The illusion surged, reasserting itself with violent insistence. The lightning creature's silhouette warped again, limbs elongating, face distorting into something inhuman. Page's form darkened, fear bleeding outward in choking waves.

Look, the cave whispered without words. Monsters. Kill them.

Lillith staggered as the pressure slammed into her mind, seductive in its simplicity. Monsters were easy. Monsters deserved death. Monsters didn't require guilt.

But humans did.

She screamed—not aloud, but internally—and forced her affinity inward instead of outward. Instead of bending reality, she anchored herself to it. The ground burned beneath her boots. The heat was real. The pain in her lungs was real.

Her thoughts were real.

The illusion faltered again.

She saw Page clearly this time.

A woman standing her ground despite injury, blade trembling not with fear but with restraint. Someone who had just realized the same truth and didn't know what to do with it.

And then Lillith looked at the lightning wielder.

He turned toward her, eyes blazing silver-purple, jaw clenched hard enough that his teeth creaked. Sweat and blood traced lines down his face. There was fury there, yes—but beneath it, confusion. Frustration. A dawning horror mirroring her own.

They were all feeling it.

They were all realizing it at once.

"This cave," Lillith whispered, the words torn from her throat by heat and disbelief, "is lying to us."

The lightning wielder flinched.

Just slightly.

But Page heard her.

The battlefield reacted violently.

The ground split open between them, molten light roaring upward as the cave attempted to separate them again, to drown the realization in chaos and force motion back into violence. Ash filled the air, stinging eyes, choking breath.

Page shouted something, but Lillith didn't catch the words; her tone wasn't murderous.

It was desperate.

The cave howled.

Terrain shifted once more, the volcanic hellscape collapsing inward into a vast, tilted arena of black stone and white crystal. Gravity pressed down harder here, heavier, as if the world itself was trying to pin them into place.

Lillith stood at the edge of it, chest heaving, violet blade lowered for the first time since the fight began.

She could still win.

She knew that with terrifying clarity.

Her affinity was perfect for this kind of battlefield. She could bend the odds, redirect fate, nudge a killing blow into inevitability. If she embraced the illusion fully, if she accepted the lie, she could slaughter them both and walk away justified.

But the thought made her stomach twist.

She had spent her life manipulating perceptions, bending desire, twisting outcomes. She had always told herself it was control, not cruelty. Choice, not domination.

Killing humans who only looked like monsters would prove that was a lie.

The lightning wielder raised his blade again, uncertain, caught between instinct and dawning understanding. Electricity crackled, then dimmed.

Page didn't attack.

Neither did Lillith.

For a heartbeat stretched into eternity, the three of them stood amid ruin and flame, no longer monsters to each other, but not yet allies either. Just people trapped inside a trial designed to turn fear into violence.

The cave pulsed angrily around them, terrain shuddering, illusions straining to reassert dominance.

Lillith tightened her grip on her sword and lifted her head.

She knew now.

And knowing made the fight far more dangerous than before.

- - - - - -

The realization hit Liam like a misfired strike—sudden, jarring, and impossible to ignore.

He stood with his lightning blade half-raised, electricity crawling sluggishly along its edge, and for the first time since the fight began, his instincts faltered.

Not because of fear.

Not because of pain.

But because something fundamental had shifted beneath his feet, like the ground itself had decided it no longer wanted to lie to him.

The monster in front of him blinked.

That was all it took.

Just a blink.

Not the jerky, predatory twitch of a beast, not the exaggerated movement of something pretending at life, but a human reflex.

Fast.

Unconscious.

Tired.

The kind born from strain and exhaustion, not hunger.

Liam's breath caught in his throat.

The thing he had been fighting, this towering, warped silhouette wreathed in fear and shadow, flickered like a bad reflection on disturbed water. For the briefest instant, the illusion thinned, and he saw her.

Page.

Bloodied. Bruised. Very much human.

Her shoulders sagged for half a second, as if the weight of the monster she was being forced to play finally slipped. Her grip tightened on her sword, not in aggression, but grounding.

His mind reeled.

No, he thought, panic flaring sharp and cold in his chest. That's not possible. The cave—

His gaze snapped sideways.

The seductress.

The creature of violet light and warped reality that had danced through attacks like gravity itself adored her, too graceful, too perfect to be real.

She was breathing hard.

Not theatrically.

Not seductively.

Genuinely.

Her shoulders were tense. Her jaw clenched. Her blade trembled, not with hunger, but restraint, like she was actively stopping herself from crossing a line.

She looked… conflicted.

Human.

The cave screamed.

Not audibly, but through pressure, through force, through a crushing insistence that slammed into Liam's skull and tried to overwrite the thought before it could fully take shape.

The world lurched.

The illusions surged violently, attempting to reassert themselves. The monsters swelled again, shadows thickening, limbs elongating, faces distorting into something monstrous and wrong.

Reality fought back.

Liam staggered a step, boots scraping stone, teeth grinding as the pressure bore down on him like a hand trying to push his face underwater.

"No," he growled through clenched teeth, voice low and furious. "You don't get to do that."

He had lived his entire past life measured against expectations. Against disappointment. Against the crushing weight of never being enough. He knew what it felt like to have truth bent around you until you questioned your own senses—until doubt became easier than belief.

He would not let it happen again. He had vowed to be better in this life.

Lightning flared, not outward, but inward.

He grounded himself.

The pain in his muscles. The ache in his lungs. The copper taste of blood in his mouth. The rough stone beneath his boots.

These were real.

Tangible.

Anchors, no illusion could steal from him.

The illusion cracked.

And this time, it shattered.

The monstrous forms peeled away like smoke caught in a gale, dissolving into nothing as the terrain around them convulsed violently.

The volcanic wasteland collapsed inward, molten rivers evaporating into steam. The freezing winds died mid-howl, air snapping back into stillness. Gravity slammed into place with a bone-jarring thud.

Stone reformed.

Crystal walls rose.

The oppressive, familiar cavern returned, exactly as it had been before the trial twisted it into madness.

Page stood several meters away, sword lowered, red eyes wide with the same dawning comprehension. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, hands shaking, not with fear, but realization.

Lillith stood opposite her, violet blade dimmed, expression unreadable but tight with realization, like someone who had just been caught mid-lie by reality itself.

And Liam stood between them, lightning blade fading to a faint, residual crackle.

Silence fell.

Not the false stillness of illusion, but the heavy quiet that follows truth.

They looked at one another fully now, without distortion, without masks forced upon them.

Three humans.

Battered.

Exhausted.

Alive.

The cave trembled.

Not in anger.

In recognition.

A pressure descended, not crushing, but expansive. Something ancient and vast brushed against their awareness, like a system recalibrating itself after a long error. The trial was no longer testing them.

It was acknowledging them.

Energy stirred deep within Liam's core.

Not mana.

Something older.

Denser.

Murkier.

It moved with intention, not obedience.

He felt it coil alongside his lightning, not replacing it, but intertwining, life and death, creation and destruction, two opposing currents flowing in perfect, unstable harmony.

Dualflow, he realized dimly.

Across from him, Page stiffened as the same power surged through her, black and crimson energy bleeding into her fear-infused aura. Her breath hitched as the force tore through her channels, reforging them, widening them, refusing to let her remain what she had been.

Lillith gasped softly, violet light fracturing as green-black energy erupted from within her chest, wrapping around her affinity and reshaping it into something sharper, more absolute, less temptation, more inevitability.

The cave shook violently now.

Cracks raced across the crystal walls, glowing with murky green light, humming with a power that felt both welcoming and merciless.

Then—

It happened.

All three of them ignited at once.

A wave of murky green dualflow energy exploded outward from their bodies, colliding in the center of the cavern with a thunderous, reality-warping shockwave. The blast tore through stone and crystal alike, suspending debris in midair as if time itself had hesitated, unsure whether to flee or observe.

Liam screamed, not in pain, but in release, as his body was rewritten from the inside out. His energy channels burned, expanded, stabilized. His lightning affinity fused seamlessly with dualflow, no longer bound to a single direction or purpose.

Page dropped to one knee, laughing breathlessly as fear and duality intertwined, her power no longer just emotional manipulation, but existential pressure, something that made reality hesitate to disobey her.

Lillith arched backward as violet and green-black light spiraled together, her seduction of reality deepening into something far more dangerous: influence over outcomes themselves.

The shockwave collapsed inward.

Silence followed.

When the dust settled, the cavern stood whole once more scarred, cracked, but intact.

Three figures remained standing.

No longer initiates.

No longer bound to singular flow.

They had ascended.

Gemini Stage.

Dualflow unlocked.

C-rank Ascendants.

The cave fell quiet at last, as if satisfied.

And somewhere deep within its ancient structure, the trial marked their names—not as survivors, but as equals.

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