The corridor that followed Floor 5's entrance narrowed into a strange, crystalline tunnel. Prisms jutted from the walls and refracted every bit of torchlight, fracturing their reflections into broken silhouettes. Roger led the group, Kai close behind, Aria scanning every angle for movement.
"This place feels wrong," Aria muttered. Her mist blade shimmered faintly, reacting to the distorted energies. "Like it's… remembering us."
Kai paused, brushing his hand along one of the prism walls. "No. Not remembering. Mirroring."
Just then, the crystals flickered.
A figure stepped forward from the tunnel's far end.
Kai's breath caught.
It was him.
Same glasses, same slouched posture, same bracer.
But the eyes—
Emotionless. Cold. Focused. The Echo-Kai radiated raw intelligence and an aura of refined control.
"Is that…?" Roger asked.
Kai nodded slowly. "It's me. Or at least, what I could become."
The Echo moved fast—runes forming in rapid-fire succession. Three at once. Then four.
Kai barely dodged the first blast, a streak of compressed force aimed at his shoulder. Aria lunged forward, mist trailing her blade, but the Echo blurred out of reach, vanishing behind a veil of refracted light.
"It's using layered invisibility!" Aria called.
"I can match that!" Kai shouted, raising his bracer. But his own rune casting lagged behind—each formation sloppy compared to the Echo's elegance.
Another barrage of sigils flew toward him.
Kai stumbled. One rune singed the edge of his coat. Another burst near his leg, knocking him sideways.
The Echo was relentless.
A third rune flashed—aimed at Kai's heart.
Roger's orb flared. Time warped.
The rune froze midair.
Roger lunged forward, slamming a fist into the Echo's side, sending it skidding back across the stone.
Kai gasped, stunned. "Thanks—"
"You're too focused on speed," the Director's voice rang calmly through the tunnel. "You are not your Echo. You're better. Use what's yours. Use your mind."
Kai clenched his jaw. Closed his eyes. Breathed.
The rushing noise faded. In its place: silence, clarity.
He reached into his satchel, pulling out a series of pre-inscribed rune plates. Not fast castings. But complex. Temporal layering, spatial rebounding.
"Roger, I'll need five seconds. Aria, veil the left."
"Got it," she replied.
Mist blossomed into a wall, shrouding half the tunnel in obscurity.
Roger moved like a wall of fire, intercepting the Echo with a series of brutal punches. His temporal orb flared again, warping momentum and displacing several of the Echo's runes.
Kai placed the plates in sequence. A triadic weave of time-lag and spatial drag.
The Echo tried to disengage—vanished into a refracted shimmer—
—but the trap activated.
A shimmer of runes caught the Echo mid-phase, locking it inside a recursive loop. For a split second, time folded around it.
"NOW!" Kai shouted.
Aria lunged, her blade piercing through the mist like a spear.
The Echo deflected—
—but just barely.
It stumbled, caught in the final layer of Kai's trap. A temporal weight rune triggered at its feet, dragging it downward, crushing momentum.
Kai formed one final sigil—a sphere of rotating runes designed to implode.
He launched it directly at the Echo.
Boom.
Light exploded inwards. The Echo collapsed to its knees, fading into a flicker of blue light before vanishing completely.
Silence followed. The sound of three steady breaths the only proof they were still alive.
Kai dropped to one knee, exhausted but smiling.
Roger patted his shoulder. "Good work, Rune King."
Aria gave a nod of approval. "Your way worked."
The Director approached last, his small form casting a long shadow. "That Echo was stronger than expected. If you hadn't trusted your path, you wouldn't have survived."
Kai looked up. "I was trying to be fast. Like it. Like you guys."
"And yet you succeeded by being yourself," the Director said. "That's leadership. That's growth."
Aria helped Kai to his feet. "Let's get moving. Next one's mine."
Kai looked around, the tunnel now calm, the crystals no longer flickering.
But deep within their reflections, something still watched.
And waited.