As soon as I gained enlightenment, the reflection appeared in front of me once more.

The reflection turned and started walking without a word, gliding silently through the corridor, its mirror-like footsteps crunching against the glass floor.

It turned, gesturing with fluid motions for me to follow, and I obeyed without hesitation. Something in its calm, deliberate movement reminded me that it was both guide and observer, and I knew better than to ignore it.

The corridor stretched before us, but already I could sense the cave shifting, warping in ways impossible outside the trials. The pale fog I had walked through before was gone, replaced by something new, something alive with color.

The walls were no longer crystalline white but deep blue stone, veins of green crystals cutting through the rock like wild lightning frozen in place.

Light refracted through the crystals, scattering emerald and jade reflections across the floor, painting everything in hues of calm and danger intertwined.

It should have been beautiful. It should have given me pause, perhaps even comfort. But I knew better. Every step forward reminded me that beauty here was a weapon, a lure designed to make me forget the stakes.

The reflection paused at the end of the corridor, tilting its head slightly, as though acknowledging that this room was different.

Its hands moved, pointing toward a massive chamber that stretched into the shadowed distance. Water seeped up from the floor in slow, deliberate streams, pooling across the stone until the floor itself seemed to pulse beneath its surface.

A faint mist rose where the water met the air, drifting toward the ceiling like smoke from a long-forgotten fire. The cave smelled faintly metallic, like the scent of blood mixed with ozone.

I froze for a heartbeat, the weight of instinct pressing down on me. I understood immediately. This trial wasn't about illusions, or ghosts, or emotional manipulation.

This was about survival. Drowning. Control. Panic versus mastery. The room had no walls visible beyond the edges, no ceiling discernible beyond the pale reflections of the crystals, only the water and the space it consumed.

I clenched my fists. My first instinct was to summon my soulflames, to feel the familiar warmth of my mana running through my veins, the cold precision of death mana controlling it, bending it to my will.

But nothing happened.

My mana felt thick, sluggish, uncooperative, as if the cave itself had seized my power and was twisting it into a mockery of itself. I forced myself to breathe. One step at a time. Focus. The moment I panicked, the water would claim me.

I needed a plan.

Dozens of plans, all at once. My mind flitted across possibilities like leaves caught in a storm.

Could I swim? I could swim, of course, but this wasn't ordinary water. The depths seemed infinite, the pressure immense, as though the cave intended to crush me even before the water reached my chest.

I could try to push the water back with mana, but my control was gone, and that alone was dangerous. Soulflames would scatter without guidance, leaving me exposed.

Could I float?

Could I hold myself above the surface with my life energy?

That would work if the water remained calm, but the pool was already rising, waves forming despite the lack of wind. The cave manipulated it. The cave was the water.

I thought about using the crystals. Could I climb them?

No, though they glimmered and jutted from the walls, they didn't seem solid. They shimmered as if they were just reflections of solidity, traps for the desperate.

If I tried to grab one, it would likely vanish or shatter beneath my weight.

Could I break the ceiling? The stone above looked too distant, too heavy, even for an attack fueled by every shred of life and death mana I had.

Could I jump and grab one of the hanging stalactites? Same problem. They might not even exist. Or they might simply recede into nothingness the moment I reached for them.

I ran through more options.

Could I manipulate the water itself?

Could I make a bubble of air, a pocket of safety?

That required precise control, something I lacked. Could I teleport, kill space to vanish from the water? Perhaps, but the last few trials had proven that these rooms didn't let you leave at will.

They bent the laws of reality, ignored the rules you brought from the outside world, and punished impatience.

Could I summon an object to float on? Create a raft? My hands moved reflexively as if the thoughts alone could manifest the tools, but the mana refused to respond, uncooperative, liquid, uncatchable.

I felt my pulse in my temples, in my chest, the air growing heavier as the water crept higher, inching past my knees.

My mind raced faster than my heartbeat, trying to think, trying to solve a problem that refused solutions.

Maybe I could anchor myself to the floor?

Grab a crystal and hold on while the water rose?

I had already dismissed that. My grip wouldn't hold, the cave would shift beneath me, and I would be swallowed anyway.

Could I create a dome of protection? Force the water to part? My control of mana was still incomplete, and I didn't know if I could summon enough to even shape the surface, let alone maintain it against the cave's will.

I tried breathing slowly, focusing, examining the physics, or lack thereof, of the room.

The water moved in impossible ways, rising steadily yet calm, like a tide timed by some hidden metronome.

No splashes.

No waves.

Only gradual encroachment. It was as if the room measured my patience, my ingenuity, my resolve. Could I wait it out? Let it rise and hope something would change? No.

That was defeat masquerading as strategy. The water would rise to my neck, to my head, perhaps to swallow my vision completely.

I tried imagining myself flying, escaping, and tearing a hole in the ceiling to climb out.

I could feel the desperation building, the mind spinning faster than rational thought.

Could I trick the cave? Could I convince it that I had already failed, that it didn't need to punish me anymore? Could I argue with reality?

My hands flexed, my feet shifted against the cold, unfeeling stone. Each plan, each possible solution, bubbled up and crashed like waves against a cliff, dismissed instantly by the nature of this trial.

The water reached my waist. A shiver ran through my spine, not from the cold, though that was starting to bite, but from the knowledge that none of the dozens of plans I had considered had worked.

I was trapped.

I had options in the abstract, strategies and contingencies, but in practice, none were possible. The water continued its steady, insistent rise. It lapped at my stomach now, filling the space around me, cold and relentless.

I imagined cutting through the water with mana, separating it into parts I could breathe in. The thought was elegant, almost poetic, but impossible.

My energy refused to obey, scattering in the medium like sparks blown from a fire by a sudden wind. Could I displace the water with fire? My soulflames flickered but burned ineffectively, extinguished almost immediately by some unseen counterforce.

My body trembled slightly as the water began pressing against my chest. Each inhale became harder, the pressure forcing my diaphragm to fight just to maintain a normal rhythm.

I tried another line of thought. If I couldn't move the water or escape it, could I change myself? Could I reduce my body's need for air, slow my metabolism, create a survival bubble within myself?

I focused inward, life and death mana swirling, trying to engineer a space of isolation, a personal bubble to resist drowning. It felt… promising at first. The warmth of life mana against the cold, crushing inevitability of the water gave me hope, a fraction of comfort.

But the pressure outside pressed relentlessly, and the mana dispersed. I could feel the boundary of my own creation bending, the magic rejecting itself as though the cave judged me unworthy.

I thought about holding my breath. It would be enough, perhaps, if I didn't panic. But panic came anyway. My chest burned, my lungs screamed.

I was running out of time, yet my mind refused to stop calculating, cataloging potential failures. If I focused on one solution, the others would slip from consideration, yet if I tried them all, I spread myself too thin.

It was a perfect trap, designed to make me fail at the very act of trying.

I imagined the reflection reappearing, offering advice, guidance, and reassurance.

I imagined it simply walking past me and saying, "Keep moving." The thought didn't comfort me. Instead, it reminded me that no help would come. The trial was mine alone.

The water rose above my waist. Every instinct screamed to act, to do something, anything, but my mind had already considered every rational action.

I tried focusing on the sensation, on the rise of water against my chest, on the rhythm of the room, on the impossible weight pressing in. I tried to embrace it, treat it as an ally, but the cave was indifferent. It gave nothing, only pressure, only inevitability.

I tried imagining shrinking myself, escaping into a smaller form, reducing my size until the water mattered less. But the water rose anyway.

I thought about teleporting, destroying the water, summoning platforms, riding on soul constructs, even crawling along imaginary ledges through my mind, but each plan evaporated before it formed. Nothing worked.

The water touched my chest.

My head remained above it, but only barely. My heart raced.

My breaths became shallow, short, deliberate.

I counted silently, keeping my mind as calm as possible.

Logic told me that panic would drown me before the water did.

Yet the pressure in my skull, the rhythm of the rising water, the silence outside my own racing thoughts—it all screamed the same thing: this was unavoidable.

I forced myself to think of survival, of persistence.

Perhaps the trial wasn't about escaping.

Perhaps it was about endurance, about watching the water rise and accepting the impossibility of control.

Perhaps it was about finding the one solution I hadn't considered, hidden beneath the layers of instinct, calculation, and fear.

But try as I might, I found nothing. Not a single one of the dozens of methods I had imagined, cataloged, considered, theorized, or tested, even in the abstract, worked.

The water pressed against my chest, almost to my neck now. Every motion of my arms displaced it slightly, but the rise continued. I could feel my hair wet against my skin, the chill seeping through every layer, cold enough to make my teeth chatter despite the life mana still coursing through me. My reflection in the water's surface rippled, a distorted double of myself staring back with wide, terrified eyes.

And I knew then, as the water reached my shoulders, that the trial had reached its peak. Every calculated escape, every clever manipulation, every fantasy of control had failed. The water pressed against my neck, almost reaching above it, and still, I floated, trapped in the blue-green chamber, powerless.

My chest burned, my limbs trembled. Each breath was laborious, each heartbeat echoing in my skull like a drum marking the passage of time. The cave had tested me, stripped away my agency, and forced me to confront the reality that not every problem has a solution.

The reflection remained just beyond the waterline, waiting, silent, unjudging, a guide and a witness to the slow, methodical rise of inevitability. And I knew, with a grim clarity, that the trial had only begun.

The water was almost above my neck.

Not a single method I had thought of had worked.

Not a single plan had saved me.

And I was still alive.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.