Ashen stood in an arena that was no longer an arena, but a living hell. The walls were hidden behind piles of corpses, the ground submerged in a sea of blood, and the air thick with the smell of iron and burnt flesh. There was no place to step without sinking a foot into torn flesh or broken bone.
Suddenly, everything fell silent. The calm that followed the massacre was heavier than any scream. Even the whispers of the beasts in his soul ceased, as if waiting for what would come next.
Ashen was barely standing. His shoulders were shattered, his right arm hanging by a thread of flesh, half his chest open and dripping blood. Yet his eyes burned with relentless savage fire.
His body was like a distorted statue of blood and torn flesh, no human features remaining except the eyes that glowed like embers in the darkness.
Suddenly, the giant statues around the arena shook. Their hollow eyes ignited with dark red light, their mouths opened wide, and from them poured bloodfalls wider and stronger than before.
The rivers flowed like hellish torrents, falling from towering heights like red rain of death. The arena was completely covered; even the corpses floated on the waves, crashing like broken wood in a raging sea.
Ashen could not move. His body no longer obeyed him. He knelt, the blood rising to his chest, his eyes fixed on the bloody sky.
Suddenly, the ground beneath him opened. It did not swallow him, but engulfed him in place, forming a massive whirlpool of blood around him.
All the rivers converged at a single point, twisting around his body. Ashen slowly rose in the arena while the blood spun around him like a tornado.
The blood whirlpool gradually transformed into a giant blood sphere, tens of meters in diameter, pulsating like a massive heart. Inside it, Ashen's body was trapped, sinking and rising, tearing and healing.
Every wound on his body healed itself through the blood flowing into his pores. But with each healing came a price: every drop carried pure savage intent, multiplied thousands of times.
Ashen screamed, but it was not a human sound. It was the scream of a beast torn between life and death.
Inside his soul, he found himself in a black void. An endless sea of shadows, writhing, screaming, and laughing. Each shadow reflected a beast he had killed, every sound an echo of a scream he had silenced with his hands.
This was the savage intent made tangible before him.
Ashen tried to resist. His hands shook, his eyes reddened further, his breaths became a roar. But every attempt to cling to his mind was crushed by shadows tearing at him, slicing his soul with black threads.
Trying to hold onto his consciousness was like trying to stop a hurricane with bare hands.
The blood that healed him was also the poison devouring him. His body regenerated unnaturally fast, his muscles swelling, bones repairing, but his mind… it was eroding.
He began to see illusions:
Himself tearing the bodies of his friends.
His clan screaming under his grip.
His mother collapsing beneath his jaws.
Every illusion stabbed him like a knife. Every image pushed him closer to madness.
The savagery consumed him, bit by bit, until only a small flicker of awareness remained, on the verge of extinguishing.
At that moment, when his madness peaked, something unexpected happened. From the depths of his blood, from the roots of his being, an ancient force arose. It was neither a skill, nor a technique, nor conscious thought… it was instinctive, innate, older than his very existence.
It ignited like fire in kindling inside his body, without his permission. The blood that had been consuming him turned inward to be consumed by him. The savage shadows that had been tearing his soul were suddenly drawn like black smoke, pulled into his veins.
Ashen screamed as he felt his soul burning from within. Yet with each scream, with each pain, the savage intent gradually became part of him, refined within his blood rather than destroying him.
It was like an inner battle surpassing any physical fight he had ever faced. Every wild shadow that tried to cling to his soul and tear his mind was pulled into his blood, consumed and melted down.
It was not fast. For every beast he had killed, he had to relive its death. For every scream he had silenced, he had to hear it howl inside him until it melted.
The pain was unbearable, as if every bone were broken again, every wound reopened. Yet he endured.
In the end, what choice did he have? Either he devoured the savagery… or it devoured him.
After a struggle that felt eternal, the blood in the giant sphere lost its turbulence. It transformed from a raging river into a calm ocean, then into a quiet stream wrapping around his body.
His wounds closed, his flesh renewed, his bones hardened. But his eyes… they were no longer the same.
A new savagery had been born within him. He was no longer just a man trying to control madness… he had become a man capable of refining it within himself, able to wield it as a weapon.
This was the partial mastery of the savage intent.
The blood sphere suddenly exploded, splashing red rain across the arena. Ashen fell to his knees in the endless pool. His body was renewed, but his soul carried the marks of an eternal battle.
He raised his head slowly, his breath heavy, yet his eyes held a light that had never been there before… the glint of a tamed, destructive savagery, ready to erupt when needed.
Then, the solemn voice thundered again from above, the sound of Dao, heavy as a final judgment, terrifying as the bell of the apocalypse:
"You have passed the first trial.
But do not think blood alone proves your strength… blood purifies the body, but regret tears the soul.
Prepare for something greater…
The second trial: the Ordeal of Regret."