---
Only moments had passed since Ashn drove the dagger into his heart when the cave began to tremble as if the mountains themselves screamed from their depths. The bloodstained altar suddenly burst into red, lava-like flames, flames that did not burn flesh... but consumed the soul directly.
The scattered corpses convulsed at once. Their pierced chests gave hoarse breaths, then their voices rose in strange, repeating, overlapping chants, like the echo of a thousand dead throats:
"Life or death... flourishing or decay... immortality or annihilation..."
They were not mere words, but arrows that pierced his skull, shaking his brain from the inside and leaving an unbearable resonance in his bones. His soul itself began to crack, and his torn heart stopped moment by moment.
Then complete darkness swallowed him... and he detached from everything.
He fell... or perhaps dissolved into nothingness. He no longer knew if he had a body, or if he had become just an idea fading in a bottomless sea.
---
He did not know how much time had passed. A second? A thousand years?
Suddenly, a bloody light exploded in the heart of the void, thick and burning... as if a sun of blood had ignited. The light pressed on his eyes, almost blinding him. When his sight adjusted, he saw a terrifying truth:
No ground, no sky, no walls. Only him... and that light tearing the darkness.
Then a door appeared.
A towering red door, as if it had stood since eternity. Its surface was a mix of metal and flesh, of blood and bone. Strange carvings crawled across it slowly, twisting around themselves like living things writhing in never-ending torment.
It was not a rigid door, but a living creature that breathed. Each breath was heavy and deep, sending waves of terror that subdued the soul before the body.
Above it, words began to be carved in glowing blood, as if being written now before his eyes. They were not only read, they were driven straight into his chest:
"Between life and death there is a thin line... O seeker of salvation, step forward... or vanish."
Ashn's body trembled. His wounds vanished as if they had never been, but his hands still shook uncontrollably.
He realized that everything that had happened in the cave was only a pale prelude compared to what awaited him now.
---
A dreadful silence fell. He could only hear his heartbeat, pounding like war drums.
The darkness around him waited, and the door stared at him in silence, like a cosmic beast watching its prey.
Inside him, thoughts were torn apart:
"If I retreat now... all the blood spilled for me will mean nothing. If I stop... I will be stuck between a life I do not deserve and a death without value."
He gripped his chest where the dagger had been driven, feeling the burning scar as if it were the mark of fate.
He raised his head, his eyes shining with a mix of fear and resolve.
"Behind this door I may either seize my self... or lose it forever. But I will not turn back."
He took a step.
The unseen ground trembled beneath him. The door made a sound like the roar of a thousand beasts slowly opening. From it came the smell of heated metal mixed with fresh blood, and new whispers that shook his chest:
"All who crossed me have paid a price... are you ready to pay yours?"
Ashn swallowed hard. Still, he did not stop.
His next step was a declaration:
"Whatever the price... I will go on."
The darkness around him surged like an angry sea, and the door exploded with a roar that made the void shudder.
In that moment Ashn realized that what was about to begin...
would not be a mere test, but a bloody judgment on his very existence.