"Enough dawdling with these rudimentary exercises."
Obsidian's tone broached no argument as he turned on his heel, obsidian cloak whirling. "It is time you bore witness to the true heart of our teachings, Ethan Specular. The chromatic light that binds all realms as one."
Cerulean fell into step alongside the headmaster, chin raised in a look of obvious pride and zeal. "You shall gaze upon the Seven Sacred Hues that birth all matter and spirit from the primordial fount. Behold the Song of Creation made manifest across infinite planes."
Ethan exchanged a wary look with Ava, both of them thoroughly bewildered by the ominous proclamations. He could feel the lingering disorientation from his soulgaze reflection still thrumming through his bones like a discordant vibration.
Ushered onward by their imposing guides, they soon reached a set of towering ironwood doors, their polished surfaces inlaid with intricate patterns of knotwork and fractal spirals. Obsidian traced one hand along an ensigillated groove, and the massive doors ground open with a subterranean groan.
Beyond lay a triangular chamber of cyclopean scale, its walls sweeping up and away into shadowed heights far above. The space's centerpiece stood as an enormous, prismatic pyramid floating unsupported in the center - its every angled surface carved with more bewildering lattices of geometric symbolism.
Ethan couldn't help but let out a low whistle. "What...is all this?"
"The Spectrorium," Cerulean replied, moving toward the great pyramid reverentially. "A three-dimensional icon, transcribed in the elemental language of shape that echoes across all worlds. At its core thrums the Seven Sacred Frequencies of Light that imbue our order with power over the primal forces of creation."
The blue-haired apprentice stopped before the floating colossus, angling her body to one chiseled slope as if allowing its unseen harmonics to pass through her. With the measured grace of one performing a sacred rite, she began chanting in a low, melodic tongue - words that could have been some ancient mantra, or a string of advanced mathematical formulae.
Slowly, a shard of light began burning within the pyramidion, spreading like a viscous liquid until its every facet gleamed with scintillating luminescence. Deep, resonant tones joined Cerulean's chanting, an eerie harmonizing hum that seemed to emanate both around them and directly into Ethan's mind.
The light within the pyramid fragmented further, phasing into distinct wavebands that shimmered and pulsated with their own spectral radiance. Magenta, azure, vermilion - a refracting rainbow of sacred luminosities shone forth in radiant genesis, each hue generating its own sublime overtone amid the rising cosmic chorale.
As the final lambent rays of indigo and violet bloomed outward, Cerulean's chant peaked in a wordless, ululating crescendo before subsiding. All around them, the air seemed to thrum with residual power as the spectrum's afterglow faded gradually, leaving only a sense of deep, charged silence in its wake.
Ethan stood transfixed, unaware of the thin trickle of blood warming his upper lip until Ava tugged at his sleeve.
"Bro, your nose..." She cast a wide-eyed look between him and Cerulean. "What just...happened?"
The apprentice arched one shapely eyebrow, bemused. "Do you not feel it, Reflector? The sublime evocation of primordial light revealing itself to your newborn cosmic senses?"
Ethan opened his mouth to respond, but found his breath caught in his throat. Even after the spectrum's searing brilliance had faded, he could still feel its resonance thrumming within him. An intrinsic, multi-threaded vibration that suffused his entire being, like a tuning fork shivering at the precise frequencies required to unmake reality's very substrate.
Something profound had awoken in that moment, a slumbering potential more infinite than he could fully comprehend.
"What was that?" He finally managed, the words emerging in a hushed rasp. "Those...lights?"
Obsidian materialized at his shoulder, eyes glittering with something like satisfaction...or triumph.
"The Sacred Light is woven into the voidstuff pervading all planes and dimensions, Reflector. Even the shallowest glimpse awakens the extrasensory acumen within those of our kind. In time, you will attune yourself to each wavelength of the luminous spectrum, master their distinct attributes, and wield their powers with utmost discipline."
As he spoke, Obsidian gestured almost reverentially toward the great pyramidion, and its myriad geometric carvings flared with prismatic glyphs that seemed to swim and spiral before Ethan's sensitized sight. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eye sockets, but the undulating symbology only seared itself deeper into his consciousness, each intricate curve and angle now echoing with raw mathematical poesy.
"Behold the language of shape, line and curve, all manifested from the virgin light," Obsidian intoned solemnly. "Speak its truths with unflinching will, and even the most fundamental forces of cosmos will resonate with your commands."
He placed one hand upon Ethan's shoulder, his grip deceptively light for the implacable force behind it.
"In this hallowed Spectrorium, you shall begin to shed your human frailties and awaken your true potential as a wielder of sacred geometries. Here...you will become truly enlightened."
A profound wave of vertigo washed over Ethan in that moment. He felt himself unmoored from all sense of corporeal gravity, adrift in a chromatic expanse of nameless vectors, symbols sheathed in blinding luminance repeating in unending fractal iterations all around him.
An abiding, alien PRESENCE seemed to spiral outward from the sacred pyramid's innumerable facets, ancient and vast and inexorable as the flow of deep time itself. Ethan's newly awakened cosmic senses flensed away at his fraying mortality, leaving only the core tones of his naked, unshielded essence exposed before that primordial immensity.
In that endless instant, he glimpsed infinity's full face...and its perfect geometries threatened to unwrite the core truth of his entire being from existence.
Then, as abruptly as the vision took him, it receded - leaving Ethan on his knees, gasping as if he'd nearly drowned in depthless, alien waters. Nearby, Ava crouched with him, eyes shining with tears and hand clenched in the fabric of his shirt as if she'd felt him slipping away.
Obsidian loomed above them with implacable grandeur. "A taste of what eternity's unfiltered light may reveal..." His tone softened minutely. "I trust this was reason enough to take our teachings to heart, Reflector."
Ethan could only nod weakly, raw existential terror still thrumming in his bones. He wasn't sure what was more harrowing - the Unfolding he'd just borne witness to, or the fact that it was merely the beginning of his indoctrination here in the heart of Obsidian's cosmic mysteries.
It was in that moment he realized that to fully open his soul to the Mirror Realms and walk their infinite pathways...may well require shattering the fragile truth at his very core and reforging it into something fundamentally other.
Something post-human, rendered in perfect transcendent geometry and resonant with the Sacred Hues of Eternity.
Whether he would emerge from that metamorphosis as something blessed or irreparably broken was yet to be determined. But after what he'd just glimpsed, one thing had become profoundly clear:
The mirrors of reality no longer held any edges for Ethan Specular to cling to. From here, there was only the untraveled abyss at creation's heart...and the risk of falling forever into its depthless, fractal waters.