The walls pulsed with alien light, and the floor beneath their feet shifted like the inside of a colossal, breathing organism. The labyrinth wasn't just a structure—it was alive.
Kaelen's blade hissed as he slashed through a phantom soldier charging from the mist. The figure dissolved into particles, but two more appeared in its place.
"Endless waves," he growled. "It's testing endurance."
"Not just endurance," Lyra said, spinning as a serpentine creature lunged at her. She unleashed a pulse of raw energy, sending it screeching backward. "It's watching us. Learning."
Ceyra crouched by one of the glowing walls, her fingertips brushing the symbols. "These sigils… they're reacting to Lyra's power. Maybe—wait—"
The wall beside her retracted suddenly, forming a new path, splitting them apart.
"Ceyra!" Rhyss shouted, but the wall closed again like a sealed wound.
Ceyra's Path:
She found herself in a circular chamber filled with floating shards of crystal, each projecting visions of the galaxy—wars, worlds burning, fleets gathering. At the center floated a single crystal, larger than the rest, humming with a voice that wasn't sound but thought.
"Daughter of flesh, do you seek to wield infinity… or to survive it?"
Her throat tightened. "What are you?"
"I am what remains of the first architects. Your Seed is a fragment of our undoing."
Kaelen, Lyra, and Rhyss's Path:
They fought their way through a hall of mirrored surfaces, each reflection showing them… different. Kaelen as a broken warlord drenched in blood. Lyra as a lifeless husk, the Seed extinguished. Rhyss kneeling in chains before a shadowed throne.
"This is illusion," Kaelen snarled, breaking a mirror—only for another to form in its place.
"No," Lyra whispered. "It's warning us."
The walls around them began to close in, and from the darkness ahead came the Echo-Lord's shape again—but this time, larger, its voice layered with countless others:
"All paths end in me."
Kaelen tightened his grip on his blade. "Then we make a new path."
He charged, and the labyrinth itself shifted violently in response.
Meanwhile, Ceyra reached for the central crystal in her chamber. As her fingers brushed it, her mind exploded with light—images of countless wormholes, each leading to a different future.
And one, in particular, where Lyra stood at the heart of a machine the size of a star, rewriting reality itself.
"If she awakens fully," the voice whispered, "she will be the end of all things."
Ceyra gasped—and the labyrinth walls around everyone began to collapse, as if the trial had reached its decision.