The corridor beyond the Court of Shadows stretched into a narrowing throat of stone, dimly lit by trembling lanterns that seemed afraid of their own light. Reiji moved first, his breath cold against the stale air, every muscle still echoing from the last clash. Akari followed close, her footsteps quiet even on stone slick with condensation. Behind them, Kaede sealed the hidden door they'd slipped through—her fingers trembling ever so slightly as the silence of the underground palace swallowed them whole.
And then the smell reached them.
Iron. Burned lacquer. Cold incense.
The hall ahead opened into a vast chamber—circular, towering, shaped almost like an inverted dome. It shimmered faintly, as if the walls themselves exhaled. Reiji stepped forward and the surface rippled.
Mirrors.
Hundreds of them. Not glass—polished obsidian, reflecting nothing correctly. Their surfaces bent light, twisted silhouettes, sliced shadows apart like prey. And woven between them, red threads hung like spider silk, pulsing in quiet, sickening harmony.
Kaede's voice was barely a whisper.
"…The Crimson Mirrors."
Akari swallowed hard. "I thought they were just a rumour. A failed experiment."
"No," Reiji said quietly. "The Monarch perfected them. But not for seeing truth. For rewriting it."
He stepped deeper into the chamber. His reflection—no, not his reflection, something shaped like him—moved a half-second out of sync, as if the mirror was thinking before mimicking. It tilted its head. Smiled faintly. And stayed smiling long after Reiji's face turned serious again.
Akari stiffened, hand going to her blade. "Reiji—"
"I see it." His voice remained low. "Don't engage yet. They react to intent."
Kaede moved to flank them, her eyes glinting with a mix of fear and scholar's curiosity. "The Monarch uses these mirrors to test loyalty. They show different versions of oneself. To break the mind. Or rewrite it."
Reiji didn't look away from the distorted version of himself staring back with those wrong eyes.
"So this is the trial," he murmured. "This chamber… is the gateway to the Tower Without Light."
"And to him," Akari whispered.
The Monarch.
Reiji stepped forward again, and the mirrors shivered—as if sensing prey. Red threads tightened, humming like plucked strings.
A low resonance echoed across the room, almost like breath.
Then the mirrors began to shift.
Not physically—reality itself bent inward, folding and unfolding like origami in slow motion. The obsidian panels rearranged their "reflections," mixing them, splitting them, reshaping them into hundreds of faces. Shadows of the past. Fears given form. Regrets given body.
And there, emerging in the center of one mirror, was a face Reiji felt hit him like a blade to the ribs.
"Yuu…" he whispered.
Akari froze.
Kaede's eyes widened. "Reiji—don't look—"
But the mirror had already seized its anchor.
The reflection stepped forward—not out of the mirror, but toward him, as if the distance between reflection and reality no longer mattered. Reiji's breath trembled, barely controlled. The memory of that day—the smoke, the cracked concrete, the trembling hand in his before it fell limp—
His knuckles whitened.
"You're dead," Reiji said, voice cracking and hardening at once. "You're not real."
Mirror-Yuu tilted his head. The eyes were wrong—too calm, too understanding, too forgiving.
Or maybe too accusing.
"Why did you leave me?" the reflection whispered.
Reiji's heartbeat stuttered.
Akari stepped closer, urgency in her whisper. "Reiji! It's not him. It's what the mirror wants from you—don't answer—"
But the mirror world rippled again, shattering the distances.
Now there were two figures.
Then five.
Then ten.
Not only Yuu—others. Faces Reiji had tried to bury deep: enemies he killed, comrades he failed, strangers whose blood had splattered across his blade. They stared. Silent. Endless.
Kaede clenched her jaw. "Crimson Mirrors don't show illusions. They pull from your memory, your fear, your guilt. They recreate the versions of people your mind cannot forget."
Akari tightened her grip on her blade, her eyes serious yet soft.
"But they're not alive. And they don't deserve control over you."
Reiji didn't respond. His breathing had become sharper, colder. A storm tightening inside his chest.
Kaede stepped forward, raising her talisman. "We can disrupt the resonance. I just need time—"
The words cut off.
Because the mirror behind her twisted violently—projecting her. Kaede. But wrong. Eyes hollow. Shoulders weighed by chains. Lips curled in disappointment.
Reiji turned sharply.
Kaede stared at her distorted self, color draining from her face as her reflection whispered:
"You should have stayed buried with the rest of them."
Akari gasped. "Kaede—don't listen to it!"
But Kaede's hand trembled. Her breathing slipped.
And another mirror lit up beside Akari—showing her, covered in blood, blade pressed to Reiji's throat.
Akari recoiled a step, fury and fear mixing. "That's not me. That will never be me."
Reiji steadied himself despite the pounding in his skull. "Listen to me. Both of you."
The mirrors pulsed.
The threads tightened.
Reiji's voice cut through the chamber like a blade of its own.
"We stay anchored to each other. Don't look at them. Don't let them speak for us. Move with me."
His hand brushed the hilt of his weapon. His reflection smirked.
Akari exhaled sharply. "Targets or illusions?"
"Doesn't matter," Reiji said. "If they stand in our way, we break them."
Kaede swallowed her dread, fingers clutching her talisman. "Then I'll deal with the resonance."
And the chamber awoke.
A scream of metal and fractured reality tore through the air as the Crimson Mirrors launched their first assault—reflections lunging from the surfaces like phantoms, their forms semi-solid, their movements uncanny.
Reiji slashed the first one cleanly in half—not with hesitation, but with cold, controlled violence. The figure dissolved back into shards of light, screaming silently as it remerged into the mirror.
Akari spun, blade cutting through three reflections in an arc so clean it left a shockwave.
Kaede's talisman flared blue and white, tearing red threads apart with bursts of spiritual force.
But the mirrors kept multiplying.
Every kill spawned more reflections—more faces, more guilt, more memories twisted into weapons. The chamber itself seemed to bend and breathe, closing in around them.
Reiji felt time stretch. The air thinned. The chamber pressed against the edges of sanity.
Yuu's reflection returned—closer this time, voice softer.
"You couldn't save me."
Reiji's grip faltered.
Akari shouted, "Reiji! Anchor!"
He inhaled sharply. Focus snapped back.
He whispered, barely audible: "…Not this time."
He drove his blade into the ground—letting the force of his will ripple outward, steadying his stance, stabilizing Kaede's talismanic field. The mirrors faltered, flickering.
Kaede seized the moment.
"I found the core! The central mirror controls the others!"
Reiji's eyes locked onto the largest mirror in the chamber—the one that had first shown Yuu. Crimson threads fed into it like veins into a heart.
"Akari!" he ordered.
"Already moving!" she responded, sprinting.
Reflections lunged. Reiji met them head-on.
He cut through his own face—his own shadow—his own past made flesh.
Akari leapt upward, twisting mid-air, blade glowing faintly as she aimed at the heart mirror.
Kaede's voice rang out: "Now!"
Reiji surged forward and threw his blade like a spear—perfect, silent, deadly.
Akari's strike hit first. A crack split the crimson surface.
Reiji's blade pierced through the same point.
Kaede unleashed a final wave of spiritual force.
And the Crimson Mirror shattered—its scream not sound but pressure, bursting outward in a wave of broken reality.
Reflections dissolved into dust.
Threads snapped.
Silence crashed down.
Akari staggered, catching her breath. Kaede nearly collapsed, clutching the floor.
Reiji stood still, chest rising and falling, sweat cold against his neck. His eyes lingered on the lingering shards of the mirror where Yuu's reflection had stood.
Akari approached him slowly. "…Reiji?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Then:
"Let's go," he said softly. "We're close. He felt that break."
Kaede nodded, voice trembling but steady. "The Monarch definitely knows we're coming."
Reiji's eyes hardened.
"Good."
He walked toward the door at the far end of the chamber—the one now exposed after the mirrors collapsed. It pulsed faintly with a cold, violet glow.
Akari joined him on his left. Kaede on his right.
Reiji exhaled, steadying himself.
"Next is the Tower Without Light."
He opened the door.
And the darkness inside welcomed them.