Orion stood in the void, feet flat on ground that gleamed like dark glass and threw back the faint light coming off his own body. He kept his hands loose at his sides. Inside him, his eighteen laws turned at their usual quiet pace, the way they always did when nothing was wrong yet.
A figure stepped out of the dark and stopped a few metres away. It wore his face — same build, same eighteen rings drifting slowly around its frame, the same glow tracing pathways under its skin. It said nothing, and Orion didn't expect it to. He'd seen enough trials by now to recognize what this one was. Not a fight. Not really. It wanted to know what he was made of underneath, and it was about to find out the hard way.
The figure lifted one hand, and the sky of the void began to come down.
