Chapter 157: The Last Reflection

The floor fell, and the whole of Floor 2 fell with it.

It came down like the end of a world. A hundred thousand square miles of mirror, held up in the Colossus's hands, dropped toward the platform where the party stood, and the light in every fragment turned the air into a field of falling suns.

[FLOOR 2 DROP: IMPACT IN 9 SECONDS]

[DAMAGE IF UNCHECKED: PLANETARY]

[HEALTH: 213/520. CHARGE: 136/220. CORRUPTION: 90%]

"Nine seconds," Penelope said. "I can write a plan in six."

"Write it in three," said Caleb.

"I do not have a plan in three!"

"Then I will draw one."

He sprinted to the edge of the platform, dropped to his knees, and swept his marking kit across the glass in a single enormous arc. The black line shot out ahead of him, rose into the air, and bent into a dome over the whole party.

"Boundary," he said. "Nobody crosses it."

The falling floor hit the dome.

The sound turned the whole hall white. Cracks ran up the black line like lightning through a thundercloud. Caleb screamed, his panel flickered, and for an instant his body looked like a drawing of a man who had been erased and half redrawn.

[IDENTITY CONTINUITY: UNVERIFIED]

"Caleb!" Jace shouted.

"I'm fine! Don't look at me, look at the thing!"

The dome held. Barely. It bent inward, shedding black flakes, and the planet-sized weight above it settled down against the line like a mountain on a thread.

[HEALTH: 213 -> 192]

The shock came through the boundary anyway and threw the whole party to their knees. Jace's ears rang. He tasted copper. Through the crack in the dome he saw the Colossus lowering its head, the light of Selene's noon sun still burning on its chin, and in its pupil the reflected Jace lifted the crown and bowed.

"It's taking a bow," said the lightning girl.

"It thinks it's won."

"It is almost right," said Selene.

Jace stood up.

The brand of gold code on his chest was still glowing. The Restoration Seed had bloomed somewhere inside it, and a warmth was spreading out from his heart, but under the warmth there was a second thing, a pressure. Not a skill. A door. The sealed doors pulsed against his ribs, six of them, one for each combat skill he had lost, and the nearest one burned like a coal.

The Unsealed King's words came back to him. I am the six skills. You will get us back. Just not here.

"Not here," Jace said. "Fine. I have something else."

He looked at the dome. He looked at the Colossus and the world it was holding. And he understood what he was standing in.

"This is an arena," he said.

Penelope looked up from her ledger. "Say that again."

"The whole floor is an arena. It was built for a trial. It has a boundary and a crowd and an opponent." He started to laugh, though it cost him a rib. "Arena Breaker doesn't need a stadium. It needs something to break."

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"Jace," said Scarlett. "That is the biggest arena anyone has ever stood in."

"Then I will have to be the biggest I have ever been."

He closed his fists. The Trial Knuckle on his right hand was dead and cold, spent in the last fight, and there would be no Breaker Wave from it today. But under the spent metal was the thing Jace had been carrying since the Ascent Line, the thing that broke arenas.

"Arena Breaker," he said.

[ARENA BREAKER: ENGAGED]

[ARENA DETECTED: FLOOR 2 (ENTIRE)]

[SIZE: PLANETARY]

[TRANSFORMATION: BREAKER ASCENDANT]

The world went quiet.

Then gold light exploded out of his chest, and it did not come out as a flame. It came out as a roar. His hair stood up and turned white at the roots. His coat tore away and became a cloak of burning code. The brand on his chest split open and spread across his skin, line by line, until his whole body looked like a map of a place that did not exist yet. His eyes were two small suns.

[HEALTH: 192 -> 174]

Pain went through him like a hammer. The transformation took its price in flesh, and he took it, because he had taken worse.

"Everyone," he said, and his voice came out in three tones at once. "Shelter. Now."

"Linked," said Hazel.

"Linked," said Zoey.

"Linked," said Liam, Emma, and Mateo, all at the same moment, and then the other names, all fourteen, one after another like bells.

The dome of black line shattered. The floor rolled down toward them like the end of the sky. And Jace stepped up through the broken boundary with a hundred thousand square miles falling on his head.

He punched it.

It was not a normal punch. It was a punch that had been waiting its whole life to be thrown. The gold in his fist met the silver of the falling floor, and for one frozen heartbeat the two lights stood against each other in midair. Then the silver cracked.

[ARENA BREAKER SHOCKWAVE: FLOOR-CLASS]

A ring of gold went out from his fist, a thousand miles wide, and every mirror it touched went to dust. The falling floor came apart from the center out. It did not fall in pieces. It simply stopped being a floor. The glass turned into a snowfall of sparkling flakes, and the flakes turned into light, and the light blew out in all directions across the hall until the whole of Floor 2 was a cloud of falling stars.

The Colossus staggered.

Theodore Voss dragged himself up beside the shield man, pressed two fingers to a fresh cut on his own forearm, and drew a line of marrow-bright blood across the glass. "I am not much for speeches," he said. "But if anyone is going to be thrown at a planet, I would like them well fed."

The line flared. A warmth rolled through the party and closed a dozen wounds on the party at once, though not Jace's, which the Seed still guarded for itself. Emma Chen began to sing under her breath, a low note that steadied the cracked weapons in their owners' hands.

"Yes," said Scarlett. "Yes, yes, yes."

"Don't stop!" Penelope shouted. "It's open! The heart is open! Hit it now!"

She was right. The giant's chest had cracked like an egg. Behind the broken ribs, a small, bright shape hung in the dark, no bigger than a man, a copy of Jace holding a crown over its own head.

"The seed was the way in," said Selene. "The heart is the last reflection."

"Then let's introduce ourselves," said Jace.

He leapt.

The party leapt with him. Alexander went first, a streak of gold with the Ninth Edict blazing in his hand. Scarlett followed, a falling star in a red cloak. The lightning girl threw her chain ahead of them, and it became a road of blue light that every champion ran across at once.

The Colossus raised its hand to swat them.

"Frost King," cried the tamer, and the wolf, now bigger than a mountain, caught the hand in its jaws.

"Meteor Hymn," roared the hammer woman.

"Sunfall Lance," called the knight.

"Ten Plates," said the shield man, and a wall of shields appeared under the swatting hand, and the hand stopped.

The Colossus screamed for the third time that day, and it was a scream with nothing left in it.

[PARTY COMBINED POWER: 920% OF BASELINE]

They hit the heart together.

Alexander's cut went in first. Then Scarlett's blade. Then the lightning girl, the knight, the hammers, the lance, the spear of Penelope Ardent, every strike landing in the same instant, each one opening the heart a little wider. The light that came out of it was nothing Jace had ever seen. It was not gold, not silver, not the white of the tower. It was the color of every possible version of him, laid end to end.

The reflected Jace looked out through the break and met his eyes.

"I could have been better than you," it said.

"I know."

"I could have been perfect."

"Probably," said Jace. "But you would have missed all of this."

He reached into the heart with a burning hand.

He did not tear it out. He took the Gravity Chain and wrapped it around the crown, and the crown stopped.

[GRAVITY CHAIN: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 136 -> 131]

He put his palm flat on the reflection's chest.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: SURGICAL APPLICATION]

[TARGET: REFLECTED JACE]

[COMMAND: REMEMBER YOUR NAME]

[CHARGE COST: 3]

[CHARGE: 131 -> 128]

"Remember your name," Jace said gently.

The reflection stared at him. Its face softened. For the length of a single breath, he saw what it had been. Not a monster. Not a copy. A boy who had been told he was the best version of everything and had never once been asked what he wanted.

"Jace," it whispered.

"Yes."

"I would like to stop now."

"Okay."

The crown fell apart in the chain's grip. The Colossus's body went dark from the heart outward, a wave of silence rolling across the planet of glass, and every mirror in the hall went still at once. The reflection closed its eyes and dissolved into light, and the light slid into Jace's chest and went to sleep next to the brand.

[REFLECTIONS DEFEATED: 11 OF 11]

[FLOOR 2 PHASE TWO: CLEARED]

[ROOK TRIAL BOSS DEFEATED]

[TRIAL GAUNTLETS: BREAKER WAVE RECHARGED]

[PRECISION PENALTY: -12% UNTIL NEXT FLOOR]

The Breaker Ascendant faded. His hair went dark. His cloak became a torn coat again, and his legs gave out under him. He hit the glass on his hands and knees, panting, and Scarlett caught him before he could fall any farther.

"You have a headache," she said.

"I have the biggest headache in history."

"Good. That means it worked."

Around them the hall was quiet. The ruins of the Colossus drifted down like snow. The party lay scattered across the glass, bleeding, laughing, half of them crying. Caleb sat with his back against the shield man's wall, holding his own right hand up to the light and flexing it as though he wanted to be sure it was there.

"Still here," he said. "Probably."

"Definitely," said Selene.

"I want it noted," Alexander said, flat on his back with his sword across his chest, "that I achieved a Ninth Edict today and nobody applauded."

"Applause," said Scarlett, without turning her head.

"Thank you."

"That was it. That was all of it."

From somewhere far below, Zoey's voice came through the Shelter, shaky and bright. "We all felt that. Every one of us. Jace, the whole Shelter is cheering."

"Tell them thank you," Jace said. "Tell them I'll be down soon."

Far above, the ceiling of the hall opened. A single white spear dropped through it, slow as a falling feather, and stood upright in the glass ten paces from where Jace knelt. It was made of light, and it hummed like something alive.

Its shadow pointed at him, though there was nothing to cast it.

"I don't like that," Penelope said.

"I do not like it either," said Jace.

On the shaft of the spear, in a script he did not know, a single word glowed, and under it, in a script he did, someone had written one line.

He read it, and went cold.

Health: 174/520.

Charge: 128/220.