Cillian's vision snapped into focus, the world resolving into a disorienting maze of reflections. He found himself in a room lined with mirrors on every wall, the glass stretching from floor to ceiling, multiplying his image into infinity. His yukata was gone, replaced by his familiar black attire, the fabric fitting him like a second skin.
He rose to his full height, every movement echoed back at him from countless angles. He turned, slowly at first, then faster, each mirror reflecting a different version of himself-each one scrutinizing, judging, exposing. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the sound of his own breath.
Without warning, a jolt of something dark surged through him. His aquamarine eyes bled into a deep, unnatural spinel red. The change was immediate, visceral-like a mask falling away to reveal something raw and feral beneath.
Drawn to his own reflection, Cillian stalked to the nearest mirror, his gaze locked with his own. The tension in his jaw was visible, a storm gathering behind his eyes. Then, with a single, decisive motion, he drove his fist into the glass. The mirror shattered, splintering into a thousand jagged fragments that rained down at his feet. Blood welled up and trickled from his knuckles, staining the shards crimson.
He crouched, the pain grounding him in this surreal place, and picked up the largest piece of broken mirror. For a moment, he stared into its fractured surface-seeing not just his face, but every fracture, every flaw, every secret he could never hide.
Then, in a moment of self-destructive defiance, he pressed the shard to his lips and bit down, hard. The glass sliced the corners of his mouth, blood pooling and dripping down his chin. The pain was sharp, electric, but he didn't flinch. Instead, he seemed to welcome it, as if proving to himself that he was still real, still alive.
A shrill, manic laugh erupted behind him, echoing off the mirrored walls. "AHHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAA!"
Cillian turned, blood still on his lips, to see the Joker-Jasper-leaning in the doorway, eyes wild with delight.
"I knew it!" Jasper screeched, his voice slicing through the tension like a blade. "Valentines do have secrets after all! In the end, nothing can be hidden from those who've always hidden themselves."
The room seemed to close in, the mirrors reflecting not just Cillian's pain, but the madness that now surrounded him. The Joker's laughter bounced from every surface, a chorus of chaos and revelation, as Cillian stood amidst the wreckage-bleeding, exposed, and utterly unmasked.
A hush fell as the ground itself began to shift and groan, the air thick with dread. Remi's voice trembled, barely above a whisper as she tugged at Kryll's sleeve from behind. "Kryll...I'm scared." Kryll flinched at the contact, instinctively stepping back and pulling Remi behind him, protective but just as unsettled.
Dylan, arms stretched wide to shield his girlfriend, shot a nervous glance at the others. "Bro. We're dead meat today, ain't we?" His voice was forced bravado, barely masking the fear beneath.
High above, Luca hovered in mid-air, a wicked grin splitting his face. He let out a peal of wild laughter. "AAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAAA, is that fear I see in your eyes? ASSASSINS?" His words dripped with mockery. Then, with a dramatic sweep of his arm, the ground beneath the six assassins and their spouses buckled and reformed, blocks rising and twisting until the entire room transformed into a sprawling, hell-themed maze. The walls pulsed with a sinister glow, and the air reeked of sulfur and smoke.
Luca, now perched atop the highest point, gestured behind him to a looming black castle. "You have one hour and thirty minutes to escape this maze and reach the top," he declared, his voice booming. "And whoever fails... shall pay the consequences." He snapped his fingers, and a massive billboard materialized, a digital timer already counting down from 1:30:00. "When the timer hits zero, you'll meet your end, right then and there." His laughter echoed as he floated away into the shadowy abyss. "GOOOOOD LUCKKK!"
The timer began its relentless march, the digits glowing red-hot. The group stood frozen for a heartbeat, the enormity of the challenge pressing down on them. All around, the maze's hellish design loomed: walls adorned with grotesque carvings, flickering torches casting monstrous shadows, and the distant, ominous sound of chains and howls. Panic and adrenaline surged in equal measure.
This was no ordinary escape room or puzzle-it was a fight for survival, a test of wit, nerve, and unity, where every wrong turn could bring them closer to the horrors lurking in the maze's heart.
The chamber was a mausoleum of shattered reflections, every surface slick with the cold sheen of broken glass and the sickly gleam of blood. The air was thick, oppressive with the metallic tang of iron and the sour stench of fear-a suffocating miasma that pressed against the skin and crawled down the throat, making every breath a struggle.
"I have long harbored a malignant suspicion about the Valentines' unnatural fixation with glass," Xerxes intoned, his voice a spectral hiss that slithered through the void like a serpent coiling around dying prey. His ephemeral form flickered and convulsed, trembling with a dread so profound it seemed to warp the very air, as his gaze locked onto Cillian-not a man, but a grotesque abomination-gnawing with savage desperation at jagged shards of fractured mirror. Crimson rivers cascaded down Cillian's chin, mingling with glittering splinters that pierced flesh and soul alike, each fragment a shard of his fractured humanity.
Cillian knelt amidst the wreckage, his breaths ragged and shallow, each exhalation fogging the shards scattered around him. His hands, slick with blood, trembled as he pressed a jagged fragment to his lips. The glass bit into his flesh with a wet, deliberate crunch. His teeth scraped and ground against the serrated edge, splintering the glass further, driving razor-sharp slivers into his gums and tongue. Blood welled instantly, hot and coppery, pooling in his mouth, spilling over his chin, painting his teeth a grotesque, glistening red.
He chewed, grinding the shards between his molars, the sound a sickening symphony of crunch and squelch. Each swallow sent a fresh wave of agony down his throat as the glass tore new wounds, shredding delicate tissue, mixing blood and saliva into a viscous, metallic slurry. It dripped from his mouth in thick ropes, pattering onto the floor with obscene finality. His body convulsed, but he did not stop-he seemed possessed, driven by an ancient, insatiable compulsion.
With a trembling hand, he raised his bleeding wrist and dragged his tongue along the gaping wound, lapping at the blood with animalistic hunger. The taste was sharp, electric, a mingling of pain and primal satisfaction. He sucked at the wound, drawing more blood, his eyes rolling back in a delirious ecstasy that bordered on madness. The mirrors around him reflected a thousand versions of this grotesque ritual-each one more monstrous, more inhuman than the last.
"Is this the extent of your depravity?" Xerxes spat, venom dripping from his words as his eyes burned with revulsion, fixated on Jasper, who hovered above with a grin so vile it seemed to rend the fabric of sanity itself-a predator reveling in the macabre spectacle.
Jasper's smile contorted into a monstrous rictus, a visage of pure, unadulterated malevolence. "You have no inkling," he whispered, his voice a venomous caress that slithered into the marrow of all who heard.
Jasper's laughter erupted-a jagged, maniacal cacophony that shattered the oppressive silence like a scream ripped from the throat of the abyss. Xerxes recoiled, his form convulsing violently, as if the very sound seared through his ephemeral essence, burning away the last vestiges of hope.
"Have you ever contemplated…" Jasper leaned in, his breath a rancid miasma of decay and madness, whispering into Xerxes's ear, "why all Valentines are born in pairs? Why they are but twisted reflections, mirror images of a singular cursed soul?"
Horror blossomed in Xerxes's eyes, black as the void that swallows light. "I believed it a filthy myth-that twins share a soul. But it is truth. Mirrors are not mere reflections-they are prisons. They ensnare their other half, their other self. To consume the mirror is to cannibalize one's own flesh, to devour one's very essence."
Jasper's grin widened to an impossible breadth, teeth gleaming like shards of shattered glass-cold, merciless, and jagged. "Precisely. The Valentines are born to feed upon themselves. Their own blood, their own flesh-their obsession is a madness that gnaws relentlessly at their sanity, devouring their very being. They are cannibals of their own existence, ensnared in an eternal spiral of self-annihilation."
Cillian's face twisted into a rictus of agony and pleasure, blood and glass frothing at the corners of his mouth. He tore another shard from the floor, plunging it into his own cheek, slicing through skin and muscle, exposing the gleaming white of his teeth beneath the torn flesh. He chewed on the new piece, the sound of bone scraping glass a grotesque counterpoint to Jasper's frenzied cackling.
The pain was transcendent, a white-hot fire that consumed thought and left only the raw, animal urge to destroy and be destroyed. The taste of his own blood became an anchor, the only thing real in a world of shattered reflections and endless torment. The glass cut deeper, slicing nerves, severing the fragile boundary between agony and ecstasy.
The mirrors wept blood, their surfaces slick and red, as if the room itself was bleeding in sympathy. Cillian's reflection fractured, multiplied-each shard capturing a different moment of his self-destruction: the wild, feverish eyes; the gaping, blood-filled mouth; the trembling hands, desperate for more.
The chamber was alive with horror-a symphony of pain, madness, and self-annihilation. Cillian's body was a canvas of wounds, his soul laid bare in every crimson drop, every glinting sliver embedded in his flesh. He was becoming something else, something monstrous-a creature of blood and glass, forged in agony and crowned in terror.
Jasper's laughter spiraled into a frenzied howl, a sound so unhinged it clawed at the boundaries of reality, shredding the fragile veil of sanity. "Behold him! Devouring himself! A beautiful abomination! The ultimate horror-cannibalism of the soul!"
And still, Cillian devoured himself, piece by bloody piece, as the abyss yawned wider, hungry for every last fragment of what he had once been.
To be Continued...