The Ascender's Legacy [A CHAOTIC STORM LITRPG]

The cultivation chamber was cold and silent save for the unsteady rhythm of Matharantha's ragged breathing. Her reflections, fractured and scattered across thousands of mirrors, seemed to follow her every move—a distorted, mocking chorus of her existence.

Most simply stared at her, but others bore eerie smiles, and a small few almost seemed giddy, their emotions beckoning her to take that last step over the edge. To plunge into the abyss that was the mirrorverse, where her soul shard would undoubtedly be snatched and her body inhabited by another.

Shuddering, Matharantha looked away, squeezing her eyes shut as if to block out the eerie whispers. But there was no escape from the reflections. They were everywhere, magnified and multiplied by the misaligned array of mirrors. Each one a different version of her. Each a reminder of something she couldn't entirely control.

Despite her best efforts, their eerie whispers wormed their way into her brain, like maggots tearing into spoiled food.

Matharantha jerked, shaking her head back and forth to dispel the whispers, but that only seemed to agitate them further. Reflection essence vibrated all around her in response to her rising panic, swirling and undulating like threads of crystal light.

Her core pulsed erratically within her, ready to evolve and plunge into the abyss. She could feel it—the promise of power. It roared in her mind, beckoning like a promise of unlocked potential. But as the pressure built, so too did the familiar dread that had haunted her for decades.

The Reflection affinity was a churning sea of madness and fractured souls. She could feel the ripples in her mind already. Her body was ready. Her core was ready. Every fiber of her being was ready. But Matharantha was not.

Taking the step forward wouldn't necessarily mean death or loss of identity, but the possibility was too high for Matharantha to risk. Moreover, it had happened once already.

Fear bubbled within her, raw and unrestrained. It clawed at her throat, filling her mind with images of the time she had delved into this pool and almost died. She had lost herself then—who was to say she wouldn't do so again?

Her hands trembled, her skin cold, sweat slicking her palms. The mirrorverse was hungry; she could feel it. It wanted her soul, wanted to pull her into its depths again, to fracture her mind just as it had years ago.

She could feel it drawing closer, like a looming shadow growing darker with every moment she contemplated it.

Sighing, she opened her eyes again, only to be confronted by the illusion of a reflection crawling out of the mirror. Before her very eyes, the mirror's surface rippled, and a hand reached out, twisting and writhing as it took a shape that was both familiar and alien.

Matharantha paused as the reflection completely emerged—a perfect replica of her. Its bone-white hair moved just like hers, and it bent its neck in the exact same way she usually did. It was the same reflection that had spoken to her the last time, but it seemed to have grown even more perfect.

The reflection smiled, and Matharantha furiously shook her head again, whispering to herself. "No. It's not real. It's not real. If it was, somebody would have stepped in by now."

True to her words, the reflection disappeared the next time she opened her eyes, yet the looming sense of threat failed to diminish. It hovered over her, whispering seductive tales of fragments of her soul lost to the mirrorverse—of versions of her that had never existed in this world, echoing only in the mirrored void of her affinity.

Their voices filled her mind, an eerie cadence that threatened to shatter what little of her consciousness she'd managed to put back together. No matter how many times she tried to quiet the voices, they rose back up, louder and louder, until it was all she could hear.

"I can't… I can't do this," she cried out. "I don't want to lose myself again. I can't…"

But the reflections were relentless. Their whispers grew louder, pressing against her mind until Matharantha could no longer withstand it. Trembling, she lurched to her feet, her body instinctively seeking to flee the mounting chaos.

She reached for the nearest mirror, ignoring the grin her reflection wore as it mirrored her movements. The mirror's surface rippled, distorting the image of the smiling reflection, but before she could escape, the chamber door creaked open, and Aldric stepped inside, his purple irises aglow with a reddish haze she identified as the effects of an amplifier.

His footsteps were calm, unhurried, cutting through the tension and fear that gripped her like a vice. He smiled at her—an expression so nurturing that Matharantha nearly collapsed from the utter security it provided. He stretched a hand toward her and waited, making a conscious decision to let her be the one to accept his help.

When she hesitated, he whispered, "Don't run from your fears, Matharantha. You can do this."

"I can't do it, Aldric." Matharantha shook her head, her arms still outstretched toward the mirror. "I can feel the abyss looming, hoping for me to fail. My reflections crowd me constantly, their whispers a constant attack on my sanity. I'm not ready."

"And maybe that's true," Aldric whispered, hands still outstretched. "But running from this won't solve anything. You know that. We spoke about this."

Matharantha shuddered. "I know, I know, but now that I'm staring into the abyss, I can't. I just—"

"It's alright, calm down," Aldric said, taking a single step forward as Matharantha's agitation spiked. "I know it's hard and scary. I don't have to imagine how hard and scary this is for you. I feel it intimately. But that's why I'm here. To help you. You're not alone."

Matharantha shuddered, her entire body vibrating as she struggled between running away from her fears and accepting his help. Aldric remained where he was, conveying his sympathy and empathy through his gaze until she finally pulled her arms back from the rippling mirror.

Aldric let out a subtle sigh of relief at that, his own heart beating erratically as he took another step toward the agitated woman. He could feel the flood of doubts threatening to overwhelm her and a mountain of fear pressing down on her, but he made no move to manipulate it or even touch it.

He needed to establish trust with her right now, and he could only do that by meeting her with full sincerity. Her arms dropped further, and Aldric took another step forward. With each step, he earned her trust until he reached her, clasped her arm, and caressed it gently.

"Your mind is not a battlefield," he said softly. "It's a cathedral. You just forgot how to pray in it. Why not let me remind you?"

Matharantha swallowed nervously and shook her head. "No, I… I don't want anyone in my mind. It's not safe for empaths."

Aldric smiled. "Well, good for you. I'm no ordinary empath. I'm the tyrant of boundless empathy."

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Matharantha smiled sadly, having heard those words a hundred times this past week. "Are you sure you can do this?" I can't handle another death—"

"I'm sure." Aldric cut her off with a warm smile. "Now let me help you."

Matharantha inhaled deeply, the weight of her fear pressing against her chest. After a long moment, though, she nodded—just barely. But that was all the consent Aldric needed.

Without hesitation, he dove into the churning pool of emotions swirling within her and grasped it tightly. It should have been impossible, but with the amplifier strengthening his abilities, it was barely a challenge.

His breath hitching, he tightened his hold on her emotions and began to pull them apart. Every emotion was sharp and raw, like jagged rocks scraping against his mind. They resisted every pull, twitching as if alive, and in a way, they were.

With an almost surgical focus, Aldric pulled Matharantha's emotions apart until he reached the very core of her problem: fear. It was old—the trauma that had shaped her and left her in a coma for years. He could see it finally, buried deep beneath layers and layers of doubts and insanity, tangled in a mist of fractured memories and mental shadows.

But seeing the core of the problem was only the beginning. Pulling on a large amount of his willpower pool, Aldric reached toward the core with mental fingers, straining to push past all the mental defenses it had erected to protect itself.

His senses dug deeper, and deeper, and deeper…

Until finally, his mental fingers brushed against something cold—a thick bundle of writhing fear that nearly made him recoil. But Aldric steeled himself, refusing to pull away. Instead, he grasped the core with a vice-like grip and wrenched it free, pulling at it like a weed from the earth.

The core resisted, wriggling and twisting, desperate to stay buried, but Aldric's hold on it was firm. With a sharp exhale, he drew on the quintessence of two full seals at once and activated {Empathic Thief}.

Heat exploded within him, so much that steam rose from his skin in waves. {Tyrant of Boundless Empathy} flared, and the core unraveled in an instant, evaporating like smoke in the wind.

Matharantha gasped, her entire body shuddering as the fear that had held her back all her life was finally torn away. She collapsed against him, breath ragged, as the haunting thoughts that had plagued her for decades diminished to distant echoes.

For the first time in nearly fifty years, Matharantha felt her affinity unfurl without the weight of fear and trauma distorting it. It was bliss, utter and complete.

For a long moment, there was silence.

The air around her felt lighter, free from the tension that had shackled her for ages. And as her fear dissipated, something else took its place: a new awareness.

It was subtle at first, like a shift in the air, an echo of clarity that hadn't been there before.

Slowly, Matharantha lifted her gaze. She looked around the chamber, her eyes falling on the reflections that had always haunted her. In the past, they had been monstrous, twisted, gnawing at her from the edges of her mind. They had been shadows of doubt, fear, and failure—each one a fragment of her past traumas, an image of who she could have been had she taken different paths, reminders of her weaknesses.

But now, without the fear clouding her vision, she saw them differently. They were still eerie figures, but rather than instilling fear, they sparked curiosity. They were... her. Her thoughts, her emotions, her experiences. Each one a fragment—grieving, angry, quiet, proud. Broken, but not wrong. Painful, but not false.

They were part of her, not enemies to be fought, but facets of herself to be understood. Her affinity was not something to fear—it was a mirror, a reflection of her soul, and the reflections around her were simply echoes of her own journey.

A deep breath filled her lungs, and she felt the weight of years of struggle lift. Not because she had conquered these reflections, but because she understood them. They were no longer something to be feared or avoided; they were truths she had been blind to. And in that realization, she felt something stir deep within her—something born not from fear, but from acceptance.

The realization struck her like lightning, an inspiration so pure it reverberated through her entire being. Her affinity—her Mirrorverse—was not just a place of madness and warring reflections; it was a realm of truth, a mirror that allowed her to see herself completely. It was not about fighting the reflections but embracing them. Understanding them. Seeing them.

For the first time, Matharantha smiled at her reflections. Her core pulsed with anticipation as the reflections smiled back. She was no longer the woman who feared her own reflection. She was the woman who could see it for what it truly was: a guide. A mirror to her truth.

With that understanding, inspiration struck her in full force.

Matharantha's breath hitched, her heart raced—but not from fear. This was something else entirely. Excitement. Wonder. Heat exploded within her as the origin plane of reflections unfurled around her in all its glory, chaotic whispers beckoning her to claim what was rightfully hers.

With the excitement of the child she had once been, Matharantha obeyed the whispers. Wielding the full FORCE of her spirit, she reached deep into the origin plane and pulled.

Chaos rushed into her core, filling it, expanding it, and then—without warning—her core exploded.

Not in a burst of physical force, but in a radiant, reality-shattering eruption that splintered the mirrors of her consciousness into oblivion. The reflections that had once tormented her dissolved, no longer mere fragments of light or glass but illusions of reality itself, and they shattered into nothingness.

The chamber around her dissolved with them, the very concept of reflection twisting and folding in on itself. Time faltered—a stutter, a glitch in the fabric of the universe. Then it halted, and like a broken clock, everything stood still.

Only for a fleeting moment. Then chaos erupted again.

Light bent, shattered, and reformed as reality itself was torn apart and painted anew. The air folded inward, contorting space into impossible geometries. What had once been a confined chamber stretched into infinity, becoming a hall of boundless truths where every version of herself, every possibility, collided and bled together in a swirling maelstrom of reflections.

Aldric watched it all with wide eyes, his senses locked onto her emotions as they surged in an ever-growing arc of elation, pain, and rapture. As her emotions expanded, so did his senses to contain them. An inspiration began to stir within him, but before it could take shape, a portal tore open beside him, and Artemis yanked him through with urgent force.

He tumbled back into the watch room an instant later, but Aldric barely noticed as his gaze snapped to the screen. His eyes widened as he watched Matharantha rise slowly into the air, hair billowing around her as if caught in an otherworldly wind. Light fractured into the chamber—ancient and unnatural, bearing with it a thousand shards of Matharantha's consciousness, all the parts she had stripped away.

The light bathed her in its radiance, returning to her the essence of her full potential. It bled into her spirit from every corner of existence. Mirrors shattered, disintegrating into dust before reforming as entirely new configurations, different pieces melding together in impossible combinations.

Then, with a force that threatened to tear the chamber apart, her transformation began.

Her body trembled, skin rippling as her very form shifted. Every cell, every fiber of her being, was restructured and enhanced. Her bones twisted, reshaped, and solidified with the strength of fundamental truth. Her eyes, once clear and perceptive, began to change. Her pupils dissolved into pure glass, and her irises swirled, becoming endless pools of crystalline clarity—transparent and infinite. They no longer reflected the world; they were the world. Her gaze had become a window to every possible reality, a reflection of every potential path.

Her soul, her spirit, her very core resonated with the raw energy of existence itself. Her consciousness expanded, stretching across space and folding through time. She was no longer bound by fear, no longer trapped by the reflections of her own limitations. The glass that had been her prison was gone. She was free.

Her core pulsed with the intensity of rebirth. A profound transformation surged through her, like the tearing of reality's very fabric. The ascension from Tier 99 to Tier 100. This was not simply evolution—it was transcendence. She had become Mythic.

Slowly, she turned her gaze toward them, staring through the screen with those impossible eyes. Her form rippled—and in the next instant, she stood before them in the watch room. Massive pressure exploded outward. Her aura descended like a crushing weight, forcing everyone to their knees—everyone except General Lucas, who simply smiled and said, "I'm proud of you, Matharantha. You overcame your fear."

She stared at him for a long moment, then shifted her gaze to Aldric. "I didn't overcome my fear. He did. And now... he's going to work for me."

Aldric shook his head. "No, no, I'd really rather not work for anyone."

Matharantha tilted her head slightly, her voice as smooth and sharp as glass. "I owe you a debt, Aldric Brystion. I must pay it. I am Mythic now—trust me when I say... working for me is a gift."

Aldric thought about it for a moment, glanced at the other champions, and then licked his lips. "What would I even do?"

"What you do matters less than what you'll learn." She stepped closer, eyes as clear and infinite as mirrors. "And I have much to teach."