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Chapter 2 – The Whisper of Pillars
Chester gasped.
His eyes flew open—not in his bed, not beside Solon, but beneath a sky too vast, too wrong. It pulsed like liquid shadow, stitched with deep crimson cracks, as if the world itself had bled open. His body floated, yet his feet touched something—an invisible floor that rang with cold pressure.
There were others. Fifteen others.
Men and women, boys and girls, all standing on scattered platforms of obsidian glass hovering in the void. They looked around, terrified, confused. Some screamed. One fell to his knees and wept. Another cursed the sky and begged to wake up. Chester watched them all through narrow slits in the porcelain mask that now clung to his face, fused like skin. His heartbeat was calm—eerily calm.
The cold air was thick with the scent of ash and iron, biting at his lungs. A low hum thrummed beneath his feet, vibrating like a pulse.
Then, a sound like thunder whispered, low and rich with menace.
> "Welcome, Dreamers… to the edge of the real. To enter the next world, you must first survive The Nightmare."
A shape descended from the darkness—neither man nor beast. A robed figure with a mirrored face, thousands of eyes swirling in the glass like trapped souls.
> "This realm is the crucible. You must endure ten days. Fight. Scheme. Survive. Only four shall pass through the gate."
Crackling silence.
> "Before you begin… choose your path."
And then—they came.
Twenty-five pillars of light exploded into view around them, encircling the group like gods peering into an ant farm. Each burned with a different hue, humming with secrets. A word, a concept, an essence.
Order. Chaos. Dream. Veil. Blood. Soul. Ember. Iron. Mirror. Destruction. Fate. Truth. Mind. Memory. Hunger. Beast. Time. Storm. Silence. Creation. Echo. Light. Shadow. Pain. Chance.
Each participant stood frozen. A hush blanketed them like snow.
One boy, eyes trembling, reached out.
> "Wait," someone shouted. "We don't know what they do!"
> "This is madness!" another cried.
> "What if we choose wrong?!"
But Chester was already moving.
He walked forward, slow, deliberate. His strange, flowing garb shimmered with dreamlike fluidity—white and gold stitched with purple thread. The porcelain mask had no mouth, no eyes—yet somehow, he saw.
He stopped in front of a flickering, unstable pillar. It crackled with rainbow static, with symbols that changed every time you blinked.
Chance.
> "He's crazy," someone muttered. "That one's cursed. No one chooses Chance."
> "It's suicide."
> "Unpredictable. Volatile. Useless."
But Chester's gloved hand touched it.
A violent wind howled.
His body lifted into the air, lightning dancing across his skin, and the voice returned—not from above, but inside his bones:
> "The Pillar of Chaos welcomes you, Mad One. Tier One awakened: Gambler's Glint."
A card etched in fire burned into his palm, then vanished.
> [Gambler's Glint] — See the probability of betrayal in others. Accurate, but changes rapidly. Cost: Insight fatigue. Optional storage available.
Chester blinked.
He smiled behind the mask.
> Too easy, he thought. I've already read them all.
He waved his hand dismissively and chose to store the ability. Let them think he had nothing. Let them underestimate him.
As the others continued panicking and shouting, Chester turned his gaze across the field. Some began picking pillars out of fear or intuition. One girl sobbed as she reached toward "Dream." Another boy hesitated before touching "Soul," trembling.
A man grabbed "Destruction," laughing like a hyena. Another chose "Order" with a face of stern defiance.
All the while, Chester watched them.
> Sixteen souls. Four shall pass. Twelve must fall.
They didn't know yet. They were trying to form alliances, seek comfort.
He chuckled quietly.
> "This is going to be fun."
The mirrored figure raised its hand. The void split open, revealing a twisted, shifting landscape of nightmares—forests made of bone, skies with falling eyes, rivers of ink that screamed.
> "Welcome to your first trial. Survive."
The ground dropped.
They fell.
And Chester, the boy who laughed at fear, whispered beneath his breath—
> "Trust no one in this Nightmare."
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