The light didn't just brighten; it solidified, turning the sphere into a pressurized chamber of pure luminosity. But instead of the surge they expected, the intensity suddenly leveled off, humming at a low, expectant drone.
Hana held up a gloved hand, stalling the progression. "Hold," she commanded. "This is a classroom, not an arena. If I let this room reflect your current output, Oni, you would simply burn through another suit and learn nothing but how to suffer. Today, we study the Physics of the Echo."
She stepped onto the edge of the dais, the reflective floor rippling under her boots. "The Sixty-Five, look at the monitors," she directed. The walls of the room flickered, displaying the real-time Aetheric Waveform being generated by the brothers.
"Oni has the raw amplitude of a storm," Hana explained, her voice echoing with academic precision. "But notice the 'noise' at the edges of his signature. That is Phase Friction. In a real engagement against an Ascended Human, that noise is what they track. It's the heat signature they lock onto. The Mirror Room's purpose is to teach you Phase Cancellation."
She looked at Oni, then at Elara. "The room is currently tuned to your exact frequency, but inverted. It is playing the 'negative' of your soul back at you. If you push blindly, you are fighting yourself. You will feel a phantom weight on your chest—that is your own energy bouncing back and hitting your heart out of sync."
Hana walked a tight circle around them. "The lesson is to adjust. Don't push harder. Use Rain's new sensor nodes to feel the 'gap' between your pulse and the room's reflection. Shift your internal rhythm by exactly 180^\circ. If you align perfectly, the room will go silent. The energy won't vanish; it will become Standing Wave Resonance."
Oni closed his eyes, his brow furrowed. He could feel it now—not just a heat, but a weird, vibrating pressure that made his teeth ache. It was his own power, reflected by the silver alloy, trying to cancel him out.
"Rain," Hana called out, "monitor the Impedance on the Litz-weave. If the suit starts to vibrate, your brother is failing the math. Elara, you are the Phase-Shifter. You cannot just be a battery today; you have to help Oni 'slide' his frequency into the pocket of the echo."
She stepped back, her expression stern but deeply focused on the instructional data. "We will begin at five percent intensity. Find the pocket. Adjust the phase. If you do it correctly, you won't feel like a mountain fighting a gale—you'll feel like the gale itself."
Oni tightened his grip on Elara's hand. He wasn't looking for a fight; he was looking for the rhythm Hana was describing. "Rain," he muttered, his voice strained. "Give me the readout on the gauntlet. Show me the offset."
Rain didn't just look at his screen; he dropped to one knee, hard-wiring his gauntlet's interface into the dais's primary data port to bypass any wireless lag. A massive, circular projection flared to life around them—the Smith Chart of Oni's current resonance.
"It's messy, Oni," Rain said, his voice dropping into a rhythmic, mechanical cadence. "The room's reflection is hitting you at a Reactance you aren't accounting for. You're pushing purely active power, but the mirrors are throwing back a Reactive Load. It's like trying to push a door that's pushing back at a different speed."
Rain's fingers flicked through the sub-layers of the Litz-weave's diagnostic logs. "The silver threads are screaming. Look at the Standing Wave Ratio (SWR). It's sitting at 4:1. Anything over 2:1 and you're just cooking your own bone marrow with reflected energy. Elara, I need you to listen to the vibration in the suit's cuffs. That high-pitched whine? That's the Phase Lead. You're too fast."
"I'm trying to find the gap!" Elara countered, her teeth grit against the shimmering pressure of the room.
"Don't find it, be the gap," Rain commanded. "Shift your focus to the Inductive Loop in the gauntlets. Oni, your output is a 'Blunt' wave. I need you to 'Thin' it. If you sharpen the peak of your frequency, the room has less 'surface' to reflect back at you. Decrease the Duty Cycle. Hit it hard, then let the suit's capacitors take the echo."
Oni took a jagged breath. He could see the math now, projected in a terrifying, beautiful arc of orange data. Every time he pulsed his aether, the room's mirrors glowed white, and a split-second later, a "shadow" of that pulse slammed back into his chest. It felt like a physical punch to his lungs.
"It's the Skin Effect," Rain shouted over the rising hum of the mirrors. "The reflection is staying on the surface of your suit, but it's vibrating the metal-ion fibers against your skin. I'm shifting the Litz-braid into a Counter-Phase oscillation. You'll feel a 'cold' prickling—that's the suit trying to eat the reflection before it reaches your nerves. But you have to match the Vector."
"Rain, I'm losing the 'Zero-Point'!" Oni growled, his boots sliding an inch on the glass as the reflected pressure increased. "The room is adapting too fast!"
"It's not adapting, it's echoing!" Rain yelled back, his eyes bloodshot from staring at the flickering code. "You're chasing the tail of your own pulse! Elara, now! Use your indigo resonance to 'Damp' the return wave. Act as a Shunt Resistor. Take the reflected load from Oni and bleed it into the floor's grounding mesh."
Elara's eyes snapped open, glowing a fierce, electric violet. She didn't push forward; she reached "down." She visualized her energy as a sponge, soaking up the jagged, "noisy" reflections that were battering Oni's charcoal suit.
"The SWR is dropping!" Rain's voice turned into a triumphant roar. "3.5... 2.8... 1.9! We're hitting the Impedance Match! Oni, the pocket is at 174^\circ! Give me a 6^\circ Phase-Lag! Now!"
Oni felt the silver threads of his suit tighten, the Litz-braid finally finding its rhythm. He let his heart rate slow, purposely delaying his aetheric pulse by a micro-fraction of a second.
The silence was instantaneous.
The roaring scream of the mirrors vanished, replaced by a low, hypnotic thrum. The blinding light didn't dim, but it stopped "hitting" them. It began to flow around them in a perfect, glowing sphere of Constructive Resonance. They were no longer fighting the room; they were the room's master frequency.
Hana stood perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the SWR meter, which had flatlined at a perfect 1.0. "Phase Alignment achieved," she whispered, a rare shimmer of pride crossing her face. "The Sixty-Five... observe the Standing Wave. This is what it looks like when a Celestial stops fighting reality and starts defining it."
The 1.0 SWR reading on the monitors held steady, but the silence in the room was brittle, a fragile equilibrium that felt like the moment before a dam breaks. Hana didn't end the session; she didn't even blink. Instead, she leaned into the silence, her voice a low, dangerous velvet.
"The brothers have provided the frequency. But a frequency without a purpose is just a hum. The Sixty-Five... move. If you are not part of the circuit, you are the resistance. And resistance burns."
As if a spell had been broken, the ten stepped forward, their different strides echoing against the polished glass. This wasn't just a classroom anymore; it was a pressurized chamber where the boundaries between biology, mechanics, and raw power were beginning to blur.
Theia was the first to break the perimeter of the dais, her steps quick and frantic. Her fingers didn't touch the glass; they danced two inches above it, manipulating a holographic bio-loom that was currently hemorrhaging red warning icons. "Mistress, the Standing Wave is perfect, but the vessel is failing!" she cried out, her voice tight with the physical empathy she couldn't switch off. "Oni's nervous system is acting as the grounding wire for the entire room. He's taking the biological heat for the math! His potassium-ion channels are flooding—if he doesn't vent the buildup, his heart is going to seize in the next ninety seconds." She looked at Oni, her own face pale as she mirrored his internal stress. "Oni, your pulse is at 168 BPM. You're redlining! Your muscles are literal minutes away from Rhabdomyolysis. You have to let the resonance out!"
"He can't vent it without breaking the phase, Theia! Use your head!" Daxos barked, sliding onto his knees beside Rain. He didn't ask for permission; he just snapped a secondary data-leash from his own wrist into the back of Rain's console. "Rain, your triple-cross braid is a work of art, but the thermal load is localized in the chest plate. You're baking his lungs! We need to turn the entire floor into a secondary radiator." Daxos's hands were a blur of motion, his eyes twitching as he recalculated the armor's conductivity on the fly. "I'm opening the sub-dermal vents on his boots. Oni, don't move an inch! If you shift your weight, the alignment snaps and I lose a finger to the kickback. I'm over-driving the silver-ion threads to 120% capacity. It's going to feel like your skin is being scrubbed with steel wool, but it'll dump the heat."
Rain didn't pull away; he felt the surge of Daxos's frantic, brilliant energy entering the system. "Watch the Reactance on the boot-soles, Daxos! If the glass floor hits 400°C, the ions will flip and we'll get a Polarity Reversal."
"Quiet," Idris said. It wasn't a shout, but the sheer, icy stillness of his voice made the air feel colder. He stood at the edge of the dais, his arms crossed, watching the monitors with a terrifying lack of emotion. "Theia, stop screaming. You're triggering his fight-or-flight response, which is spiking his cortisol and making the phase jitter. Daxos, your torque is too high; back off the boot-venting by 3%. We need a steady bleed, not an explosion." Idris looked directly at Oni, his sleepless eyes boring into the "Mountain." "Oni, ignore the pain. It's just data. Look at the Smith Chart. See that tiny oscillation at the 174° mark? That's not the room. That's your fear. Kill it. Elara, hold the indigo 'lead' exactly where it is. Do not compensate for his jitter; make him find you."
A loud, booming laugh suddenly vibrated through the floorboards. Bane stepped up, his massive shoulders rolling as if he were just strolling through a park instead of a high-pressure energy field. "God, you guys are so intense! You're gonna give the poor guy a stroke before the mirrors do." Bane winked at Elara, then made a casual, sweeping gesture with his hand. Suddenly, the crushing weight of the room seemed to lift—not everywhere, but in a precise, five-foot radius around the dais. "There. I've created a Gravity Null-Pocket. I'm taking the physical weight off his bones so he can focus on the 'pretty lights.' Don't get used to it, Oni—maintaining a static well in this frequency is like trying to hold a bubble underwater." He looked at Theia, grinning. "See, Doc? Pulse is dropping. I'm the best medicine he's got."
"The air is ionizing," Xylia interrupted, her voice clinical and detached. She was holding a handheld spectrometer, watching the purple haze forming near the ceiling. "The ozone concentration is reaching toxic levels. If the Standing Wave continues to compress the atmosphere, we're going to have an Aetheric Flash-Point. We'll all be breathing liquid fire." She looked at Rain. "I'm introducing a Reagent through the ventilation scrubbers. It's going to turn the air a deep shade of teal. Don't panic—it's just a stabilizer to keep the nitrogen from bonding with the aetheric waste. If it starts to smell like burnt almonds, it means we're all about to die. Try not to let it smell like almonds."
Valen exhaled a long, theatrical sigh from the back of the group. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. "All this shouting... so much wasted breath." He didn't walk to the dais. He just slumped against one of the mirrored pillars, his eyes half-closed. "Valen, do something!" Solene hissed, her skin glowing a dangerous, angry red as she stood near Theron at the perimeter. "The jitter is back! The SWR is climbing to 1.1!"
"Because you're all 'pushing,'" Valen muttered. He didn't move his body, but his aetheric signature suddenly flattened. He didn't try to add power; he simply became a Harmonic Sink. He allowed his own frequency to become so perfectly passive that he "drank" the excess noise that Daxos and Theia were creating. On the monitors, the jagged edges of the waveform smoothed out instantly. He wasn't helping them build the wave; he was just removing the friction. "There. Can I go back to sleep now?"
"Stay sharp, Valen," Theron rumbled, his voice like grinding stones. He stepped into a heavy, wide-set stance, his body positioned between the dais and the rest of the student body. His skin began to darken, taking on the matte-black sheen of hardened kinetic-glass. "If the phase snaps, the backlash will hit the front row first. I'll take the brunt. Solene, get ready to vent the secondary explosion."
"I've been ready," Solene snapped, her eyes tracking the energy flow like a predator. She was vibrating with a desire to hit something, her hands radiating a heat that was beginning to melt the frost on the nearby cooling pipes. "If Oni slips, I'm going to jump the frequency to a High-Pass Filter. It'll hurt like hell, but it'll keep the room from imploding."
Oni stood in the middle of it all, sweat pouring down his face, his teeth clenched so hard he thought they might shatter. Through the link with Elara, he felt the entire network. He felt Theia's panic, Daxos's frantic genius, Idris's cold logic, and Bane's casual strength.
"Rain..." Oni gritted out, his voice a distorted rasp. "The suit... it's breathing."
"That's the Litz-weave matching your lungs, Oni!" Rain yelled, his eyes bloodshot as he balanced the inputs from Daxos and Valen. "We aren't just one person anymore! We're a ten-man circuit! Don't fight the 'noise' from the others—use it! Let Daxos take the heat, let Bane take the weight, and let Valen take the jitter!"
Hana watched the SWR meter. It wasn't just at 1.0 anymore. It was locked. The room was no longer screaming; it was singing—a pure, terrifying note of absolute synchronization.
"Twenty percent intensity," Hana commanded, her voice a whisper of a challenge. "Let's see if your 'crew' can handle the real pressure."
The mirrors didn't just glow; they vanished into a wall of white fire.
The shift from five percent to twenty percent intensity wasn't a linear increase; it was a geometric expansion of agony. The white fire erupting from the mirrors didn't just illuminate the room—it began to overwrite the physical laws within it. The "Zero-Point" that Oni and Elara had fought so hard to find suddenly felt like a needle trying to stay upright in a hurricane.
The first thing to go was the air. As the intensity climbed, the oxygen molecules began to vibrate with such violence that they refused to enter the lungs.
"Theia! I can't... the oxygen is too 'excited'!" Oni gasped, his chest heaving, but the air felt like inhaling jagged glass.
Theia didn't just watch her monitors; she let out a choked sob as her own lungs constricted in sympathy. She dropped her holographic loom and lunged toward the dais, her hands trembling. "It's the Electronic Transition! The aether is forcing the electrons into a higher orbital—the hemoglobin can't bind to it!" She turned her frantic gaze toward Xylia. "Xylia, the stabilizer isn't enough! He's suffocating in a room full of air!"
Xylia didn't flinch, though the teal mist she had introduced was now swirling in violent, electrified eddies. She looked at the spectrometer with a cold, terrifying focus. "Then we stop treating it like air and start treating it like a Plasma Field," she said, her voice a sharp blade of ice. She grabbed a secondary canister from her belt and slammed it into the intake. "I'm flooding the chamber with an argon-krypton buffer. It's heavy, Oni. It's going to feel like breathing soup, but it will carry the charge away from your alveoli. If you panic and hyperventilate, the buffer will crystallize in your throat. Do not panic."
Beneath them, the dais began to groan. Daxos was practically lying on top of Rain's console now, his fingers moving so fast they were a blur of flesh and silver-ion sparks. "The floor is hitting the Curie Point!" he screamed over the roar of the mirrors. "Rain, the glass is losing its magnetic permeability! The boots are going to lose their grip and Oni is going to be thrown into the ceiling at Mach 1!"
"I see it!" Rain yelled back, his face inches from the screen as he fought the Hysteresis Loop of the failing hardware. "Daxos, divert the primary cooling from my gauntlets to the dais's substructure! I don't care if my hands burn, keep that glass solid!"
Rain's hands were already blistering inside the suit, the smell of singed fabric rising, but he didn't pull away. He felt a sudden, heavy pressure on his shoulder. It was Theron. The Tank had moved closer, his metallic skin now glowing a dull, angry cherry-red as he absorbed the thermal bleed coming off the machinery.
"Transfer the heat to me," Theron rumbled, his voice a low vibration that Oni felt in his marrow. "I am a heat sink. I can take another thousand degrees before I melt. Rain... give me your fire."
As the heat transferred, Idris remained the eye of the storm. He wasn't looking at the fire; he was looking at Valen. The slacker was no longer leaning against the pillar; he was hunched over, his face twisted in a rare expression of genuine effort.
"Valen, the Phase Jitter is hitting 12^\circ," Idris noted, his voice impossibly calm amidst the screaming light. "Oni's heart is fluttering. He's trying to compensate for the heat, and it's throwing the 'Lead' off. You need to expand your sink. Take more of the noise."
"I'm... trying..." Valen hissed, sweat finally breaking on his brow. "There's so much... trash in the signal. It's like trying to drink a waterfall."
Suddenly, a localized "crack" of gravity slammed into the room. Bane had dropped his playful smirk. His teeth were bared, and the muscles in his neck were standing out like steel cables. He was no longer just holding a "bubble"—he was fighting the room's desire to crush everyone into a singularity.
"The mirrors are focusing!" Bane roared, his arms outstretched as if he were physically holding the walls apart. "They've found a Structural Resonance in the group! They're trying to sync with our heartbeats to shatter our ribs! Castian! Where is the focus point?!"
From the shadows of the far corner, Castian finally spoke. He had become almost invisible, his form a mere ripple in the white fire. "The mirrors aren't targeting the group," his voice drifted over the comms, eerie and detached. "They're targeting the link between Oni and Elara. There is a Null-Node forming six inches above the dais. It's an interference pattern designed to sever their connection. If that link breaks, the 'Zero-Point' collapses."
"I'll burn it out," Solene growled. She stepped forward, her hands glowing with a terrifying, solar intensity. She didn't look at the mirrors; she looked at the empty air Castian had pointed to. "If I create a Thermal High-Pressure Zone at that node, the interference won't be able to settle! I'm going to create a sun in the middle of this room!"
"Solene, wait!" Lyriel called out, her voice the only thing that sounded human in the mechanical nightmare. She reached out, her fingers brushing the aetheric signatures of each of them, stitching the frayed edges together. "You'll cook Oni if you go that high! Let me harmonize the node. If I can bridge the 'Lead' from Elara to the rest of the crew, the room won't have a single target to hit. We become a Distributed Network."
Oni felt it then—the moment the "Mountain" became part of a range. He felt Lyriel's gentle touch smoothing the jagged edges of his pain, Solene's fierce heat acting as a shield, and Bane's massive strength holding the very fabric of space together.
But the cost was becoming visible. Elara's nose began to bleed, the indigo light of her eyes flickering.
"Oni..." she whispered through the link, her voice a fading echo. "The room is... it's looking at me now."
Hana's eyes narrowed as she watched the SWR dip to 1.05 and then, miraculously, pull back to 1.0. The team was holding. They were compensating for the mechanical failure of the suits, the chemical toxicity of the air, and the biological collapse of their leader. It was a symphony of desperation.
"Twenty-five percent," Hana said, her voice devoid of mercy. "Break the link, or be forged by it."
The mirrors began to pulse with a rhythmic, subsonic throb—the "Predatory Light" was no longer just shining; it was hunting.
The throb grew into a physical hammer, a 20Hz vibration that didn't just rattle the ears—it vibrated the internal organs. Every mirror in the room began to tilt on a microscopic axis, focusing the white fire into a needle-thin lattice of light that converged directly on the space between Oni and Elara's joined hands.
"The null-node is hardening!" Castian's voice was barely a ghost in the comms. "It's not just interference anymore. It's a physical shear. It's trying to cut them apart."
Elara's knees buckled. The indigo glow in her eyes wasn't just flickering; it was being sucked out of her, pulled toward the focal point the mirrors had created. The predatory light was literally eating the bridge between them.
"I can't... hold the lead..." Elara wheezed, her head snapping back as a fresh trail of blood escaped her lip. "It's pulling me in, Oni. It's taking it all!"
"Don't let go!" Rain screamed, his own hands smoking as the gauntlet interface began to melt. "Oni, if you lose her, the reflected load will hit you with the force of a freight train! Daxos, give me everything! Bypass the safety shunts! I don't care if the console explodes, give them the power to bridge the gap!"
Daxos didn't hesitate. He slammed his fist into the override, and a jagged spike of raw, unfiltered aether surged through the dais.
The room screamed. The white fire turned a blinding, bruised violet as the 25% threshold was breached. The sheer atmospheric pressure made the glass floor spiderweb beneath Oni's boots.
"Theia, help her!" Oni roared, his voice sounding like grinding tectonic plates. He was no longer just standing; he was bracing himself against reality, his charcoal suit glowing with a white-hot intensity that threatened to turn the litz-weave into vapor.
Theia lunged forward, ignoring the skin-searing heat. She didn't touch Elara, but she threw her hands out, her aetheric signature blooming into a soft, golden mesh that tried to stabilize Elara's failing nervous system. "I've got you, Elara! Keep your heart rate steady! Breathe the soup, just breathe!"
Beside them, Bane was a statue of strained muscle. The gravity well he was maintaining was the only thing keeping the air from collapsing into a vacuum. "Almost... there..." he gritted out, his nose starting to drip blood onto his shirt. "Just... ten more... seconds..."
"It's not enough!" Idris shouted, his cold mask finally breaking. "The mirrors are adapting to the power spike! They're shifting the phase-angle again!"
"Not on my watch!" Solene stepped directly into the path of a focused beam. She didn't use a shield; she simply absorbed the light, her skin turning into a translucent, solar furnace. She redirected the energy into the floor, away from the node. "Theron! Ground me!"
Theron grabbed Solene's shoulder, his black-glass skin acting as the ultimate conductor. The heat flowing through them was enough to turn the air into a shimmering haze of blue ozone.
In the center of the storm, Oni looked at Elara. Her eyes were rolling back, her indigo light almost gone. The mirrors were winning. The "Echo" was about to become a "Silence."
Oni didn't push harder. He remembered Hana's words: Don't push blindly. You are fighting yourself.
He let out a breath, a long, steady exhale of the heavy argon-krypton buffer. He stopped trying to be the "Mountain." He stopped fighting the light. He looked through the white fire, through the math, and through the pain, and he simply reached for the "Zero" at the heart of the storm.
"Rain," Oni whispered, his voice suddenly calm. "Cut the active power. Now."
"What?! Oni, you'll die!" Rain yelled.
"Trust me. Cut it. Now!"
Rain's hand hovered over the kill-switch. He looked at Daxos, then at the screaming monitors, and then he slammed the lever down.
The power surge died. The 25% intensity vanished.
For a heartbeat, the room went pitch black. Then, a massive, thunderous crack echoed through the chamber as the reflected energy, with no "Active" wave to fight, slammed back into the mirrors themselves.
The mirrors didn't just dim; they shattered.
Thousands of shards of silvered glass exploded outward, moving like shrapnel. But they didn't hit the students. Bane's gravity well, combined with the sudden vacuum of the power cut, pulled the shards into a swirling vortex that hovered six inches away from the group before falling harmlessly to the floor.
Silence. Heavy, ozone-scented silence.
Hana stood on the edge of the dais, her gloved hand still raised. She was surrounded by a sea of broken glass, her reflection shattered into a million pieces. She looked at the SWR meter, which had frozen at 1.0 before the power cut.
She slowly lowered her hand.
"Exercise complete," she said, her voice echoing in the wreckage. "You didn't just find the pocket. You broke the instrument."
Oni didn't move. He remained on his feet, his chest heaving, his hands still locked with Elara's. His suit was still radiating a dull, orange heat, and the argon-krypton gas was swirling around his boots like thick, teal fog.
Elara was slumped forward, her weight supported entirely by Oni's grip. She was alive, her heart hammering against her ribs, but the indigo glow had vanished from her skin, leaving her looking fragile and grey in the dim emergency lighting.
The rest of the Sixty-Five stayed where they were, frozen in their defensive stances. Theia was still reaching out, her hands shaking. Daxos and Rain were slumped over the terminal, their faces illuminated by the sparks of a dying console.
Hana stepped off the dais, her boots crunching on the glass. She walked past the brothers, past the others who were still trying to find their breath, and stopped at the door.
"Scrub the radiation off your skin," she said, her back to them. "And get to the lounge. You have ten minutes before the medical droids arrive. If you're lucky, you'll be able to walk by noon."
The door hissed open, and she was gone.
Only then did Oni let his knees give way. He went down slowly, carefully, lowering Elara to the cracked glass with him. He didn't let go of her hand. He couldn't. His fingers felt fused to hers.
"Elara," he croaked, his voice raw from the gas and the screaming.
She didn't answer at first. She just leaned her head against his shoulder, her breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. "Did... did we win?" she finally whispered.
Oni looked around at the ruin of the Mirror Room—the shattered glass, the burnt-out consoles, and his brothers standing in the wreckage.
"I think we just survived," Oni said.
Oni stayed on his knees, his heavy charcoal suit still clicking and popping as the metal cooled. He didn't pull Elara closer, and he didn't try to stand up. He just stayed there, a grounded weight in the center of the debris, letting the silence of the room settle over them like ash.
Elara's fingers twitched against his. She was staring at a single shard of glass near her knee, her eyes wide and unfocused. The indigo light hadn't just turned off; it felt like it had been scraped out of her. She wasn't moving, wasn't crying, just breathing in the heavy, metallic scent of the argon buffer.
Nearby, Bane let his arms drop. The gravity well didn't snap shut; it dissolved slowly, the swirling vortex of glass shards finally losing its momentum and clattering to the floor in a lazy, rhythmic sequence. He didn't make a joke. He just sat down right where he was standing, his head hanging between his knees, listening to the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.
Theia was the first to actually move. She didn't walk; she crawled the last three feet to the edge of the dais, her hands hovering tentatively near Elara's shoulder. She didn't touch her—she knew better than to introduce a new physical sensation to a nervous system that had just been fried—but she stayed close, her golden aura flickering at a dim, low-frequency hum meant to soothe.
"Don't move yet," Theia whispered, her voice barely audible over the whine of the dying fans. "Just... stay in the zero. Give your heart a second to remember the rhythm."
Rain and Daxos remained at the console. Rain's hands were still flat against the sparking metal, his head bowed. He looked like he was praying, but he was actually just watching the skin on his palms turn a waxy, translucent white where the heat had bypassed the suit's insulation. Daxos reached out, his fingers trembling as he slowly began to unplug the data-leashes, one by one, with the careful precision of a man defusing a bomb that had already gone off.
Across the room, Idris straightened his spine. He was the only one who looked relatively untouched, but the way his hands were clenched into tight, bloodless knots behind his back gave him away. He looked at Oni and Elara, then at the door where Hana had exited.
"We have nine minutes," Idris said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual sharp edge.
Theron let out a long, grating breath, the matte-black sheen of his skin slowly fading back to a bruised-looking grey. He stepped toward Solene, who was still standing rigid, her hands curled into claws. He placed a heavy, grounding hand on her upper arm. She didn't pull away, but a single, sharp spark jumped from her skin to his, the last of the thermal load venting into the air.
Nobody was in a hurry to leave. The Mirror Room was a ruin, but for the first time since they had arrived at the school, the pressure—the actual, physical pressure of being watched and measured—was gone.
Oni finally shifted his weight, his boots crunching softly on the glass. He loosened his grip on Elara's hand just enough to let her blood circulate, but he kept his palm pressed against hers.
"Rain," Oni croaked, not turning his head. "The suit logs. Did you save them?"
Rain looked up, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. He nodded once, a slow, jerky movement. "I got it all. The phase-shift, the null-node... everything."
"Good," Oni said. He looked down at Elara. "Can you feel your feet?"
Elara took a long, shuddering breath. She moved her toes, then her ankles. "They feel like they're a mile away," she whispered. "But yeah. I can feel them."
"Take your time," Oni said, his voice a low, steady anchor. "We aren't going anywhere yet."
Theron was the first to fully commit to the weight of the room. He moved with a heavy, deliberate gait toward the dais, his boots grinding the shattered mirrors into a fine silver powder. He reached down toward Bane, who was still slumped on the floor. Theron didn't say a word; he just extended a massive, calloused hand. Bane looked up, gave a weak, lopsided ghost of a smirk, and let Theron haul him upward. Bane stumbled for a second, his equilibrium still tilted from the gravity well, and leaned his full weight against Theron's shoulder.
"Easy, big man," Theron rumbled, his voice low. "I've got the center of mass."
"You're a damn space-elevator, Theron," Bane wheezed, but he didn't pull away. He stayed anchored to the larger boy as they turned toward the others.
Idris moved toward the console, but he didn't look at the data. He looked at Rain. He saw the way Rain was staring at his waxy, burnt palms and the way Daxos was staring at the ruined interface. Idris stepped between them, placing one hand on Rain's shoulder and the other on Daxos's arm. It wasn't an affectionate gesture; it was a physical command to stand.
"The console is dead," Idris said, his voice regaining a sliver of its usual cold authority. "The hardware is scrap. Leave it. Rain, walk. Daxos, guide him."
Daxos blinked, the manic light in his eyes finally fading into a hollow exhaustion. He took Rain's elbow, carefully avoiding the burnt skin of his forearms. "C'mon, Rain. Let's go see what Xylia's got in those vials. I think I've got a permanent teal tint to my retinas." Rain let himself be led, his legs moving like a marionette's, stiff and uncertain.
On the dais, Theia finally reached out and touched Elara's shoulder. The contact made Elara flinch, a sharp, static pop jumping between them, but Theia didn't let go.
"Oni, on three," Theia directed, her eyes locked on Elara's pale face. "We lift together. Don't let her spine take the torque."
Oni nodded, his jaw set. He shifted his knees, the charcoal suit groaning as he found his leverage. "Ready," he grunted.
"One. Two. Three."
Oni stood, his massive frame trembling under the combined weight of his own exhaustion and Elara's limp form. He kept one arm locked firmly behind her back and the other under her knees, lifting her off the glass entirely. Elara let out a small, sharp gasp as the change in pressure hit her, her fingers clutching instinctively at the scorched fabric of his chest plate.
"I've got you," Oni whispered, his voice vibrating through the suit and into her. "Just breathe."
Solene and Xylia moved to the front, clearing a path through the larger shards of glass. Solene looked back at Oni, her eyes lingering on the blood still dripping from his ear. She didn't offer a "good job," but she stood tall, acting as a shield for the group as they began their slow, rhythmic march toward the exit.
Valen trailed at the very back, his hands in his pockets, his eyes scanning the ceiling for any lingering predatory light. He looked tired, but the jitter in his aetheric signature was gone. He was the rear guard, the silent sink for any leftover energy the group might bleed out as they walked.
As they reached the door, the group naturally funneled into a tight, interlocking formation. No one was walking alone. They moved as a single, bruised organism, the sound of their collective breathing the only thing filling the corridor as the Mirror Room hissed shut and locked itself behind them.
The decontamination showers were a cold, clinical necessity. The high-pressure jets didn't just wash away the sweat; they blasted the teal chemical residue and the fine silver glass dust from their skin. The water was spiked with neutralizing agents that stung like a thousand needles, forcing a hollow, ringing silence as each student stood in their own private stall, staring at the tiled walls.
Oni stayed under the spray until his skin was raw. He needed the heat to leach the deep, vibrating ache out of his bones. When he finally stepped out, the locker room was empty, the others having already retreated to the lounge or their bunks to collapse.
He wrapped a single, thick grey towel around his waist, tucking the corner in with fingers that still felt clumsy and numb. He didn't bother with a shirt; the air against his damp chest felt like the first real thing he'd touched all day. His charcoal suit was a heap of scorched alloy in the disposal bin, and he felt strangely light without it—lighter, and dangerously tired.
The hallway to the residential wing was dim, the overhead lights set to a low amber for the mid-day rest cycle. Oni walked with a heavy, rhythmic tread, his head down, focusing on the simple mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other.
He rounded the corner near the intersection of the women's wing, and a sudden movement made him halt.
Elara was there, coming from the opposite direction. She had clearly just finished her own scrub; her hair was a damp, dark mess against her shoulders, and she was wrapped in a standard-issue white robe that looked two sizes too big for her. She was staring at the floor, her face pale and scrubbed clean of the indigo light, looking smaller than she ever did on the dais.
They didn't just pass each other. They collided.
Oni's shoulder clipped hers, the sudden physical contact sending a jolt through both of them. Because he was nearly a foot taller and twice her mass, the impact sent her reeling back. Oni's hand shot out instinctively, catching her by the upper arm to keep her from hitting the wall.
For a second, neither of them moved. The hallway was silent, save for the hum of the ventilation. Oni's hand was warm and damp against the cool fabric of her robe.
Elara looked up, her eyes wide and startled. She looked at his hand, then up at his face, then down at the bare, muscular expanse of his chest and the low-slung towel at his waist. Her breath hitched, a small, visible shudder running through her.
Oni froze, his fingers tightening slightly on her arm before he realized he was holding her. "Sorry," he rasped, his voice still sounding like it had been dragged over gravel. "I wasn't... I didn't see you."
He let go of her arm as if it were hot iron, stepping back a half-pace. The sudden distance felt cold.
Elara didn't pull away further. She just stood there, her hands clutching the lapels of her robe, her gaze lingering on the faint, red marks on his chest where the litz-weave had overheated. "You're bleeding again," she whispered, nodding toward his ear.
Oni reached up, his knuckles brushing the drying blood. "It's nothing. Just the pressure."
"It's not nothing," she said, her voice gaining a tiny bit of its usual sharpness, though it lacked any real bite. She looked at him properly then, her eyes searching his. "You cut the power. Why didn't you tell me you were going to do that? I thought the echo was going to kill you."
Oni looked down at her, the amber light casting deep shadows across his face. "If I'd told you, you would have tried to take the hit for me. I couldn't let the room have you, Elara."
The air between them felt thick, the remnants of the neural link they'd shared in the room still humming like a ghost limb.
"I could have held it," she said, though her voice lacked conviction.
"No, you couldn't," Oni said softly. "And neither could I. That was the point of the lesson."
He shifted his weight, the towel slipping slightly, and he adjusted it with a quick, awkward tug of his hand. The silence stretched out, no longer clinical or terrifying, but heavy in a completely different way.
Oni's hand was halfway to hers, his fingers twitching with the urge to cover her hand and hold it there, when a frantic, slapping sound echoed from the far end of the corridor. It sounded like wet flippers hitting the floor at high speed.
"Oni! Elara! Tell me you haven't gone to sleep yet!"
The moment shattered. Elara yanked her hand back as if the skin had turned into live wire, stumbling a step away and nearly tripping on the hem of her oversized robe. Oni straightened up, his face flushing a deep, embarrassed red that rivaled his burns.
Rain came skidding around the corner. He was wearing nothing but a pair of neon-orange swim trunks and his medical bandages, which were trailing behind him like the streamers of a kite. He was holding a large, vibrating metal cylinder and a handful of half-eaten nutrient bars.
He stopped dead when he saw them. His eyes went from Oni's bare, burned chest to Elara's damp hair, then down to the single towel hanging precariously off Oni's hips.
"Oh," Rain said, his voice dropping an octave. He looked back and forth between them, a slow, annoying grin spreading across his face despite the bandages on his hands. "Am I... interrupting the 'post-phase-shift' debrief? Because it looks like a very thorough physical assessment."
"Rain, shut up," Oni growled, his voice a low warning.
"I'm just saying!" Rain held up the vibrating cylinder, which was humming at a high pitch. "I managed to swipe a Grade-4 Sonic-Infuser from the med-bay while Xylia was busy threatening to set Daxos on fire. It's supposed to accelerate tissue repair, but it also makes a great drink mixer if you bypass the frequency regulator. I was going to suggest a celebration, but it looks like you two are already celebrating the 'biological proximity' part of the curriculum."
Elara's face was now a matching shade of crimson. "We were checking the burns, Rain. Only checking."
"Right. Right. Checking," Rain nodded vigorously, his grin widening. He took a huge, theatrical bite of a nutrient bar, showering the floor in crumbs. "Very professional. Very celestial. I'll just go tell the others that the Mountain and the Phase-Shifter are occupied with... sensitive calibration."
He started to back away, still grinning. "Don't let me stop you! Carry on with the 'data collection'! Just remember, Oni, that towel has a lower SWR than your suit did. One wrong move and the whole room gets a 100% intensity show."
"Rain! Get back here!" Oni lunged forward, but his legs were still shaky, and he had to catch his towel to keep it from fulfilling Rain's prophecy.
Rain let out a cackling laugh and took off back down the hallway, the sound of his wet feet slapping the tiles echoing all the way to the lounge.
Oni stood with his hand still gripping the top of the towel, his muscles tight and his face burning. He didn't look at the hallway where Rain had vanished; he looked down at the floor, his breath coming in a slow, jagged rhythm. The clock on the wall flickered—it was barely 11:40 am. The day was only half over, and yet it felt like he had lived an entire lifetime since the Mirror Room powered up.
Elara was clutching the lapels of her robe so hard her knuckles were white. She looked like she wanted to bolt, but her feet stayed rooted to the tiles. She finally looked up, catching Oni's eye, and for a second, the embarrassment was so thick it was almost funny.
"He's going to tell everyone," she whispered, her voice a mix of horror and a tiny, unintentional breath of a laugh. "By lunch, Daxos will have a graph of our 'proximity' projected in the cafeteria."
Oni let out a huff of air—a dry, tired sound that was the closest he could get to a chuckle. "I'll kill him. I'll actually throw him into the 100x gravity chamber and leave him there."
He looked at her properly then. The dim amber light made her look softer, the sharp edges of the "Phase-Shifter" replaced by the girl who had almost let the room take her to save the link. The memory of her hand on his chest felt like it was still there, a phantom warmth over his heart.
"Elara," he said, his voice dropping low.
She stilled, her eyes searching his. "Yeah?"
"We held it," he said. He wasn't talking about the math or the SWR anymore. He was talking about the fact that they were both still standing. "Twenty-five percent. Even when the mirrors started hunting... we held."
Elara nodded slowly. She stepped back, finally creating that sliver of space that the collision had taken away, but she didn't look away. The silence of the hallway returned, but it wasn't cold anymore. It was just quiet.
"I should go," she said, her voice barely a breath. "Before Rain comes back with a camera or a live feed."
"Yeah," Oni agreed, but he didn't move. "See you at the meal block?"
"Maybe. If I can figure out how to look at Rain without wanting to phase-shift him into a wall."
She gave him a final, lingering look—one that traveled from his eyes back down to the red marks on his chest, then back up. Without another word, she turned and started walking toward the women's wing, her damp hair swaying against the white fabric of the robe.
Oni watched her until she rounded the corner. Only then did he let out the breath he'd been holding, his shoulders finally dropping. He was still damp, still burned, and the day wasn't even close to being done.