The ripple reached the temple just after dawn.
It didn't strike with just pure force, a wall of intent wrapped in motion. The sea swelled, then stilled, forming a perfect ring around the drifting temple, its surface like glass.
The group gathered near the outer terrace, where the stone met open water. The mist had parted, revealing a circle of calm sea so unnaturally still that their reflections shimmered like crystal in its surface.
But something was wrong.
The reflections didn't move correctly.
Ryu took a step to the edge. His own image remained standing still.
Elyra noticed it next. "They're delayed. A half-second behind. Like the sea is remembering us, not reflecting us."
Lira joined them slowly, her pale feet barely making a sound against the carved stone. Her eyes were glazed with half-dreamt memory.
"It's begun," she whispered. "The gate is testing you."
Kalavan frowned. "Testing how?"
Before anyone could answer, the reflections began to ripple.
And then they stepped free.
Figures emerged from the water, identical to each of them, down to the smallest detail. Ryu stared into the eyes of his own double, which lacked emotion, but shimmered with power.
Yan's reflection had no flame in her blade. Kalavan's counterpart wore a grin that was too wide, too sharp.
Elyra's was cloaked in chains of fractal light, her staff bent in a circle.
Lira's reflection didn't appear at all.
Ryu's double tilted its head. "You carry a flame you don't understand."
Ryu stepped forward drawing his sword.
The reflection moved instantly, blades colliding in a flash of pressure and steam.
Yan's opponent charged her in silence, blade dragging along the ground before sweeping upward. She blocked with a flare of phoenix-fire, sparks lighting the edge of the terrace.
Kalavan and his copy vanished into shadow, blades clashing in a blur of movement around the courtyard.
Elyra fought without words, casting counter-fields of time compression, struggling to keep up with a reflection that moved both backward and forward at once.
Only Lira stood still, staring at the place where her reflection should have been.
Then she gasped.
And behind her something rose from the water, not her, but something shaped like a gate.
Ryu fought hard. Every strike was matched, every motion countered.
His opponent mirrored him not only in form, but in instinct. It moved like him, only smoother, faster. Its blade met his with mechanical precision, as if it had studied every fight he'd ever fought and learned to refine them.
Every feint was predicted. Every breath was matched.
It wasn't just his reflection.
It was the version of him without fear. Without doubt.
Steel clashed in a burst of sparks. Qi burst from their blades in arcs of pale energy, warping the ground with each blow. Ryu spun low, using a sweeping kick, but his double was already airborne, blade slicing down like a falling star.
He rolled back, barely dodging the strike that cracked the earth beneath him.
Sweat dripped from his brow. His heart pounded like a war drum.
It's faster than me... no, it's more certain.
The realization struck harder than the blows.
His hesitation was its strength. His fear, its fuel.
Then, he saw it.
The rhythm faltered.
Its footwork didn't adjust for the shifting terrain. It didn't breathe. It didn't feel,
It just simply executed.
That's when Ryu knew, it wasn't alive.
It was an echo. A memory of what he could be, without pain, without doubt, without heart.
And that he could beat.
He let his guard slip, just enough. Let uncertainty flicker through his eyes like bait.
The reflection lunged, blade arcing toward his throat in a clean, decisive strike.
Ryu shifted. A breath earlier than instinct would allow.
He feinted downward, drawing the double's guard low, then twisted his wrists, rotating the blade in a rising crescent. Steel flashed.
His sword drove up under the reflection's guard, slicing through its chest with a burst of crackling Qi.
For a moment, it just stood there.
Then the reflection screamed, a soundless cry of denial, before its body fractured like glass, dissolving into water and light.
The mist swirled around him then faded.
Across the terrace the others began to turn the tide.
Yan burned her reflection to cinders with a defiant roar.
The clone had danced through her flames, striking with elegant mimicry, but Yan's fury was not a thing that could be copied.
It surged from deep within, a fire not of cultivation alone, but of spirit. Her phoenix mark blazed gold and crimson as she hurled a storm of flame into the mirror image's path.
The reflection raised its arms to shield itself, mimicking her stance,
But it lacked her conviction.
It lacked him.
With one final cry, Yan thrust her palms forward. A wall of searing fire engulfed the figure. The copy staggered, screamed in silence, then erupted into ash and golden light.
Kalavan fought like a tempest, blades flashing, cloak whipping through the smoke.
His double moved with equal speed, every feint countered, every strike met with its mirror. But Kalavan wasn't just fast. He was unpredictable.
His true blade was not his steel, it was his mind.
He baited his clone into a duel of footwork, stepped into a clumsy stance, then switched hands mid-spin.
In a flash, his twin daggers formed an X across the copy's throat.
Steel slid through flesh with perfect precision.
The double's head dropped silently to the ground, followed by its dissolving form.
Elyra's battle was unlike the others.
She stood still. Her copy danced around her, casting illusions of time gone wrong, burnt futures, broken realms, echoes of failure.
But Elyra didn't flinch.
She listened.
In her hands, her staff began to glow, not with flame or Qi, but with time itself, moments unravelling in threads of silver and violet.
Her clone attacked, shifting through temporal echoes. But Elyra stepped forward and, with a steady breath, broke her staff in half.
The fragments whirled, caught in orbit around her hands as she channelled her core.
A spiralling loop of time rewound around her double, once, twice, again, until the pattern collapsed.
"You're not me."
She cast the loop inward, and it snapped shut like a closing gate.
Only Lira remained frozen.
The air trembled. The still waters below the platform began to ripple, then churn.
Something ancient stirred within them.
From the depths came a presence, wrong in its very nature.
A crack sounded like bone under pressure. The water did not simply part, it convulsed.
A shape began to rise.
It didn't emerge, it assembled.
Qi hissed and bled from the pool as if siphoned, threads of pale light twisting toward a single point. The waters boiled around it and swelled. Turned black. Then white.
Within the column of shifting liquid, bulges began to form, amorphous, pulsing. They expanded, shrank, then knit together with sickening precision.
Something was forming a body.
From nothing but extracted Qi and the memory of power.
A jaw split open, assembling backward, bone folding over muscle that had not yet formed. Limbs extended unnaturally, segments stitching together from formless sludge and ether-soaked water. Each finger was long, tapering, and unfinished, some clawed, some still webbed in thin strands of embryonic sinew.
Eyes opened last.
Twin voids.
Spheres of absence.
Their gaze locked onto the temple above.
Lira screamed, she clutched her head, collapsing as pain detonated behind her eyes. Her forehead glowed, branded by the remains of the Queen's seal. It pulsed erratically, like a heart struggling to hold back the flood.
The monster was feeding, off her. Off her Qi. Off the seal that tethered it.
Her scream echoed through the chamber. She collapsed to her knees, then the floor.
Energy poured from her body in strands of light.
Yan was already at her side. "Lira!"
But she couldn't reach her.
A radiant shell of protective Qi had formed around the girl, her body limp, trembling with phantom pain. Her aura flickered. Then dimmed.
Her memories were returning.
And with them came the agony of death, the pain of facing that monster before, of dying as Queen Liryetta.
Then silence.
Lira collapsed, her breath shallow, her body faintly glowing beneath the seal.
Yan pressed desperately against the barrier, panic rising in her chest. "No, no, stay with me!"
But the seal was unyielding.
Below, the water had fully evaporated.
And from the steam rose a nightmare.
The creature stood, skeletal, towering, and still.
Its body was bone-white and jagged, like the remnants of a divine beast sculpted into a twisted humanoid form. Tendrils of black Qi dripped from its joints, writhing like smoke in a vacuum.
At its core, beneath layers of exposed rib and marrow, a dull purple heart pulsed, slow and steady.
Its presence flooded the temple.
Ascendant Stage Eight.
The pressure alone fractured the terrace beneath their feet.
The team, Ryu and Yan reached Stage four and three. A monumental feat for most cultivators.
But with the monstrous being before them, it felt like nothing.
Even so, Ryu and Yan's bloodlines made them outliers. If their lineage were ignored, they'd each stand nearly equal to Stage Six… perhaps even close to Seven.
This wasn't a trial.
This wasn't a reflection.
This was death given form.
The creature's head tilted, unnaturally, like a puppet rediscovering its strings.
Then it moved.
Fast.
A lance of bone and black flame erupted from its arm, tearing through the chamber in a howling arc of destruction.
The team scattered just in time.
Ryu stepped forward, eyes blazing. His sword slashed upward, twisting the very air. Space rippled,
The lance veered off course, bent around their position, and exploded skyward in a column of inverted light.
The terrace groaned beneath them, cracking deeper.
Elyra slammed her staff down, conjuring layered shields just as a second pulse detonated across the temple. Water rose in reverse, pillars crashing upward as reality bent and screamed.
Yan surged forward, a wheel of phoenix flame spiralling from her blade. It struck the monster's side, flames chewing through its shell. The creature screamed, runes flaring across its body, then cracked.
Kalavan vanished into the mist.
He reappeared an instant later, blades gleaming, plunging into the creature's ribs. He twisted violently,
The monster shrieked.
Then retaliated.
Its skeletal arm swung in a blur.
Kalavan was hurled backward like a ragdoll, skidding across stone and crashing into a collapsed column. Blood smeared the ground, but he stood, grinning through the pain.
"We need to break the core. That thing is dangerous."
Ryu's eyes locked onto the beast. "Then we go through it."
He leapt,
Blade glowing, space folding around him.
Ryu vanished, reappearing behind the monster with a ripple of warped light.
His sword crashed into its back, splintering bone and tearing through its armoured skin. A second strike slammed into its shoulder, shattering part of the arm.
The creature howled.
Its entire right side collapsed in a burst of light and gore.
Below, Lira stirred.
The mark on the back of her hand, cracked, glowing, unstable.
Elyra was the first to reach her. She pressed her hand to the seal. "She's syncing with the temple. That connection, it's what's keeping the creature anchored here!"
The sea trembled.
Mist howled through the ruins.
Reality blurred.
Ryu surged forward again, sword trailing arcs of spatial light, his Qi swirling at its peak.
He had reached the height of Stage Four, a threshold barely contained. His bloodline burned like a star; every strike laced with space-warping intent.
Kalavan pressed on with slashing currents, wind slicing in perfect arcs, water cutting through exposed bone.
Then came Yan.
Her breath steadied. Her steps fell into rhythm.
Qi surged through her core, spiralling in radiant waves.
She felt it, deep within her blood.
A storm waiting to be released.
Her Qi pulsed, then swelled. Her pool expanded, thickening with radiant flame.
Her very presence ignited as the force of her lineage awakened in full. The Phoenix within her unfurled its wings.
Her blade ignited in white-hot fire. The hilt vibrated with raw power.
And then, her realm broke.
Ascendant Stage Four.
All of it built toward a singular moment.
She raised her sword, the tip glowing like a fragment of the sun,
And released it.
A vortex of crimson and gold tore across the battlefield.
It collided with the creature's chest, detonating with sacred fire.
The monster's outer bones scorched to ash, pieces falling away in molten streaks.
Ryu stepped through the fire. His sword shimmered with void light. Space folded around him like cloth as he landed in front of the exposed core.
And then, the creature shifted.