Chapter 362

The hall of mirrors wasn’t a corridor in the physical sense because there were no walls, no ceiling, and no actual distance to cross, but Nick’s mind struggled to give it shape, so it became a long passage lined with glass panes, each as tall as a man and framed in dull silver, reflecting different versions of him.In one, he wore Tower-blue robes with a satisfied smile, the ideal apprentice who never lied, never stole, and never pushed his luck. In another, his eyes were empty, his skin pulled tight over his bones, and the Shard hung at his side like a noose. In a third, venomously yellow eyes stared back from beneath his own, and he could taste the iron-sweet echo of blood that wasn’t there.

Nick didn’t slow down, smashing through any mirror that tried to block his path.

The glass shattered outward in a burst of glittering fragments that scraped his thoughts rather than cut his skin, and the pieces fell away like ash before hitting the floor. Another mirror slid into place behind it, already intact, already waiting.

He hit that one, too.

And the next.

And the next.

The hall kept reshaping itself as he moved forward, as if his refusal to engage was just another variable the trial adjusted for. By then, the mirrors weren’t obstacles meant to stop him, but bait, designed to make him glance sideways and lose his balance.

, he reminded himself, as he bulldozed through another pane.

If this were just simple illusion magic, would have destroyed it without trouble. He’d seen enough tricks aimed at his mind to spot the signs of a spell trying to manipulate his perception, and this wasn’t that.

What he was currently experiencing was a shared mindspace, formed from Malik and Yvonne’s subconscious and connected through Nick’s spiritual presence, which meant he couldn’t block everything out, as a good chunk of it came from within.

So he had to walk a very delicate line: both participate in the Trial and refuse the impossible knowledge being offered to him, yet not deny it altogether, or he would break the Trial.

Nick pushed through another mirror, ignoring the version of himself inside it, kneeling and begging, palms pressed together as if in prayer before a twisted altar, which whispered back. He didn’t even flinch when the glass shards sang across his thoughts, trying to make him taste the forbidden knowledge that particular Nick sought.

Finally, the hall began to change.

The mirrors shifted from showing him his various versions to reflecting other people. Faces and locations flickered in the reflections now: a woman with a knife in her boot, a man with a battered shield, a muddy street, and a cramped room with no fire and too many hungry mouths.

And then, abruptly, there were no mirrors ahead at all.

The corridor opened into a space that looked like a courtyard at dusk, with its edges fading into the darkness beyond. The ground beneath was uneven stone, and the air reeked of weapons’ oil and sweat.

A voice snapped like a whip. “No.”

Nick turned and found a girl ten paces away.

She was about twelve, maybe. Thin but not malnourished, with her hair tied back using a strip of cloth that used to be white. Her eyes were sharp, and her jaw was clenched as if she was doing her best to hold back tears.

It was Yvonne, or at least a memory of her, and she was in the middle of an argument with a man in a dark wool coat, broad-shouldered and red-faced.

“You will do as you’re told,” he said. “You will stop this foolishness and learn what matters. You will marry Darrin’s boy, and our companies will be one, as has always been the plan.”

The girl’s fists clenched. “I don’t want to,” she spat, voice cracking from the intensity of her emotions. “I’m not marrying anyone. And I’m not staying here.”

“You’re my daughter,” the man snapped. “You will do as you are told. You think training with learning the blade will feed you? You think it will keep you safe? It will get you killed, you foolish child.”

Yvonne stepped forward, as if she meant to square up with him.

“Then I’ll die on my feet,” she said, moments before being struck.

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The scene jolted, transforming the courtyard into a street that merged into the temple's interior. He glimpsed the details as they flashed past, the outline of a brass lantern, the scent of incense, and the soft chants of priests, until everything settled back into place.

They were inside the temple now, standing before a stone altar. A priest in pale robes held out a hand toward the young Yvonne. His mouth moved, but the words were muffled.

Still, it was recognizably a Class Ceremony.

Young Yvonne lifted her chin, with defiance and fear battling on her face as the priest’s hand lowered toward her forehead.

Neither of them seemed fully aware of it, but Nick felt a pressure settle over the soulspace, as something vast reached down.

For a moment, he thought it was the System, but surprisingly, that wasn’t the case. Oh, its cold touch was there, ready to offer her a new Path, but it wasn’t the only presence. The other entity resembled a divine agent more than a conscious being, yet it felt less like an independent force and more like an extension of one. Authority radiated from it in a way that suggested it could serve as either the judge or the enforcer, and it wouldn’t care which way it swung, even as it decided Yvonne’s fate.

But it still targeted the girl, and Nick’s instincts told him it couldn’t be good.

He didn’t have time to choose what the right decision was, beyond realizing that he was inside her foundation, and that if he watched passively, he might let it break apart.

Yesod wasn’t passive. If he wanted to take the Second Step, he had to get out there and discover what was beneath the mask.

Nick moved forward and positioned himself between the approaching presence and the child.

The priest’s hand moved through him like fog, not even noticing him, while Nick exhaled and let his emotions rise, recalling the image of a wooden sword in his hands, of his mother’s patient corrections, and his father’s quiet comfort after teaching him what a real fight was like. He remembered sparring with his brother until his arms shook and he could barely think of anything beyond the blade.

He pushed it outward in a wave, and the descending presence hesitated for a split second, like a mechanism recalculating when gears don't mesh. Reality stuttered, and the temple flickered between frames as half a dozen outcomes tried to play out at once.

Nick pressed harder, guiding the presence’s course toward the right conclusion, and watched as young Yvonne’s face eased.

The scene shattered, and glass burst outward from Yvonne herself. For the briefest moment, the adult Yvonne stood there, exactly as Nick knew her, and she looked directly at him.

“Thank you,” she said softly, with an understanding of what had happened that he doubted even the real adventurer could have.

Then she shattered into shimmering bits, and the pieces dispersed through the void.

Nick turned and kept walking as the hall reappeared, mirrors lining the path again, thousands of them, and he smashed through without looking, letting the reflections of Yvonne’s life flicker and fade until the air changed again.

Cold crept in, though it wasn’t necessarily physical, but an oppressive pall, one that could only come from hunger and despair.

A boy crouched behind a stack of crates.

Eleven, maybe twelve, but very thin and way too tired, yet still recognizable as Malik. His hands were raw, with broken nails, and his eyes held the wariness of someone whose life had been full of hardship.

The scene was a warehouse at night, lit by a lone lantern. The smell of grain was everywhere, heavy and haunting, coming from sacks piled like small hills, each one representing a chance at survival the boy couldn’t afford.

Malik’s fingers shook as he reached for a loose tie.

A sound snapped behind him, then a shout.

“Thief!”

The boy bolted.

Nick’s perspective jerked with him as he watched Malik reach the street, only to slip when a hidden ward activated, and he went down hard.

Hands grabbed him and dragged him upright.

A noble crest flashed on a ring—gold on black—and Malik’s expression sank with the realization that it had all been a trap. He could have never entered the warehouse in the first place if it truly belonged to a noble house.

A man with a cane stepped forward, looking at him boredly, but there was a glint in his eyes that promised a tough night.

“You tried to steal from me,” the man said. “Do you understand what happens to animals who bite the hand that feeds them?”

“I was hungry,” the boy rasped, voice cracking. “I was—”

The cane came down, and Nick’s jaw clenched.

He could tell where this was headed. He could feel the mindspace wanting to show him not just pain, but the pivot, the moment when Malik’s entire worldview crystallized around survival and stubborn endurance, the seed that would become his Class.

Yet when the cane lifted again, angled toward the boy’s head, he could tell that the blow would have a good chance of killing him, so Nick raised a hand and pushed back.

Not with kinetic magic, since there was no real spellwork here in the usual sense, but with intent and emotional pressure, using the same refusal he’d used to reshape the other moment.

The cane’s arc shifted, but it still struck, and the boy cried out.

But he could see it had landed on the shoulder instead of the skull, bruising flesh rather than shattering bone.

The man with the cane frowned, as if annoyed by a misfire, and prepared to strike again.

Again and again, Nick blunted the deadly edge while keeping the pain there, because pain was part of the foundation, too. He couldn’t remove it even if he had the power, because doing so would have broken Malik just as much as letting him die.

Finally, the beating stopped, and the noble spat in disgust before turning away.

The boy sagged, panting, tears streaking down his dirt-streaked cheeks.

His eyes lifted, and he saw Nick.

There was a moment of silent understanding, and then the boy nodded, tired and in pain, but still fierce.

And then that scene fractured as well, breaking into glass that rose upward and disappeared.

Nick let out a slow breath, contemplating the two foundational moments he’d been shown, confident that he was finally beginning to understand the true shape of the Step settling into place around him.

Yesod wasn’t just about seeing illusions, though that was certainly part of it. It was about recognizing the lie people were forced to live within, and the moment they either accepted it or rejected it.

But that still left the corruption to deal with. Now that he had seen a bit of who the two adventurers really were, he could explore their core without fear of messing them up.

The mirrors blurred into a storm as thousands of scenes flashed by too quickly for him to comprehend. Nick pushed through all of it, refusing to let any mirror affect him, until finally the hall opened into an empty space.

There was no floor, no ceiling, and no horizon, only a pale emptiness that stretched forever, and in the middle of it, absurdly enough, sat a rocking chair with an old man lounging on it.

He wore a black cloak, with messy hair, sharp eyes, and a smile that held a mix of amusement and schadenfreude that felt distressingly familiar.

Aleister Crowley, his grandfather from Earth, sat there rocking softly, as if this were a porch on a calm evening instead of the center of two minds teetering on collapse.

He looked up as Nick approached, spreading his hands. “Ah,” he said, voice warm as whiskey. “About time.”

Another chair appeared beside him, plain and wooden, facing the same endless emptiness.

Aleister patted the armrest, inviting him to sit.