Josh's soul tore through the layers of the trial world like smoke dissolving into wind, and in an instant, it returned to his physical form with a jolt.
His eyes shot open.
He gasped.
Then the pain came.
Each breath he took sounded like glass scraping against his throat. His chest rose and fell erratically, like a man who had been drowning for hours and only now found air. On the surface, he looked stable—sweat-drenched but alive. But anyone who cared to look deeper would feel it. Something was... wrong.
It wasn't his body.
It was his soul.
The price of survival had not come cheap.
The countless trials, the psychological torment, the near-death experiences in a realm where time bent and reality bled into metaphor—they had left fractures in the very core of who he was.
Hairline cracks in the crystal of his spirit.
And though small, they were fatal—if left unattended, they could tear him apart from the inside out, turning Josh Aratat into a breathing husk with no mind, no purpose, no memory of who he once was.
He groaned, the sound coarse and raw. His hands clawed at the ground beneath him as if searching for something solid in a world that had suddenly become too loose.
From the adjacent cage, Avalon stirred.
The serpent goddess slithered forward, her sapphire-scaled body gliding gracefully though her prison. Her otherworldly eyes narrowed as she studied Josh, sensing a shift in his aura—a dangerous instability that reeked of soul damage.
"You're back..." she whispered, her serpentine eyes glinting with curiosity and something that suspiciously resembled reverence. "First, you were meditating, then—suddenly—it felt like... you weren't there anymore. Your body was right in front of me, unmoving like a statue, but your essence, your presence, just... vanished. What exactly happened to you?"
Josh groaned again, clutching his chest. His breathing was shallow, as if each inhale was dragging sandpaper through his lungs. He didn't answer immediately. Not because he didn't want to, but because his soul was still recalibrating—still stitching itself back together with the divine thread of the child's blessing.
Avalon slithered closer, her long, silver tail gliding across the cold stone floor of the cage with a soft hiss. Her claws grasped the bars that separated her from Josh's cage. "You look like death chewed you up and forgot to swallow," she muttered, though there was no mockery in her tone—only worry. "Your aura… it's in tatters. Whatever you did… you're lucky to be alive."
Josh remained silent.
Avalon's gaze narrowed, her voice low. "Whatever you've done… I hope it was worth it. Because you're not just bleeding energy—you're radiating something primal. Something old. The kind of thing gods whisper about but dare not name."
Josh didn't respond.
He was focused.
With a trembling hand, he reached inward—into his dimensional storage—and summoned the prize he'd earned from the final trial of the "I AM KING Protocol."
The potion.
It shimmered with a violet-gold glow, and the moment it appeared in his hand, the very air around it began to vibrate subtly, reacting to its uncontainable power. The bottle looked small, delicate even, like liquid stardust trapped in crystal—but the energy it radiated was enough to bend weak realities.
Josh's hand shook violently as he held it. His soul was screaming, pulsing in disarray, urging him to hurry. He knew he didn't have long. If he passed out now, it could be the end.
Avalon watched with furrowed brows. She could feel the tension crawling across her scales. She wanted to speak, to ask what he was doing, but something—instinct, perhaps—told her this moment was not hers to interrupt.
Josh brought the vial to his lips.
His eyes fluttered once, as if in silent prayer.
And then, with a grunt, he downed the entire thing in one harsh gulp.
The effect was instantaneous.
His body arched back violently as a surge of energy shot through him like lightning through a conductor. His veins lit up, glowing briefly with the same hue as the potion. His breath caught in his throat, his teeth clenched as if he were trying to trap the scream rising in his chest.
Avalon's eyes widened.
"What exactly is that? He's... absorbing it all at once?"
Josh's heart thundered like a war drum as the power rushed through his broken soul like molten gold through shattered glass. The fractures in his essence resisted at first—but then, one by one, they began to mend. Light filled the gaps, warmth replaced the cold void, and for a brief, breathtaking moment… he felt whole.
He collapsed back onto the ground, chest heaving.
His body was still weak.
But his soul…
Was no longer falling apart.
A greenish-black cocoon began to form around Josh—slowly at first, like mist weaving into silk, then all at once, as if a dark flower had bloomed from his very skin and wrapped him in its petals.
It pulsed with a dim light, viscous and alive, the edges writhing as though the cocoon itself was breathing. In the blink of an eye, Josh disappeared beneath the opaque mass, fully enveloped. It was as if he'd been swallowed by some ancient organism birthed from his own soul.
Avalon's eyes widened. Even she, a serpentine goddess who had seen magic older than most civilizations, took a cautious step back from her cage's edge.
This… this was not ordinary regeneration. It was raw, chaotic, primal. The cocoon looked as though it was made from a mixture of shadow, venom, and the fading echo of celestial fire. Its surface shimmered every now and then with strange symbols—runes not written by any known language but formed by will, pain, and survival.
For the next thirty minutes, the cocoon remained still. Deathly still. Josh didn't move, didn't speak. There was no indication of consciousness. Only the gentle, rhythmic rise and fall of the cocoon hinted that life still pulsed within it—slow, deliberate breaths like those of a beast in hibernation. Each exhale released a faint mist, greenish and foul-smelling, dissipating as soon as it touched the ground. It was a healing process, but also… a metamorphosis.
Avalon remained rooted in place, arms folded, tail twitching slightly in restrained agitation. Her scarlet slit-pupiled eyes never left the cocoon. She kept watching him, her expression caught between concern and contempt.
"Of all the foolish things…" she hissed under her breath.
He had barely responded to her before the transformation began. Just a grunt. A nod. Not even a full sentence. And now this?
"You just come back from the edge of death, ignore me like I'm some common pest, and then seal yourself up like a hatchling in an egg?" she muttered, tapping the bars between their cages. "You arrogant, reckless mortal…"
Yet she didn't look away. Not once.
Her fingers tightened on the bars. "Fine. Stay silent. Go play hero with your broken soul and your cryptic cocoon. Just don't die before I figure out what in all the realms is going on and how I'm going to get out of here."
The cocoon gave a faint shudder in response, as if it had heard her. Or perhaps Josh had. But no words came.
Just the steady, haunting breath of transformation.