The air in the hall of mirrors was breathless. Not cold—just still, like time had flatlined the moment they crossed that shimmering threshold.
Kael reached out instinctively, but his reflection moved faster. Smiling. Just a half-second ahead, like it already knew what he was going to do.
"Where the hell are we?" Mace muttered, turning slowly on his heel. His reflection spun around him like a wheel—twelve Maces, all glaring at each other.
Rin narrowed her eyes. "This isn't an illusion. It's a memory chamber."
"Whose memory?" Juno asked, stepping carefully past a cracked panel.
"All of ours," she said. "At once."
Kael caught a flicker in one of the mirrors to his left—himself, younger, on his knees in a rainstorm. Crying. Screaming someone's name. The image disappeared before he could process it.
"What does this place want from us?" he asked, voice tight.
Rin didn't answer. She had stopped walking. Her gaze was fixed on a reflection that wasn't hers.
A child. Huddled. Bleeding. Clutching a broken dagger.
Kael followed her eyes and froze.
"Is that—?"
"My brother," she whispered.
The moment shattered.
The reflection lunged from the mirror.
Kael barely reacted in time, yanking Rin back as the glass panel cracked outward, a spiderweb of energy shooting across its surface. But the boy was gone—vanished like smoke.
Mace stepped beside them. "Okay. Nope. We're leaving. Vault monsters, fine. Tethers? Sure. But haunted trauma mirrors? Count me out."
"This is the test," Juno said sharply. "The temple's trial. We're not leaving until we pass it."
Kael clenched his fists. "Which means what, exactly?"
Juno turned slowly, meeting each of their eyes.
"We face the part of ourselves we keep buried. The part tied to the tether."
---
They split up.
It wasn't planned. The hall bent and twisted around them, separating them like it wanted them alone. As if the temple knew unity was their strength—and chose to isolate it.
Kael found himself walking a corridor with no end. Just infinite versions of himself in each panel, all slightly wrong. One was smiling when he wasn't. Another had a scar he didn't. Another held the violet tether in one hand like a chain leash.
Then—he saw him.
The cloaked figure. Older. Broken. The version he'd seen in the vault.
"Why do you keep showing me this?" Kael asked, stepping closer.
The figure didn't speak. Just raised a hand—and suddenly, Kael was there. In his place. Years later.
A battlefield. Bodies. Smoke. Flames crackling in the distance.
And his hands—
His hands were covered in Rin's blood.
"No," he whispered. "No, I would never—"
> "You will," the older Kael said, voice dry as ash. "If you let it win."
> "The guilt doesn't make you weak. But it will make you blind."
Kael staggered back as the vision shattered. He was in the corridor again, gasping.
---
Mace stood in a mirrored dojo—wooden floors, old calligraphy scrolls hanging above sliding paper doors. All around him were versions of himself. Laughing. Mocking.
> "You were too late, always too late."
> "You couldn't even save your own father."
He snarled. "Shut up."
A younger Mace appeared in front of him—ten years old, standing in the doorway of their Seoul apartment, fists clenched.
"You ran," the boy said. "When the fire started. You ran."
Mace fell to his knees. "I had to. You don't understand—"
> "No," the boy said softly. "You don't."
And then he stepped forward—and hugged him.
Just like that, the dojo cracked and vanished.
---
Juno faced a mirrored version of his childhood bedroom in Nara.
He was sitting at a desk. Studying. Practicing seals and ink glyphs until his fingers bled.
Outside the window, his mother called for him. Over and over.
He never looked up.
"You regret leaving," a voice whispered behind him. "But you never stopped."
Juno turned to see her—his mother. Young. Smiling. And then burning, as the temple she guarded was razed behind her.
"I had no choice," he whispered.
> "You did," her voice echoed. "You always did."
And then she vanished like steam, and the window shattered into stars.
---
Rin stood alone in a burning courtyard.
Her village. The one she had destroyed.
All around her were whispers. The elders. Her father. Her brother.
> "You rewrote the thread," one voice said.
> "You sacrificed us," said another.
She raised her blade.
The crimson rune on her arm glowed—and she sliced through the fire.
The vision died. But the guilt didn't.
She walked forward anyway.
---
One by one, they returned to the altar.
The lotus still floated there—five petals now open.
Only one remained unopened.
Kael stepped forward and raised his marked hand.
The sixth petal bloomed.
A shockwave of color burst outward, light arcing across the old temple like lightning across the sky. The tethers pulsed within them—not burning, but settling. Stronger. Calmer.
Balanced.
The mirror hall faded.
They were back in the clearing—outside the temple, beneath the clouds, standing beneath an ancient sakura tree now blooming out of season. Petals floated around them like snow.
"I think we passed," Mace said, exhaling.
"For now," Rin muttered. "That was the first gate. There will be others."
Juno glanced at Kael. "But we're closer. We understand the bond now."
Kael looked down at his hand. The mark had changed. The violet was joined by gold—and beneath it, a lotus sigil.
A new thread.
A new choice.
But even in this peace, he could still feel it.
The hunger.
Far below. Waiting. Watching.