The Hall didn't whisper. It moaned.
Walls of old stone, slick with ancestral sweat, trembled with every step Kael took. Beneath his feet, tiles etched with names—thousands of names—flashed red as he passed, glowing like embers under his weight. Some of the names gasped. Some begged. Some screamed his name before he'd even said it.
"This is where love turns to murder," the Mirrorlord said behind him. "The Third Veil is the final wound of the soul. The one you chose to hide."
Kael didn't answer. He knew what the Mirrorlord meant.
He felt it pulsing in his chest, in his cock, in his guilt.
At the end of the hall stood a mirror—tall, smooth, rimmed in bone and stitched leather. It pulsed like a living thing, its glass surface reflecting not what was, but what he had buried.
---
The reflection showed a bed.
On it: a young man.
Naked. Beautiful. Mouth bound with red silk. Arms tied.
Kael's body, in the reflection, was above him. Dominant. Slow. Tender.
Don't show me this.
He gritted his teeth, fists clenched.
He's dead. I killed him. I had to—
The Mirror shimmered. The scene changed.
Now the same man—eyes wide with betrayal, his chest pierced by Kael's dagger, his lips still wet with the taste of Kael's seed.
---
"You fucked him," whispered the Mirrorlord. "Then you killed him. For gold."
"He begged me to run with him."
"And you sold his body instead."
Kael roared and punched the mirror—but it didn't shatter. It swallowed his fist. Then his arm. Then his chest.
The Mirror drank him whole.
---
Inside was a bedchamber made of memory.
Silk sheets soaked in blood. Perfume still clinging to the air. And on the bed—him.
Auren. The only lover Kael ever allowed too close. The only one who knew his real name. The only one whose death had left Kael waking up hard and crying.
"You came back," Auren whispered, rising from the bed, fully nude. "I've missed your cock... and your knife."
Kael didn't speak. He was already hard. Already aching.
"Do it again," Auren whispered. "Fuck me. Kill me. Or let me live. This is your test."
---
Kael crossed the room and took Auren in his arms, lips meeting with desperate fury. He thrust him back on the bed and entered him without mercy—raw, brutal, teeth bared. They moaned in unison, the room echoing with the sound of old lust resurrected.
Kael came hard, biting Auren's shoulder—but didn't kill him.
Instead, he whispered:
"I loved you. I still do. And I let the world turn me into a thing that couldn't keep you."
Auren smiled.
"Then you pass."
He crumbled into ash in Kael's arms.
---
Kael awoke kneeling in front of the mirror. The sigil on his chest flared with a third ring—black, red, and now white, pulsing with balance.
The Mirrorlord stepped forward.
"You have passed the Three Veils. Now, you are worthy to enter the Crimson Labyrinth. The path of kings. The first threshold to the Fleshbound Throne."
Kael rose, cock still half-hard, chest burning with power.
"Then open the fucking door."
---