir stopped.
The silence was worse than the song.
Every reflection of him turned its head at once.
They stared directly at him — hundreds of Elias faces staring through glass, unmoving, unblinking.
Then, slowly, one of them stepped out of the mirror.
It was him, yet wrong — taller, gaunter, eyes like hollow lamps. The reflection opened its mouth, and this time words came.
> "Do you know what you're resonating with?"
Elias froze.
"I wasn't planning to find out the polite way," he said dryly.
The other Elias tilted its head, voice reverberating in layers.
> "The Trial listens too. It learns from every word you speak."
"Then I'll keep my mouth shut," he muttered.
But the thing smiled.
> "Too late."
It lunged.
Elias ducked, the movement instinctual. The impact cracked the mirrored wall behind him, scattering fragments of reflected light. Each shard showed a different scene — one of Lira, one of him dying, one of him standing in sunlight. None were real.
He rolled, picking up a shard as he rose. It vibrated faintly in his grip. The hum of resonance deepened.
The fake Elias came again, but this time, Elias didn't run.
He held the shard forward, whispering the only thing that came to mind — not a spell, not a prayer, just intent.
Break.
The shard pulsed — and the reflection froze mid-lunge, trembling.
A crack spidered through its chest, glowing faint blue. Then another.
It shattered into a rain of glass and light.
For a heartbeat, Elias saw something small and faint in the air — a wisp, like a piece of sound made visible.
He reached out. It entered his hand.
A whisper echoed in his skull:
> [Echo Remnant Acquired: Faint Tier.]
[Category: Murmured Memory.]
Then, nothing.
He stared at his hand. "So… that's what happens when you win."
The shard dissolved, the whispers faded, and the Choir began again — louder this time.
Their voices merged into words, fragmented phrases.
> "…not supposed to survive…"
"…the Cycle watches…"
"…your resonance is unclean…"
He pressed forward, following the hum that pulsed faintly through the ground. Every few steps, another reflection moved — sometimes hostile, sometimes pleading.
Some showed him things he couldn't bear to look at.
His sister crying alone.
Himself walking away from her.
Himself kneeling before a throne made of shattered glass.
Each one tried to break his focus, but he'd learned something already.
The Trial fed on reaction.
The less he gave, the less power it had.
When a reflection whispered, "She's dying without you,"
Elias smiled thinly and said,
> "Then I'll just have to be faster than fate."
The reflection cracked and vanished.
He continued walking.
Somewhere ahead, he sensed movement — not reflection, but real. The air trembled, like a drumbeat underwater.
Something large was awake.
He ducked behind a fractured pillar of glass and waited.
The fog parted, revealing a creature of living light — no shape, no face, only a dozen eyes orbiting a void where its body should be. Every eye turned toward him.
The Resonant Wraith — guardian of the second layer.
The creature didn't move to attack. Instead, it hummed.
The same tone as the Choir — but purer, deeper.
The mirrors responded in kind, vibrating like tuning forks.
Elias realized too late that the creature was calling the reflections.
All around him, the mirrored walls began to ripple.
Dozens of false Elias stepped forward, each one holding a shard of his own broken face.
He swallowed hard. "Alright. So that's how it is."
He checked his pockets — empty. He had nothing left.
No weapons, no light, only a faint hum in his chest and the strange, invisible threads still shimmering in the air.
Threads that resonated with him.
He closed his eyes. He remembered the hum he'd felt before — that rhythm, that pulse beneath the silence. He focused on it, syncing his breathing to the invisible beat.
The world dimmed. The sound of the Choir faded.
And suddenly, he heard it —
A subtle shift in tone, like the world exhaling.
The threads around him vibrated once, responding to his focus.
The reflections halted mid-step.
The Resonant Wraith tilted its head.
Elias opened his eyes, a faint glow reflecting in them — like light trapped inside storm clouds.
> "If this world runs on sound," he whispered,
"then let's see what silence can do."
He raised his hand — and the entire chamber fell silent.
No hum, no echo, no sound.
Every reflection froze, shattered, and dissolved into mist.
The Resonant Wraith wailed — a noise of static and broken harmony — and withdrew into the mirror's depths, leaving behind a single faint pulse of light that drifted into his palm.
Another whisper followed:
> [Resonance Synchronization: 23%.]
He exhaled, half in awe, half in terror.
"Twenty-three percent of what?"
The corridor ahead brightened faintly. Another door formed — a gate of fractured glass, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Elias looked up at it and muttered,
> "Guess that's the next layer…"
He took one cautious step forward, then another, his voice low, dry, but steady.
> "If I die here, Lira's gonna kill me again."
The light swallowed him whole.