One second he was blinking at the forest haze of Vulkren—next thing he knew, boom.
Reality just… glitched.
There was no falling. No warning. Just a blink—and suddenly, darkness. Not nighttime darkness. Not cave darkness. This was extra-dimensional, can't-see-your-own-hands, is-this-even-real kind of darkness.
"Okay," he muttered, standing up slowly. "This… isn't Vulkren. Or the forest. Or anywhere sane."
The ground beneath him was flat and solid, yet featureless. No texture. No sound. No horizon. Standing here was like being trapped inside a closed eyelid—only without an eye. Worst of all, nothing echoed. His voice, when he spoke, was swallowed whole.
He flicked a dim trace of mana from his palm. The glow barely pushed back the void. Just enough to see his own shoes. Barely. Comforting? Not really.
Then he saw it.
A single floating door. Just… hovering. Glowing faintly, etched with symbols that pulsed faintly. No walls, no frame—just a door suspended in nothing.
Great. Floating door in space. Classic "mysterious trial" behavior.
He sighed. "Yup. Definitely a trial. Either that or I fell asleep on the train and someone dumped me into a cosmic shit show."
The air—or lack of it—felt charged. Expectant. Like it was waiting for him to take the first step.
He walked. Carefully. Quietly.
"…If this is some twisted teacher's idea of orientation, then it's just… bland," he muttered, more to steady himself than anything else.
He opened the door. Reality shattered.
The world turned red.
No sky. No floor. No time. Just blood.
It gushed from the walls—if there were walls. It poured like molten metal, warm and metallic, slick over his skin, clogging his throat as he gasped. It wasn't just bodies. It was masses of torn flesh. Mouths twitching, fingers clawing at nothing.
He stepped. Something cracked beneath his boot. A half-dissolved skull. Another step—his foot sank into a split-open torso, intestines uncoiling like wet ropes, steaming in the heat of the slaughter.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak.
The screaming didn't come from around him—it came from inside him.
Memories twisted. Warped. Flashing images of every person he'd seen die. Worse: now he was the killer.
His blade tore through the throat of a mentor—eyes wide, mouth mouthing his name.
Hands shoved a child into a wall of spikes.
He laughed. Blood sprayed across his face.
Every death he'd witnessed wore his face. Over and over. Again. Again.
His hands were soaked to the elbow. They wouldn't stop shaking. Pieces of flesh clung to his nails. Tissue squelched under his fingers as he clenched his fists.
Stop. Please. Stop.
But the trial didn't relent. It tightened.
The sky tore open. Rivers of organs, eyeballs, skinned limbs rained like divine wrath. Faces peeled halfway open. Tongues twitched in the dirt. A jaw sat inches from his foot, teeth still clenched around a severed finger.
And then—he broke.
Knees hit the ground with a crack, sliding in gore. Shoulders trembled. Breath hitched, shallow and ragged. Too much.
Too much pain.
Too much blood.
Too much himself.
Then—something inside snapped. Then… froze.
> [Mental Limit Exceeded.]
[Skill synchronised: Void Trance]
Emotional Flow Severed. Cognitive Suppression Active. Sensory Dampening: MAX
He exhaled. Calm.
Not peace—emptiness.
The blood, the severed heads, the twitching lungs—still there. But now? Nothing.
No disgust. No guilt. No mercy.
Only clarity.
Only surgical, unnatural stillness.
He cut through illusions of himself and the people he'd failed. Stepped through twitching hearts. Walked over rivers of flesh. And felt… nothing.
Then, like a pulled thread snapping, the world shattered.
Void Trance ended.
Everything came back.
The screams. The pain. The grief.
The smell of burning children.
The sound of his mother's voice begging.
The guilt of watching people die.
The pleasure of killing.
The shame of that pleasure.
The blood wasn't on the world. It was on him.
It hit like a tidal wave. Chest convulsed. Nerves screamed.
He collapsed.
Every sense flooded—color, scent, memory, regret.
He couldn't stop crying. Couldn't stop shaking.
Minutes passed. Or hours. He didn't know.
Eventually, he just lay there. Silent. Still. Breathing. Barely.
And in that silence, in that wreckage of emotion and gore and madness, he realized something terrifying:
He could do it again.
He would do it again.
Because now… he knew how to shut it all off.
Crouching, he felt something in his palms. A shard, shaped like a broken mirror.
All that… for what? Going back to his own world? Or satisfying his own selfishness?
He knew he'd get no answers standing there shivering, letting others manipulate his fate.
With trembling hands and bloody memories, he popped the shard into his mouth.
And in the next second…
Bright light illuminated the forest in the cosmic night.