"Good, young hero... very good," the voice ca again, velvet-smooth and humming with approval, her tone laced with pride and just the right touch of amusent, as if she were speaking to sothing wild she had chosen not to cage. "Arrogance suits those who wish to stand at the top. You’ll need it. So let tell you this... if you manage to survive, if you can stay alive through the final trial, I will give you all the power your greedy heart can crave. That is... if you can escape with your life intact."
Her voice grew softer, deeper, almost teasing, as the warmth of the divine bled into sothing colder, sothing real. "The next trial alone will already be unlike anything you’ve ever faced, harder than any nightmare your soul can conjure. But the last... the last one will be built personally by , tailored with my own hands, shaped to break even the finest champions the seventeen realms have birthed. Not one, not even the greatest prodigies across the stars, has ever cleared it. And you, Sylvaris... you’re not strong enough either."
She paused, then laughed, her voice like silver breaking the stillness.
"But here’s so motivation for that filthy little mind of yours," she whispered, voice like silk sliding between ribs, "if you can kill the final beast and break free from the trial realm with your own power... I’ll co down myself. I’ll offer myself to you. My body, my soul. I’ll beco yours. How about that? Hahaha..."
It was a joke to tease him a little, a flick of divine flirtation ant to amuse herself, because no one had ever reached that point, and she had no reason to believe anyone ever would.
But Sylvaris’s eyes burned with desire. He heard the words loud and clear...
The flash of greed in his gaze was so sharp, so feral, it could’ve sliced through stone. Sothing primal shifted inside him, sothing deeper than ambition—lust, raw and overwhelming, crashed into his mind like a tidal wave, drowning out caution, silencing fear.
He didn’t care if it was bait. He didn’t care if it was a lie. He didn’t even care if it was impossible. He had heard the words fall from her divine lips, and it was enough. His path was now carved in blood and desire, and he would walk it to the end, even if it killed him, because no trial, no beast, no realm would stop him from one day having the goddess of heroes beneath him, screaming his na while he fucked her like the arrogant bastard he was born to be.
Everyone stood frozen, stunned into silence, their minds reeling as they tried to process what they had just heard, unsure if the words were real or if the gods had played a cruel trick on their ears.
The king, once so composed and regal, now looked a shade paler, his jaw clenched, hands trembling ever so slightly as he stared at the divine screen before him, unable to decide whether this mont marked a celebration of divine favor or the beginning of sothing far more dangerous. This had never happened, not in any recorded history, not in the countless generations of trials and legends. No goddess had ever spoken so directly, so intimately to a mortal, and certainly not with that tone, that promise. And perhaps because of that, a shift began in the king’s heart.
It was a subtle, almost imperceptible turn, but one that mattered. Where once he had seen Sylvaris as a tool, a weapon to be pointed at the dark, he now saw sothing far more unstable... sothing that could turn its edge toward him without warning. It wasn’t hatred. Not yet. But it was fear. A seed of it, buried deep in his chest, whispering that this boy might one day take everything he controlled and crush it beneath his heel like ash.
And in the corner of the crowd, sitting high and mighty, Arathor’s face spoke a thousand words, but his lips said nothing, yet his heart thundered in his chest, his fingers curled so tightly into his sleeves they left blood under his nails. He had watched all of it, every word, every pulse of power, every divine reaction, and he had hoped, prayed, that Sylvaris would fall in these trials, that this cursed heir would finally be erased from the board so one of his other sons could rise and carry the hope of mankind forward with clean blood and loyal obedience.
But now... now it seed fate had no such intentions. Sylvaris was rising at a rate that was too fast, reaching way too far... And unless the final trial consud him, unless his darkness remained sealed, unless the power sleeping inside him never awakened... the world would not remain safe. Arathor didn’t care about gods or goddesses anymore. He cared only about stopping what he now knew would one day burn the world down, and wear a smile while doing it.
"So let start the next trial for you then... be sure not to disappoint , youngster." Her final words echoed through him, not just through his ears but down into his bones, vibrating through every inch of his body like a divine ripple tearing through his spirit, and before he could even react, the world began to shift. The ground beneath him folded in on itself, the sky above lted into light, and the realm around him unraveled into a thousand colors—blinding, beautiful, and terrifying—until everything blurred into brilliance, and he was swallowed whole by the embrace of a new reality.
And then the pain hit... All at once, rciless and absolute. Scorching heat roared across his skin, the air around him igniting as if the sun itself had dropped into the realm to test his endurance, while biting frost imdiately followed, sinking its fangs into his flesh, clawing at his nerves with a cruelty that didn’t belong in nature. Razor-sharp winds tore across him like invisible blades, howling in his ears, trying to rip the strength from his limbs, and beneath his feet, the ground swelled and twisted, impossibly dense, pressing up like it wanted to crush his bones into the earth. All four elents crashed into him at once—fire, ice, wind, and earth—not in harmony, but in war, each one trying to break him, to bring him to his knees, to force him to submit before the trial had even begun.
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