The final piece of my plan was now in place, the mirror would soon be a serpent coiled in the foxes den. Satisfied, I ascended into the sky, the wind whipping through my hair as I arced toward Tofu’s pyramid. Time was a fraying thread; every second counted.
The structure loomed ahead, its obsidian slopes devouring the sunlight. I flew towards it, soon reaching the ominous entrance and promptly diving into it.
The pyramid’s maw swallowed me whole, its shadows clinging like cobwebs as I descended into the vault. Plunder choked the chamber—dunes of gold coins, gemstones glittering with the cold malice of a predator’s gaze. The air tasted metallic, thick with the rot of ambition left to fester.
I drifted past the hoard, drawn to the far wall where Six-Tails’ garish red couch sprawled amidst the treasures. Nestled in its cushions lay the sphere: a fist-sized orb of pitted stone, its surface etched with glyphs that pulsed a sickly cerulean. The light throbbed in time with my heartbeat, as if the damn thing was breathing.
“Mine.” I muttered, extending a tendril of aether. The sphere resisted, humming with a frequency that made my teeth ache. For a heartbeat, the glyphs flared—a language older than the pyramid itself, older than the warring divinities who’d etched their curses into this world.
Then, with a shudder, it relented. Blue light winked out as the sphere vanished into my storage dimension. The cold that followed was immediate, seeping into my bones like a warning.
Weapon? Relic? Didn’t matter. In this game of celestial chess, even pawns bled. And I intended to make every piece count.
Next, I drifted to the far wall where celestial crystals jutted from the stone. These were no mere ornaments; their light pulsed faintly, remnants of the pyramid’s original purpose. Kneeling, I activated my bracelet, and several shards vanished into its silver void. A cold weight settled against my wrist—insurance.
As I turned to leave, the carvings on the stone wall snagged my gaze. There I was, rendered in crude relief: a spectral figure hovering above the Great Tree, monkeys prostrating below. The artist had etched a story told by Celeste herself. My stomach tightened, ‘Her game, her rules.’
image [https://static.vecteezy.com/system/resources/thumbnails/027/187/944/small/gold-and-luxury-under-line-png.png]
My pavilion sprawled below like a bone-white scar, teeming with simians. Scores of them—no, hundreds—milled in restless tides, their fur glowing faintly in the dusk. At the pyramid’s base stood Tofu, now a hulking monolith of muscle and malice. Four-Tails crouched beside him, dwarfed but no less vicious.
I descended, the monkeys’ guttural chants rising to meet me, “Fine work.” I said, eyeing the sea of bared fangs and white fur.
Tofu thumped his chest, the sound a war drum, “Many Simians hurt from last battle, but hungry! Ready to crush blood rats!”
I nodded, then soared above the horde. My voice, amplified by the black-furred headphones’ sorcery, sliced through the din, “Hear me!” The mob stilled, ears twitching. “Tonight, you feast! The Great Tree’s bananas will fatten your tails! Its enemies will break beneath your claws!”
The roar that followed shook the earth. Monkeys stomped, howled, tore at the soil—a primal frenzy stoked by promise and pain.
“When we're done here, move your forces to the Great Tree. Hide in the forest’s shadows. Wait for my signal—a false sun blazing in the night sky.” I commanded, locking eyes with Tofu. His grin widened, fangs glinting as he licked a smear of dried blood from his claws.
The horde stirred, a ripple of guttural chants passing through them. I gestured sharply, “Bring forth your strongest.”
Tofu roared, slamming his spear into the earth. “Strong tails! Front!”
A tide of muscle and fur surged forward—twenty-odd monkeys, their tails lashing like serpents. Three-tails dominated the pack, their scarred hides bristling with primal authority. They pounded chests swollen with old wounds, snarling challenges at any underling who strayed too close. A two-tailed whelp dared to edge near; a backhanded blow sent it sprawling, screeching, into the mob.
I plunged my consciousness into the storage dimension’s grey expanse. Among mountains of plundered gold lay a forgotten arsenal: swords pitted with rust, spears bent from forgotten battles, scythes crusted with dried viscera. Perfect.
With a sweep of my arm, blue light erupted. Weapons rained down in a cacophony of metallic thunder—jagged iron, splintered hafts, blades serrated by time.
“Arm yourselves!” I shouted.
The monkeys descended in a frenzied scramble. Claws raked stone as they fought for steel. The largest seized spears first, mimicking Tofu’s favored weapon. A three-tailed brute wrestled a cleaver from a rival, silencing protests with a guttural snarl. Within moments, the pavilion’s floor was bare, every relic clutched in simian fists.
I studied them—the gashes across their ribs, the missing ears, the fire in their bloodshot eyes. Survivors. Killers. Exactly what I needed.
“Go.” I ordered Tofu, rising on aether-laced winds, “Let the forest swallow you. Hide in the trees… until the sky burns.”
He thumped his chest, the sound echoing through the ranks. As I soared upward—a shadow against the paling dusk—the horde melted into the treeline, weapons glinting like fangs in the fading light.
Elaria’s great tree towered before me, its colossal trunk vanishing into the inky sky. Its leaves pulsed with an unearthly cerulean glow, casting jagged shadows across the forest floor like shards of stained glass. I lingered at the edge of the clearing, the air thick with the musk of damp soil and sap, until I heard the rustle of simian footsteps in the distance. Time to begin.
The night air screamed past me as I surged upward, the forest canopy shrinking into a sea of undulating shadows below. My aether coiled around me like a second skin, sharpening the bite of the wind until it stung my cheeks raw. The storage bracelet on my wrist flared—a burst of sapphire light that cut through the darkness—and the celestial crystal materialized in my palm.
It was colder than I expected, a jagged shard of frozen stardust that thrummed with an indescribable power. Veins of iridescent blue pulsed beneath its glassy surface, as if containing miniature galaxies desperate to escape.
Memories of Picea’s tomes slithered through my memory, crisp as the day I’d deciphered the crumbling scrolls: “The crystals sing with essence. They can be used as an energy source, or as a blade.”
But they omitted the best part.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent the crystal spiraling upward, my aether guiding it like a marionette’s string. It climbed twenty meters, thirty, until it hung suspended—a false star winking against the true constellations. For a heartbeat, everything was still.
Then I clenched my fist.
The crystal exploded. Light erupted in a supernova burst, fracturing the darkness into shards of electric blue. The shockwave hit me first—a concussive crack that rattled my bones—followed by a cascade of prismatic sparks that rained down like dying stars. The explosion painted the sky in violent brushstrokes, a beacon so radiant it pierced the night’s veil for miles.
But only those above the forest’s suffocating foliage would see it—the monkeys perched in the treetops, waiting.
The crystal’s remnants dissolved into motes of azure dust, carried away on the wind. Below, the forest remained oblivious, its labyrinth of leaves and roots shielding the foxes’ den from the celestial spectacle. The great tree’s roots snaked across the earth like petrified serpents, their faint bioluminescence guiding me to a burrow half-hidden beneath a curtain of moss.
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As I descended, the tunnel constricted around me, gnarled roots scraping against my shoulders. The blue light intensified, throbbing in time with my heartbeat, until the passage abruptly opened into a cavernous chamber.
Foxes swarmed below—crimson fur rippling like a living tide—their chittering voices echoing off walls veined with glowing roots. At the chamber’s heart stood Vyrrin, his withered frame hunched over the divine reflector. The mirror’s surface swirled with liquid mercury, casting fractured light across his grizzled muzzle.
“Kane!” His rasp cut through the din, too jovial, too sharp, “Back so soon?”
I descended slowly, feigning sheepishness, “Thought I’d make amends. A proper trade this time.”
His rheumy eyes narrowed. “And what treasures do you peddle today?”
Play the fool. I gestured to the mirror, letting my voice waver with faux awe. “What is that? It’s… mesmerizing.”
Vyrrin’s tails twitched. “A celestial bauble. Beautiful, yet useless.”
“Useless?” I flicked my wrist. A chest of gold coins and rubies clattered onto the stone, scattering nearby foxes. “I’ll take it off your paws.”
He chuckled, a sound like dry leaves crushed underfoot, “Child, such artifacts devour greed. They demand blood, not mere currency.”
I stopped myself from heaving a sigh of relief—he didn’t suspect a thing. I drifted closer, my shadow swallowing the mirror’s glow, “What happens if you… look?”
The moment Vyrrin’s eyes met the mirror’s surface, the world dissolved. Not in a flash of light or a swirl of smoke, but as though reality itself had been poured into watercolor and rinsed away.
image [https://i.imgur.com/PhUvYDb.png]
One heartbeat, Kane stood in the foxes’ den, the musk of damp earth and the chitter of panicked voices thick in the air. The next, he was drowning in silence.
An endless ocean stretched before him, its surface so still it might have been glass. The water was neither blue nor black, but a shade that seemed to swallow light—a liquid void, stretching to a horizon blurred by a haze of silver mist.
Above, the sky mirrored the ocean’s eerie calm, a perfect cerulean expanse untouched by clouds or birds. It was the blue of Earth, a hue Kane hadn’t seen since his arrival in Amaranthine. The familiarity of it clawed at his chest, sharp and unexpected.
He floated, weightless, a breath caught between awe and dread. The air here had no scent, no bite of salt or tang of life. It was sterile, lifeless, as if the world itself held its breath. When he moved his hand, ripples cascaded outward, not across the water but through the air, distorting the horizon like a stone dropped into a painting.
“Are you the child Celeste spoke of?”
The voice was everywhere—in his bones, his teeth, the marrow of his spine. It resonated not as sound but as pressure, a tectonic force that vibrated through the fabric of the dimension. Kane’s breath hitched. The ocean trembled.
“W-who are you?” he called out, his own voice alien in the stillness. “Where am I?”
The mist ahead coalesced, swirling into a towering column of vapor. Within it, shadows flickered—suggestions of a form too vast to comprehend. A face? A hand? The harder Kane stared, the more it slipped from his grasp, a mirage dancing at the edge of understanding.
“It is not polite to answer a question with another question.”
The voice held no malice, but its indifference was colder than the void beneath Kane’s feet. The ocean rippled again, this time in sync with the words, as though the water itself were the voice’s tongue.
Kane steadied himself. “Celeste told me to give the mirror to the foxes. She didn’t mention… this.”
A pulse of light flared within the mist. The ocean’s surface shivered, and for a heartbeat, Kane saw them—faces. Hundreds of them, etched into the water like reflections, their features blurred but their eyes piercing. Foxes. Monkeys. Creatures he didn’t recognize. All staring. All silent.
“Just as I thought. You are indeed the one she foretold.”
The mist thickened, spiraling into a vortex that churned the placid ocean into a frenzy. Waves rose, not in crests but in jagged spines, their peaks sharp as shattered bone. The sky darkened, bruised by storm clouds that roiled like smoke from a funeral pyre. Lightning spiderwebbed across the heavens, not in flashes but in crawling veins of gold, as though the storm itself were alive.
“What is this place?” Kane demanded, his voice swallowed by the thunder. “Are we still in Amaranthine?”
“You are within the Divine Reflector.” the voice intoned, the words echoing across the water. “A bridge between realms. A prison for souls. Celeste tasked me with its keeping four centuries ago, when she first wove the threads of your arrival.”
The storm stilled abruptly, the waves freezing mid-crash. The mist parted, revealing a figure—or the shadow of one. A man, perhaps, but stretched and warped, his edges bleeding into the air like ink. His eyes glowed, twin suns in a featureless face.
“Why did you bring me here?” Kane’s throat tightened. The words weren’t his own. They spilled out, compelled by the weight of the figure’s gaze.
“To see your heart.” the voice replied. “To know if it could bear the weight of what must be done.”
The ocean surged, not with water but with images. Vyrrin’s den materialized below, the foxes frozen in mid-flight, their fur singed by the mirror’s light. Tofu’s monkeys swarmed the tree, claws glinting. And there, at the center, Kane saw himself—a specter hovering above the chaos, his blade floating next to him.
“The crimson rot must be purged.” the voice boomed. The storm raged anew, rain falling in sheets that burned like ice against Kane’s skin. “But do not mistake this for slaughter. You are a gardener, child. Pruning decay so life may thrive.”
“How?” Kane shouted over the din. The faces in the water wailed soundlessly. “There are hundreds of them!”
The figure raised a hand—or something like one. The storm stilled. The ocean flattened. Even the mist froze.
“I will bind their souls to the mirror.” it said, calm as a surgeon’s blade. “You will sever their ties to flesh. Begin with the strongest. His will… resists.”
The water rippled. Vyrrin’s face surged to the surface, his muzzle twisted in a snarl, ruby mana crackling around him like an inferno Behind him, the other foxes flickered—smaller, fainter, their eyes wide with terror.
“My power is finite.” the voice warned. The storm clouds thickened, pressing down until Kane’s ears popped. “You will have moments. Strike true. Hesitate, and their souls will scatter beyond even Celeste’s reach.”
Kane’s chest ached. The ocean’s cold seeped into his lungs. “And if I refuse?”
For the first time, the voice softened. The figure’s glowing eyes dimmed to embers.
“Then the rot consumes all. The tree. The realm. The threads of fate Celeste has spun.” The water stilled, reflecting not Kane’s face, but his first parents—his mother's fragile smile, her hands stained with batter. Next to them stood his father, whose stoic gaze was boring into him. “Even them.”
The image shattered. The storm surged back, waves crashing like a thousand fists. Kane’s vision blurred, the ocean and sky bleeding into streaks of color.
“Decide.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/xRcYCW4.png]
Reality snapped back into existence. I could hear Vyrrin’s growl slice through the ringing in my ears, “Get your wits—you’re gray as ash!” His voice came from my right, but before I could turn, the mirror thrummed.
A glacial light burst forth, it's cold radiance lancing through the chamber. Where it brushed the sea of foxes, they stiffened mid-motion—paws lifted, tails coiled, eyes widened in primal terror—transformed into twisted statues of fur and bone.
Vyrrin reacted like a cornered predator. Ruby mana flared around him, muscles rippling beneath his pelt as he shifted into a hulking, fanged monstrosity. But the light was faster. It slithered around his ankles, then his torso, gluing his claws to the ground. His roar shook dust from the ceiling as he strained against the force, veins bulging, but the mirror’s grip was absolute.
Pandemonium tore through the pack. Foxes at the edges screeched and surged toward the tunnels, their claws shredding kin who staggered too slowly. A scattered few—nimble, half-starved things—darted into cracks too narrow for the light to follow.
‘Let the monkeys scavenge those scraps.’ I thought, numb. My gaze stayed fixed on Vyrrin.
His body was rigid, a sculpture of rage and sinew, but his eyes… they darted wildly. Alive. Trapped. When they found me suspended above the chaos, untouched by the mirror’s cold fire, his pupils contracted.
Understanding—then fury—flooded his gaze. His jaws creaked open, a guttural snarl building, but the light tightened its hold. Frost spiderwebbed across his muzzle, silencing him mid-breath.
By the time the glare faded, the chamber was a gallery of horrors: foxes frozen mid-leap, mid-scream, mid-flight. Only their trembling whiskers betrayed the life still flickering beneath the light’s cruel grip.
And there I hung, weightless and unmarked, as Vyrrin’s ice-glazed stare bore into me—accusing, condemned, aware.