The sombre warrior analysed the scene, then precisely barked orders.
"Bring some mutts back for my blade to replenish itself."
"And you," he pointed toward a shadow-host, "relinquish your existence for the Legion."
"For Oblivion, it is an honour, General."
The General used cultivation of some sort—it seemed he was cooking up a ruthless scheme.
"You, assault the remaining Custodian. And you—investigate why the rifts are being patched up."
He barked orders and sat on his throne of desecrated bodies.
Thales was somewhat shocked. He was thinking about Khalud's words. He knew Thales was observing... and knew he chose not to move a single muscle to help.
One would assume it was for self-preservation, and they wouldn't be entirely wrong.
It would simply be a bad move if I attempted to fight that man in those conditions.
Fighting that man in general would be courting death too.
I need a deeper connection to the underground while not compromising my position in Historia.
"Thales Miray, I know your competence in battle, and you stand there with a distant look in your eyes... but it is a look filled with a dark hunger. Why is that?"
Aletheia asked him as she rallied the terrified Mnemonics who had fled here, and her own Everspire who stood their ground.
"Brothers and sisters! This man is not one who can overturn the fate of Historia. We archive out of passion—he destroys out of hatred. He is scared and obsessed with the idea that he is chronicled in history.
We can hide behind the Archives and use that fear as an impenetrable shield.
So stand—not for yourself, but for those before you and to be the hope for those after you."
Thales was bored. He was looking for a way out. A thought crossed his mind:
Khalud made a similar speech and got slaughtered like a pig.
We need results to maintain true morale; words are only as good as the actions that follow from them.
That's why I'm moving with my mantra.
"Huh—?"
Aletheia placed her hand on Thales's shoulder. She had an assured conviction in her eyes.
"Miray, perhaps your lack of confidence stems from your cultivation stage. I am a teacher. Perhaps it's best you learn... from experience."
"Huh, what the heck is that supposed to mean?"
Thales blushed instinctively—it was like he had the sudden awareness that he was an adolescent and she was a mature woman.
"Here is my Trial of Truth."
She unleashed her cultivation, attacking all his senses and his mind at once.
"To wield chaos is to feed and be moulded by it—finally accepting what you are.
You reject that. Let's see if you can overcome the puzzle... the disarray of your own existence, Thales Miray."
His last thoughts before blacking out were the realization of his innate misinterpretation.
The Trial of Chaos
Without the sensation of touch, Thales recognized his body was being placed into a shard of his own memory. It was blackened. It came from his own chaos—a bubbling soup of emergent discord.
In this dark and yet glassy dimension, he saw a fractured door with obsidian chains. The door quaked. Vibrations rocketed across the pocket dimension.
A dangerous roar bellowed from within. The chains were pulled inward—by the very door they guarded. Perhaps this was Thales's own hunger.
The door exploded.
And out, in a destructive dance, flew a dragon of pure shadowed visage.
It appeared to be envious and self-loathing. Towering. Its ephemeral substance indistinct and ever shifting.
It taunted him—taunted itself—as if it were the echoes of his own mind.
"You. Your thoughts. Life. History. And lastly, your existence... consign no value.
You are a fragment cast away by your own mother.
You are a bubble of chaos, undeserving of a name.
Ready to be popped out of existence."
It slithered, shifting. Slimy tendrils leapt in the darkness—formed of both light and shadow.
It gripped Thales's spirit. He agonized under someone else's torment.
Am I fucking delusional? Why am I plagued by ghosts?!
He grunted in mental anguish. He felt guilt. Inadequacy. A void of nihilism.
The tendrils suffocated him. He saw a shape being horribly destroyed. And he was the harbinger of its doom. A primal, misguided anger and hatred.
He lived through it.
He remembered his hunger was quenched.
"Memory, the fruit!"
He rebelled—not in futility, but in acceptance.
How many times will I repeat this torment? I could slither like a snake and I'll still be scorned.
No matter. All I have to do is paint the eternal moment again and again. The shaper instead of the shaped. No—a creator. A more passionate artist than that.
A maker of one's own destiny. Cliché... but it's cliché because it's an endearing wish for all living things.
He skipped a moment in time—combining temporal intuition and teleportation, mere seconds before being subsumed.
He sped up time to hasten his crafting—bringing forth the flintlock pistol he first made in Historia.
He fired. It tore apart the tendrils.
It didn't backfire this time.
A tendril swiped at Thales—direct hit.
Only... it wasn't Thales.
It was a temporal echo.
The dragon roared, attempting to devour him—but a moment that should've happened earlier took effect now.
A construct of pure chaos exploded on the beast—delayed by an hourglass. A spear of chaos hurtled into the dragon and shattered it.
"Is this... victory?"
Thales leapt back.
The same spear was sent back at him—by smaller fragmented dragons.
Each dragon embodied a piece of him.
• The one that crafted weapons and raged with destruction? Thales's Rage.
• The one who turned on its own and manipulated time? Thales's Ambition.
• The one who apologized over and over while wailing? Thales's Sorrow.
"You think you can maintain yourself while you chase The Mystery?"
The Ambitious Dragon laughed, slamming Thales down with gravity.
"We cannot live, can we?
Can you have a new name? I think not.
Can you uncover a myth? I don't know."
This was Thales's Doubt—it breathed, slowing time, making the crushing gravity even worse.
He couldn't teleport. They used his cultivation against him.
Even cultivating would be suicide in this situation.
They're unpredictable... ironically attuned to chaos.
Wait—they are chaos.
That means... I can refine them.
He turned inward.
Prepared a liturgy.
This is the harmony of chaos. My own harmony. The song of Thales Miray.
"I stand amidst the storm, unbroken.
Rage, you burn as fire, yet fuel my ascent.
Sorrow, you flow as water, yet shape my depths.
Ambition, you rise as wind, yet carry my flight.
Doubt, you root as earth, yet ground my resolve.
Each piece, a truth.
Each wound, a mark of life.
I am not one—but many.
Not whole—but infinite.
Chaos is my blood,
Potential is my creed.
I do not deny you, fragments of my soul—
For together, we are the storm reborn."
He wove the fragments together into one—the mosaic of Thales Miray.
But the dragon... wasn't gone.
It reformed—wrestling out of Thales's cultivation.
"This is your destiny.
The apocalyptic dragon.
To destroy everything you touch.
To lose all you love.
To have an empty belly eternally.
For you, my hated comrade, are chaos itself."
I'm tired of hearing the same tune in symbols...
Even if the chamber was shadowy, it was now stable.
But then—reality itself slipped away.
The Spiral of Reality
The battlefield disintegrated beneath his feet. The sky cracked, spilling kaleidoscopic light—violet and gold bled together, too fast to grasp. Day flickered into night and back.
The ground pulsed—no longer solid. It became tundra, lava, forest, ash—changing with each step. Gravity betrayed him. He stumbled.
In the distance—the dragon roared. Its cry fractured air, looping infinitely. Whispers cut through.
"Nameless. Fragmented. Forgotten."
He saw spectres of himself—young Thales, old Thales, all fighting one another.
The dragon split into dozens of forms—trails of spiralling shadow.
"You are not real.
A fragment cast away.
Chaos consumes you—as it always has."
He reached for a shard of reality. It broke in his hand.
But he clenched his fists. The chaos was his. His birthright.
He flung chaotic energy into the storm.
"You think I fear chaos?"
"I was born of it! Not a man born from a mother—I came from the true womb directly, fiend!"
The dragon reared. The storm surged.
Thales stood tall.
He whispered again:
"I stand amidst the storm, unbroken..."
The spirals slowed. The battlefield aligned to his rhythm.
"Each piece, a truth. Each wound, a mark of life. I am not one—but many. Not whole—but infinite."
The orchestra of chaos reached its crescendo.
Thales closed his eyes—not in surrender, but clarity.
"Hear me, force beyond form,
Breaker of certainties, bearer of truths.
I am splintered but unyielding,
A mosaic of fragments longing to unite.
From the storm, I claim my shape.
From the void, I call my name.
Grant me the strength to weave this chaos,
To master its infinite dance,
And to rise, whole yet many,
As one with the unbroken flow."
The storm listened.
The fragments wavered... then spiralled toward him. Their light became part of his own.
The dragon knelt—and vanished into Thales.
The battlefield calmed.
From the horizon, Aletheia stepped forward.
"You've done what many cannot," she said. "To embrace chaos is to accept the unending dance of creation and destruction. Yet this... is only the beginning."
"I didn't fight to conquer the chaos," Thales whispered.
"I fought to become it."
She studied him. Then offered a memory shard.
"Take this. It is not a gift... but a burden. One you must choose to carry."
He took it.
Visions flooded his mind—the Spire. The Mnemonics. A shadowed figure leaving a trail of oblivion.
Hannibal Voidclaw was here.
And his presence heralded destruction.
"The Legion is here," Aletheia said, voice like iron. "If you've truly embraced chaos, Thales... now is the time to prove it."
The ground trembled. The Shadow Host had breached the walls.
Thales gripped the shard tighter.
The echoes of his prayer rang in his mind.
No certain course forward...
But I move anyway.