Light faded. The white chamber trembled.
Kieran didn't fall—he was taken.
In an instant, space folded like paper, and his body was flung across dream-realms. Cold air struck him. Branches whipped past.
He landed hard on ash-covered ground.
A forest surrounded him—one where the trees had no tops, only jagged trunks that split into open sky. Ash rained down like snow. The air was too still. Too quiet.
Then the stillness broke.
A sound—low, guttural, grinding like stone dragged across bone—rippled through the trees. The ground trembled. The shadows twisted.
It stepped from the dark.
A Bronze-Rank Wretch. The Trial Beast.
Taller than the ruined pines, its body was a mass of sinew and bone, skin shifting with runes that bled. It had no face—only a ring of eyes, circling its head like a crown. Each blinked independently, some wide with hunger, others shut in pain. Its limbs were too many, too long, jointed wrong. And in its chest, where a heart should have beat, there was only a burning hole, bleeding darkness.
Kieran ran.
Not in fear, but in calculation. The moment it charged, he had already mapped the terrain: shattered roots, narrow clearings, broken stone. His feet moved before thought.
It followed, howling. Where it stepped, the ground fractured. Shadows bled from its wounds and coiled like snakes. One lash of its arm shattered a boulder beside him. Another carved a trench in the earth.
Kieran dove, rolled, slashed.
His blade—born of dream and will—bit into its side. It howled. The shadows surged. One tendril struck him full in the chest and hurled him against a tree. Bark split. His ribs screamed.
He coughed blood.
The beast loomed above him. A dozen eyes stared. Shadows reached.
He whispered something.
The beast paused.
Kieran's hand closed around a fallen shard—not metal, but glass from the sea he had walked in before. Memory forged into weapon.
He stabbed upward.
The shard pierced the beast's throat—or where its throat should have been. It convulsed. The runes on its body flared and dimmed. Kieran scrambled to his feet, drew his blade, and with a cry that tore his voice in half, drove it into the beast's heart-hole.
Light exploded.
The beast screamed.
And then—it was gone.
All around him, the world of the trial cracked and shuddered. His blade flickered with dying light. His body ached with wounds too deep for the waking world, but he remained standing.
He had survived.
He had killed it.
And the trial was over.
The sky above the shattered dream began to collapse inward, like a dome folding into a star. Light flared—blinding, absolute—and then, with a chime like meaning itself, everything shifted.
Kieran found himself once again in the white chamber—the space with no walls, only echoes.
A chime, clear and resonant, rang out in the air—not from metal, but from meaning. Light pooled above Kieran's head, swirling into shape.
A circle hovered, inscribed with shifting runes and constellations. It turned slowly, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
Then a voice—neither male nor female, older than language—echoed through the chamber.
"Subject: Kieran Thorne."
"Age: Nineteen cycles."
"Gender: Male."
"Trial Status: Completed. Threat Level: Obsidian. Survival Margin: 3.4%."
"Assessment: Unorthodox methods. High resilience. Critical instinct activation."
"Appraisal: Worthy."
The runes rearranged. The circle expanded, became three—interlocking, orbiting one another. Within them, symbols began to emerge:
A flame burning upside down.
An eye split in half.
A blade pierced through a crown.
Each glowed in sequence.
"Primary Aspect: Umbrakinesis."
"Sub-Aspect: Revelation."
Descriptions followed, spoken like prophecy:
Revelation — You see through illusion, through comfort, through the veil of lies cast by gods and men. You unearth secrets meant to remain buried. Your gaze is an unraveling.
Umbrakinesis — You command shadow, not absence but presence unlit. You shape fear into form. You become what dwells beneath the eye.
The voice fell silent. The light dimmed—but the symbols burned themselves into his vision, floating there even when he blinked.
Then, soft and final:
"You are chosen. Not by gods. But by what comes after."
From behind him, the shadows stirred.
Kieran turned—and faced himself.
His future self stood cloaked in darkness, eyes like gold swallowed by black, sclera dark and endless. The air warped around him, like light trying to escape.
"Now you begin," the future Kieran said, voice layered with echoes and fire. "Now you burn."
He stepped back into the dark, and was gone.
Kieran remained.
Awake.
Changed.
And far above, in the silence of the dead heavens, something stirred.
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