The Trial of Reflections

The ceremony ended with no applause. No closing words. Just silence… and stillness that felt wrong.

The students remained in the grand hall, breaths held as if the air itself had thickened.

Then the torches dimmed. Not from wind. From something else.

No one moved. No one breathed.

A hum started—low, like the grinding of a bone flute played underwater.

One student shifted nervously. Another reached for the hem of their robe, knuckles white.

“What’s….happening?” someone whispered.

The floor trembled.

From the marble beneath them, mirrors began to rise.

Dozens.

Then hundreds.

Tall and slender. Cracked and warped. Some clean as new silver. Others smeared with blood-like streaks. They encircled the chamber like silent judges.

Elarion’s gaze darted across their reflections.

But something was off.

Some mirrors didn’t reflect the room. They showed memories that hadn’t happened yet. Others showed versions of the students—distorted, broken, afraid.

One mirror didn’t show him at all.

Then the voice came. Not from a speaker or the faculty, but from everywhere. And nowhere.

"The Trial of Reflection begins."

"You will be seen."

"You will be judged by the truths you hide from even yourself."

Stone shifted. Thirteen glowing circles carved themselves into the floor. One beneath each student.

The mirrors responded—angling inward. Turning. Watching.

"To ascend, one must survive their reflection."

"To fail... is to shatter."

The first student disappeared.

Not through spell or chant.

Just—gone. Pulled backward into the mirror behind him as if swallowed whole.

His scream echoed a heartbeat later—from a different mirror.

In it, he was running from something. Bleeding. Screaming for a mother that was long dead.

Then the mirror cracked.

The others began to panic.

But the runes beneath their feet were already binding them.

There was no escape.

Elarion exhaled. Cold air stung his throat.

The mirror behind him trembled.

The room fell away as soon as Elarion stepped through the mirror.

No sound. No light. Just pressure. Like the air had lungs, and he was inside them.

Then—

Fire.

The illusion didn't form gently—it ripped into place.

The Tower burned.

Its spires, once proud, crumbled like wax under lightning.

Ash fell like snow.

And through it all… a child screamed.

Elarion stood in the ruins of his own memory. The stones beneath his feet were familiar—he had bled on them once. And there he was—himself, age eight, crawling toward the wreckage, voice raw from begging:

“Please! I did everything right! I tried, I swear—don’t leave me here!”

He watched the boy sob until his throat gave out. No one came.

Not Damien.

Not the Tower.

Only the voice answered.

“Why do you cry for them still?”

The world twisted.

The child vanished.

And from the smoke, he stepped forward—same face, same eyes… but hollow.

Not broken.

Erased.

A version of Elarion without mercy, without questions, without the voice that ever whispered "Maybe there's more to life than this."

“I am what you were meant to become,” it said.

“Not the cracked thing pretending to carry honor in its silence.”

The real Elarion stood still.

He said nothing.

But the pressure grew—like gravity had turned against him. His knees buckled, breath shuddering from his lungs.

“You wear his name. His sigil. But you’re not a son,” the echo spat.

“You’re a container. A sheath. Something sharp… waiting to be used.”

The illusion struck deeper—into his bones.

And then—

The Mirror.

It formed behind the double—a twisted pane of silver, rippling like blood. It didn’t show their faces.

It showed Elarion kneeling before Damien, eyes vacant, body marked with chains made of runes. The Tower behind them roared with approval.

He watched himself smile.

Obedient.

Silent.

Perfect.

He screamed.

Not aloud.

Inside.

Because part of him wanted it.

The peace of surrender. The ease of erasing himself to fit their mold.

To finally stop pretending he didn’t hate being alive.

Elarion closed his eyes.

“No…”, he said.

His mana erupts, raw and untethered. Reality splinters.

He slowly devours everything, and everyone watching from outside felt it.

He laughed—but his eyes were filled with darkness.

“If I’m a weapon…then may the first thing I cut be you.”

And his mirror shatters itself to get away from him.

He woke up gasping.

But no one noticed.

Because most of the other students hadn’t woken up at all.

And the ones who did….were breaking.

Around him, bodies trembled. A girl clutched her head, sobbing uncontrollably, smearing tears and blood across her face.

Another had vomited on the marble, retching again and again even though there was nothing left inside him.

One boy knelt in the corner, whispering apologies to someone long-dead brother, his hands shaking so violently.

But not all were broken.

A few stood.

Unsteady. Pale. But upright. Their eyes were haunted. Breathing shallowly. But they hadn’t shattered.

Elarion’s gaze swept across them. Some met his eyes. Most didn’t.

One boy leaned against a pillar, jaw clenched, blood smeared along his sleeve where he’d wiped his mouth.

A girl stood barefoot, trembling, arms wrapped tightly around herself—but she was still standing.

They were the ones who made it. The ones who passed.

The survivors

Not unscarred.

Just….awake

Footsteps approached behind Elarion. Slow. Unhurried.

“Survived?”

Elarion turned. The Crown Prince stood behind him,

wathcing with something unreadable in his gaze.

Elarion didn’t answer. He just looked at him—then looked away.

“Not much of a talker, huh?”

The Crown Prince extended a gloved hand.

“Sevrien,” he said, voice cool. “Sevrien Aurel Duskgrave—of House Duskgrave.”

Elarion glanced at the offered hand, then took it out of formality.

“Elarion di Valtor. From the Tower of Valtor.”

Sevrien tightened his grip. Mana of gold burst forth, radiant and oppressive.

It poured from him like sunlight turned molten, his aura flooding the air in waves.

Elarion glanced directly at the Crown Prince’s eyes. A cold surge of violet aura erupted,

Sharp and precise—like amethyst flames coiled in control.

Their manas collided.

The impact cracked the platform beneath them, spiderwebbing the stone under their feet.

A shockwave rippled through the hall. Students staggered back, some gasping, others too stunned to speak.

Then—

“Enough.”

A voice cut through it. Sharp. Commanding. Cold.

A third presence surged into the room.

Ice-blue light cascaded from the far end of the hall, swallowing the gold and violet in one breathless sweep.

The clash stopped instantly—snuffed out like a flame under water.

Walking with poise, untouched by the trembling air was the Imperial Princess.

Her silver-white hair flowed behind her like mist trailing moonlight, each step measured, deliberate.

As she reached them, the frost never left her eyes.

She turned to Elarion with practiced grace, extending her gloved hand.

“Lysaria Evanthe Duskgrave,” she said, voice like velvet over ice. “It’s a pleasure to meet the Tower’s heir.”

“Elarion di Valtor”

Elarion looked at her hand. Then took it.

His grip was calm. His eyes weren’t.

“The next time you call me the Tower’s heir…”

He glanced at her, then at Sevrien.

“The world will forget that you both existed…”

Elarion’s words hung in the air, sharp and final.

Lysaria didn’t flinch. She smiled—softly, like snow falling on steel.

“I apologize,” she said, with the elegance of a bow,

“both for the title…and for my brother.”

Sevrien scoffed under his breath but said nothing.

Then—

A rush of wind swept through the grand hall

Not natural. It came from nowhere. From above.

Chandeliers swayed. Runes on the walls flared to life.

And the mirrors began to sink—slowly, deliberately—into the marble floor.

By the time the final mirror disappeared, the silence had changed.

Not empty.

Expectant.

Students looked up just in time to see a figure descending from the ceiling like a falling shadow cloaked in midnight blue.

He didn’t cast a spell. He didn’t announce himself.

He simply arrived.

Gravity folding around his cloak as he landed without sound, and his boots kissing the marble floor with the gentleness of falling ash.

His face was carved with harsh lines and unkind wisdom. Pale eyes like glass blades. The kind of man who had watched thousand realities and never once flinched.

“Silence,” the man said, though no one was speaking.

Everyone stopped breathing anyway.

“I am Professor Corven Vale,” he said. “Overseer of Ascension. Witness to Reflection. And judge of what remains.”

He walked forward, slow and deliberate, eyes sweeping the survivors like a butcher inspecting still-living meat.

“A hundred entered,” he said. “Forty remained.”

No one moved.

“Survival in this trial is not a guarantee of strength. It only means your mind bent just enough to avoid breaking.”

He stopped in front of a girl with bloodshot eyes. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“The mirror shows what you hide. Not what you want.”

Then he turned—to Elarion.

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then:

“But it seems that others are already fighting what they hide….”

Elarion met his gaze without a word.

Behind him, Lysaria shifted. Sevrien’s hand tightened at his side.

Vale turned from them like he had already measured and filed their existences into proper categories.

“Rest,” he said finally. “Your next trial begins in three days. If you still breathe by then.”

He raised a hand. The remaining torches flared back to full flame.

Then he vanished. No flash. No sound.

Only pressure relieved.

And the silence that followed felt almost louder than his voice.

But it wasn’t just silence.

It was the sound of something waiting.

The kind that comes before a storm.

Or a reckoning.

Elarion stood still in that silence—not broken, not whole.

Just… sharpening.

Because what the mirrors didn’t show was that…

He wasn’t afraid of being seen anymore.

He was afraid of what he might become now that he had been.