Boundless Chronicles

Chapter 22: Diverged Timelines, II

…The world shattered.

Cracks of blinding silver light spiderwebbed through the stone floor, the wooden counter, and the yellowed ledgers of Tally's shop. The spatial architecture of Sector Three Sanctuary was unraveling at the seams.

"Aaaaaah! The channel! I'm opening the channel!" Tally shrieked, its small wings flapping violently as its ink-stained hands slapped the air.

Ti-ri-ring!

[Channel #809-Tally has gone LIVE!]

[Stream Category: Cataclysm Trial #8: The Sea of Hungry Mirrors]

[Broadcast Tier: Local / Lower Gallery]

[Current Viewers: 14]

Fourteen audience members. A pitiful starting count for a live broadcast, but it was expected for an unregistered junior node.

[The Gallery-being 'The Auditor of Ash' has entered the channel.]

[The Gallery-being 'The Crowned Ember' has entered the channel.]

[The Gallery-being 'The Hollow Cartographer' has entered the channel.]

"Noël!" Gideon shouted, his rapier drawn as the floor beneath his boots dissolved into a swirling vortex of liquid mercury. "My body is being pulled into a sub-space fold!"

The System's forced partition was attempting to divide all entrants inside the Sanctuary into isolated, individual mirror pockets. If Gideon and Noël were separated now, Gideon would be thrown into a Tier-1 high-density reflection chamber alone, without a guide.

'Not happening.'

Noël reached into his coat and gripped the cool, metallic surface of the Chronometer of the Unseen Clerk.

'Activate.'

Click.

The hands of the silver pocket watch spun backward three full ticks.

[Relic Effect: 'Chronometer of the Unseen Clerk' triggered.]

[Local System Scan delayed by 3.0 seconds.]

A dull, subsonic vibration thrummed through his soul grid, temporarily masking their unique spatial coordinates from the Codex's partitioning sweep.

[Error: Entrant location packet unreadable.]

[Partitioning delayed.]

Noël grabbed Gideon's shoulder with his right hand and seized Tally's oversized collar with his left.

"Hold your breath," he said.

"W-What?!" Gideon gritted his teeth as gravity inverted.

Kuuuuong!

The world fell away.

They plummeted through an endless expanse of fractured grey sky before crashing onto a hard, polished floor made of pure, calcified glass.

Brrrsh!

Dust and white glass powder billowed into the air as they skidded across the ground, coming to a halt at the edge of a massive, frozen amphitheater.

"Ugh..." Gideon rolled onto his knees, shaking his head to clear the dizziness. He looked around, his eyes widening. "Where... where are we?"

Noël stood up and dusted off his coat.

Before them lay a sprawling desert of towering, jagged mirror shards jutting out from the calcified earth like giant teeth. Millions of identical reflections of Gideon, Tally, and Noël stretched endlessly into the horizon.

A crimson UI panel materialized before them.

[Main Trial #8: The Sea of Hungry Mirrors]

[Category: Main]

[Difficulty: Tier 1: Extreme]

[Clear Conditions: Navigate the mirror maze, survive the 'Unmade Reflections', and reach the Core Meridian within 3 hours.]

[Time Limit: 02:59:57]

[Compensation: 8,000 Tribute, Tier 1 Superior Skill Scroll.]

[Failure: Death (Soul consumed by the Mirror Mesh).]

"Three hours?!" Tally squeaked, floating upside down in terror. "A Tier-1 Extreme Trial with a three-hour limit?! That monster of a regional Administrator wants to wipe out the entire lower ring!"

Tiiiing!

[The Gallery-being 'The Auditor of Ash' frowns deeply at the sudden advancement of the Trial timeline.]

[The Gallery-being 'The Crowned Ember' grins eagerly, anticipating a bloodbath.]

[The Gallery-being 'The Hollow Cartographer' is scribbling notes on the warped spatial layout.]

[Current Viewers: 142]

The viewer count was climbing rapidly. The Gallery loved sudden, high-lethal emergency overrides.

"Noël," Gideon said, stepping beside him with his rapier raised in a low guard. "These mirrors... they aren't reflecting us properly."

He was right.

Noël looked into a six-foot mirror shard directly to his left.

The reflection looking back at him was not wearing a dark trench coat. It wore the blood-stained grey rags of an Aethelgard penal worker. Its left eye wasn't glowing violet. It was completely hollow, gouged out, and dripping with dried blood.

It was Noël Voss from the 1st timeline. A version of him that had died in the Iron Tomb four years ago.

"This is 'The Sea of Hungry Mirrors'," Noël said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. "The mirrors here do not reflect your present self. They reflect the versions of you that failed in erased timelines."

Gideon gasped, looking at his own mirror shard.

In his reflection, Gideon Vance wasn't a proud, silver-armored noble youth. His arms had been replaced with crude, steam-hissing Aethelgard iron prosthetics, and his eyes were completely black, corrupted by dark ether.

"T-That's impossible..." Gideon whispered, his hand trembling slightly against his sword hilt. "I've never... I've never suffered such injuries!"

"In this timeline, you haven't," Noël corrected flatly. "In another, you did."

Cr-Crack!

The six-foot glass shard in front of them fractured down the middle.

A pale, rot-covered hand reached out from inside the glass, gripping the sharp edge of the mirror frame.

"N-Noël..." Tally whimpered, diving behind his shoulder. "It's coming out!"

Gideon instinctively took a step forward, his sword tip glowing with a bright pulse of solar ether. "Stand back! I'll cut it down before it fully steps through!"

"Stop," Noël said, catching his forearm.

Gideon turned to him, frustrated. "Are you mad?! It's a Tier-1 Variant construct! If it steps out, it gains a physical vessel!"

"To be exact, attacking it now is what gives it a physical vessel," Noël replied.

He opened his left eye.

The Gyre Eye spun, analyzing the glowing red conduit lines binding the mirror variant to the glass pane.

In his ghost-memories of the 2nd timeline, three teams of Tier-1 mercenaries had been wiped out on this exact floor because they attempted to brute-force the reflections. The rules of this Trial were a semantic trap created by the Aethelgard Architect.

'Article 7, Clause 12 of the Mirror Domain Regulations,' he recalled. 'A reflection possesses no physical weight until the observed entity acknowledges it as a threat.'

The System wanted them to panic. It wanted them to strike first, because a combat action constituted a legal acknowledgment of the reflection's reality.

"Gideon," Noël said calmly. "Lower your blade."

"What?!"

"Lower it."

Gideon hesitated for a fraction of a second before lowering his rapier, though his muscles remained taut as wire.

Noël stepped forward, stopping less than three inches from the rot-covered hand protruding from the glass.

The Variant version of him grinned, its hollow eye socket leaking dark fluid as it opened its mouth to screech.

Noël looked at it with a blank expression.

"You are ugly," he said.

The Variant froze.

"Your posture is terrible, your rags are unwashed, and your stats are completely unoptimized," Noël continued deadpan. "You are an irrelevant statistical error from an obsolete draft."

[You have invoked 'Absolute Denial' of the reflection's authority.]

[The Mirror Variant's existence coefficient has dropped by 90%!]

Crack!

The rot-covered hand turned into brittle sand, crumbling into dust before it could touch Noël's coat. The entire glass shard shattered into harmless, glittering silver powder, scattering across the floor.

Silence fell over the amphitheater.

Gideon stood frozen, his rapier dangling in his hand, his mouth slightly open.

Tally peeked out from behind Noël's coat, its large blue eyes blinking in total bewilderment. "H-How... how did you kill a Tier-1 Variant without using a single drop of ether?!"

Tiiiing!

[The Gallery-being 'The Auditor of Ash' is utterly speechless at your psychological loophole exploitation!]

[The Gallery-being 'The Crowned Ember' is wildly banging its fists, screaming in delight at your absolute disrespect!]

[The Gallery-being 'The Hollow Cartographer' is chuckling maniacally!]

[3,000 Tribute has been sponsored!]

[Current Viewers: 1,890]

[Current Tribute: 26,200]

Noël calmly swept the silver dust off his sleeve.

"It was a simple story," he said, turning to Gideon. "Now, let's go find the rest of the mirrors before the timer runs out."