Chapter 15: The Mirror's Reflection

The mirror was no longer an object. It had become an abyss, a hollow portal through which Caelum glimpsed the fractured fragments of himself. Standing before it now, he was not Caelum the wanderer, the lost soul seeking answers, but Caelum the disassembled mind, a puzzle whose pieces were scattered through the labyrinth of his own thoughts.

He had wandered the mansion for what felt like hours, or perhaps it had been days. Time had become irrelevant here. The walls shifted like the course of his thoughts, and the air smelled faintly of dust and decay. The mansion, in its grand yet unsettling silence, seemed to watch him, its pulse beating in rhythm with the confusion and unrest that churned within him. Each step forward felt like a journey deeper into his psyche, as if the mansion was mirroring the descent of his thoughts, its very structure a reflection of his fractured identity.

He turned toward the mirror once more. This time, he expected no clear image. His reflection was always distorted, a twisted version of himself staring back with hollow eyes and an unnatural smile. But what he saw now made his breath catch in his throat.

At first, the reflection was simply his face, but as the seconds ticked by, something shifted. The figure in the glass began to stretch, pulling away from the surface like a phantom emerging from the depths of the water. The distorted features twisted, growing, until the face before him no longer resembled his own.

It was Dante.

The man’s face was darkened, shadowed, his eyes filled with an unnerving calm. He was smiling that same knowing smile, the one that Caelum could never quite understand. Dante, the voice that had guided, manipulated, and torn at his mind. The one who whispered from the depths of his psyche, urging him toward some unknown end.

“What are you?” Caelum whispered, his voice shaking with a mix of fear and recognition.

The figure in the mirror tilted its head, the smile never wavering. “I am you,” Dante said, his voice dripping with the same haunting familiarity that had spoken to Caelum countless times. “Or at least, a part of you. The part that has always been there, hidden beneath the surface.”

Caelum took a step back, his heart pounding in his chest. The air grew heavier, thick with a pressure that seemed to emanate from the mirror itself. The walls of the mansion creaked and groaned, shifting once again, but this time, they felt alive, pressing in on him from all sides.

“No,” Caelum whispered, shaking his head as he backed away further. “You’re not me. You can’t be.”

Dante’s reflection remained still, unyielding in its presence. “Is that what you truly believe?” His voice echoed, but it felt distant, as though the mansion itself was speaking through him. “The truth is, you and I are not so different. We are both born from the same shattered core. You seek answers, but you already know them. You always have.”

The mirror began to warp again, ripples forming in the glass like the surface of a disturbed pond. Caelum's reflection now mirrored his every movement, yet he could not escape the weight of Dante’s gaze. The reflection of Dante smirked, then reached out through the mirror, fingers stretching toward Caelum.

The mansion’s walls began to shift more violently now. The floor trembled beneath his feet, and the room seemed to stretch outward, swallowing him in its vastness. The faint whispers of the mansion itself—the sounds of the doors creaking, the floorboards shifting—became a cacophony in his mind, disorienting, maddening.

“You have nothing left,” Dante’s voice boomed, reverberating through the walls. “No past, no future. Only me. Only this place. You can’t escape.”

Caelum gripped his head, pressing his palms against his temples. The walls of the mansion felt as though they were closing in on him. The very air seemed to thicken, making it harder to breathe. He could feel his own thoughts slipping away, scattered like broken glass at his feet. The mirror had become a window into his deepest fears—his inability to escape his mind, his fractured self.

“You lie,” Caelum snarled, his voice raw. “I’m not broken.”

But deep within him, a seed of doubt began to sprout. Was he truly whole? Was there any part of him left that wasn’t shaped by the mansion, by the voice of Dante? The pain in his chest gnawed at him, a relentless reminder of his fractured identity. How much of himself had he lost? How much of this nightmare was his own doing? Was Dante truly his enemy, or was he just a reflection of Caelum’s own self-doubt, the part of him that he had tried to bury?

Dante’s laughter echoed in the room, a cruel sound that made Caelum’s blood run cold. The mansion around him flickered, its walls shifting like sand, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure if he was standing in the hallway of the mansion or trapped in the very depths of his mind.

"To find yourself, Caelum," Dante said softly, his voice now a mere whisper, "you must first confront the self you’ve tried to deny. The mirror will always show you what you truly are."

Caelum's legs trembled as he collapsed to his knees, the weight of Dante’s words pressing down on him. He felt the full force of the mansion’s power, a suffocating force that twisted everything in its path. His mind swirled, caught between the truth and the lies that had haunted him for so long. What was real? What was just a reflection of his mind? And where did he, the person Caelum once thought he was, fit into this twisted labyrinth?

The mirror shattered.

The shards flew in every direction, each piece reflecting a different version of him, each one broken, fragmented, incomplete. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the chaos of the mansion. His heart raced, his breath shallow. The shards of the mirror embedded themselves in the floor, and the reflections that remained began to blur together, a grotesque amalgamation of all the parts of Caelum he had tried to bury.

The walls of the mansion surged, closing in around him, suffocating him with their weight. His mind was a whirl of confusion and fear, his body trembling as if the mansion itself was feeding on his very essence.

And then, in the silence, something shifted. The tension in the air relaxed, just for a moment. Caelum, broken and exhausted, raised his head.

He was not alone. The reflection in the shards of glass—distorted, fractured—was still there. But now, it was a piece of him he could no longer deny. The voice, Dante, the mansion, and his own shattered self: they were all connected. The only way forward was to face what lay within him, to accept the parts of himself he had rejected. Only then would the maze unravel, and he could finally break free from the nightmare.

“Dante,” Caelum whispered, his voice raw, yet certain. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

The walls trembled once more, but this time, the mansion did not close in. Instead, it seemed to pause, as if recognizing his acceptance. And in that moment, Caelum knew that the path forward would not be simple. It would not be easy. But it was the only path that led to freedom.