The wind here didn't blow.
It pulsed.
Like a heartbeat—one long forgotten by time, but still echoing through the void-threaded air of the Starlight Abyss.
Raizen floated toward the Mirror Hall. The structure defied normal space. No platform connected it. No energy stabilized it. Just an impossible spire, twisting like glass melted by stars, hovering over a chasm that stretched into absolute nothingness.
And yet, it called to him.
Not with words.
But with recognition.
As if it had always been waiting for him.
Raizen landed silently on a shard of floating earth near the spire. Dim purple mist wrapped around his boots. The silence here wasn't natural. It was enforced—like sound had been judged, and sentenced to exile.
At the hall's entrance stood no gate.
Only a silver veil.
Thin as fog.
Sharp as soulsteel.
He didn't hesitate. He stepped through.
Instantly, reality shifted.
The inside of the Mirror Hall was larger than kingdoms. A single corridor stretched into infinite darkness, lined with dozens—no, hundreds—of floating mirrors. But none reflected his face.
Instead, they showed… others.
Ancient figures, powerful and proud. Some looked human. Others didn't. Their eyes blazed with rebellion. Their bodies were scarred by battles beyond mortal comprehension.
Each one was a void cultivator.
Each one had challenged the heavens.
Each one had died.
Raizen paused in front of one. The figure wore celestial armor split down the middle, void energy leaking from every crack in his body. His eyes were calm, but tired. Behind him, a sky burned.
Inscribed under the mirror:
"Zanros the Dissonant. He refused the call of the Immortal Host. Slain by the Twin Seraphs."
He moved to the next.
"Veira of the Ninefold Moons. She turned her void into light. The gods answered with fire. She fell laughing."
Another.
Another.
Another.
Each one had their story etched beneath.
All powerful. All defiant.
All gone.
Raizen walked in silence, absorbing their fates.
This wasn't a tomb.
It was a warning.
"Is this what they think waits for me?"
"A mirror… with my name carved beneath?"
He clenched his fists.
Suddenly, one of the mirrors flickered.
And changed.
It didn't show a figure from the past.
It showed him.
Raizen. Standing right where he was. But in the reflection—he was bleeding. Kneeling. Surrounded by gods whose faces were veiled in radiance. Above them floated a crown made of stars and bones.
The inscription was blank.
No name. No fate.
Just a line waiting to be written.
A whisper echoed in the hall.
"All who enter here must see the end."
"The question is… will you accept it?"
Raizen narrowed his eyes.
"I don't accept endings."
"I rewrite them."
With that, he raised his hand.
The mirror shattered.
The shards didn't fall—they were absorbed into his palm. Melted into the void that curled beneath his skin like ink in water.
The hall trembled.
Every other mirror began to hum.
Some cracked.
Some pulsed.
One even showed a flash of the Supreme One's mark, blazing faintly behind a dying world.
"He's not repeating their path…"
"He's breaking it."
The hall grew still again.
But far above, in the real sky, across multiple realms...
A god slowly stood up from his throne.
"It's begun."