The Glitched Mage

The fire responded not with resistance, but reverence. The great doors shuddered, flame curling inward like breath being drawn. The scorched images burned brighter, then crumbled to ash, revealing not darkness behind them—but light.

No warmth, no welcome. Just white-hot brilliance, pure and merciless.

The second trial.

The moment Riven crossed the threshold, the world shifted. The obsidian underfoot dissolved into smoke, the walls of fire fell away and the ground vanished beneath him.

But he didn't fall. He descended—slowly, deliberately—carried downward through spiraling currents of flame and memory, as though the world itself was delivering him to the place he needed to be.

The fire around him didn't burn but it was alive. Within its flickers, shapes stirred: half-formed faces, hollowed eyes, moments burned into heat and shadow. He saw the forming of his mana heart, the betrayals of his youth, the whispered voice of Velmorian that seemed to follow him everywhere. They passed by him like echoes etched in molten glass.

He didn't reach for them. Didn't flinch at the flickering echoes of pain, betrayal, or the haunting pull of memories burned into flame.

He let them drift past—silent phantoms in the fire—acknowledging them not with fear, but with understanding. They were part of him, but they did not define him.

When the descent ended, he stood alone in a vast, circular chamber, forged entirely from ember-black stone. The walls curved around him like the inside of a forge, their surfaces shifting with veined light. The ceiling burned with a slow spiral of fire—neither rising nor falling. The floor beneath his boots was a perfect disc of obsidian, polished and unbroken, save for a single line carved straight through the center.

It led toward a raised platform and atop that platform, surrounded by silent fire and pulsing heat, stood a lone figure.

It didn't stand apart because of anything it wore—there were no sigils, no crown, no armor to mark it.

What made it uncanny was the absence of difference.

It was him.

For a moment, Riven stopped breathing.

The resemblance wasn't vague—it was absolute. The height, the stance, the hair tousled by heat. The same icy-blue gaze. But there was a sharpness to the figure's posture—cleaner, colder, carved from certainty and silence. It radiated calm. Control. Purity of purpose.

It didn't mirror him. It defined him.

Like a version of himself unburdened by grief or hesitation—carved from the path he might have taken had his fire always been cold. Had he never known betrayal. Had he been born to conquer from the very start, not be forced to carry his hurt.

The abyssal flame coiled at the figure's shoulders, dark and hungry.

It raised its head slowly, meeting Riven's stare with a flat, unreadable gaze. Then it lifted a hand, not to attack, but to beckon.

A challenge—clear and wordless, as if to say: Prove you belong here.

Riven stepped forward.

The air warped between them, heat thickening, pressure mounting until the chamber itself seemed to shrink inward. When they met in the center, there was no sound. No declaration.

Only fire.

The clash was instant.

Their hands met with the force of colliding stars. Abyss met abyss. Flame met flame. The impact cracked the platform, molten veins snaking across the floor. The mirrored Riven moved with precision, every strike a reflection of his own technique—refined, stripped of wasted motion, focused to the point of violence.

Riven countered, ducked low, swept wide. His elbow caught the figure's ribs—it didn't flinch. It responded with a spinning strike, catching him across the jaw. He stumbled.

This wasn't just a spar. It was a purge.

He understood now. The trial wasn't trying to kill him. It was trying to expose him.

Every movement was a question: Why do you burn? What remains when everything else is stripped away? The mirror forced him back with relentless speed, every blow landing not just on flesh, but on thoughts and memories.

You hesitate here, it said with its silence.

You still carry guilt here.

You've lied to yourself here.

Riven's back hit the far edge of the platform. The mirrored version pressed the attack. Fire wreathed its arms like blades, slicing through the air with cruel grace.

A deep growl built in Riven's chest, low and rising. Then, with a twist of his stance and a surge from the pit of his core, he released it—his abyssal flame erupting outward in a violent, concussive wave. It wasn't a clean burst of fire—it was raw force, thick with devouring heat, swallowing the very air it touched. The blast struck his double square in the chest, folding it backward mid-strike and hurling it across the chamber like a broken doll.

The clone's body spiraled through the air, tumbling head over heels before it righted itself with unnatural control. It landed in a crouch, one hand pressed to the fractured obsidian floor, embers curling around its fingers like restless spirits.

It didn't rise right away. It looked up slowly—head tilted, eyes glowing, lips parted just slightly.

Gone was the cold, detached indifference. In its place was something keener. Sharper.

It watched Riven now not as a reflection, but as a rival. No longer passive, but interested. As if, for the first time, it realized it was not facing just a mirror…

But something it hadn't yet earned the right to become.

"You want my truth?" Riven snarled.

He summoned his flame—not just from his hands, but from deep within, from the scarred parts of his soul that never healed. From the hunger he had buried. From the voice in him that screamed relentlessly that he needed to be the most powerful.

The devouring fire came alive.

It didn't roar. It didn't scream.

It fed.

The flame around him bent inward, drawn to him like breath pulled from the world itself. Riven strode forward, fire wreathing his limbs like armor. When he struck again, the mirrored form faltered—stepping back, for the first time it was uncertain.

And Riven pressed the advantage.

He moved faster, driven not by rage, but resolve. Every strike a memory. Every blow an answer. The clone tried to match him, but faltered. It didn't know what it was to grieve. To lose. To love and burn anyway.

He did.

Their fire collided again, and this time, it was the clone who staggered. Riven surged in, shoulder-first, and drove the figure back to the platform's edge. They exchanged a final flurry of strikes—fists and flame, blade-edges made of mana—but Riven did not yield.

He did not doubt.

Riven surged forward, his boots cracking the scorched obsidian beneath him. The chamber pulsed around them like a forge brought to life—walls rippling with flame, the air thick with heat and judgment.

His double raised a hand, too slow.

Riven was already there.

He drove his arm forward—not in fury, but with focused will. His palm struck the clone's chest with crushing force, and in that instant, the flame that coiled around his body converged. It spiraled inward, flowing through his veins, his shoulder, his fingertips—then into the mirrored form.

It didn't blaze.

It sank.

Abyssal fire poured from his hand like liquid void, seeping into the figure's chest in tendrils of black flame edged in violet light. It was not a flame that scorched—it bypassed the surface entirely. It burrowed deeper. Searching. Peeling. Claiming.

The clone seized, body arched in resistance. But the fire didn't relent.

It wasn't meant to destroy.

It was meant to consume.

To unmake.

The mirror-Riven arched back, mouth open in a silent scream as the flame spread through its form—not burning it from the outside, but unraveling it from within. Its skin cracked. Light poured from the seams. The fire didn't resist.

It submitted.

And with a sound like glass breaking under pressure, the figure shattered—not into ash, but into radiant fragments. They floated for a moment, suspended like the pieces of a dying star before drifting up and away into the flames.

The platform dimmed, its cracked stone cooling. The ceiling of flame rippled, and far above, the skybound anchor pulsed—once. Then twice.

Calling.

Waiting.

Riven dropped to one knee, breath ragged. The remains of his fire curled around him, no longer consuming.

The trial hadn't merely tested his strength—it had delved deeper, pressing against his will, his mind, the very core of who he was. And he had endured. He had overcome.

He stood slowly. The chamber was quiet now, the air no longer heavy with judgment. The scar on his shoulder burned faintly, pulsing in time with the rhythm above. Somewhere beyond this chamber, the final trial stirred.

Riven turned, expecting to see the scorched steps, the obsidian path, the towering doors of flame that had once welcomed him into the trial.

But the space behind him was empty.

No gate. No stone. Not even a shadow of the path he had walked.

It was as if the second trial had never existed at all—sealed away in silence, erased the moment its task was done. The chamber around him grew still, reverent. Emberlight faded into a hush of shadow, like the last breath of a forge cooling after its final shaping.

The past had vanished.

There was nothing left behind him.

Only the way forward.

Above, the ceiling of flame had shifted again, drawing inward—forming a spiral of burning light that pointed toward something unseen, something waiting. The walls began to glow with slow, pulsing rhythm, and from deep within the stone beneath his feet, Riven felt a vibration. A summons.

He stood for a moment longer, catching his breath. The weight of the trial clung to him like smoke—coiled around his shoulders, pressed into the hollows of his bones.

Then, slowly, he exhaled.

One breath.

Then another.

Not to steady himself—but to acknowledge what lay ahead.

And with the quiet certainty of one who had already been reforged by flame, Riven stepped forward.