THE MIRROR WAITS.
After the second challenge, I expect time to breathe, but the Temple doesn't care about recovery periods. The surface ripples once, then stills, showing only my reflection again. My real face this time, no cracks, no strange smiles. Just me. Pale. Exhausted. Hair sticking up at angles gravity shouldn't allow. It wouldn't happen but I sure as hell don't want Hanna to see this new makeover.
Foras floats at my side, unusually quiet. His eye flicks between me and the mirror like he's deciding which one of us is the greater liability.
"You think it's done?" I ask, knowing full well it isn't.
"Nope," he says immediately. "You've still got one more round of getting tossed around like a sack." I wish to refute but I'm no hero. No huge power spike or any fancy powers. So I simply shoot back a grim smile.
"Can't wait."
This time when the air in the chamber shifts, I'm not caught by surprise. It is a tad bit stupid, immature even, but that was my way of showing defiance. The torches flare, burning brighter, shadows stretching across the water. The temperature drops a few degrees, enough to raise goosebumps on my arms.
The System's voice threads into my mind: "Final Reflection Challenge Initiated."
"Do not run."
I let out a dry laugh as I remember the countless hours I spent in track practice. Of course the quest denies the one thing I'm good at. I throw a glance around the gloomy, slimy place. "Do I look like I have anywhere to run?"
Foras pats my shoulder. "Hey, look on the bright side. At least you'll fail spectacularly in style."
"Really, Foras?" I groan, swatting his hand off. "You think this helps?"
Foras shoots what I assume is his second best smile. Still ugly. "You're welcome anyway."
Not waiting for us to chatter away, the mirror ripples again, the surface bending like liquid. When it clears, it doesn't show another corridor or a chamber. It shows a street.
Not here. Not Brumdn Cove.
Home.
The scene pulls me in before I can stop it. One blink, and I'm standing on cracked pavement under the flicker of a broken streetlight. The air smells like summer dust and cheap takeout. I know this road… the one leading back to our house, where the vending machine on the corner always ate my coins and the neighbour's dog barked at me merely for existing.
It's wrong seeing it here. Wrong in the way a dream feels when it tries too hard to look real. The sky is darker than it should be, the stars smudged, the moon swollen and low. Everything too hazy, like when I forgot to wear my glasses before I got lasik done.
The street is empty, but I know I'm not alone.
Foras hovers nervously beside me. "I don't like this, hyung."
"And you think I do?"
Interrupting us, the sound of footsteps echoes behind us. Slow, steady, deliberate. Creeping in.
I turn.
Another me walks out from the shadows. Not cracked or monstrous this time. Not hollow-eyed. Just… me. Same clothes. Same hair. Same slouch in the shoulders. He stops a few paces away and smiles faintly.
"You always were good at pretending," he says.
My mouth goes dry. Not what I was expecting. "What?"
"You laugh. You make jokes. You call it sarcasm so people don't look too close. But you've been running the whole time."
The System's words echo: Do not run.
I shake my head. "You're not real."
He chuckles. "Neither are you. Not anymore."
I know it is all mind games yet the words still cut me with what I can only understand as pure anxiety. What does he mean? 'Not anymore?'
Before I reel from the shock, the world tilts. The buildings around us blur, their edges stretching like melted wax. The ground ripples underfoot, pavement turning to glassy water that reflects us both.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection below. Except my eyes are hollow. My mouth twisted. My reflection doesn't wait for me — it grabs my ankle from beneath the surface and pulls. I stumble, nearly falling, yanking my leg free with a splash. The water stains my skin with faint blue lines that crawl up my calf before fading.
The other me watches calmly. "See? You can't keep it down forever. The lies. The weight. You run from it, but it always catches up."
He lunges.
This fight is different from the others. He doesn't move with inhuman speed or twisted limbs. He moves exactly like me — same stances, same habits. When I feint, he feints. When I swing, he parries. It's like fighting a mirror that knows every mistake I'm about to make.
Our fists clash, blows meeting with sharp cracks that echo too loudly in the warped street. The fight isn't sophisticated unlike the other times where the reflections moved like fighting was a muscle memory. This one is rowdy. And messy. Almost like boys throwing punches at the backgate to assert dominance.
My stamina is at a limit too. My grade D gear can only take so much and I slowly start to feel the dull punches growing sharp as each second trickles by. But I try. Every time I think I've outmaneuvered him, he counters. He knows my rhythm because it is his rhythm too.
Sweat drips down my temple. My chest burns. If I had the luxury, I'd cry right now.
"Stop running," he says again, voice steady even as his strikes hammer into me. "Face it."
Foras darts around the edges, shouting advice that makes no sense. "Kick him in the ankle! No, not like that! Hyung, he's literally you, how are you losing this badly—"
"Helpful as always!" I grunt, blocking a punch.
My double smirks. "You can't beat yourself."
"Watch me."
I twist, forcing my weight behind a desperate strike. It lands against his jaw, the impact sending him staggering back. But when he straightens, he wipes his lip and laughs.
"That all you've got?" I hate how cocky he sounds. My one voice in my own words. No wonder the basketball team hates my guts.
The pavement beneath him fractures, lines of light spreading outward like cracks in a window. The street melts away entirely, leaving us standing on a floating shard above endless black water. The rest of the neighborhood drowns, sinking into the dark.
There's nowhere to run now. Just me, him, and the void.
Okay, let's say it out loud. I'm scared shitless.
We clash again. Blow for blow. Strike for strike. Each movement is mirrored, every impact sending ripples through the shard we stand on. It's like fighting in a nightmare that refuses to let me wake.
But then, I notice something.
He doesn't mock me when I falter. Doesn't laugh when I stumble. He repeats the same phrase over and over, like a mantra.
"Stop running. Face it."
It's not taunting. It's a demand.
A demand from me. A demand to finally agree that I'm not special. That I'm just a brat.
I stagger back, chest heaving. "You think I don't know?" I shout. "I know I'm running! From Shin Woo. From Hanna. Heck, even my sister! And from everything I can't achieve. I'm not blind to it."
My double stills.
The words keep spilling, raw and ragged. "But if I stop… if I face it all at once… I don't know if I'll survive it. You think I want to remember every single day that I'm incompetent? That no matter how hard I try I'm always so average that all I can do is hide behind dumb jokes. So yeah, maybe I'll keep running. Maybe that's the only reason I'm still breathing."
The shard trembles beneath us. Cracks widen. It will definitely be an ugly fall from this height, illusion or not.
For a long moment, he just watches me, no sense of hurry whatsoever as the shard groans under our feet. Then he nods. "Finally."
His form shatters into glass, fragments scattering into the void. Like a rewind button, the cracks quickly glue to each other, so fast that I can barely see it happen. And just like that, the platform holds steady. The mirror's surface ripples back into place in front of me.
The System's arctic voice returns. Not sure if I am imagining things but she sounded relieved as she made her announcement.
"Final Reflection Challenge Complete."
"Quest Clear: Temple of the First Reflection."
"Reward Tier: Pending."
I collapse onto the stone floor, gasping. Before I could ask anything, The System withdrew like a swift thread.
"Hey! System, wait!" I shouted in my mind but just like that, she was gone. Well, that was definitely anticlimactic. To think I did all of that and still back at being as clueless as ever. Anger washes over me but I'm too tired to even throw a tantrum. Foras hovers anxiously above me.
"You did it," he says softly. "Hyung… you actually did it."
I close my eyes, every muscle in my body shaking. "Yeah. But I don't feel like I won."
The Temple fades around us, stone walls dissolving into mist. When it clears, I'm back at the entrance archway, the black water gone, the torches extinguished. Only the mirror remains, its surface now dull and cracked, as if the Temple itself has gone dormant.
Foras taps my arm lightly. "So. Back to Brumdn Cove?"
"Yeah," I mutter, pushing myself up. "Not like The System showed us any other way to progress. So yep. Back to pretending nothing's wrong."
t o b e c o n t i n u e d