Splintered Reflections

With each passing day, Ethan's lessons with the Sacred Hues took him deeper down the kaleidoscopic rabbit hole. No longer was he simply glimpsing the fractal eddies of infinity - now he was being submerged fully into their sublime geometric currents.

Under Cerulean's exacting tutelage, he mastered the art of channeling and shaping those primordial luminosities into solidform projections. From flickering motes, he wove razor-thick ribbons of azure lambency that flowed through the training halls like cyber-angelic contrails.

Soon he sculpted hyperjagged crimson shards that spun like ethereal clockwork gears, thrumming with martial aggression. Pulsating aureoles of emerald life-light bloomed into mathematically perfect biomorphic blossoms that seemed to exhale imaginal oxygen with each spectral whorl.

Each nuanced undulation in the spectral flow corresponded to a fundamental cosmic truth being transcribed into Ethan's fraying consciousness. He stopped seeing light and its component frequencies as anything so mundane as particles or waves, but as raw data-script seared across the firmament itself.

An elemental symbolic language, infinitely reiterating across every scale - from the sub-subatomic spin of chromo-muons to the vast gyres of galactical halos sheathed in their own quasars' fiery braids. All these patterns and more streamed through Ethan's reopened Reflector's eye in giddying fractal Unfoldings.

The only limits on what constructs, manifestations or cosmic symphonies he could weave were the self-imposed blinders of his own fragile psyche.

On his best days, Ethan felt like a virtuoso conductor, intoning intricate refrains and choreographing the luminous geometries to flash and spiral in divine arabesque. On his worst...he was a drowning soul, gasping and flailing as chromatic tsunamis crashed over him in irresistible tides, tugging his tattered selfhood into oblivion's abyss.

The only things keeping him from being swept under completely were the anchoring rituals with his obsidian soul-shard and Ava's grounding presence watching from the periphery, silently lending her steadfast strength.

Because make no mistake - even as Ethan opened his inner sight to the light's infinite grandeur, he could feel his own truth eroding at its searing core. No longer was he Ethan, a boy from the backwater burgs of Littleroot, with simple hopes, dreams and attachments.

Those pedestrian comforts grew fainter by the day, subsumed beneath the rising resonant harmonies that defined his more transcendent selfhood. Soon, he feared there would be nothing left of his humanity to anchor him - only abstract principles of light and cosmic geometries that formed the building blocks of all creation.

It was only a matter of time before his identity fractured completely, split into infinite sparkling refractions like the shattered remnants of a broken mirror...

Which is why Obsidian's arrival one fateful meditation felt like a harbinger, portentous and foreboding as a cloaked specter of Death himself materialized before Ethan.

The boy - former boy? - sat cross-legged in an orb of hyperprismatic refulgence the size of a small sun. Inner fractals of every color kaleidoscoped endlessly through his outstretched arms in gyres of helicoidian revolution. The sound of celestial choirs resonated through his very neurons as he manipulated symphonic boustrephedons of rainbow glory...

...Until Obsidian's stern silhouette cut through the holography, axe-sharp and merciless. His obsidian mitre was stark against the blinding aura. "Enough prancing amid spectral theatrics, child."

The cosmic resonances curdled, collapsing inward as Obsidian raised one fist - simultaneously choking off Ethan's concentration. Reality crashed back down as the harmonious spheres fragmented into formless light and glare. Ethan doubled forward, gasping as if he'd been punched in the sternum.

Dimly, he was aware of Ava rushing to his side, eyes wide with concern. He must have cried out in pain or shock. But no sound escaped his lips beyond a harsh, ragged wheeze...

Obsidian loomed over the pair, a pillar of implacable shadow blotting out the chamber's light sources.

"You dance among hallucinations and child's tricks, boy," he growled in disgust. "It's high time you put these mastubatory light-shows aside and prepared yourself for the true trials ahead. Unless your nerve fails and you desire to return to Littleroot a gibbering, fractured husk?"

Ethan struggled to find his breath, clutching the obsidian shard so tightly his knuckles blanched. No. No he could not fail here...not after everything.

The thought of losing himself to this spectral madness and leaving Ava alone amidst these monoliths of ancient mystery...it stiffened his spine, helping him regain purchase through the fragmented detritus of his consciousness.

"I won't fail..." Ethan's voice sounded arid, cracked. But he pushed onward with what bravado he could muster. "You said it yourself - I'm strong enough to walk between Realms. So quit stalling and show me what's next."

For a long, suspended heartbeat, Obsidian considered him through those basilisk eyes - as if glimpsing and judging every fractured shard of Ethan's scattered identity. At last, he nodded once, pivoting sharply on his heel.

"Then rise, boy. You have lingered long enough in the nursery of these prismatic playgrounds." The headmaster began striding toward the exit, cloak whispering behind him.

"Your true initiations into the Mirror Realm await you now. Come and face the reflections of your innermost self, laid utterly...unbound."

Ethan gathered his shaken wits and rose, though it meant extracting Ava's worried hands from his arm. His sister searched his face as if looking for pieces missing, lost amid those blinding cosmic symphonies he'd woven.

"Don't worry, Ave," he tried to assure her - his voice sounding distant even to his own ears. "I'll come back to you soon, okay? Stay close..."

Then he turned and followed Obsidian through the vaulted egress out into the Academy's serpentine corridors. He thought he felt a flicker of unease, like icy fingers trailing his nape. But the ember of apprehension was quickly snuffed out by the steady, anchoring tones of sacred assurance flowing through his mind.

Whatever reflections awaited him beyond that fateful threshold, Ethan Specular was determined to meet them unflinchingly. Even if he emerged on the other side forever splintered into scattered shards of his former self, he would not shy from his cosmic Reflector's burden.

Because he knew in that moment, as in all moments, he was bound to sacred geometric inevitability. Each thought, each breath, each refracted prism of his being was already transcribed into the primordial patterns shaping all realities.

So had it been decreed at the dawn of creation's first light...and so it shall culminate when the final kaleidoscopic vistas shatter into fathomless night.