The world that greeted Kal was ash and smoke, obsidian and fire.
Above him, the sky was a swirling storm of slate-gray clouds that never parted. Below, jagged terrain stretched endlessly in all directions, a landscape carved from black volcanic rock, cracked and steaming. The horizon pulsed faintly, glowing a dull crimson—like a furnace breathing through the mouth of a dying world.
The sun hung low in the sky, a hateful orb that beat down on his back with relentless intensity. There was no wind to offer relief—only the still, suffocating heat that pressed against his skin, making every breath feel thick and heavy. The air tasted dry, like dust and ash, coating his mouth and throat with each breath. It felt too still, unnaturally stagnant, like a world that had stopped breathing.
Kal stood at the edge of a narrow path, a twisted, uneven trail etched into the stone. It stretched forward like a scar, winding through pillars of craggy basalt, steep rises, and jagged descents. Every step ahead looked worse than the last.
[Trial of Endurance Phase One: THE GAUNTLET MARCH]
[Gravity Intensity: 5x Earth Standard]
He blinked. The pressure hit him immediately.
Five times Earth's gravity meant that even breathing took effort. Each heartbeat thudded harder in his chest. His limbs felt heavier, his thoughts slower. It wasn't crushing—not yet—but it was like trying to move through syrup, like his body was being dragged downward by invisible chains.
Then came the weight.
Without fanfare or warning, it slammed down on him—100,000 pounds of invisible force, crashing onto his shoulders like a collapsing mountain.
Kal's knees buckled instantly.
His breath caught. His ribs groaned. For a single heartbeat, he thought he might die. Then—through sheer instinct—he dropped into a low stance, feet braced wide, back arched, muscles straining against the load.
The stone beneath his boots cracked.
He didn't scream. Not yet.
The air shimmered in front of him, and then the voice came—not from behind, not above, but from everywhere at once.
Cruel. Cold. Mocking.
"To succeed, you must cross this land without pause. No rest, no escape. Endure until your strength no longer matters. You will suffer, Kal Kent."
The voice was spiteful, callous, imperious. It ridiculed him. The voice of a cruel god passing judgement upon a worthless ant.
"Begin. You may stop... when your spine turns to dust."
Kal looked up. His vision blurred. A full kilometer of terrain stretched ahead, fractured and cruel. There were no rails. No guidance. No mercy. The path seemed to shimmer at the edges like it wasn't entirely real—like the trial itself wanted him to fall.
He grit his teeth.
He stepped forward.
The first ten steps were manageable, if only barely.
He kept his head low, balancing the weight across his spine and shoulders, every step measured, calculated. The terrain already sloped upward. The jagged rock was pitted and uneven, and he had to shift with every foothold just to keep from toppling.
Then—at the tenth step—he felt it.
A spike. A subtle increase in pressure.
The weight grew.
Not a huge jump. Not enough to crush him instantly. But enough to make his muscles seize. Enough to make his balance wobble, just for a second.
Kal's foot slipped on a ridge of dark stone.
He staggered.
His right knee gave out.
He hit the ground.
The moment his body made contact, everything froze.
"Failure. Again."
There was no sound. No flash of light. No swirling portal.
Just an instantaneous blink.
And Kal was standing at the start again.
Same position. Same stance. Same oppressive weight slamming down on his shoulders.
He looked around.
The path was whole. The stone beneath him uncracked. The journey not yet begun.
His body felt fine—whole again. No injury, no pain.
But his heart was still racing. His lungs still ached. His mind remembered everything.
That fall. The impact. The humiliation.
He snarled and stepped forward again.
Ten steps.
Weight increased.
Fifteen.
He breathed through the burn.
Twenty.
The weight increased again.
Twenty-five.
The rocks grew uneven.
Thirty.
His vision dimmed around the edges. Another increase.
Thirty-one—
His ankle twisted on a sharp incline, and the sudden shift pulled his center of gravity off.
The weight drove him down like a hammer.
His body crumpled.
"Failure. Again."
Blink.
He was back.
Fresh again.
Whole again.
And carrying ten thousand pounds at five times Earth's gravity.
The cruelest thing about it wasn't the pain.
It was the reset. The illusion of rest.
Every time he failed, he was sent back to the beginning. And though his injuries healed, the burden remained. The starting weight returned. The gravity never let up.
It was like drowning, only to be pulled back up for air—and then shoved under again.
Over and over.
Kal walked.
Again.
And failed.
Again.
The third try ended when the ground shifted beneath his feet, slipping and knee buckling.
Fourth, he pushed too hard, too fast, lost his balance.
Fifth, his legs gave out. A full-body collapse. He didn't even catch himself.
Each time,
"Failure. Again."
And each time: blink, reset, begin.
There was no timer. No end marker in sight. The system offered no hints. No encouragement. No mercy.
The voice didn't even seem interested in his suffering. It was just doing its job. A cold, automated arbiter of pain.
Kal didn't cry. Not yet. But the fury in his chest was beginning to boil.
He adjusted his footing.
Took another breath that felt like breathing ash.
And stepped forward once more.
Kal had lost count of how many times he had fallen.
Each time he awoke at the beginning, pain-free but heavy with rage. Every reset left behind no bruises, no scars—but his soul remembered. The shame. The strain. The helpless, humiliating moments when his strength failed and the weight drove him down into the stone.
The cruel voice never changed.
"Failure. Again."
And every time he blinked back to the start, the path loomed ahead—unchanged in distance, but somehow more threatening. As if it knew he would fail. As if it were waiting for it.
He grew smarter. More cautious. He began counting his steps with grim precision, each one a heartbeat of agony.
At ten steps the weight increased.
At twenty it did again.
By one hundred, his breath came in ragged bursts. Sweat soaked through his shirt and ran in streams down his arms. The gravity made every drop feel like molten lead, dragging him further into the ground.
At one-fifty, he was limping.
Two hundred… he had to bite his lip so hard it bled just to stay focused.
And still, he fell.
Each time the system returned him to the start, his body renewed but his resolve cracked a little more.
Somewhere around his eighth or ninth attempt, something changed.
Not in him—but in the trial.
The terrain shifted.
At first, it was subtle. A gentle tremor beneath his feet as he climbed over a narrow ledge, a faint hiss of steam from a new fissure in the ground. The jagged stones grew sharper, the inclines steeper. The path narrowed just slightly—enough to force him to step more carefully, to edge sideways around rock formations that hadn't been there before.
It wasn't just heavy now.
It was hostile.
The mindscape was adapting to him. Reacting. Trying to break him.
Kal could feel it in his bones—that this wasn't some preset obstacle course. It was alive in the way a storm is alive. A force of nature. A punishment crafted specifically for him.
Step 250.
The stone underfoot crumbled just slightly as he moved. A hairline fracture, nearly invisible—but enough to make his ankle twist half a degree.
He recovered. Barely.
Step 300.
Another weight increase.
He grunted, sweat blinding him. The steam was thicker here, hissing from the ground in stinging waves. Every breath burned.
Step 400.
The path tilted to one side, like a ship at sea. Just a few degrees—but with the weight on his back, it felt like the world was trying to tip him over.
Step 500.
His foot came down on what looked like solid stone—and it crumbled.
He dropped to one knee with a grunt, barely keeping upright.
His heart thundered. Not from fear, but from the sheer effort of resisting the urge to scream.
Step 550.
The stone ahead split open with a slow, grinding sound. A fresh crack tore through the path, splitting it down the middle.
A test. A trap.
Kal stepped over it without hesitation. The weight felt like it had at least doubled, maybe tripled since the start. Every breath was fire, every movement a negotiation with agony. His skin was slick, his hair plastered to his face, his vision swimming with heat and pain.
And still he walked.
He failed again.
And again.
And again.
Sometimes after step 400.
Sometimes after 650.
Once—he nearly made it past step 850.
He could see the end of the path then—just a blurry glimmer in the red haze—but his foot slipped on a shifting plate of obsidian. A single misstep.
His head struck the stone.
The weight crushed him into the ground.
"Failure. Again."
Kal screamed when he returned to the start.
Not from pain. From rage.
He slammed his fists into the earth hard enough to shatter it. Chunks of volcanic glass exploded around him. The sky roared overhead, echoing his fury.
Then, without pausing, without breathing, he stood and stepped forward again.
There were no breaks. No encouragement.
The trial offered nothing but pain.
But Kal was learning something—something crueler than gravity, sharper than the obsidian underfoot.
He was learning humility.
He had come to this world with power. With strength that made him feel untouchable.
But here—in this forsaken crucible—none of that mattered.
It didn't care who he was.
Didn't care what crest he bore.
Didn't care about his morals, or dreams, or reasons.
All it cared about was whether he could walk.
Whether he could endure.
Whether he could suffer.
And still move forward.
The next time he passed the 900-step mark, the ground screamed beneath him.
It cracked and shifted like a puzzle rearranging itself. Chunks of rock jutted from the walls at random. One nearly clipped his shoulder, and he had to twist violently to avoid it.
The twist cost him his footing.
The weight punished him.
He dropped like a felled tree.
"Failure. Again."
Back at the start.
Again.
His eyes burned, but he couldn't cry. The gravity made even his tears too heavy to fall.
He walked anyway.
Kal no longer knew how many attempts he had made.
Fifteen?
Twenty?
He had stopped counting. It no longer mattered.
All that mattered was the next step.
And the next.
And the next.
By now, the terrain felt like it was alive. Angry.
Steam vents burst open suddenly beneath his feet, forcing him to leap—barely staying upright. Stone pillars toppled in his path. The trail cracked underfoot at random, and sometimes even tried to split under him as he passed.
It didn't want him to win.
It didn't even want him to survive.
The weight on his back had gone from oppressive to torturous. His muscles throbbed with every heartbeat. His arms ached from stabilizing the load. His legs felt like they were made of iron, brittle and hollow and ready to break.
And yet, he had learned to fall forward.
To stumble and recover. To catch himself before he went down.
To balance agony and endurance.
Step 930.
The path ahead writhed.
Not metaphorically. It moved, subtly, like a living thing exhaling in its sleep. Stone rippled. Cracks sealed and opened. The obsidian landscape surged beneath him like the crust of a waking world.
Kal gritted his teeth, adjusting to a new shift in the incline—one that wasn't there moments ago. The earth was curving now, rising in a slow, vicious arc, turning the final seventy steps into a climb.
A climb under thousands of times his body weight, amplified by five times Earth's gravity.
Every tendon in his legs screamed. His knees trembled. His hands dug into the strap across his shoulders, bracing the invisible load that bore down like a collapsed building.
He staggered up the incline.
Step 940.
The ground hissed.
Steam burst from a vent beside his foot. The heat blistered his skin, and he snarled through the pain, leaning forward like a man walking through a hurricane.
Step 950.
The air changed.
It was thicker here—syrupy, like walking through congealed fog. Each breath dragged through his lungs like paste, slow and cloying. His vision swam. Shapes moved in the fog ahead—shadows that flitted just out of focus.
He didn't trust them.
He didn't stop.
Step 960.
The weight felt like it might crack his spine.
His arms had long since gone numb, the tendons frozen in tension. His back was a furnace of pain. Every step was a negotiation with collapse.
He saw a figure in the mist.
It stood in the path ahead—tall, cloaked in shadow, unmoving.
Kal blinked hard. His mind was faltering. Hallucinations? Or something else?
He kept walking.
Step 970.
The figure took a step toward him.
It had no face. Just a silhouette carved from black flame, flickering at the edges. It raised one hand—
—and the path snapped under Kal's right foot.
He stumbled forward, leg plunging into a fresh fracture.
The weight twisted with him.
He flailed, nearly going down.
'No.'
He roared and drove his other foot forward, dragging his trapped leg out. The sharp obsidian tore into his calf as he hauled himself upright.
He took another step.
Step 975.
Blood poured down his leg. It hit the ground with a soft hiss, steaming.
He didn't stop.
Step 980.
The fog grew thicker. Now it was whispering.
He heard voices.
Some were familiar.
Some were not.
One sounded like his mother, begging him to stop. Another was a language he didn't recognize but somehow understood—ancient, cold, inhuman.
He shut them out.
Step 985.
The terrain pitched sideways.
The incline jerked under his feet, suddenly tilting to the left. The path cracked along the center, fissures opening into a chasm that hadn't been there before.
Kal's foot hit the slope.
He slipped.
His knees buckled.
'No.'
He threw himself forward, landing on all fours. The weight bore down like a god's hand. His elbows nearly snapped. Blood burst from his mouth as his ribs compressed.
'MOVE.'
Step 986.
Crawling.
That was all he could do.
Not because he was weak, but because upright walking was no longer possible.
The path was a knife's edge now, narrow as a balance beam, sloped and steaming and cracked. Wind howled through unseen crevices, echoing with mockery.
The burden hadn't stopped increasing.
He felt like Atlas.
Except this wasn't the sky.
This was hell.
Step 990.
He stopped for just one second.
Just one breath.
The weight surged.
He bit through his tongue. Pain blinded him.
His knee slipped again.
The obsidian edge opened like a mouth beneath him.
NO.
He screamed, body twitching, and heaved himself forward with a noise that wasn't human. Rage gave him momentum. His palms tore open on the volcanic stone. Bone showed through.
Step 995.
He saw the end.
The plateau.
Five more steps.
Five.
The voice hadn't spoken in hours.
Not the cruel one. Not the cold one.
Silence reigned here—except for the rasp of his breath and the wet drag of his limbs.
Step 996.
The path buckled.
One last test.
The stone cracked and split in three directions.
He didn't hesitate. He lunged.
Step 997.
He was on the correct path. He knew it. There was no logical reason—just instinct.
He dragged himself upright on one leg.
Took a step.
Step 998.
He collapsed.
But he didn't fall.
His knees hit stone.
His hands slapped down beside him.
He pushed up.
Step 999.
The wind vanished.
Everything stilled.
Only one step left.
Kal rose to his feet.
The weight threatened to drive him through the planet.
His bones screamed. His heart thundered like a war drum. His breath was a blade in his throat.
Step 1000.
He stood.
At the edge.
On the plateau.
A long pause.
Silence.
"Phase One Complete."
Kal swayed.
He didn't know whether he would vomit or cry.
There was no applause. No victory. No comfort.
Just those three words.
He dropped to his knees.
The burden vanished.
Not slowly. Not gradually.
Instant.
Gone.
He hit the ground with a gasp, body lurching forward. Every muscle shook with aftershocks. His head hit the ground. He didn't feel the pain.
Just the weight of existence.
The silence lingered for a moment.
The next path opened.
And the trial wasn't over.