The chamber was colder than before.
It wasn't the kind of cold that made your skin crawl it was quieter, emptier, like the absence of warmth had been engineered rather than lost. Arkhan stood still in the center of the circular room, surrounded by seamless obsidian walls that curved upward into darkness. No windows. No corners. Just silence and a smooth floor that reflected his shadow with uncomfortable accuracy.
Somewhere above, something shifted.
Threshold Chamber B - 0437 hours.
His name wasn't called.
There were no instructors. No introductions. Just the hum of pressure building in the air, like time itself was holding its breath.
Arkhan lowered his eyes to the floor. Symbols faint and silver began to emerge beneath his boots. Rings inside rings. Not magical. Temporal calibration nodes.
He knew what they meant.
They were calibrating him.
He didn't flinch as the room darkened further. He simply adjusted his breathing. Slow inhale. Three-second hold. Exhale.
They're scanning baseline vitals, he thought. And threading in artificial destabilization zones.
Of course they were.
This was the Threshold the simulation where students were judged not by strength, but by how well they could survive within a world that didn't obey time. For the average student, it was overwhelming.
For Arkhan, it was… familiar.
He'd died in simulations like this. Many times. The old world had forced his generation to live inside Threshold environments just to predict what might come next. But this one it wasn't just synthetic.
It felt real.
The air warped suddenly. A high-pitched hum reverberated through the chamber, and the symbols at his feet spun outward like a dropped ring on water. In seconds, the floor vanished beneath him.
No sensation of falling.
Just a blink and the room was gone.
He landed in a corridor.
But not a corridor that belonged to any school. No walls, only jagged pillars of stone rising and collapsing in irregular intervals. Gravity was uncertain. The sky was upside down an endless dome of swirling silver clouds and broken clock hands spinning without rhythm.
This isn't a memory, he realized. It's a broken possibility.
A future that had fractured. One of many.
Wind whipped his coat behind him as the air thickened with static. Up ahead, the terrain fragmented, opening into a void filled with shifting platforms and towers of frozen glass some upside down, some suspended in motionless descent.
Arkhan stepped forward.
One foot after another. No hesitation.
Behind him, the air trembled.
He didn't turn. He knew the pattern already Thresholds always began with distortion shadows. Creatures made of residual time energy, mimicking motion they didn't understand.
A low scrape echoed.
He finally turned.
There, not twenty meters away, stood something vaguely human-shaped. Limbs elongated, joints too smooth. No face just a clock embedded where its eyes should be. And it was ticking backward.
Arkhan exhaled through his nose.
"So… they sent a rewind-type construct," he muttered.
Chrono Pulse: Surface Layer. Activate.
A soft pulse rippled from his chest barely visible but it sharpened the world around him. The sky slowed. The wind curled like paint in water. His perception widened.
Time stilled.
He moved.
Not like a martial artist. Not like a soldier. But with the precision of someone who had memorized every step before he took it. He stepped forward as the creature lunged then sidestepped at the exact angle where its weight would cause its momentum to twist inward.
He touched its chest gently.
Pulse Disruption.
The construct imploded with a soundless crack, unraveling into particles of light that scattered upward like sparks being pulled into the stars.
Silence returned.
Arkhan stood still, waiting.
Simulation adapting... phase shift imminent.
So they were watching. Good.
He walked further, now stepping onto the shifting glass platforms. Each one hovered above nothingness. A single misstep would be fatal, but he trusted the rhythm beneath his boots.
The simulation trembled again.
This time, it wasn't a shadow that appeared it was a wall of water frozen mid-collapse. Suspended in air, a tidal wave hung in stasis just ahead, droplets like glass beads, catching glimpses of himself in each.
He approached slowly.
In the reflections twelve versions of himself stared back.
Some older. Some younger. All different. One of them wore a lab coat. Another bore scars on his face. Another was… dead-eyed. Lifeless.
What is this…?
He reached toward one of the droplets.
The moment his finger brushed it, the chamber shuddered.
All twelve reflections spoke in unison though no mouths moved:
"You failed us."
Arkhan staggered back instinctively.
"You let the Collapse happen."
His heart skipped a beat.
The reflections cracked glass fracturing under pressure until they shattered completely, and the wall of water behind them surged forward.
Time snapped.
Arkhan launched himself backward, pulling the Chrono Pulse deep into his spine. The air screamed. His body flickered appearing first above, then below, then five steps to the right. The tidal wave hit the platform but passed through him like smoke through cloth.
The air recalibrated.
He landed hard on his knees, breath short, eyes wide.
They've integrated guilt triggers into the test.
Emotionally destabilizing elements. Echoes from past timelines.
This wasn't a simulation.
It was a mirror.
And they were using him against himself.
He didn't move for a while. Just knelt in silence, one hand on the cold surface of the platform. His pulse had steadied. But not because the fear was gone.
Because he understood what was coming.
—
The environment began to fade, pixel by pixel, like dust being blown from a canvas.
Threshold: Complete. Candidate Marcus Reed - score: 92.7 / 100.
Instability Response: Atypical.
—
He was back in the original chamber.
This time, there were voices.
Murmurs behind the walls. Observers. One of them was definitely Elena. He could recognize her clipped speech even through the static.
But he didn't listen.
He stood slowly. Brushed dust from his sleeves. And for the first time since waking in this new body, he allowed himself a moment to simply breathe.
The ceiling lights dimmed back to neutral. The platform reset.
The door hissed open.
Outside stood Kaito, arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
"You were in there for twenty-two minutes," he said.
Arkhan blinked once. "And?"
"Thresholds are built to end at ten."
Arkhan said nothing.
Kaito stepped closer. "What happened in there?"
Arkhan finally met his eyes. Cold. Direct. "I remembered something I wasn't supposed to."