The ascent to the Third Floor was almost instantaneous—one moment they were surrounded by glowing leaves, and the next they stepped onto a surface that reflected their faces like water.
The Third Floor was a vast plain made entirely of glass.Glass ground.Glass hills.Glass sky—fractured into shifting colors like a giant mosaic.
Every step echoed as if the world were a cathedral made of crystal.
Selene stared down. "Okay, I hate this. One wrong step and I'm going to fall through reality."
Lyra knelt to examine the floor. "It's magically reinforced. But look—every reflection is slightly delayed."
Ethan checked his sword's reflection. Selene was right: the glass didn't mimic them perfectly. Their reflections moved a fraction of a second slower.
Aeloria narrowed her eyes. "A mirror trial. Be ready."
As they walked, the reflections began aligning, matching their movements exactly. Ethan felt uneasy, as if the reflections were studying them. Waiting.
Then the System's message appeared.
[Floor 3 Trial: Confront Your Mirror][Condition: Destroy the false before it replaces the true.]
Selene groaned. "Ah. Classic evil clones. Perfect."
Lyra trembled slightly. "These trials… they're getting more personal."
Aeloria simply drew her twin daggers. "Prepare yourselves."
The glass around them rippled like disturbed water. Their reflections warped, twisted, and pulled themselves out of the ground—each one a perfect copy, except for their eyes, which shone with pale silver light.
Ethan's reflection pointed its sword at him and spoke with his voice, but hollow:
"You should not be here."
Selene snorted. "Wow. Rude."
Ethan raised his blade. "Then you'll have to make me leave."
The mirrored versions attacked first.
Ethan met his clone's strike, sparks sliding across glass. His reflection fought with perfect technique—identical speed, identical strength, identical timing. Every slash he made was countered with precision.
"It's reading every movement!" Ethan shouted.
Aeloria clashed with her own mirror, moving with blinding agility. "Not reading—mirroring! It copies our intention before we act."
Lyra stumbled as her reflection chanted an attack spell faster than she could. Selene lunged in to protect her, tackling the fake Lyra to the ground.
"This is cheating!" Selene yelled.
Lyra, catching her breath, whispered, "Mirrors always reveal flaws. Maybe… maybe that's the point."
Ethan gritted his teeth. His clone was overpowering him, matching him perfectly. Every time he tried to outmaneuver it, it copied the attempt instantly. Their blades clashed again and again, ringing across the glass plain.
"How do we beat something that knows our moves before we make them?" he asked.
Aeloria ducked under her clone's attack. "Don't fight like yourself!"
Selene blinked. "Huh?"
Aeloria kicked her reflection unexpectedly in a wild, ungraceful move—nothing like her usual fluid elven precision. The clone hesitated for a split second, confused.
"Do what you normally wouldn't!" Aeloria yelled. "Break your patterns!"
Ethan switched his stance. Instead of a clean, perfect strike, he made a reckless charge, stumbling purposely mid-step. His reflection hesitated—uncertain how to mirror something sloppy and unbalanced.
Ethan used the opening and slashed across its chest. The clone cracked like breaking glass.
Selene cackled. "Oh I can do that. Chaos is my specialty!"
She began fighting like an unpredictable whirlwind—jumping sideways, spinning at weird angles, even meowing at her clone. Her mirror double faltered completely, unable to copy such nonsense, and Selene pounced, shattering it into shards.
Lyra wasn't a fighter, but she nodded with determination and cast a spell she normally avoided—a raw burst of unstable mana. Her reflection tried to replicate it but failed to control the overflow. Both blasts collided, and Lyra's clone exploded in harmless light.
Aeloria ended her fight with graceful efficiency, striking her off-balance clone once it stumbled out of rhythm.
Silence fell.
Cracks spread across the glass plains.The mirrored battlefield shook and collapsed like falling dominoes.
Ethan watched the sky above split into shimmering fragments. "Is that… normal?"
Lyra looked around nervously. "I—I think it's supposed to do that."
The floor dissolved into light beneath their feet.
[Floor 3 Cleared][Reward: Shard of Insight — enhances resistance to illusions]
Selene flopped onto the nearest stable fragment. "Three floors and I already need a vacation."
Aeloria scanned Ethan with narrowed eyes. "Your reflection spoke to you. Not to us."
Lyra hesitated. "It said you shouldn't be here… but why only tell you?"
Ethan looked down at his reflection in the remaining sliver of glass.For a moment, the reflection didn't move.
And then—it blinked.
Ethan staggered back. "Did you see—?!"
But the fragment shattered before anyone else could look.
The System's light enveloped them, pulling them toward the Fourth Floor.