Reneth Virel stepped through the curtain with a calm breath and a straight back.
The hallway was warm. Not physically. Warm in the way ceremonial halls always were. He had walked many of them before. His family made sure of that. You do not descend from divine blood and walk crooked. You do not arrive unpolished. You move like you were carved for it.
His boots made no sound on the glyphlit floor. The light pulsed faintly beneath each step. Measured. Clean. The marks on his skin—m sigils passed down from his mother's side glowed in steady rhythm.
He was not nervous.
Not truly.
Reneth had trained for this since he was old enough to remember his father's voice. He had studied the linework of his blood, practiced the glyphs for each academy, mastered two Forms and one Domain. His first Vein had opened when he was thirteen. His second began to stir two years later. He was ready.
He entered Chamber Two with a clear mind and a quiet confidence.
The mirror stood in the center of the room.
It looked exactly as it had in his training records. Narrow. Tall. Suspended light above a platform of black stone. Glyphless. Motionless. Waiting.
He stepped toward it without hesitation.
The air thickened as he approached. He had read about that. It was a spiritual filter, designed to disrupt passive blessings and bring subconscious thought to the surface. Standard process.
He took position in front of the mirror.
His reflection appeared immediately. Centered. Whole. His sigils were visible. His posture was perfect.
He waited for the voice.
None came.
Instead, the mirror pulsed once with a ripple of blue.
And then his reflection began to change.
His form shifted. The lines of his body blurred. His hair turned white, then black, then white again. His eyes dimmed. Brightened. Then vanished.
He swallowed.
His heartbeat quickened, just slightly. It was likely a test of lineage entropy. A way of examining his identity's strength across inherited lines.
He whispered his name.
"Reneth Virel. House of Aurrin. Second blood of Tevara, Hand of Dawn."
The mirror froze.
Then shattered.
Not explosively. Not violently. It cracked from the center outward, slow and soundless, as if time itself had peeled apart the surface.
The light vanished.
The platform dimmed.
Reneth stood frozen.
He had no context for this.
No one had prepared him for silence.
No one had told him what to do if the system failed.
The voice that followed was not warm. Not instructive. It simply said, "Proceed."
He left the room with a numbness in his steps.
He did not realize that behind him, the crystal that formed the mirror had already begun to reform.
Not in the same shape.
Not in the same language.
The system had already adjusted.