The Gateway chamber hummed with a desperate, focused energy. Jade scanned the room, his mind a cold engine processing variables. Morale: degraded. Physical readiness: acceptable. Mental focus: variable.
His gaze snagged on Seraphina first. She stood before a portal of swirling blood and shadow. She felt his stare and turned her head, just enough. Their eyes locked. Her face was a mask of frozen obsidian, all emotion carved away, leaving only terrifying, absolute purpose. She looked through him, as if he were already a possession accounted for, then turned and stepped into the darkness without a word.
Then, Lyra. Her back was to him as she reached her portal. She glanced over her shoulder, and her amethyst eyes showed anger and a raw hurt he couldn't quantify. She turned away completely and vanished.
A presence manifested beside him. Zero.
"They are distractions," he stated. "Statistically, it is more efficient to be hated than loved. Hate only requires your continued existence."
Without another word, they stepped together into the shimmering gray energy of their portal.
The transition was instantaneous, and it tore them apart. A violent, spatial shearing force wrenched them in different directions.
/ JADE'S POV /
One moment, the solidity of the Sanctuary. The next—a violation. I am alone. The air is thick, heavy with the scent of ozone and old memories. I stand in a corridor, but the walls are not stone. They are shifting, smoky mirrors, reflecting a thousand distorted versions of myself.
A whisper slithers directly into my consciousness. It is his voice, laced with familiar, chaotic malice.
"He broke you... laid you bare for everyone to see..."
The memory of my absolute defeat by Zero slams into me. I see it play out in the shifting walls. My knuckles turn white around my scythe's haft. The urge to Obliterate this memory, to shatter the mirrors, is a fire in my veins.
But a colder thought surfaces. To swing my scythe here would be to admit the memory still holds power. I am a weapon. I do not rage against the whetstone; I am sharpened by it.
I stand my ground. I let the painful echo wash over me, acknowledging it as part of my steel, but not my master. The corridor shudders. The whispers fade. The path ahead clears, just a little.
I have not fought the echo. I have absorbed it.
/ ZERO'S POV /
The transition is a calculation of force and trajectory. Then, silence. Perfect, featureless white. An empty canvas. It is almost... correct.
Then the silence begins to press. It is not an absence. It is a presence. The weight of my own philosophy, reflected back at me.
A figure coalesces from the whiteness. Myself. A perfect Reflection. Its eyes are not silver-green; they are hollow pits.
"Your silence is a lie," it speaks, its voice the sound of concepts ceasing to exist. "You carry the ghosts of every will you have unmade."
It points its blade at the empty space beside me. "You claim he is your whetstone. But what is a whetstone to a void? You can only erode."
It swings, and an image appears: Jade, turning his back, cold dismissal on his face. A perfect, logical fear.
I watch, unmoved. Chinmoku is my state of being.
"The edge is the only truth," I state. "Your words are noise."
The Reflection screams soundlessly and lunges. I do not move to block. I perform a minor severance—not on the Echo, but on the connection between the illusion and my mind. The image of the betraying Jade shatters like glass.
"The void cannot be filled with echoes," I tell the creature. "It can only be understood. And you are a flaw in this system's logic."
I step forward. The Reflection recoils. The perfect white hall begins to crack.
The moment each man overcame his trial, the labyrinth shifted again. The separate corridors dissolved, the space warping and merging.
Jade and Zero were thrown back into existence in the same place—a circular chamber. The walls were no longer mirrors or white voids, but active, swirling pools of liquid mercury, showing distorted, real-time glimpses of the other's past trials.
A System prompt burned before their eyes simultaneously:
< Resonant Cage Engaged. >
< Objective: Synchronize. >
< Failure: Amplification. >
Before they could process the words, the room attacked. Not with monsters, but with their own powers, weaponized against the other.
Shards of solidified silence, manifestations of Zero's Chinmoku, fired at Jade, seeking to numb his core. Waves of chaotic, crimson-black energy, echoes of Jade's Obliterate—washed over Zero, a violent assault on his void.
They stood back-to-back, the Chain and the Whetstone, as the very nature of their bond was turned into a cage designed to break them.