The moment I stepped through the rift, the world around me shifted. The wasteland and the ruined academy vanished, replaced by the suffocating darkness of an ancient corridor. The air here was thick. Not just with dust and dampness, but with something heavier. Something unseen, pressing down like an unspoken warning.
I moved forward, my boots making only the faintest sound against the cracked stone floor. The ruined academy stretched before me in eerie silence. Towering walls, once majestic, now stood crumbling, their surfaces veined with thick roots that had forced their way through stone. The torches lining the halls had long since burned out, leaving only the occasional flicker of ghostly blue light emanating from cracks in the walls.
This place wasn't just abandoned.
It was alive.
A distant sound reached my ears. A low, drawn-out groan, followed by the scrape of something dragging across stone. I halted, listening. It wasn't human.
Then, footsteps. Rushed, panicked.
I turned toward the sound, stepping through the corridor's archway.
Down the hall, a group of students ran through the dim passage, their ragged breaths and hurried steps echoing against the ruined walls. They were covered in dirt, their uniforms torn. One of them clutched his arm, blood soaking through his sleeve. Another held a sword, its edge trembling in his grip.
They weren't just running. They were being chased.
I followed their gaze to the darkness behind them. Shadows shifted unnaturally, bending and twisting in ways they shouldn't. Something was there. Watching. Then it moved.
A mass of writhing limbs and indistinct features slithered from the darkness, its shape flickering between solid and mist, as if reality itself rejected its existence. It had no eyes, yet I could feel its gaze upon us.
A wraith, one of the ruin's many cursed remnants.
It lunged.
I moved faster.
A fracture in space split open in front of me, swallowing the creature mid-attack. It shrieked, its distorted cry reverberating through the corridors as the rift snapped shut.
Silence followed. But the danger had not passed.
I turned to the students. "What happened?"
The boy with the bleeding arm swallowed hard. "W-we were searching for supplies when we saw it. It wasn't there at first, then suddenly... the shadows moved, and it attacked."
I glanced at the other two. They were shaken, but still standing.
This was just the beginning.
The academy's ruins weren't merely dangerous. They were hungry. The deeper one ventured, the more the place twisted reality. The weak would crumble. The strong would adapt.
"Stay close," I ordered, stepping forward. "There will be more."
They didn't argue. We continued deeper into the ruins, the cold air growing heavier with each step. Whispers slithered through the corridors and a faint, almost unintelligible, as if voices from another time were trying to reach us. The torches along the walls flickered with blue flames, illuminating murals that had been long forgotten.
Depictions of the old academy. Before its fall. Students training. Instructors guiding them. A grand hall filled with scholars. And then… The destruction.
Figures shrouded in darkness. Creatures not of this world. The collapse of the academy, its once-proud halls swallowed by shadow and fire.
One of the students, a girl with short brown hair, hesitated. "What... what is this place?"
"The past," I said simply, my gaze lingering on the final mural. The last image depicted the headmaster of the fallen academy, standing alone against the darkness and losing. A sudden gust of wind howled through the corridor. The torches sputtered, then extinguished entirely, plunging us into darkness.
And in that darkness… something breathed. We were not alone here.
As the air shifted, not a breeze and not a gust of wind. But something far more unnatural.
The moment we arrived, the ruins responded to our presence. A deep, guttural growl rumbled through the ancient stones. Not human. Not even close. The students tensed, their gazes darting around, hands instinctively reaching for weapons they weren't sure they could use.
I, however, simply watched.
Then—It came.
A monstrous figure erupted from the darkness, moving with unnatural speed. Eyes like molten gold. A body covered in shifting runes, pulsating with ancient power. The remnants of something that once guarded this place.
Before any of the students could react, I moved. Faster than thought. There was no flash of energy, no drawn-out battle and no room for resistance.
I simply raised a finger.
The world shattered around me. Space warped at my command. Chaos Fracture: Absolute Rend.
The creature never even had the chance to breathe. One moment, it lunged. The next—
It was gone.
Erased. Not killed. Not defeated.
Removed from existence. The ruin itself seemed to groan in response, as if acknowledging a force beyond its comprehension.
The students stood frozen. Silent.
Some of them hadn't even seen what happened. One blink, and the threat was simply no more.
The students barely registered what had happened.
Some had turned away, expecting to see blood. Others had flinched, convinced they were about to die.
But when they looked up again. The enemy was gone.
The battlefield fell into silence.
All eyes turned to me.
I said nothing.
Their expressions were a mixture of disbelief and awe. They had seen magic before, seen their own instructors wield powerful spells, but this?
This was something else entirely.
One student swallowed hard. "What… what was that?"
Another murmured under his breath. "He erased them…"
I ignored them and turned toward the ruined temple ahead. This was only the first wave. In the novel, the deeper they ventured, the more this place twisted reality. Monsters weren't the true threat here.
It was the ruin itself.
The students, still shaken, slowly began to move.
For now, the bravest among them took the lead, stepping over the dust. Others followed hesitantly, casting nervous glances at the ruins ahead.
"Stick together," one of the students ordered. "We don't know what's waiting for us."
I knew. And it wasn't just monsters. As we moved deeper into the ruins, the air grew heavier. The oppressive weight of something unseen pressed down on us.
The deeper they ventured, the more the ruin changed them.
I glanced around, already seeing the early signs. A few students had started hearing things. One girl suddenly whipped around, drawing her dagger at empty air.
Another flinched, clutching his head as if something had whispered directly into his mind.
The ruin was testing them.
Twisting their senses.
One by one, it would make them doubt reality. Force them to face fears they didn't know existed. The real danger here wasn't the creatures lurking in the shadows.
It was themselves.
But unlike them, I wasn't affected. The whispers clawed at the edge of my consciousness, trying to twist my perception, trying to make me see illusions of my past.
They failed. My willpower was too strong. I had leveled it to the point where mind manipulation, illusions, and even soul-crippling fear had no effect on me.
Which meant I was the only one here who could see what was real. And right now, a shadow moved. High above, perched along the remains of a broken tower, something watched us.
I locked eyes with it. The moment I did, It vanished.
So. It's already started.
An Unseen Threat.
I knew what this trial was supposed to be.
Students would struggle, some would fall, and only those with the strongest willpower would survive the ruins without losing themselves.
But history won't repeat itself. Because this time, I was here. And whatever that thing was, It just made a mistake.
I had already marked it.
There would be no escape.
***