Three days later, nestled between the misty cliffs of Solarnis and the whispering trees of the Elderwood, stood a dungeon entrance no one had dared approach in decades. Not because it was too dangerous… but because it talked back.
Literally.
Aresando stood before the cracked archway, his cloak fluttering lightly in the wind. Carved into the stone were shimmering glyphs, glowing faintly like moonlight reflected in a broken mirror. From within, a voice echoed out:
"Ooooh, another hero approaches! Tall, broody, and clearly overqualified! Shall I alert the bats?"
"…It talks," Aresando muttered.
Jade, leaning against a boulder nearby with a bored expression, flicked her tail. "I told you. The Dungeon of Whispering Glass is infamous. Not for killing adventurers — but for annoying them into madness."
The entrance shimmered again.
"And what's this? A wolf girl companion? Oh ho! Is this a romantic subplot I detect?"
"Shut. Up," Jade growled, ears twitching violently.
Aresando sighed. "Let's just get inside before it starts narrating our childhood traumas."
"Too late!" the dungeon chirped. "Remember that time you cried because a butterfly landed on your head? Age six, very poetic."
"…I regret this already," Aresando muttered, stepping into the shadows.
---
Inside, the air shimmered with strange magic. The walls weren't made of stone but of glinting glass panels, each one slightly warped. They reflected movement oddly — not always in sync with reality.
Sometimes, Jade saw Aresando in the mirror… standing beside her. Other times, she saw him on the other side of the corridor, staring at her with a strange look.
"Ares," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Promise me that if one of these reflections says it loves me, it's not you messing with me."
"I swear," he said. "If one of them does, it's the dungeon trying to cause drama."
A beat.
One of the mirrors shimmered. A reflection of Aresando stared out with dreamy eyes and said in a deep voice, "Jade… your eyes are more dangerous than any monster we've faced."
She blinked.
Then turned slowly toward the real Aresando. "…Well?"
"Not me!"
They moved on.
---
At the first chamber, they encountered a puzzle: four crystal pedestals, each playing a different musical note when touched. In the center: a locked door with a riddle etched above it.
"Play the song of silence, or scream forever."
Jade scratched her head. "What's that supposed to mean? How do you play silence?"
Aresando crouched by the crystals, tapping each one.
"Hmm… three notes, one of them makes no sound."
The fourth emitted only silence.
He pressed it three times in a row.
Click.
The door opened.
"Show-off," Jade muttered, grinning.
Aresando shrugged. "I like riddles. They're quieter than demons."
---
As they descended deeper, the dungeon began… flirting?
"Ooooh, you two make such a lovely pair!" it crooned as they passed a mirror showing them dancing under moonlight. "Have you confessed your feelings yet? No? Shall I lock you in a 'romantic tension' chamber?"
"Touch me and I'll rip out your keystone," Jade snapped.
Aresando coughed, ears a little red. "Ignore it. Let's just find the relic and get out of here."
She glanced at him, tail twitching. "You do know it's clearly obsessed with the idea of us, right?"
"I noticed."
"And you're not… like… entirely against it?"
He paused. "…I didn't say that."
Silence.
Then the dungeon walls shimmered with sparkles and flowers.
"AAAAAHHH! THEY'RE CUTE! THE TENSION! I CAN'T BREATHE!"
"I swear I'll burn this place down," Jade muttered, face red.
---
Finally, they reached the heart of the dungeon — a circular room with a lake of crystal-clear water and a floating relic in the center: a pendant shaped like an eye, pulsing faintly.
As Aresando stepped toward it, a familiar shadow rose from the water — tall, armored, and holding a twin blade of obsidian.
"Valtros?" Aresando muttered.
"No," Jade growled. "That's not him. It's a memory."
The shadow charged. They moved in perfect sync — Jade diving low with clawed gauntlets, Aresando catching the blade mid-strike and countering with a burst of radiant magic. The fight was swift — clean.
As the memory dissolved into mist, the pendant floated down into Aresando's hand. The whispers stopped.
Silence fell.
Then the dungeon sighed.
"…Fine. You win. Take your romance and your magic and leave me in peace."
As they walked out, victorious and more exhausted from the dungeon's personality than its dangers, Jade bumped her shoulder into Aresando's.
"You didn't deny it back there," she said casually.
"Deny what?"
"That you're not entirely against the idea of us."
He glanced at her, then smiled faintly.
"I'd be a fool to be against it."
Her ears twitched.
"…Well, good," she said, cheeks slightly red. "Because if you were, I'd have to seduce you the old-fashioned way. Traps. Ambushes. Maybe some light kidnapping."
He laughed — a full, genuine laugh.
As they emerged into the sunlight, relic in hand and hearts strangely lighter, Aresando turned to Jade.
"You really would kidnap me?"
She shrugged, smirking. "Only a little."
And with that, they walked into the morning light — two misfits, one relic, and a story just beginning to bloom.
——
The sun was beginning to set when Aresando and Jade emerged from the Mirror Dungeon, unscathed and absolutely radiant — well, at least Aresando was radiant. Jade had a few smudges on her cheek, a leaf in her hair, and the satisfied look of someone who had just kicked a mimic's face in.
"Did you really have to shatter all the mirrors?" she asked, walking beside him as they approached the gates of Valkirya's Guild.
"They were showing me embarrassing memories," he said with a shrug. "Like the time I tripped in the academy cafeteria. Twice."
Jade snorted. "Only twice? Weak."
Aresando laughed, adjusting the heavy sack on his shoulder. Inside was a fortune in loot: enchanted trinkets, potions with questionable labels, and one extremely cursed mirror that wouldn't stop whispering compliments.
"Are you sure you don't want me to carry something?" Jade asked, tail swishing.
He shook his head, offering her a calm smile. "It's fine. I've got this. You tanked three illusions, fought your own reflection, and still had time to make fun of mine. Let me do the gentleman part."
She blinked. Then grinned, ears perked. "Okay, Master Gentleman."
When they reached the guild doors, the scent of firewood and stew drifted out to greet them. Inside, the main hall was lively — adventurers swapping stories, someone tuning a lute, a dwarf arm-wrestling a werewolf and losing.
The moment they stepped in, Valkirya looked up from the quest board.
Her eyes locked on Aresando. She froze, then crossed her arms as if trying to look unimpressed. "You're late."
"We're early," Aresando replied, dropping the sack onto the counter with a solid thunk. "The dungeon begged us to leave."
Jade waved. "Hi, boss lady."
Valkirya's stoicism cracked. "You're both in one piece."
"You sound surprised," Aresando teased.
"I'm always surprised when idiots return with all their limbs and enough loot to bankrupt a city-state," she said, inspecting the goods. "Nice haul."
Then, under her breath, just loud enough for Aresando to hear: "I'm glad you're back."
He met her gaze and nodded, the moment warm and unspoken.
But just as Jade reached for a new mission from the board—
Something shimmered.
A quiet hum. A twist in the air. The faint sound of a coin spinning.
Aresando's hand shot to his coat pocket, too late. The enchanted coin — the one that had once pulled him from Earth to this world — was glowing. Again.
"No," Jade whispered, ears flattening.
Light burst outward, blinding. Aresando's form began to flicker like a fading memory.
"Res—!" she lunged forward, catching only air.
And just like that…
He was gone.
——
The world returned with a jolt.
Aresando gasped as his back hit something cold and metallic — a toolbox, maybe. Fluorescent light flickered above him, and the familiar scent of oil and old paper filled his lungs.
He was in the garage.
His grandfather's garage.
Silence reigned for a few seconds. Then came the overwhelming rush: the weight of the mirror dungeon loot now gone, the warmth of Jade's presence replaced by dusty cardboard boxes, the magic in his veins reduced to a distant echo.
He blinked.
His hand was closed tightly around something — the coin. The cursed, enchanted, utterly ridiculous coin that had thrown him back and forth between worlds like some celestial prank.
He slowly stood up, his legs trembling not from weakness, but from sheer disbelief.
"Not again…" he muttered, brushing dirt off his cloak — or rather, what remained of it. He was back in his normal clothes now. Jeans, shirt… no magical armor, no glowing sword, no wolf-girl companion calling him Master every five minutes.
He looked around. Everything was just as it had been before.
The cluttered shelves.
The dusty map of Solarnis pinned to the wall.
The sealed crate with the insignia of the Valkirya Guild — his grandfather's old adventuring badge etched into the wood.
Aresando swallowed hard.
His grandfather had been there. In Solarnis. Fought, lived, saved. It had all made sense now, the way he'd vanished before his death, the stories no one believed, the journals half-burnt and stuffed into locked drawers.
And now… it was happening again. To him.
Riiiiing!
Aresando flinched. The sudden ring of his phone cut through the silence like a sword. He scrambled for it and saw the name flash on screen:
"Headmaster Vercetti - School Administration"
He groaned.
"Oh no."
One missed call.
Then another.
Then six.
He answered reluctantly.
"Aresando speaking," he said, trying to sound as if he hadn't been trapped in a magical dimension for the past month.
"Aresando! You're alive! Where have you been?!" came the voice, panicked and stern. "Do you realize you've been missing from school for over thirty days?!"
He winced. "Yeah, um… about that…"
"There will be disciplinary action, young man. The police were contacted, your family worried sick—!"
"My parents are in Florence," he replied dryly. "They probably didn't even notice."
"Regardless! I expect you in my office first thing tomorrow morning!"
The line went dead.
Aresando stared at the screen.
Then he stared at the coin in his hand.
Then back at the old, dust-covered crates from Solarnis.
And he whispered, "I really need a vacation."