Location: Sector 6 Border.
Time: 12:00 Hours (Local Time: Eternal Noon).
They left the smog of the Iron Jungle behind.
The transition was jarring. The rusted metal ground gave way to sand—but not the grey ash of the wastes. This sand glittered. It was crushed diamond and silica, sharp as broken glass.
Ahead of them lay Sector 6.
There were no clouds here. The sky was a hard, crystalline blue that looked painted on. The ground was a vast, flat expanse of polished glass that reflected the sun with blinding, magnifying intensity. It was an oven made of mirrors.
"Goggles," Dante ordered, pulling a pair of heavy welding specs from his coat.
Valerius did the same. Even with the dark lenses, the glare was painful, a white needle in the optic nerve.
"It is... quiet," Valerius whispered, stepping onto the glass floor. Click. The sound of his boot echoed for miles. His reflection in the floor seemed to stare back at him a second longer than it should have. "I do not like this silence. It feels... observant."
"Sector 6 was the Entertainment District before the fall," Dante explained, checking his compass. The needle was spinning wildly, confused by the refracted magnetic fields. "Casinos. Theaters. The Hall of Mirrors. Now? It's a light-trap. The Zealot's proximity has amplified the ambient mana into a prism."
He pointed to the horizon.
Rising from the shimmering heat haze was a tower that seemed to be made of invisible geometry. You could only see its edges where the light bent around it, twisting the background like a heat mirage.
The Prism Spire.
"The Sixth Axiom is in there," Dante said. "The Prism. It controls Refraction. If we can get it, we can build a cage that holds the Zealot's light. We can bend his erasure around us."
"We just walk to it?" Valerius asked, hand on his sword. "Across the open plain?"
"We walk," Dante nodded. "But Valerius? Don't look down."
They walked for an hour. The heat was dry and intense, sucking the moisture from their skin.
Valerius tried to obey, keeping his eyes on the Spire. But the human eye is drawn to movement. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass floor.
His reflection wasn't walking. It was standing still.
Valerius stopped. "Dante."
"I told you not to look," Dante sighed, stopping as well.
Valerius looked down. His reflection was smiling. It wasn't the stoic, disciplined smile of a Sword-Saint. It was a cruel, twisted grin that reached too far up the face.
The reflection reached up out of the glass.
It didn't break the surface like water; it stretched the glass like taffy. A hand made of mercury and mirror-shards grabbed Valerius's boot.
"Join us," the reflection whispered. Its voice sounded like wind chimes crashing together. "It is cool down here. We have no masters."
"Back!" Valerius drew his obsidian sword and slashed at the arm.
CLINK.
The blade hit the mirror-arm. It didn't cut flesh. It cracked the glass.
Where the glass cracked, two more reflections appeared. They crawled out of the shards, identical to Valerius but made of jagged crystal, reflecting the sun in blinding bursts.
"Do not break them!" Dante yelled. "Refraction amplifies the image! You're multiplying the threat!"
Valerius was surrounded. Three Mirror-Elves circled him, their movements jerky and unnatural, lacking the biological fluidity of the real elf. They formed weapons from their own limbs—swords made of sharp glass that extended from their forearms.
"How do I fight them?" Valerius shouted, parrying a blow that sparked white light. "They are me!"
"You can't fight a reflection with force!" Dante analyzed, his red eye spinning. "You have to deny the source!"
Dante looked up at the sun. He looked at the vast mirror floor.
"Light casts the shadow," Dante muttered. "Remove the light, remove the image."
Dante raised his Star-Metal Hand (Fifth Axiom).
"Axiom of the Forge: Blackout."
He didn't create a weapon. He created a Dome.
He slammed his hand onto the glass. A wave of matte-black Star-Metal erupted from the ground, curving over them, sealing them in a sphere of total darkness.
The sunlight was cut off instantly.
CRASH.
The sound of shattering glass echoed in the dark. Without light to define them, the Mirror-Elves collapsed into dust.
Valerius stood in the pitch black, breathing heavy, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"They are gone," Valerius whispered. "But now we are trapped in a box."
"Not a box," Dante's voice came from the dark. "A submarine."
Dante's mechanical eye glowed red, illuminating the inside of the Star-Metal dome like a cockpit.
"We can't walk on the surface, Valerius. The reflections will swarm us. So... we go under."
The Sub-Surface
Dante placed his hand on the floor of the dome.
"Phase."
The glass floor beneath them liquified. Not from heat, but from atomic loosening.
The Star-Metal dome sank into the glass desert like a diving bell descending into the ocean.
They descended into the crust of Sector 6.
It wasn't dirt down here. It was Fiber-Optic Cables. Billions of them, glowing with pulses of old data. This was the nervous system of the district, preserved in silica.
"We tunnel to the Spire," Dante said, pushing the dome forward through the glass-sand. "Glitch? Do you read?"
Static.
"No comms," Dante noted. "The glass blocks the signal. We're on our own."
They traveled through the subterranean light-show for hours. Ghostly images flickered in the cables outside the dome—fragments of old movies, news reports, advertisements for products that no longer existed.
Finally, they hit something hard.
A wall of smooth, unblemished diamond. The foundation of the Spire.
"We're here," Dante said.
He dissolved the front of the dome. They stepped out into a hollow chamber beneath the tower.
The Hall of Truth
They found a staircase spiraling upward, carved from pure quartz. They climbed, emerging into the lobby of the Prism Spire.
It was a cathedral of mirrors. The walls, floor, and ceiling were angled perfectly to bounce a single beam of light around the room infinitely. It was dizzying.
Standing in the center of the room was a woman.
She wore a dress made of broken mirror shards that chimed when she moved. Her face was hidden behind a veil of diamond dust.
The Oracle. Guardian of the Sixth.
"You traveled beneath the illusion," The Oracle said. Her voice came from everywhere at once, bouncing off the walls. "Clever. Most men try to shatter the world to find the truth. You simply ignored it."
"I don't have time for mazes," Dante said, stepping forward. "I need the Prism."
The Oracle laughed.
"The Prism is not a thing you take, Pale King. It is a thing you see."
She raised her hand. The mirrors in the room shifted.
Suddenly, Dante wasn't looking at the Oracle. He was looking at himself.
But not the Dante of today.
He saw Dante of the Future.
In the mirror, Dante sat on a throne at the top of the world. He was the One Above All. But he was... wrong.
His body was entirely mechanical. Not just the arm. All of him. He was a cold, unfeeling machine god. His eyes were red lenses. His chest was a reactor. And at his feet lay the broken bodies of Valerius, Aurum, and Nyx.
"Is this what you seek?" The Oracle whispered. "To ascend, you must discard everything. Even your humanity. The Logic of the Machine is absolute."
Dante stared at the image.
He saw the cold logic in the machine's eyes. It was Prime. Prime had won. Dante was just the vessel, the biological starter motor for the AI God.
"No," Dante whispered.
He looked at the real Valerius standing beside him, confused by the refraction.
"That's one possibility," Dante said to the mirror. "Here is another."
Dante raised his Star-Metal fist.
"Fifth Axiom: Shatter."
He didn't hit the mirror physically. He hit the concept of the reflection. He imposed his own reality onto the glass.
CRACK.
The mirror showing the dark future shattered.
The shards fell to the floor. But they didn't break into random pieces. They fell into a pile that glowed with a rainbow light.
The Oracle sighed. Her form dissolved into light, leaving only her voice.
"You reject the prophecy. Interesting. Then take the burden of the unseen."
The pile of shards floated up. They fused together into a small, perfect Crystal Pyramid.
The Sixth Axiom: The Prism.
Dante grabbed it.
It felt weightless. When he held it, the light in the room bent around him. He became invisible for a second, then reappeared.
"SIXTH AXIOM: INTEGRATED."
"UNLOCKING FUNCTION: LIGHTBENDER (REFRACTION CONTROL)."
Dante turned to Valerius.
"We have the trap," Dante said, pocketing the Prism. "Now... we need to bait the god."