Nathan stood in a hallway made of black stone, colder than it should’ve been, stretching longer than it looked. At the far end was a single door: smooth, seamless obsidian carved with a glowing sigil that pulsed like a heartbeat.
He wasn’t alone. Krit stood a few steps ahead, back straight, eyes calm. Lissandre lounged nearby against a floating bench, twirling a flame between her fingers with practiced ease. They were next. Nathan was last.
"Feeling heroic?" Lissandre asked without looking up.
Nathan didn’t answer.
Krit turned toward him, eyes unreadable. “They say the room shows you what it must. Not what you want. Not even what you fear. Just... what matters.”
“Comforting,” Nathan muttered.
Krit gave a rare, faint smile. “Or disastrous.”
A soft hum buzzed in the air. The door at the end of the hall opened with a sigh.
“Serel, Roremand,” a voice called.
The golden-haired top student, Roremand, strode down the hallway with all the confidence Nathan didn’t have. He didn’t glance back. The door closed behind him. A beat of silence.
Then a new voice—not spoken aloud, but pressed into the bones of the hallway itself—called:
“Velle, Lissandre.”
Lissandre stood, cracked her knuckles, and winked at Nathan. “If I explode, you can have my scarves.”
Then she was gone. The hallway seemed to pulse in her absence. Nathan felt something shift in the walls around him. It was like the magic that held the hallway together noticed him. Krit turned their head slightly. “You might want to brace yourself.”
“What happens in the room?”
Krit hesitated. “Mine asked me what I feared more: drowning or becoming like my father. Then it made me choose which I’d lose—my voice or my memory of home.”
Nathan blinked. “What did you choose?”
“Neither,” Krit said. “I lied. The room didn’t like it.”
Then, mercifully or not, the voice returned.
“Quinn, Nathan.”
The hallway dimmed.
Krit touched his shoulder as he passed. “Let it show you. But don’t believe everything you see.”
The door closed behind him.
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Light vanished.
Nathan stood in total, absolute black.
No texture. No floor. No walls.
Nothing.
His breath echoed like he was underwater, but there was no water. No sound.
Then—
“Name.”
The voice didn’t come from anywhere. It formed inside him.
“Nathan Quinn,” he said.
Nothing.
Then, all at once, light snapped into being. A circle of stone beneath him. Eight glowing objects floated in the air, evenly spaced: a flame, a feather, a droplet, a stone, a metal ring, a curled root, a silver disc, and a golden orb. Each pulsed with its own rhythm. Each seemed to tug on something in his ribs. But before he could move—
“You may not choose yet.”
The light around the objects dimmed. A soft, golden thread of light unfurled from above, landing directly in front of Nathan. It wove into a mirror. The surface was black, dull, unreflective—until it wasn’t. His face stared back. Then it changed. His reflection lifted its head, blinked—and its eyes were silver. Not glowing. Burning. Like molten light poured into pupils. The reflection smiled. Slowly. Not cruelly—but not kindly, either. Then it spoke, in his voice.
“Are you the version that survived?”
Nathan stumbled back, heart hammering. “What—”
“Why do you lie so well?” the voice—not the mirror, but the room—asked.
“I—what do you mean?”
“You tell yourself you're ordinary.”
The mirror changed. A vision appeared: Nathan, sitting in a small mortal-world dorm room. Alone. Lights off. Window open, rain falling. Not moving. Barely blinking. “But you’ve always known you were waiting for something.”
Another image—young Nathan, maybe nine or ten, standing at the edge of a pond, watching his reflection move out of sync. Back in the room, the eight objects flickered again. The golden orb pulsed, stronger this time. The mirror spoke again.
“Do you remember what you dreamed when you were seven? The first time the shadows whispered your name?”
Nathan’s breath caught. He did remember. A dream of standing in a circle of stars, watching his own body dissolve into light. A melody rising without source. And a woman made of golden smoke saying:
"You were made to break the pattern."
That dream had haunted him for years—until he stopped telling people about it. The voice shifted again. Warmer now. Lower.
“Tell me, Nathan Quinn: Which is harder to survive—being nothing… or being seen?”
He swallowed. “Being seen.”
The mirror showed his face again. Eyes silver. Then white.
“And if they knew?” the voice asked. “If they saw what stirs beneath your skin—would they still love you? Would they still follow?”
Nathan didn’t answer.
The mirror faded.
The room shifted.
He stood on a cliff now, high above a plain of broken runes. The air shimmered with golden fog. The sky above had no sun, but everything glowed with a brightness that made the shadows stretch too far. In the center of the plain: the eight objects. Each hovering. Waiting.
“Choose.” the voice said.
But Nathan didn’t move.
He stepped forward, each footstep echoing like it weighed centuries.
The flame pulsed, but it didn’t call to him.
The water droplet shimmered. Familiar, but not true.
The silver disc—Moon—glowed faintly. Almost respectfully.
But the golden orb?
It was music.
Not sound, not song, but music.
A hum in his bones. A pulse that fit into his chest like it had always belonged there.
He reached for it.
The moment his fingers brushed the surface—
—Light erupted.
—The plain shattered.
—The orb sang.
Not literally, but it sang. A harmony of heat and movement, of creation and rhythm.
The golden orb cracked.
And from inside it spilled light that remembered his name.
The cliff crumbled beneath him. The runes caught fire. The room bent.
And a voice whispered in the gold—
“The Conductor.”
“The Composer.”
“What will your symphony be?”
Nathan fell to his knees as everything around him melted.
The last thing he saw before blacking out was the mirror—
—with the version of himself still watching—
—and smiling.
