Year 8 – Spring, Lunaris Academy
The candles in the meditation hall burned with crimson flames, each wick resting in a bowl of blood water that shimmered like liquid glass. The air hummed with quiet tension; fifty students knelt in rows before mirrors inscribed with glowing runes. The topic today was one whispered of in reverence and fear alike—Astral Projection.
Professor Nier glided between them, robes whispering. "To project," he said, "is to divide the soul without tearing it. You must open the mirror inside you and trust that what looks back is still yourself."
Ketsuraku listened. He had spent months reading the codices in House Sanguis—records of Veilborns who had left their bodies and never returned. His pulse drummed quietly in his ears.
"Focus on your reflection," Nier continued. "Let it breathe for you. If it moves before you do, you are ready."
The students obeyed. Light flickered across glass. Some reflections shivered and stretched thin, ghostlike. Others flickered out.
Ketsuraku stared into his mirror. His reflection stared back—steady, patient. Then it smiled.
He hadn't smiled.
The mirror darkened to red. The reflection's eyes bled into black voids.
"Not yet," Nier warned somewhere behind him, but the voice sounded far away. The hall twisted, pulling him through the mirror's surface like silk.
The Trial of the Self
He landed on polished glass that stretched into forever. Mirrors surrounded him on every side, endless, each showing a version of himself—some proud, some broken, some crowned, some bleeding. The air smelled of iron and rain.
From one reflection stepped a figure exactly like him but wrong. The eyes were pits, the smile sharper. The shadow raised a crimson blade identical to his.
"You think you've changed," it said in his own voice. "But you still fear what you were."
"I'm not afraid," Ketsuraku said.
The shadow laughed, a hollow sound. "Then prove it."
They clashed.
Every blow he struck met itself. Every trick he used was already known. Sparks flew; red droplets scattered like petals. The shadow's strikes carried anger—his anger—the memories he tried to bury: the blade that killed him, the helplessness, the guilt.
When the shadow pinned him down, pressing the blood-sword against his throat, its whisper echoed:
"You saved them and died, and still you call that courage? You died because you hesitated. You will die that way again."
He gritted his teeth, ready to fight back—but then he heard another voice, calm and deep, from somewhere above the storm.
"Do not fight what you are. Embrace it."
He froze. The light in the mirrors trembled.A tall figure appeared behind the shadow—transparent, composed of red light and white code, the outline of himself older, serene.
"I am what you might become," the Higher Self said. "He is what you left behind. Neither can vanish. You must walk as both."
Ketsuraku dropped the sword. The shadow's blade stopped a breath from his throat. Slowly, he reached out and took the shadow's hand.
For a moment there was only pain—fire through his veins, ice in his lungs—then the glass floor shattered. Light swallowed everything.
The Astral Awakening
He floated weightless.
The academy stretched below him like a map drawn in starlight. Lines of red code ran through walls; veins of golden light pulsed through towers. Students shimmered as faint silhouettes, asleep within their bodies.
He looked down at himself—translucent, edged with blood glow.His first Astral Projection.
From the east tower, another light rose—a soft gold touched with rose. It drifted closer through the glowing air, slow and graceful.
A girl. Six faint wings of light trailed behind her. Her eyes opened, warm and uncertain.
"Who are you?" she asked softly. Her voice carried no distance; it simply was everywhere.
"Ketsuraku," he said. "House Sanguis."
Something in her expression shifted. "Rosa Seraphiel," she said. "House of Fallen Angels."
Their spirits circled each other in the sky between towers. The wind here didn't move—only the rivers of light flowing through the air.
"You're the boy from my dream," Rosa whispered.
"You're the voice that kept me alive," he replied.
She smiled, faint and bittersweet. "So we both remember."
The astral current shimmered between them, pulling their forms closer until their hands touched. For a breath, their lights merged—red and gold twisting together.
A pulse rippled across the academy; mirrors trembled. Every candle in both Houses flickered crimson-gold for a heartbeat.
The Return
They woke at the same instant.
Ketsuraku sat upright on the meditation floor, gasping. The mirror before him was cracked down the center, blood seeping from its surface as if it had a pulse of its own.Across the campus, in another tower, Rosa touched her own cracked mirror and whispered his name.
Professor Nier stood silent at the hall's doorway, eyes wide. "Two projections synchronized across Houses," he murmured. "That hasn't happened since the First Era."
He approached Ketsuraku slowly. "What did you see?"
Ketsuraku hesitated. "Myself. And someone who remembered me."
Nier stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. "Then you've crossed your first threshold. The others still fear their shadows. You shook hands with yours."
When he left, Ketsuraku looked again into the broken mirror. His reflection smiled—not the cruel one from before, but calm, almost proud.
From the mirror's crack came Hel's whisper, faint as the rustle of silk.
"You've crossed the first river. Now the world will notice."
And somewhere in the higher tower, Rosa pressed her palm to her mirror and whispered back,
"Then let it."
The moon rose over Lunaris Academy, and the two mirrors glowed faintly through the night—red and gold, beating in time with the same quiet heart.