The Hollow Realm rippled like broken glass. After the horror of Sid's new flame, silence stretched — taut, suffocating. Serrath's eyes lingered on him, still burning with that whisper: Why does he carry a god's curse? Yet his attention shifted, slow and sharp, toward Lucien.
The Hollow warped. The cracked floor spiraled outward into an arena of fractured stone, timeworn pillars jutting skyward and bending mid-air as if resisting the pull of eternity. A clocktower—its face shattered, its hands circling in impossible directions—loomed over them.
Lucien stepped forward, his composure unbroken, though his grip on the Timeglass Aegis trembled faintly. Serrath moved opposite, his shadow twisting into a dozen overlapping selves — each a reflection pulled from different moments.
"This is your trial," Serrath said, his voice echoing strangely, each word layered with versions spoken in the past, present, and future. "Not his. Not theirs. Yours."
The arena sealed shut.
Lucien's chest rose and fell steadily. "If this is time's judgment, then I accept it. I won't falter."
His Aegis pulsed, grains of sand suspended mid-air around him, orbiting like fragments of eternity. Serrath lunged first, his multiple selves converging — one striking from the left, another from behind, another from a second ahead.
Lucien's shield flared. Clang—! Sparks scattered, but Serrath's strikes overlapped, each one striking from a different temporal thread. Lucien staggered, blood spraying from a cut that hadn't yet reached his flesh but already marked his skin.
Sid gasped. "He's—fighting time itself."
Lucien's voice was steady, but low. "Aegis… synchronize."
The sand reversed, rewound, collapsing into his shield. Serrath's blade cut, but time rebounded — the wound closed, blood retracted. Serrath snarled, overlapping voices cutting the air.
"You think you hold dominion? You're a child clutching at the edges of the river!"
Their duel became unbearable to watch — Lucien freezing single moments, Serrath splitting across multiple. Every strike echoed in three different places. Stone crumbled and reformed. The shattered clocktower above them rang with no sound, its gears spinning backward, forward, both at once.
Sid's breath hitched. In the flickering distortions, he caught sight of a familiar silhouette — standing beyond the duel, watching.
"...Nox?"
The professor's figure emerged in the mirage. Not the man himself — but something colder, spectral. His eyes glowed with that same unsettling brilliance, voice cutting through time:
"Sid Arkwood. You are trespassing not in illusion, but in memory. This Hollow has woven fragments of what was… and what should never be seen."
Sid staggered, chest tight. "Memory? Then this—this duel—"
"—is both trial and truth."
The apparition reached out a hand, but the form fractured, slipping through. Sid trembled, torn between watching Lucien's struggle and the professor's cryptic warning.
Lucien roared, his shield fracturing under Serrath's endless advance. For the first time, Sid saw him shaken. Serrath's strike connected — the Aegis cracked, grains of time scattering into the void.
Lucien's knees buckled. Serrath pressed close, his voice sharpened to a whisper only Sid seemed to hear:
"That flame your friend bears… it does not belong to a mortal. It is god's bane. Do you even know what you stand beside?"
Lucien's eyes snapped wide. For a heartbeat, Sid swore he saw him hesitate—saw doubt flicker.
But then Lucien stood, blood streaking his mouth, and lifted the broken shield. "Even if it burns me, even if time breaks me—I will not betray him."
The air froze. Serrath's many selves faltered, drawn back into one form.
The arena shuddered. The cracked clocktower groaned, gears seizing. Sid's ears rang as the Hollow itself seemed to convulse.
And then, for the first time, Sid heard it — not a whisper from Serrath, nor from Nox, but from deeper. Colder. Vast.
Ravh'Zereth's voice.
"Not all trials are yours."
The words struck through Sid's skull like burning chains. His knees buckled, vision going black at the edges.
Lucien and Serrath blurred into nothing. The arena dissolved, the world bending inward.
The next trial had already begun.