The first section was memory: a sequence of lava blocks that blinked in a pattern—red, blue, green, skip, red. His fingers danced. Jump, shift-lock, spin, jump. Easy. He’d done it a hundred times.
Then he faded.
Leo leaned back. The screen went black.
In the forgotten server farm where Gamenora lived, a single line of code flickered. The ghost of a boy in a red shirt sat down on a pixelated flower and smiled.
Someone understood.
The floor became a perfect reflection of the ceiling. Up was down. Left was right. Your own shadow clone ran toward you, mimicking your every move. To survive, you had to do the opposite of what your instincts screamed. When the clone jumped left, you slid right. When it paused, you sprinted.
The clone dashed forward. Leo backflipped. The clone spun. Leo crouched. For ten agonizing seconds, they were a perfect negative image. Then, with a final, silent agreement, the clone shattered into pixels.
Then came the third section. The killer. “The Mirror Walk.”