More visions appeared in Kranos line of sight.
A prince who never got the chance to fight for his kingdom.
A beggar who could’ve beco a sage if only soone had offered him rcy.
Each life a story lost to the cruel indifference of ti.
Each one shown to Kranos was haunting, he slowly fell to his knees.
His heart ached. Not from guilt, but from the sheer weight of their stories. Of the rcy that was never given to them and the chances ti refused to allow.
It seed as though his emotions was being subtly affected by the trail. Then the last vision appeared in his field of vision.
Kranos stood on a mountaintop, older, powerful, ruling as an emperor. Below him, was a vast empire but the land was scorched, and lifeless.
He had gained everything but no one had survived to see it.
Such feelings is truly unpleasant.
He turned, and saw a younger version of himself, lying dead on the battlefield.
Kranos watched everything silently, the options appeared in his line of sight asking if he would chose to sacrifice his life to save the crowd.
Or save himself without care for their lived. Kranos made his decision without hesitation..
Just then he noticed a masked figure approached. "rcy is not weakness. But neither is it always possible."
After the figure finished speaking, an jobjumscthourglass turned.
Ti surged backward, dragging Kranos with it.
He gasped, opening his eyes on the platform again. Beside him, Kathryn was breathing heavily, her body trembling. Kevin was on the ground, tears streaking down his cheeks.
None of them spoke.
The golden-silver sands resud their flow. The wind began again, colder now. The plateau faded.
A staircase of obsidian ford ahead, spiraling upward.
Kranos stood, fists clenched. "Four down."
The masked figure’s voice echoed one last ti.
"Those who have seen rcy... will be tested again."
And so, they ascended.
Chapter 5: The Trial of Ti’s rcy
The crimson winds howled louder with each step.
Kranos, Kathryn, and Kevin stood at the threshold of a new domain. The ground beneath them shimred like polished obsidian, reflecting twisted images of their own faces. Above, the blood moon remained still, bathing everything in an eerie red hue.
A deep gong echoed,once, twice, then thrice.
Before them, the vast plain transford. Countless hourglasses, large and small, hovered in mid-air, each dripping golden sand into black voids below. Towers of bone, warped clocks, and statues of weeping angels stretched across the land. It was like walking through a temple to forgotten ages.
A disembodied voice, no longer human or divine, whispered from all around:
"The Trial of Ti’s rcy... Not all sins are born from action. So from inaction. Walk the river of what could have been, and choose: whom will you save... whom will you forsake?"
Without warning, the three were separated. Portals of glowing gold ford beneath each of them. They fell.
---
Kranos found himself standing in front of a magnificent palace he hadn’t seen since his childhood. The old capital. He recognized the banners of his grandfather, the king.
But the air reeked of death.
Soldiers lay scattered in pieces. Blood painted the walls. Flas crackled in the distance.
Kranos stepped forward, only to hear a familiar scream. He dashed up the crumbling stairs of the palace, sword drawn.
He reached the throne room,and saw her.
His mother.
Pinned to the wall by spears of void essence. Her eyes t his, a flicker of recognition,but then she vanished, replaced by a battlefield.
Now, a different scene. A young woman, barely older than Kathryn, lay dying under collapsing debris. His childhood friend,he rembered her face, even now.
A tir floated above her, its sand nearly drained.
Behind him, a thousand other hourglasses glowed. Each linked to soone he’d known, fought beside, or saved. All were frozen in the mont before death.
A final voice echoed:
"You may save three. Choose."
Kranos’ jaw clenched. "Only three?"
Silence.
He looked around. So many people. So many mories.
He stepped toward the dying girl. Chose her. Her hourglass shattered, and light enveloped her.
Then he moved to a cultivator he barely rembered but who once shielded him from an ambush.
Finally, he stopped in front of his younger self.
The boy stood in front of a burning village, about to run. About to make the choice Kranos would regret for decades.
He touched the hourglass. It shattered.
Then the world bled away.
---
Kevin was back in his father’s tomb.
He had killed his own father, a traitor to the Scarlet Moon Organization. But here... the body wasn’t there. Instead, his father stood alive, weeping.
Behind him, Kevin saw himself,young, proud, confused.
His father turned.
"You never asked why."
Kevin approached slowly. "I didn’t care. You killed innocents."
His father nodded. "But do you understand who gave the order?"
A scarlet seal appeared in the air. The sigil of the organization.
His father reached out. A vision played,a council ordering the massacre. His father’s resistance. His punishnt.
"You killed ," his father whispered, "but the rot still spreads. Will you be its sword or its fire?"
Kevin stood, frozen.
Then his father vanished, and Kevin collapsed to his knees.
The sands shifted.
---
Kathryn walked through a mory that wasn’t hers.
She saw her master kneeling before an unknown altar. Sacrificing her own cultivation to seal sothing within a mountain of light.
"What... is this?" Kathryn whispered.
A voice answered from behind: "The truth of your bloodline."
She turned,and saw herself. An older Kathryn, eyes hollow, robes torn, radiating divine madness.
"You are ?"
The older version nodded. "In one future, yes. After the seal breaks. After you fail."
Kathryn’s expression hardened. "I won’t fail."
"Then survive this place. Choose rcy when you mustn’t. And never,never trust the stars."
A blinding flash consud everything.
---
They woke at the sa ti.
The obsidian floor now cracked beneath them. The hourglasses above had shattered.
They stood once again as a trio.
None of them spoke.
Not at first.
Kevin finally muttered, "What is this place? Every trial is like digging into your soul."
Kathryn nodded. "That’s the point. This isn’t about strength. It’s about surviving your own essence."
Kranos didn’t reply. His fists were clenched tightly.
Another staircase rose from the dark. This ti, it was forged from starlight and dripping liquid ti.
Above it, the next domain shimred,a floating maze of rotating glass spheres.
A voice rang out:
"Next... the Trial of Reflection. Let no lie pass through."
Kranos, breathing deeply, stepped onto the staircase.
They followed.
The mont they stepped onto the staircase of starlight, the world trembled.
The atmosphere shifted once more. Wind gave way to silence. Movent gave way to stillness. Sound itself seed to die.
By the ti Kranos, Kathryn, and Kevin reached the next realm, the surroundings had transford again.
They now stood before a floating labyrinth composed entirely of translucent glass spheres. The maze shimred with mirrored surfaces that reflected not just the physical form,but intent, desire, and mory.
Suspended across space like constellations, the spheres rotated slowly in mid-air, forming an ever-changing labyrinth.
An orb of silver fire hovered above the entrance.
A voice, this ti low and emotionless, spoke from everywhere and nowhere:
"Trial of Reflection. All lies are burdens. Here, you must speak the truth, or be unmade."
Kevin took a step back. "What kind of trial is this...?"
Kathryn narrowed her eyes. "Be cautious. The mirrors here don’t just show illusions. They reveal what we deny."
Kranos stepped forward.
Instantly, a sphere shifted to et him, aligning itself like a lens. Inside it, a reflection ford.
He saw himself,but not quite. His reflection had older eyes. Wiser. Colder. This version wore dark armor, and behind him stood a mountain of corpses.
"Is that... ?" Kranos whispered.
The reflection spoke. "No. I am who you pretend not to beco."
He felt a sharp pain in his chest, as if a thousand chains had snapped inside him.
Then a beam of light struck him from the sphere.
Kranos staggered back.
"LIE DETECTED."
The voice bood.
Kranos gritted his teeth. "I never said anything!"
"Your soul did," Kathryn muttered.
Suddenly, hundreds of glass spheres twisted inward, forming narrow passages. Each held a different reflection,so real, so imagined, so worse. The only way forward was to walk through them.
Kevin stepped into one.
A mont later, he was screaming. The mirror before him showed a battlefield where he abandoned his comrades for power. Another showed him betraying Kathryn. Another,his own hands covered in innocent blood.
He fell to his knees.
Kathryn moved forward calmly. She stood before one mirror and stared.
In it, she saw her master dying.
Another mirror showed her accepting help and kindness,then ruthlessly destroying those who aided her.
She did not deny it.
"Yes," she said. "I chose survival. And I will again."
The mirror rippled. It allowed her to pass.
Kranos braced himself and entered his path.
One by one, the spheres floated before him.
They showed him monts when he could have saved others, but chose himself.
They showed his desire to kill the king.
They showed his hatred of being weak, even at the cost of others.
They showed a future where he ruled over shattered worlds.
"Do you accept these?" the sphere asked.
Kranos breathed slowly. "I won’t run from them. But I won’t beco them."
The mirrors paused.
The glass shimred.
And split.
He walked through.
Monts later, all three erged at the maze’s heart,a circular platform beneath an open sky of swirling cosmos.
In the center, a final mirror stood,black, with no reflection.
The voice echoed again:
"Lie to this mirror, and you will be erased."
Kevin was first. He stepped forward.
"I have never wanted power for its own sake," he said.
The mirror cracked.
Kevin closed his eyes. "Fine. I did. But I want more now. I want to protect them."
The mirror healed.
Kathryn walked up next. She looked into the mirror.
"I don’t regret anything."
The mirror remained still.
She nodded and stepped back.
Kranos exhaled. His heart thundered.
He walked forward and spoke.
"I don’t want to be like him."
The mirror flared red.
Kranos closed his eyes.
"I want to surpass him."
The light cald. The mirror accepted.
They passed.
---
A beam of violet energy rose from the heart of the maze, opening a stairwell of fragnted stars.
Above it, a new realm began to form.
"Trial of the Echoing Grave awaits..."
Without a word, they stepped into the light.
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