Chapter 16: The Whisper of the Infinite

The reflection in the glass wavered, not as though disturbed by water, but by an invisible hand, twisting the very fabric of reality. Caelum stood motionless, his breath shallow, as if each exhalation might breach the fragile barrier between his being and the shifting figure in the mirror. The whisper began, low and sibilant, an echo of Dante’s voice: familiar, venomous, and unsettling.

"Do you recognize him, Caelum?"

The question, like a serpent’s tongue, flicked through his mind, challenging him to confront a truth he had long ignored.

The reflection was not just a mirror of his face—it was something more, something ancient. A subtle distortion ran through it, an unraveling that beckoned to him. His chest tightened, a phantom pressure pushing against his ribs. The mirror was not a surface but a membrane—a boundary between what was and what could be.

“I don’t know him,” Caelum whispered, the words almost foreign on his tongue.

"Liar," Dante’s voice sliced through his thoughts, sharp and accusing. "You’ve known him longer than you care to admit. The part of you that you’ve buried, locked away in the dark corners of your soul, where the light could never reach."

The room, the mansion—it trembled. Beneath his feet, the floor thrummed with a pulse, synchronized to the racing of his heart. The walls seemed to stretch, the air grew heavy, as though the house itself were breathing, alive, aware of his presence.

The mansion is not just a place. It is you. The thought echoed, as though the very structure had whispered it into his mind.

Books toppled from their shelves, pages curling and morphing like living things, ink flowing across them in patterns that seemed to tell a story he could not quite grasp. The air tasted copper, thick and metallic, as though the world itself were being tainted by something older than time.

"Why now?" he asked, though it wasn’t clear whether the question was aimed at Dante or the reflection—if either of them were even real.

"Because you’re ready," Dante replied, the tone shifting, becoming almost fatherly—an eerie calm that contradicted the violence in his words. "Ready to face the pieces of yourself you’ve long hidden. Ready to become whole—or break completely. The choice, as always, is yours."

Caelum clenched his fists, feeling the bite of his nails against his palms. "Stop playing games. Tell me what you want from me."

Dante’s laughter reverberated in the air, deep and rumbling, as though it were coming from the very bones of the mansion itself. "What I want? Oh, Caelum, you misunderstand. You’ve always misunderstood. The real question is not what I want, but what you want. Do you even know?"

The reflection’s lips twisted into a smile—a mirror of his own expression, but twisted, cruel. The words it spoke, however, were not his own.

"You’re terrified, aren’t you? Terrified of what you’ve done. Of what you will do. It’s why you run from the truth. It’s why you lie to yourself."

Memories—fragments—streaked across his vision: faces long forgotten, places that felt like dreams, bloodstains on his hands that could never be washed away. The images were violent, jarring, too real in their incoherence.

“I don’t remember,” he whispered, his voice breaking under the weight of what was almost forgotten.

"You don’t want to," Dante said, the calm of a serpent before it strikes. "But you will. It’s inevitable."

The glass rippled again, distorting into a liquid pool that seemed to draw the very air into itself. The reflection stretched, expanded, until it stepped from the glass as though it had become part of the room itself. It was not a perfect mirror of Caelum—its features were sharper, its eyes colder, its smile jagged like a wound.

"I’ve had enough," Caelum said, his voice thick with resolve. "If this is some twisted game, I’m done playing."

The figure—his reflection—tilted its head, a grotesque mimicry of curiosity. It moved closer, each step a silent whisper against the shifting floor. Caelum recoiled, but the wall behind him, once distant, now pressed against his back, as if the house were conspiring against him.

"You’re always playing, Caelum," Dante’s voice flooded the room, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "The difference is whether you know the rules."

The reflection reached out, its fingers hovering inches from Caelum’s chest. He felt the air grow colder, the pull on his very soul. The touch seemed to draw him in, as if it could tear him apart from the inside.

“Get away from me,” he growled, his fear now rising to meet the anger that had always smoldered beneath the surface.

The reflection’s smile grew—a grotesque, jagged thing, hungry and knowing. “I can’t. I am you.”

The words sank into Caelum like stone, their weight unbearable. His hands moved on their own, a fist striking the figure’s face in a violent blur. The impact tore through the space between them, fracturing the room, the walls, the floor. The air fractured like glass shattering, revealing impossible, shifting patterns that twisted and distorted like a kaleidoscope of madness.

When the world reformed, Caelum was alone. Or so he thought.

"You cannot fight what you are," Dante’s voice murmured from the depths of the room, full of a cold satisfaction. "But oh, how entertaining it is to watch you try."

Caelum collapsed to his knees, the weight of the revelation pressing down on him. The mansion pulsed, as though it were alive, alive in ways that defied understanding. The air hummed with an energy he could not name, a presence that filled the room with an intangible weight.

And then, from the distance—faint but undeniable—came the sound of a door creaking open.

It wasn’t an invitation. It was a command.