The Selection was moving with a ruthless efficiency that allowed no time for reflection or healing. The initial shock of the rogue automaton and the sinister undertones of the Trial of Synergy were barely digested before the candidates were ushered into the next, far more intimate challenge. This was the Trial of Will Resonance, a phase designed not to test physical prowess, but the very core of a fighter's spiritual intent.
The second testing area was unlike the chaotic outdoor simulation. It was a massive, subterranean circular chamber known simply as the Hall of Mirrors. The entire floor and all walls were clad in seamlessly polished, obsidian-black glass, creating an infinite recursive reflection of every person, object, and stray beam of light. The air inside the chamber was unnaturally still, yet it felt thick, humming with a faint, low-frequency static that immediately set Kai's inner System on edge. It was the same electrical sensation he had felt during his most intense moments of Aura channeling.
Instructor Tanaka gathered the 1^{st}-year trio just outside the main entry. His face was devoid of the amusement he'd shown the day before; now, it held only grim expectation.
"This is not about muscles or speed," Tanaka warned, his voice barely a rasp. "The Resonance Hall is a psychological and spiritual weapon. The field reacts to the emotional state and fighting spirit—your intent. It's designed to show you what you're most afraid to see, what you're trying hardest to suppress. Your reflection will become your truest enemy."
He fixed each of them with an intense gaze. "If your internal will is fractured, the Hall will magnify that fracture until you are broken. Don't lose to your own reflection. Accept the fear, but do not let it control your intent."
Haru, pale but determined, nervously joked to break the suffocating tension. "So if I see myself losing, does that mean I already failed? Or if I see myself as a giant marshmallow fighting a vengeful tax auditor?"
Aiko didn't bother with words. She simply jabbed him sharply with her elbow, her flat expression conveying the message: "You fail by talking."
Kai, however, was in a state of hyper-awareness. He wasn't afraid of the challenge, but he was wary of the unknown variable—the ability of the Hall to probe his carefully constructed logical defenses. He knew his greatest weakness was not a lack of power, but the hesitation that always preceded his total commitment—the millisecond where the logic firewall delayed the impulse of instinct. If the Hall could exploit that delay, he would be trapped in an endless loop of analysis and failure.
One by one, the candidates stepped into the terrifying chamber. The Hall instantly isolated each participant into their own reflected zone, the mirrors bending and shifting to create a claustrophobic, individualized cage of reflections.
Kai stepped onto the polished floor, the cold stone seeping through the soles of his training boots. The silence immediately intensified, pressing in on his ears, amplifying the gentle, electrical hum of the resonance field. He stood still, closing his eyes and drawing his Aura inward, attempting to establish his mental equilibrium before the trial began.
When he opened his eyes, the change was instantaneous and startling. His reflection, standing three feet in front of him, was subtly wrong. It was too fast. It mirrored his physical position flawlessly, but its eyes moved a fraction of a second before his did, radiating an intense, aggressive heat. The reflection was not merely showing him; it was anticipating him.
The Hall began its psychological assault. The smooth glass walls dissolved into flickering projections of past scenes. Kai saw himself standing on the gym floor, watching Riku's perfect technique, the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy washing over him. He saw the cold, analytical expression he wore when he logged a loss, masking the internal, searing frustration.
His reflection rippled, its expression twisting into a cynical, sneering mask that mirrored Kai's deepest, most suppressed self-doubt.
"You calculate everything, Kai Takasugi," the reflection hissed, its voice an unnerving echo of his own internal monologue. "You hide behind the data. You treat the world like a formula because you are afraid to make a choice without certainty. You analyze the distance between you and Riku, but the distance is not in power; it is in courage. You are a puppet controlled by logic."
The reflection lunged, not physically, but psychically, projecting the crushing weight of his final loss to Riku. Kai instinctively raised his hands in a defensive guard, but the pressure was overwhelming, a tidal wave of internalized fear. He saw the milliseconds of hesitation that had cost him the match—the flicker of uncertainty that prevented the golden Aura from stabilizing.
"But when will you feel?" the reflection whispered, its voice cutting deeper than any physical blow. "When will you stop calculating the risk of failure and simply commit to the blow? You are 99\% analysis and 1\% will. That 1\% will always be the gap."
Kai gasped, realizing the fundamental truth of the challenge. The Hall wasn't asking him to fight an illusion; it was forcing him to confront the wall he had built between his intellect and his primal intent. He was fighting the fear of surrendering control. He fought back not with strength, but with a sudden, painful mental discipline. He forced himself to look past the calculated flaw and accept the emotion, drawing the sharp, icy spike of fear into his core. Only by acknowledging the fear of failure could he stabilize his will. Slowly, painstakingly, he began to integrate the feeling, forcing the anxious static into a low, steady analytical hum—a subtle gray Aura that stabilized his reflection, neutralizing its taunts.
In a separate, distant zone of the Hall, Riku was facing a trial of a different magnitude—a test of acceptance, not integration. His zone was quieter, filled not with chaotic images, but with a profound, oppressive sense of past guilt.
His reflection took the form of a younger version of himself, perhaps twelve years old, still trembling from an unnamed, agonizing defeat years ago—a moment Riku had successfully buried beneath layers of relentless training and perfected technique. This boy was the seed of fear Riku had tried to kill with discipline.
The younger reflection stood hunched, tears staining its cheeks, radiating an Aura of pure, brittle terror. "You're no hero," the reflection of Riku's youth choked out. "You just learned how to hide your fear behind power. Every perfect form, every flawless strike—it's just another layer of armor. You're still that terrified, weak child who couldn't protect himself."
Riku, the Academy Champion, struck out immediately, his attack fueled by raw anger and the urgent need to suppress this painful truth. He executed a perfect, thunderous high-kick—but the illusion, fueled by Riku's own aggressive energy, mimicked him perfectly, delivering an equally powerful counter that struck Riku's mental focus, driving him back two paces. Riku tried again, channeling his powerful blue Aura, only to find the illusion becoming stronger, his own aggression multiplying the projection's size and ferocity.
He realized the brutal elegance of the Hall's design. Brute strength only served to feed the very fear he was trying to exorcise.
Slowly, painfully, Riku ceased his aggressive attacks. He steadied his breathing, stopping the outward flow of his powerful Aura. He didn't evade or strike; he simply stood, allowing the vision of his young, terrified self to stand before him. He channeled not defiance, but quiet acceptance. He acknowledged the pain, the defeat, the deep-seated fear he had carried since childhood.
As Riku's intent shifted from resistance to harmonization, the violent blue Aura flooding his zone stabilized. It ceased to be an aggressive weapon and became a comforting, steady light. The younger, trembling reflection did not disappear; instead, it slowly stood tall, mirroring Riku's perfect adult posture, its terror replaced by quiet discipline. The entire mirror field around Riku glowed with an intensely focused, steady azure light.
Observing instructors, cloaked in the gray robes of the analytical division, furiously transcribed notes. "His synchronization rate… it's off the charts," one murmured into a small device. "He's harmonizing with the resonance instead of resisting it. Total internal control."
The Trial of Will Resonance was designed to be isolating, but the massive power and internal conflict of the two top candidates proved too much for the controlled environment. As both Kai and Riku reached their peak moment of either integration or acceptance, the faint electrical hum in the chamber escalated into a sharp, painful whine.
The resonance fields began violently overlapping.
Kai's mirrored zone—currently subdued and stabilized by the pale, analytic gray of his integrated intent—suddenly cracked open, its surface flickering with intense blue static.
Kai found himself staring not at his own reflection, but at Riku's. Riku stood in his zone, his face etched with profound mental exhaustion, surrounded by the powerful, serene azure glow of his successful harmonization. The separation between their chambers had dissolved, creating a terrifying, volatile bridge of pulsing Aura.
The two rivals stood wordlessly, separated only by the razor-thin, shimmering plane of the destabilized mirrored floor. The electrical discharge and the amplified thoughts of the hundreds of students pulsed between them, amplifying their internal tension.
The surprise was absolute, yet Kai instinctively realized the truth: the Hall had registered their unique connection—the push-and-pull rivalry that had been the driving force of their growth—and had treated their two separate minds as a single, dual-faceted problem requiring simultaneous resolution.
Riku finally spoke, his voice dry and strained, still echoing with the remnants of his confrontation with fear. "Still analyzing everything, Kai?"
Kai, his own breath shallow, his logic firewall fighting a losing battle against the flood of unfiltered data and emotion, replied with equal calm, a faint, almost desperate defiance in his tone. "Still relying on instinct, Riku?"
Their brief, sharp exchange was the spark. The shared energy between them—Kai's analytical gray seeking Riku's established blue control—clashed with the chaotic, amplified static of the Hall. The very air shrieked. Their reflections merged momentarily on the shimmering floor, the gray and the azure light colliding to create a pure, blinding flash of white energy.
The resulting shockwave—a rare and catastrophic "dual resonance" event—slammed into the surrounding mirrors, which fractured and sparked violently before the main power cut out. The Guardians watching from the upper balcony, usually passive and motionless, took immediate, aggressive notice, one figure slamming a fist onto a railing in shocked dismay.
The energy stabilized after seconds, the emergency safeties kicking in, plunging the Hall into a safe, dim light. Both Kai and Riku stood panting, exhausted, but strangely enlightened—each sensing the complete, painful growth of the other in that fleeting moment of connection.
When the trial officially ended minutes later, the air was heavy with the smell of ozone and burnt electronics. The examiners, visibly shaken by the instability of the event, announced the results. Only a handful of students had managed full synchronization and stabilization—the ultimate goal of the test. Unsurprisingly, Riku and Kai were at the top of the list, followed by Aiko.
Instructor Tanaka watched the duo, his arms crossed, a muscle twitching beneath his eye. He hid his pride, but the internal satisfaction was immense. He allowed himself a small, silent nod. "Lazy genius, huh? Seems you're not done surprising me yet. You may just survive the crucible."
Aiko, despite her exhaustion, walked over to Kai, her posture perfect. She didn't smile, but her compliment was high praise from the notoriously cautious 1^{st}-year. "You passed the psychological firewall test. Congratulations."
Haru, meanwhile, was curled into a small ball in the corner, visibly trembling. He had seen something truly horrifying in his mirror, something that had nearly broken him. He swore to Aiko, his voice raw with trauma, that he would "never look into a reflection again—not even to brush my teeth."
As the candidates were led out of the still-smoking Hall, a group of senior, black-robed Guardians converged on the area of the dual resonance. One of them, speaking quietly to another, confirmed the gravity of the event.
"Those two… their wavelengths matched for an instant," the first Guardian said, his voice hard. "The data proves it. That's not coincidence. That's a connection. A bond forged by their rivalry. If their synchronization continues, their combined potential could stabilize the very anomaly we seek to suppress."
That night, Kai found himself unable to sleep. The memory of Riku's face, the flash of white light, and the immense, shattering energy of the dual resonance event played on loop in his mind. He sat at his desk, recording meticulous notes in his journal—a frantic effort to contain the uncontainable.
His handwriting was unsteady, betraying the mental and spiritual exhaustion he felt.
Entry 53.9: Resonance. The Hall of Mirrors is a measurement tool. It measures not data or logic, but will itself. My failure was exposed: the hesitation between calculation and commitment. I must collapse the analytical time-frame.
The anomaly: Dual Resonance with Riku (Subject 01). The energy pulse was exponential, not additive. The combined intent created a force far greater than the sum of the parts. It's as if will itself can be measured and amplified.
As Kai finished writing, his hand trembled slightly, and for a split second, a faint blue spark—the same hue seen when Riku stabilized his resonance—flashed and died between his fingertips. It was a physical manifestation of the energy connection, a foreign element now subtly integrated into his own Aura structure.
Kai stared at his hand, curiosity mixing with profound caution. He whispered the essential question that would drive the next phase of his journey: "This connection… is it power? Or warning?"
The Selection was no longer about winning. It was about defining the limits of his own existence and understanding the terrifying destiny that had bound him to Riku.