Darkness swallowed Lumian whole.
For a fleeting mont, he felt weightless,adrift in a void without direction, without ti.
Then, gravity returned.
He crashed onto solid ground, the impact sending tremors through his bones.
Slowly, he pushed himself up, his golden eyes piercing through the suffocating gloom.
The air was thick, humid, and strangely warm.
It slled old,ancient.
Like a place that had been untouched for centuries.
But beneath that...
A familiar scent.
Faint, but unmistakable.
He narrowed his eyes.
He knew this scent.
But he couldn’t quite place it.
"Where the hell am I?" he muttered
"One thing was for sure, I am no longer in the training room. The Augnted reality technology was good but no so good that I would not be able to tell reality apart from man made illusion"
His voice echoed unnaturally, stretching too far, as if the space around him was... wrong.
He glanced up.
The ceiling was gone.
Only an endless black abyss lood above, stretching far beyond the range of his sight.
His gaze flicked to the ground.
The floor was stone,smooth, yet covered in unnatural carvings.
Symbols he didn’t recognize.
Symbols that pulsed...
...like they were breathing.
He exhaled slowly.
This was sure not a part of the training facility.
This wasn’t a simulation.
This was sothing else.
And he could tell, tell that sothing was watching him.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Footsteps.
Slow, deliberate, echoing in the vast emptiness.
They weren’t his.
His muscles tensed.
His ears twitched, pinpointing the direction,
To his left.
Sothing moved in the darkness.
Not approaching,just... standing there.
Watching.
Lumian rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck.
"You gonna keep lurking, or are you gonna co out and play?"
No response.
Just more silence.
Then,
A whisper.
Faint, just at the edge of his hearing.
"You are... unbroken."
"Not too far from strength compared to the last."
Lumian’s grin sharpened.
"Last?" he echoed.
"You an I’m not your first guest?"
The air grew colder.
A presence lood closer.
A faint outline ford within the darkness,
Sothing tall. Wrong.
Its shape was blurred, as if reality itself refused to acknowledge its existence.
Then,
It stepped forward.
And Lumian’s grin disappeared.
Because the thing standing before him...
Looked just like him. Lumian stared at his own face.
But it wasn’t quite right.
The eyes were... empty.
Hollow pits of swirling darkness.
The grin on its lips stretched too wide.
Its skin shifted, twisted, like it couldn’t decide what shape it wanted to take.
And then,
It spoke.
"You are incomplete."
"Weak."
Lumian exhaled, running a hand through his hair.
"Great. Another one of these weird cryptic bastards."
He took a step forward.
So did his copy.
A perfect mirror.
"So, what now?" Lumian asked. "You gonna bore with riddles, or do we fight?"
The other Lumian tilted its head.
Then,
It lunged.
Fast.
Too fast.
Lumian barely had ti to react before a fist crashed into his gut.
The force sent him skidding back,his feet digging trenches into the stone.
"Oh?"
Lumian wiped the blood from his lips, golden eyes gleaming.
Then,he laughed.
"This might be fun after all."
Above, the tower was in chaos.
Alarms blared. Red warning lights flashed across every hall.
Heroes ran frantically, trying to figure out what was happening.
Shirley ignored them all.
Her focus was on one thing.
Finding Lumian.
She sprinted after Trinity, her speed making the air whistle around her.
"Hey, white fox!" she barked.
Trinity didn’t stop.
Didn’t look back.
She moved like a woman possessed,her breath ragged, her eyes locked on sothing far beyond Shirley’s understanding.
"No, no, no..." she kept muttering.
Shirley growled in frustration.
She increased her speed , vanishing and reappearing directly in front of Trinity. Trinity was surprised, she was running at an incredible pace that would be difficult for most heroes to match but yet Shirley matched and surpassed it.
She skidded to a halt.
"Move," she snapped.
Shirley grabbed her by the collar.
"What the hell is going on?! Where is Master? Is this a part of your training too?"
For the first ti,
Trinity’s composure cracked.
"Get your hands off before you lose them," she threatened
Her red eyes burned with sothing close to fear.
She opened her mouth,
Then,
The entire tower trembled.
A low, guttural sound rumbled from beneath the earth.
Sothing ancient.
Sothing hungry.
Shirley froze.
That sound... it went straight under her skin, her hairs stood on end and she imdiately released Trinity then hugged herself as if comforting herself
Lumian dodged his copy’s fist by a hair.
The shockwave split the stone behind him.
He grinned, twisting midair,
And slamd his own fist into his copy’s ribs.
CRACK.
The other Lumian staggered.
Then,
It laughed.
Low. Twisted.
Its voice warped and layered, like a dozen voices speaking at once.
"Stronger than expected."
It straightened, the bones in its chest snapping back into place.
Lumian narrowed his eyes.
"That’s new."
The copy’s face rippled. Shifted.
Then,
It changed.
Its grin widened, stretching beyond what was humanly possible.
Its fingers elongated into claws.
And its golden eyes...
They turned black.
"You were not ant to wake."
"Yet here you are."
The ground beneath them cracked. Twisted.
A low, bone-deep rumble echoed from the abyss.
Sothing stirred in the darkness.
Sothing vast. Incomprehensible.
And then,
The voice ca.
Not from the copy.
Not from the shadows.
From everywhere.
A voice that did not belong to this world.
"Ah... you."
The ground collapsed and Lumian fell deeper. Lumian stood motionless.
The chamber around him pulsed like a living thing. The walls,if they could be called such,shifted between solid stone and a swirling, abyssal void.
Strange, iridescent veins coursed through the surface, pulsating like the slow rhythm of a dying heart.
Yet Lumian’s focus wasn’t on the grotesque beauty of his surroundings.
It was on the thing that stood before him. His eyes widened and he instinctively shifted back.
"What the hell is that?Just what the fuck has the Vanguard been keeping in their basent?"
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