God's Tree-Chapter 230: Rules of the Unseen

After the mimic had been destroyed, silence hung over the group like a burial shroud.

They had always known the Twelfth Gate would challenge them.

But this was different.

This was personal.

The enemy had worn their face. Spoken in their voice. Almost passed as one of them.

They couldn't trust the world.

Now they couldn't fully trust each other.

Ren broke the silence first.

"From now on, every fifteen minutes we do a call sign check."

He reached into his satchel and pulled out a chalk rune disc, quickly drawing a symbol into the air: a triangle intersected with a broken line.

"This is mine. If you see me and I don't respond with this rune, you kill it."

Varen growled, gripping his halberd tighter. "No hesitation next time. I held back. That's on me."

Sorien adjusted the runes on his sleeve. "We should ward ourselves individually. An aura signature. Unique to each of us."

Calla nodded. "But that won't matter if they learn to copy that too."

Velka, half-faded into her dream tether, murmured from her semi-projected state.

"Then we add behavior checks. Things only we would say."

"Passwords," Myra added. "Memories."

Argolaith stood at the edge of the circle, his arms crossed as the cube floated slowly around his shoulders. Its shape was more refined now—no longer a formless cube, but a multi-layered construct of folded geometry, humming quietly.

"Good precautions," he said, "but it won't stop the Gate."

They all turned toward him.

"This place is alive," he continued. "The more you fight it with logic, the more it adapts. It doesn't just copy you—it reshapes the laws around you. It wants doubt."

Caelene—real, this time—stepped forward.

"Then what would you suggest?"

Argolaith let a brief silence linger.

Then spoke.

"Don't just protect your body. Protect your identity. Speak less. Focus inward. Let your magic reflect your truth, not your voice."

Kier frowned. "Magic isn't always that simple."

"It is when you've died in a thousand lifetimes."

They stared at him.

Argolaith didn't elaborate.

The group moved again, now tighter, quieter.

No one wandered off.

Every fifteen minutes, a glowing mark would be drawn in the air by each member, unique and glowing briefly before fading.

Every time, all thirteen would pass the test.

But the echoes didn't stop.

They didn't attack again—not directly.

They followed.

Out of the corners of vision.

Standing in reflections.

Mirroring footsteps when no one else walked.

Watching.

Waiting.

As the temple neared, the terrain became still.

Too still.

The floating debris ceased spinning. The sky stopped bleeding. The stone floor no longer shifted.

A narrow bridge extended toward the broken gates of the floating ruin—the Core Seal's final resting place.

Calla shivered. "Something's waiting there."

Sorien nodded. "I can feel the mana folds compressing. Like we're stepping into a spell that hasn't finished casting."

Argolaith looked ahead.

The temple pulsed.

The cube beside him trembled once.

And then—

The sun blinked again.

And they heard it.

A voice.

Soft.

Argolaith…

It came from the temple.

Only Argolaith seemed to react.

But the voice hadn't spoken aloud.

It had spoken beneath his thoughts.

As if the Gate had finally recognized him.

Not as an invader.

But as a threat.

The temple loomed before them.

Suspended by jagged bridges of mana-light and gravity-defying pillars, it stretched impossibly high—its upper towers piercing the blinking sky like shattered glass.

The broken sun overhead cast strange shadows along the stone bridge they stood on, warping their outlines into things that twitched when no one moved.

They stepped forward as one.

Thirteen elite mages. Soldiers of fate.

And the Gate swallowed them whole.

The moment they crossed the threshold, the world bent.

Stone transformed into glass.

The entrance behind them vanished.

And in its place—

A maze of mirrors.

Curved, spiraling, hovering.

Each wall shimmered with enchantments layered so densely the air around them hummed with contained power.

The reflections weren't perfect.

They moved.

Too late. Too early.

Sometimes they didn't move at all.

Kier muttered. "This… isn't spatial distortion. This is intention. The temple wants us lost."

"Not just lost," Calla whispered. "Divided."

Sorien tried mapping their path with minor illusions—but each time they turned a corner, the mirror changed its shape, reorienting space like a puzzle that refused to be solved.

Zephion's spirit familiar spun in circles. "It's feeding on confusion," he hissed.

The group paused at a four-way split—each passage identical. Each one reflected the same thirteen bodies, shifting out of sync like the memory of something long dead.

"We're being mirrored," Caelene muttered. "This place is studying us again."

Argolaith looked at the nearest wall—smooth, impossibly polished, yet buzzing with runes too fine to see unless focused on.

He raised a hand.

The cube floated beside him—now ringed in fine glyphs that rotated around its outer surface like a clock ticking out of time.

Without a word, he pressed it against the mirror.

There was a moment of resistance—

Then the mirror shuddered.

A pulse of light flashed across its surface, and the wall fractured, peeling away like mist.

The mana—the very enchantment woven into the mirror—was siphoned into the cube.

And the moment it was, the air around Argolaith thickened with potential.

His eyes narrowed.

"It works."

Varen leaned forward. "You just drained the wall—how?"

Argolaith spoke slowly.

"The cube doesn't just absorb magic now. It can consume spatial logic—unweave it. This maze is made of mirrored enchantments layered on light. The cube's feeding on it."

Ren looked down the path that had opened.

"Then you can guide us through."

Argolaith nodded.

"I think it's close."

"What is?" Myra asked.

He didn't answer at first.

Then, with quiet finality:

"A new spell."

The cube pulsed at his side, swelling slightly in size, runes rotating faster now.

It had never been so full.

They continued forward, following Argolaith as he pressed the cube against each wall in turn. Some resisted. Others collapsed instantly into dust and memory.

With each collapse, the maze became smaller, more focused. The reflections in the mirrors stopped mimicking them and began watching them.

The walls twisted to show memories.

Jastin saw the day he failed his brother.

Calla saw the moment her planar anchor collapsed and killed her mentor.

Caelene saw herself—kneeling in a throne room, her family behind her, not in honor… but in chains.

Argolaith saw nothing.

No reflection.

No memory.

Just the cube, and himself.

One whole.

One fracture made real.

They reached the heart of the maze.

A chamber of perfectly still glass, like standing in a drop of water held together by time.

At the center: a pedestal of light, and above it, a suspended glyph—an incomplete rune the size of a full-grown tree, spinning slowly, folding in on itself.

The Core Seal.

Argolaith stepped forward slowly.

The cube hovered close to him, trembling.

Ready.

"It's close," he whispered.

The spell was coming.

Not from a book.

Not from tradition.

From everything he had consumed.

Every reflection.

Every echo.

Every illusion unmade.

Something new was being born.

And it would define him.