They did not remember how they arrived.
One moment, Hector and Vicky drifted near a quiet current of the Web, talking softly, trading hums and fragments of shapeless thought. The next, the light folded inward, and something vast and silent swallowed them whole.
They stood—not floated, stood—on what might have been a surface. But there were no lines. No ceiling. No ground. No walls. Only the sense that something had ended, and something else had begun.
> "This place feels… still," Hector said, adjusting to the strange sensation of gravity. "Like everything's holding its breath."
Vicky nodded, her grief-shell clinging tighter to her form. "It's not waiting. It's watching."
Then a voice spoke—not from around them, but within them.
It did not belong to any god they had met.
> "To hold a gift forever, you must bleed it into being."
> "This is the Trial of Becoming. Step forward, or forget."
The voice did not threaten.
It simply was.
A law, not a choice.
Trial One: The Spiral's Grasp
For Hector, the ground bent underfoot—spiraling, twisting, forming a glassy path that seemed to echo with every heartbeat he'd ever had.
The Whispering Spiral appeared before him, not in full form, but in echo. It hovered like a question waiting for its own answer.
> "You followed emotion once," it whispered. "Now command it."
A shape flickered ahead: a memory that was not his. A scream of joy. A gasp of love. Pain folded like petals opening.
> "Follow," the Spiral urged. "But more than that… pull."
Hector reached out with his echo-sense. The emotion vibrated just ahead—a bright trail vanishing into fog.
> "What if I lose it?" he asked aloud.
> "Then it was never yours."
He stepped forward, heart open.
The memory trembled and fled, but Hector's magic bent to his will. He reached, not with hands but with feeling, pulling the emotion backward through space and time like a scent caught in the wind.
It struck him full in the chest.
Joy. Loss. Love. Regret.
All tangled.
He didn't just sense it—he understood it.
And then, it fused into him.
His echo-sense flared brighter than ever before, sinking deep into the roots of his unborn soul.
> "It's mine now," he said softly.
> "It always was," the Spiral replied.
Trial Two: Vemathi's Unburdening
Vicky's surroundings shifted next.
Her grief-shell cracked slightly, releasing small wisps of sorrow that curled in the air like ink in water.
Before her, the red mist of Vemathi the Hollowed coalesced, still faceless, still weeping silence.
> "You wear your grief," the god intoned. "But now, wear it with intention."
A tower of shadows rose before her — forms of people she had never known but somehow mourned. The weight pressed on her chest like hands.
> "Choose one," Vemathi said. "And become her."
Vicky stepped forward, heart pounding.
She looked at the shapes: a mother. A sister. A lost child. A warrior drowned by her own choices.
She touched the warrior.
Her grief-shell shimmered, then shattered — reforming not as armor, but as skin. Not hiding her, but expressing her.
> "She feared dying with her regrets unspoken," Vicky said.
> "Then become the one who speaks them," Vemathi whispered.
And she did.
She willed the shell into clarity, shaping it not from pain, but through it. Not a mask. A truth.
The trial burned in her body.
She screamed once—not from agony, but from release.
And the shell locked into place.
Her first true self.
> "You carry no one's sorrow now," the god said. "Only your own."
> "That's enough," Vicky replied.
Trial Three: Flame of the Laughing God
Together, the two turned to see a third spark rise.
Ozoz, the Laughing Flame spiraled into being, flickering with wild joy.
> "All mastery comes at a price," it laughed. "You wish to change the world? Then break your own first."
A wall emerged between them.
Not solid. Not physical. But made of memory and fear.
> "Shatter the idea of yourself," Ozoz declared. "Or burn away trying."
Vicky raised her hand, forming a whip of transformation magic. Hector's echo-sense pulsed like sonar. They circled the wall. Hesitant. Curious.
> "What if it's all we are?" Hector whispered.
> "Then we'll build ourselves again," Vicky answered.
She struck first.
Her magic warped her arm, shifting through versions of herself—stronger, stranger, clearer. The wall shuddered.
Hector followed, channeling a wave of grief-born echoes—emotions too powerful to name—ripping into the construct.
It cracked.
Laughed.
Broke.
In the explosion of meaning, both of them stood still, their bodies outlined in luminous memory.
They had changed.
Not just in magic. In truth.
> "You burn well," Ozoz chuckled. "Now you carry flame without fire."
Then vanished.
Trial Four: Dreams Without Borders
Hector found himself alone.
Thren rose again, silent but humming.
A field of dreaming minds opened before him — not people, but fragments. A child's terror. A mother's hope. A thousand unborn thoughts, swirling.
> "You walk the minds of others. But can you leave without keeping them?" Thren asked.
He stepped through.
The first dream clung to his chest — warmth.
The second: ice.
The third: a scream beneath a bed no one remembered.
He tasted each one, let it pass through.
Refused to become it.
Refused to cage it.
> "You are not a thief of thought," Thren said. "You are a gardener. Let memory grow where it chooses."
Hector knelt and whispered a dream back into the soil of the Web.
And left whole.
Trial Five: Mirror-Sky's Choice
Vicky stood again before Nahliv, whose water-skin pulsed midair.
A choice now.
Become one of the versions—the safe ones. Or keep the tension of unknowing.
> "Comfort is identity that never grows," Nahliv said.
> "I want to be many," she whispered. "Not to escape. But to arrive."
> "Then drink," the god said.
She drank from the suspended mirror.
Her bones flickered into dozens of lives.
And then sealed, choosing none, but remembering all.
---
When the chamber began to dissolve, the voice returned:
> "You have taken your gifts into bone and breath."
> "When you are born, they will sleep beneath your skin."
> "Not memory. But essence."
Vicky looked at Hector.
He was brighter than before. Sharper. More whole.
She didn't know what she looked like to him.
But he smiled, and she felt seen.
> "We passed," he said.
> "We began," she corrected.
Their hum rose again.
A soft song to no one.
And to everything.