Chapter Four:

  “Reflections at a Distance”

  They reached the ridge just before the wind turned.

  The ruin was older than anything John had seen, columns worn to nubs, stone stairs cracked from centuries of rain and sun. Half of it had collapsed into the hillside. The other half still held its shape, barely. Enough for a vantage point.

  John crouched low beneath a slanted arch, brushing grit from the edge of the stone. Below them, the coliseum seethed.

  "A game’s already started,” Rai said.

  John followed her gaze. The Mirror Field had activated. He hadn’t seen it happen. One moment the arena was open. The next, it was crawling with vertical shards—mirrored slabs that warped and rearranged themselves like a puzzle no one could solve. From this distance, it looked like someone had buried a thousand knives in the earth and told people to run through them.

  “What you think is with all the mirrors?” Akira asked. He sat cross-legged against the wall, his stomach growling loud enough to make RW flick an ear in concern.

  RW’s eyes tracked the mirrored maze. “They’re not just walls, the maze is pulling from memory. What you see in there isn’t meant to be escaped. It’s meant to be believed. Thought. Identity. It’s an environment designed to erode the boundaries between what a someone sees, and what they believe.”

  John frowned. “Explain.”

  RW didn’t look at him. Her green eyes were fixed on the shifting maze. “Whatever that place is doing, it’s not part of any game I’ve seen played under rule or ritual. It’s... untethered.”

  “So no rules?” Akira asked. “No structure?”

  “No mercy,” RW said.

  Rai crouched beside John, voice low. “Whoever’s running this isn’t just playing to kill. They’re playing to break people.”

  John nodded slowly. "Pretty use to that by now. Did you see that woman?"

  "The Pale Oracle, Thessala." RW said. "She makes people see things. Believe them. Then punishes them for it."

  A scream echoed from the coliseum. Faint. Too far away to make out the source. But not far enough to ignore.

  John gritted his teeth. “They’ve been in there too long.”

  Rai didn’t flinch. “There's nothing we can do now.”

  Akira leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Then we watch. We learn. We figure out how to get into these... games.”

  The Mirror Field glimmered below them.

  From their vantage point, the arena looked like a place meant to trap rather than test. The mirrored walls moved constantly, grinding past one another in slow rotations. Paths formed and vanished at random, seeming to follow patterns no sane person could understand.

  At first, there was silence.

  Then came the screams.

  One started sharp—short and panicked. Another followed, lower, jagged with confusion. Then more. Within minutes, the Mirror Field echoed with them. Not battle cries. Not even pain. Confusion. Disorientation. Loss.

  John tightened his grip on the edge of the crumbled ledge.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “They’re turning on each other,” Rai said. She wasn’t guessing. She was watching. “See that one? He’s chasing someone. He doesn’t know if they’re real.”

  Akira shielded his eyes from the sun. “They’re breaking. Fast.”

  RW stood on her hind legs for a better view. “The maze isn’t testing combat ability. It’s probing belief. Players are attacking illusions. Attacking each other. It’s recursive instability by design.”

  Below, a girl struck what looked like her own reflection. The panel shattered—and she collapsed.

  Another Player screamed at the sky, swinging blindly with fists.

  “This isn’t a game,” John muttered.

  “No,” Rai said. “It’s a slaughter.”

  RW’s tail lashed once. “Whoever built this doesn’t want survivors. They want scars.”

  John’s eyes locked on a figure near the center of the maze. She moved slower than the others. Not stumbling. Not sprinting. Just... aware. Intentional.

  He leaned forward. “There. Who is that?”

  RW flicked her ears. “Not sure. But she’s not falling for it like the others.”

  The three of them watched in silence as the figure moved through another mirrored corridor.

  The Mirror Field shifted again.

  And swallowed her whole.

  They didn’t speak for a long time after she vanished.

  The mirrored maze had consumed her like it had all the others—no scream, no echo. Just the slow swallowing of walls, and the eerie return to silence.

  But John couldn’t look away.

  He leaned over the edge again, eyes scanning the field. The shifting had slowed, though the maze was still active. Shapes still moved in the corridors—some fast, some crawling, some no longer moving at all.

  “I don’t think she’s dead,” he said.

  Akira looked over. “You saw her disappear.”

  “I saw her move like she knew where she was going.”

  “Plenty of people move with confidence. Doesn’t mean they survive.”

  Rai stood with her arms crossed, scanning the field from a different angle. “She moved differently. Like she wasn’t reacting. Like she’d already made peace with what was coming.”

  “That’s not peace,” RW said, tail flicking. “That’s focus.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “We need to find her again.”

  RW tilted her head. “Even if she survives the maze, she’ll be taken away with the others. Back underground. Likely into holding.”

  “Can you track her?”

  RW’s ears twitched. “Not without a signature. I’d need to make contact, physically. From here, all I can say is that she hasn’t resurfaced yet.”

  John stepped back from the ledge.

  “We’re going to have to get inside,” he said.

  Akira raised an eyebrow. “You mean into the arena?”

  “No,” John said. “Into the games. Whatever they are, whatever the Triarchs are using them for—if we’re going to get answers, we have to play.”

  Rai nodded slowly. “Then we stop watching. We find a way in.”

  Akira didn’t argue.

  “Then we get closer.”

  They left the ridge as the sun slipped behind the western peaks.

  The trail down was narrow, dry, and edged with old bones—goat, mostly. Some human. No markers. No graves. Just silence and dust. The wind carried the faint sound of drums from the city below, but it was hard to tell if they were real or imagined.

  RW scouted ahead, slipping through brush and stone in her feline form. She’d warned them to speak little and walk lighter. The guards patrolled in irregular patterns. Some on foot. Some on pale, red-eyed horses that didn’t blink.

  John crouched low near a scrub-lined ridge, peering down into the outer edge of Nerathe.

  The city spread out in elegant tiers—temples of marble and sandstone perched along the cliffs like watchful gods, their columns draped in ivy and banners. The coliseum stood at its heart, surrounded by curved plazas and narrow stone alleys twisting downward toward the sea. Ships bobbed at the harbor far below, their sails crimson against the turquoise bay. Rooftops bloomed with flowers and creeping vines, a deceptive beauty masking the cruelty beneath. Bronze statues of warriors and demigods loomed from high terraces, casting long shadows over the streets like judges watching from above.

  They passed no civilians. Just guards.

  Akira squinted at one of them as they passed a torchlit corner. “Who are they?” he asked. “They don’t look like locals.”

  “They’re not,” RW said. “They were Players once. Some broke under the weight of the games. Others sold whatever was left of themselves for favor. The Triarchs like using what’s already been corrupted.”

  They waited behind a crumbled wall as a column of survivors was led down into the coliseum.

  Thirty, maybe fewer.

  All walked. None spoke.

  Some were bleeding. Some limped. Some kept looking behind them, as if the maze might still be chasing them.

  One girl walked with her eyes closed—not in fear, but in defiance. Even when a guard shoved her, she didn’t flinch.

  John recognized her. Not from her face. From her posture. From how she moved.

  The one who hadn’t broken.

  He said nothing.

  The group passed beneath a gate etched with three overlapping crowns. On the other side, a set of steel doors opened, and they were led underground.

  “Is that where they’re keeping them?” John asked.

  “Likely,” RW said. “Holding. Conditioning. Preparation for whatever comes next.”

  John looked at the sealed doors. “Then that’s where we go.”

  Rai nodded. “We find the cracks. We slip through. We see what they see.”

  RW flicked her tail. “If we’re lucky, we’ll pass as tributes. If not…”

  “We make our own path,” John said.

  They began to move again, circling inward toward the city’s heart.

  Ahead of them, the coliseum sat quiet. Not asleep, watching.