The winding obsidian corridors seemed to go on forever, twisting and branching like the inside of some massive organism. Ethan tried to keep track of their bewildering path, but quickly lost his bearings.
Beside him, Ava kept pace with a look of awe and confusion as she gazed up at the vaulted ceilings far above. Flanking them, the blue-haired apprentice Cerulean walked with an effortless, almost gliding stride. And in the lead, Headmaster Obsidian cut an imposing figure, his cloak of night trailing behind him like a slipstream of void.
At random intervals, ornate windows punctured the corridors, offering fleeting glimpses into vastly alien vistas. Towering jungle canopies of glazed crimson fronds. Sunless cities comprised of cyclonic stairs and structures that seemed to loop endlessly back upon themselves. Auroras of spectral lights dancing across shimmering emerald plains.
Each tantalizing vista made Ethan's head swim more than the last. Were these true windows into the Mirror Realm that Obsidian had spoken of? If so, it was more shocking and infinite than his wildest imaginings.
"This place is like an ant colony," Ava mused in a hushed voice. "All these twisty tunnels and weird windows looking out at crazy worlds." She clutched Ethan's arm, brow furrowed. "Are you sure we should be following these people, bro? This all seems really freaky..."
Ethan didn't have the chance to respond before Obsidian spoke without turning, his voice echoing with clipped finality.
"Rest assured, the disorientating paths we tread are by ancient design, girl." They rounded a corner and a vast atrium opened up before them, its walls stretching endlessly upward to contain the dizzying enormity of...something.
"In time, you will learn to read the flowing geometry all around us - the sacred language of our creators transcribed into every line and curve of Vitreopolis."
Cerulean chimed in eagerly. "The city itself is a map of primordial significance. A three-dimensional cipher revealing the hidden mathematics that bind all realms into one infinite kaleidoscope." Her azure eyes glittered with feverish zeal.
Ethan peered upward into the lofty shadows of the cyclopean space surrounding them and felt his breath catch. Above, tier upon tier of platforms and buttresses spiraled up and outward in hypnotic, twisting patterns - or were they spinning lazily? Up became down and out curved inevitably inward as his gaze traced the infinite, looping geometry.
It was like staring too long into the whorls of a seashell and having the boundaries of scale, dimension and perception stripped away, leaving only the core truth of shape itself.
"What...what is this place?" Ethan's voice sounded very small, very insignificant.
"This great amphitheater is the Obsidian Cathedral." Obsidian never turned, but tilted his head back imperiously to address the sheer, vertiginous heights.
"Carved from the prism light of dead worlds, its every curve and line resonates with the primordial frequencies that birthed and bound our universe. Here, in this black heart of Vitreopolis, the veil between all realities grows immeasurably thin..."
On cue, the mirrored planes and floating platforms comprising the impossible, twisting spire around them blazed with blinding luminescence. Ethan flung up one hand in reflex, glimpsing after-images of towering abstract formations seared onto his vision.
When his sight cleared, it was to behold a series of shapes surrounding them that defied logic or physics - here, gleaming straight edges seemed to curve in upon themselves in infinite loops. There, polished surfaces flickered and shifted between perfectly flat planes and twisting cyclones of corkscrewing geometry.
The impossible geometries danced and flickered, hypnotically cycling through permutations and iterations of shape in constant, flawless flux. It was order made infinite...and chaos rendered sacred.
Something within Ethan resonated in tandem - a tuning fork struck by the hidden, sublime harmonies of the Cathedral's cosmic orchestra. An answering vibration, low and celestial, seemed to hum inside his bones, his very cells.
He sank slowly to one knee, disoriented but rapturous. The boy from Littleroot had glimpsed the face of divinity in the whorls of eternity surrounding him, and it had unmade his entire perception in transcendent, holy revelation.
Peripherally, Ethan was aware of Cerulean casting him an unreadable look, eyes gleaming with secrets. Ava shrank against him, uttering a small sound of fear or awe, he couldn't tell.
But Headmaster Obsidian simply stood unflinching amid the rippling, fractal immensities spiraling in every direction. His figure cast in profane silhouette against the unfolding geometries.
"You were born to this, Reflector." The words fell with arcane finality, hammered into the deltas of Ethan's shaken consciousness. "You are a lens through which infinite planes can be brought into focus. All the realms are open to your kind, should you possess the strength of will to master them."
The headmaster clasped his hands calmly behind his back. "Become worthy, and you shall gaze long into the kaleidoscope...perhaps even emerge with your sanity intact."
With that dire pronouncement hanging in the air, Obsidian turned on his heel and strode from the amphitheater, gesturing curtly for Ethan and the others to follow.
"Come, there is still much to bear witness to before our night's introductions are concluded..."
Ethan cast one last dazed look around the architecturally impossible space, feeling at once profoundly insignificant and uniquely elevated by the experience.
Was this transformative revelation only a glimpse of the mind-shattering wonders yet to come?
As he followed in Obsidian's footsteps, the hairs prickled on the back of Ethan's neck, the cosmic vibrations still tingling through his frame. He could feel the ancient, languid scrutiny of presences far vaster than any mere mortal brushing up against the newly expanded boundaries of his consciousness.
The infinite kaleidoscope of realms had opened its first facets to him. And the more he witnessed of its inscrutable geometries, the more he began to understand the Obsidian Order's dark obsession with maintaining order.
For if one's sanity slipped, even fractionally, all of reality itself may be rent asunder with it.