The world around Name was shifting.
The walls rippled like liquid. The ceiling fractured into broken light. Slowly, the room began to dissolve, piece by piece, until polished mirror replaced every surface. The chair vanished beneath him, the walls stretched infinitely outward, and the floor hardened to glass.
Name stood in the center of a mirrored chamber...his reflection staring back at him from every direction, multiplied a thousandfold.
"What... what is this?" he asked, his voice shaking despite himself. He turned to Crown, desperate for answers. "What is the ritual?"
Crown smiled.
A soft, strange smile. Not mockery, not cruelty...but something older. A smile of curiosity, of sorrow. A smile filled with pity.
"It's simple," Crown said, folding his hands behind his back. "You'll face your fear... and overcome it."
Name blinked. For a moment, he went quiet. Then, with unexpected calm, he said:
"I don't have any fear."
Crown laughed. Not mockingly...but thoughtfully. As though Name's response had confirmed something important.
"I know," he said. "That's why I placed one inside you."
Name turned to him, confused. "What does that mean?"
But Crown was already fading...his form dissolving into mist, vanishing like the walls had. Within seconds, he was gone, as though he had never stood there at all.
Name stood alone.
Everywhere he looked: mirrors. Reflections. Countless versions of himself staring back. Some emotionless. Some twisted in slight, unreadable expressions. Some entirely still.
"What does he mean by... fear?" Name whispered.
Then, a voice echoed through the chamber...mechanical, toneless, yet deafening.
FEAR DETECTED.
FEAR NAME: FEAR OF UNCERTAINTY.
Just as suddenly as they had come, the mirrors shattered. Not with sound...but with silence. The reflections vanished, the walls dissolved like water, and the world shifted again.
Name was no longer in a room. He stood in a field...vast, empty, and endless.
Golden light bled from the setting sun above. The sky was orange, tinged with deep violet at the edges. A wind moved through the field, though there was no grass. No trees. Just a perfect horizon in every direction.
Despite the warm sky, Name felt a chill crawl over his skin.
He was not alone.
He turned.
Behind him stood a crowd...an army of white...cloaked figures. Hundreds. No—thousands. Perfectly still. Their faces obscured by the shadows of their hoods.
But one man stood apart.
He was at the front. Unhooded. His yellow hair gleamed under the dying sunlight, casting golden strands across his sharp, pale features. And in his left ear—an earring glinted. Small. Metallic. Shaped like a spear wrapped in a violet serpent.
The same earring Crown wore.
The man took a step forward. His voice, deep and steady, rolled across the field like thunder.
"You killed me," he said. "You slaughtered my people."
Before Name could speak...before he could even understand—the crowd behind the man erupted in a cry. A deafening chorus that tore through the quiet of the field like a storm breaking the sea.
"You killed our Zenith."
"You killed us."
Cold sweat slid down Name's forehead.
His thoughts were a tangle of confusion and dread. He didn't know what was happening...or what was going to happen. All he knew was this: the figures before him were not illusions.
They were the dead.
The dead Zenith, and the clan that had been slaughtered six months ago.
That much he understood. But nothing more.
Was he supposed to fight them?
Convince them he wasn't the one who killed them?
...Was he even sure he hadn't?
He stood paralyzed. Unmoving. Heart pounding like a war drum. The only coherent thought he could cling to was a single, bitter curse:
Crown. That bastard.
After their declaration, the crowd fell silent once more. The field grew still. Unnaturally still.
Then, the sun vanished below the horizon.
Darkness fell...fast, and absolute. Name couldn't see his own hands. Couldn't see the white...cloaked crowd. But he could still feel them. The presence of a thousand unmoving souls, each one heavy with unspoken judgment.
Then came the light.
He looked up...and gasped.
Three moons hovered in the night sky.
The first: a vast violet moon, its surface etched with black carvings like arcane wounds. Jagged chains wrapped around it like prison bindings, glinting as they held the moon captive in the heavens.
The second: pitch...black-its surface so dark it devoured light...yet from its boundary, radiant golden light poured outward like a crown. As if the moon held some divine fire inside, desperately trying to escape.
The third moon...smaller than the others...burned with an unnatural white, like bleached bone. But its glow flickered, like it was barely holding itself together. Cracks pulsed across its surface, leaking thin streams of blue mist that shimmered like tears.
Then the same mechanical voice from the mirrored chamber echoed once more:
"The Ritual of Will begins."
As the final word rang out across the empty field, the white...cloaked crowd roared once again.
"You killed our Zenith!"
"You killed us!"
Name's eyes snapped away from the moons. He turned to the sound...but it was already too late.
The yellow...haired man, who had stood a hundred meters away, now stood right in front of him.
In the blink of an eye.
His arm reached out.
Name reacted on instinct. He jumped backward...but not fast enough.
The Zenith's hand missed his face...but caught his arm.
And in a single motion, the arm shattered.
A scream tore from Name's throat.
Glass.
His arm had turned into glass...and not just broken, but ripped from his body in jagged shards. Even the blood that splashed from the wound wasn't blood anymore...glittering fragments of red crystal scattered through the air like a shattered ruby.
But the pain was real. It was not like the god's punishment...that cold, divine numbness. This was raw. Animal. Human.
He screamed until his throat burned.
Then he ran.
Clutching the broken stump of his arm, he sprinted across the field, not thinking—only fleeing. He didn't care that there was no escape. That the field stretched forever in every direction.
All he knew was the pain, the fear...the sense of helplessness that dug deeper than the wound itself.
Behind him, his blood...glass rained onto the ground, sparkling beneath the three moons like scattered pearls.
But he didn't make it far.
Only ten steps forward...and one of the cloaked figures raised an arm.
A finger pointed at him.
There was no flash. No sound.
Just a sudden, incomprehensible force.
And then—nothing.
His body exploded.
Flesh, blood, and bone flew apart in every direction. As if a hand had reached from the sky and crushed him like a bug. Viscera and bone, soaked in crimson, scattered across the field.
Then even his remains began to change.
The flesh. The blood. The shattered pieces of his ribcage. All of it started to turn into glass. Slowly. Elegantly. Under the pale light of the moons.
Though the life of Name had ended in an instant...
...his broken body glimmered across the field like something sacred.
Or perhaps...like something cursed.