Chapter 20: Descent into Madness

The silver glow of the new doorway beckoned, but the weight of my actions lingered in the air.

The wasteland I left behind, charred, broken, lifeless, felt like a haunting reflection of myself.

I stepped through, and the world shifted again.

This time, the void wasn’t as hostile.

The atmosphere was eerily calm, the suffocating pressure replaced by an unsettling stillness.

The floor beneath me was smooth and black, reflecting my image like a distorted mirror.

The silence was deafening.

[Ding!]

[Stage Six Initiated. Proceed Through the Void.]

No monsters.

No bosses.

Just a command to "proceed."

I walked, each step echoing in the vast emptiness.

My reflection beneath me seemed to ripple with every movement, distorting my figure until it became something unrecognizable.

My black hair seemed longer, wilder, and my eyes glowed faintly with the same electric light that had destroyed the last arena.

“Is this me?” I whispered, staring down at the shifting reflection.

No response came, only the faint sound of my footsteps against the unnatural surface.

Minutes stretched into hours, or maybe it was the other way around.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The void had no sense of time, and I could feel it gnawing at the edges of my mind.

The first signs of the void’s effects were subtle.

The sound of footsteps that weren’t mine.

Shadows flickering just out of view, even though the space was devoid of light.

Whispers, faint and unintelligible, tickling the back of my mind.

I ignored them at first, chalking it up to exhaustion.

But the longer I walked, the harder they became to dismiss.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” a voice hissed, faint but sharp.

I froze, spinning around.

The void was empty.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, my voice echoing back at me.

Silence.

I pressed forward, but the voices grew louder.

“Monster.”

“Destroyer.”

“Is this what they would have wanted?”

Each word sent a jolt through me, like a knife twisting in wounds I thought had healed.

“No,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Shut up!.”

But it didn’t stop.

The reflections beneath me began to change, showing me scenes I didn’t want to see.

The ruins of the arena I’d destroyed.

The charred corpses of monsters I hadn’t thought twice about killing.

And then-

“Mom? Dad?”

Their faces stared back at me from the reflective floor.

They looked just as I remembered, kind, warm, and so painfully out of reach.

“Allen,” my mother’s voice called, soft and gentle. “Is this what you’ve become?”

“No.” My voice cracked, and I clenched my fists. “You’re not real. This isn’t real.”

But the images didn’t fade.

Instead, they shifted.

I saw myself, standing amidst the destruction I’d caused, lightning crackling around me as I unleashed unrelenting power.

My face was emotionless, my eyes glowing with an unnatural light.

“You’ve lost yourself,” the reflection whispered, its voice identical to mine.

“I haven’t!” I shouted, but the words felt hollow.

“You are all alone,” the reflection said.

I dropped to my knees, gripping my head as the whispers grew louder, overlapping into a deafening cacophony.

“You’re no hero.”

“You’re just another monster.”

“You’ll destroy everything.”

“You are dangerous to humanity.”

“You are the -.”

I slammed my fist into the ground, the impact sending a pulse of lightning through the reflective surface.

The voices silenced, and the distorted images faded, leaving me alone again.

I stayed there for a moment, my breathing ragged.

I couldn’t afford to lose myself, not now, not ever.

I pushed myself to my feet, my legs trembling.

“You’re not real,” I said aloud, my voice firm. “None of this is real.”

The silence returned, but it felt heavier than before.

Ahead of me, another doorway appeared, this one pulsing with a deep purple light.

It was a reminder that this wasn’t over.

With a deep breath, I stepped forward.