Reincarnated as an Apocalyptic Catalyst-Chapter 117: Shadows of Choice

The mirrored floor dulled, it wasn’t sudden, as nothing in this place did anything suddenly, not unless it involved violence. It was more like the reflections were done with mimicking us, like the dungeon had seen what it wanted to see and decided we were no longer worth the energy.

All of our mirrored selves shuddered before collapsing inward with a ripple of colorless light. There was no sound, no fanfare, just an unraveling of presence, like they’d never been real at all, which I guess they weren’t.

The chamber dimmed. The once-vibrant walls, so alive moments ago with the glowing threads of our intent, faded to a dull, exhausted blue. Not dead—just dormant. The room had been awake for the duration of the trial. Now it was sleeping again.

For a moment, none of us moved. Not because we were unsure, but because there was something weighty about stillness after violence. The kind that made your muscles twitch because they weren’t convinced the danger had passed. I sheathed Phantom Edge slowly, more for my nerves than necessity.

Vance was the first to speak, voice dry. "Well... That fucking sucked."

"You? I had to fight a version of me that dodged better and didn’t make bad decisions," I said. "It was exhausting."

"I don’t make bad decisions," he replied, brushing off a smudge of phantom ash from his shoulder. "Just entertaining ones with unexpected consequences."

Nythera didn’t join in the banter. She stood still, her staff lowered but not stowed. There was a stiffness in her shoulders, the kind you get when you’ve seen something too close to home. Whatever the dungeon had shown her—whatever she’d fought—it hadn’t been just a shadow. It had been something real enough to shake her.

Ronan remained quiet, but there was a new tension behind his eyes. Focused, calculating. Like he was piecing together a larger puzzle he hadn’t let us see yet.

The spiral platform flickered once, then dissolved into mist. At the far end of the chamber, a wall shifted with a sound like grinding ice, revealing a crystalline corridor that sloped sideways instead of down. The passage was lined with the same pulsing veins of mana, but they flickered less erratically now. Controlled. Observing.

I didn’t like that.

"So," Vance said, gesturing to the new passage. "On a scale of one to that time the sewer ceiling tried to eat us, how bad do we think this is?"

"I’m not sure," I replied, stepping forward. "But if the last fight was the dungeon reading us... this one might be it writing something back."

"Cool. Can’t wait to be fanfiction," he muttered.

We crossed the threshold into the new corridor. The air didn’t grow heavier this time—it became finer. Almost sterile. Whatever rot had permeated the earlier levels was gone now, replaced by something cleaner, colder. The magic here wasn’t born from decay or blood. It was curated. Archived.

Every few feet, the crystals embedded in the walls sparked in brief flashes. Like the dungeon was taking notes. Or checking ours.

"This isn’t a gauntlet anymore," I said under my breath. "This is observation. Evaluation."

"Like a trial?" Nythera asked, voice steady again but edged with something newly brittle.

"No," Ronan replied. "A thesis."

We reached a widened alcove in the corridor. Not another open chamber, but a rounded threshold—a space just large enough for us to pause in without comfort. Ahead, another wall. No visible door. No light. Just stillness.

Until we heard it.

A voice.

Not booming. Not monstrous. Just quiet. Male. Human.

It echoed down the corridor like it had been spoken a moment ago and trapped in the crystals.

"...don’t forget who you are."

I froze. Not because it was familiar, but because it wasn’t. It didn’t sound like anyone I knew, but the tone—it was meant for me.

Vance looked at me. "That wasn’t you, right?"

"Nope," I muttered, squinting ahead. "But I think it was supposed to sound like it could’ve been."

More voices came. Faint. Distant. Different each time.

"...run..."

"...it’s not ready..."

"...you’re not supposed to be here..."

Nythera pressed herself closer to the wall, whispering a protective chant under her breath, the light from her staff flickering in sync with the energy around us.

"Hallucinations?" she asked.

"No," Ronan said. "Echoes. The dungeon’s pulling from other runs. Other people."

"Other people who didn’t make it," I added.

Another wall began to shift. Not violently, just enough to part like paper under breath. Beyond it, a new chamber—this one glass-like, domed, with fractured prisms of light arcing across the ceiling like lightning made of memory.

Something had changed again. I wasn’t sure what we’d see inside.

But I knew it wasn’t going to be a reflection this time.

It was going to be a warning.

The moment we stepped into the chamber, the door behind us sealed—not with sound, not with motion, just finality. The kind of closure that didn’t need to be seen to be understood. We weren’t going back.

The room itself wasn’t hostile. It was... reverent.

Wide and domed, every surface of the chamber shimmered like polished obsidian overlaid with translucent crystal, giving it a depth that made the walls seem farther away than they were. Light refracted from every angle, splitting and bending into hundreds of fractured rainbows that never touched the floor. Above, a lattice of crystal veins spread out in a sprawling web, humming so softly it felt like a lullaby just out of reach.

In the center stood a pedestal. A simple structure, smooth and without ornament, but undeniably important. Hovering above it was a single crystal shard—roughly the size of a dagger, but no sharper than a tear. It pulsed faintly, a heartbeat made of memory.

I didn’t approach. Not yet.

"Feels like a boss room," Vance murmured beside me, his hand twitching near his hilt.

"No," I said. "Not this time."

It didn’t feel like a fight waiting to happen. It felt like something had already happened—and we were the ones late to the aftermath.

Nythera moved slowly to the edge of the pedestal, her gaze drawn to the shard like a moth sensing its own flame. "It’s full of something," she whispered. "Not mana. Not entirely. It feels... old."

"Stored memory," Ronan said from behind us. "Possibly fractured. Possibly filtered. But someone put it here to be found."

"Let’s just hope it doesn’t scream at us when we touch it," Vance muttered. "Or explode. Or scream and explode. That would really round out our day."

"Only one way to find out," I said, and stepped toward it.

The shard didn’t react. Not until I raised my hand, hovering just inches from its surface. Then, the chamber responded—not with violence, but with breath.

A slow exhale of energy swept across the room, brushing over our skin like wind in a sealed cathedral. The lights above shifted—no longer random colors, but scenes. Memories. People flickering in and out like stuttered projections.

I saw cloaked figures moving through a tunnel much like this one. A man’s face twisted in concentration as he etched symbols into crystal with trembling fingers. A woman kneeling beside a fallen companion, screaming silently. Then...

Dalric.

But younger. Clear-eyed. Standing before the same pedestal, reaching for the same shard. A projection of him flickered into view beside it—stable for only a moment before fracturing into a dozen fragmented versions of himself, each turning away, each walking down a different corridor, a different choice.

It was never a single path.

"This place," I said, voice quieter than I meant it to be, "has been testing people for longer than we’ve been alive."

Ronan stepped beside me. "It’s not just recording. It’s experimenting. Each trial is a variant."

"A lab," Nythera said hollowly. "We’re part of its data set."

I didn’t want to touch the shard anymore.

But I did.

The moment my fingers met the crystal, the light rushed inward, collapsing into the shard and surging into my hand—not painful, but cold. So cold I forgot how to breathe. Images poured through me—fast, flickering, not mine. Not all of them. Some were from past runs. Some were fragments from the entity we fought. Some... some were mine. From before. From when I wasn’t this.

My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall. Ronan steadied me.

The shard dimmed. Whatever it had wanted to give, it had given.

And it left behind something new.

A message. System-delivered.

[Memory Fragment Absorbed: Echo Archive Alpha]

[Path divergence recorded. Combat variant unlocked.]

[Note: Further exposure to anchor shards may destabilize existing party cohesion.]

I exhaled slowly. "Okay, so that’s not terrifying at all."

"What’s a path divergence?" Nythera asked, worry climbing into her voice.

"It means," Ronan said, "this dungeon just gave us a choice we haven’t made yet."

"And it’s watching to see if we will," I finished.

We stood there for another few breaths—longer than we probably should have—then stepped back, leaving the pedestal behind.

There was another corridor ahead. Dark. Steady. It didn’t pulse with energy. It didn’t flicker with light.

It waited.

And somehow, that was worse.

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