The first step beyond the gate felt like walking through memory.
Not one of their own, but someone else's dream half-remembered and rewritten. The ground underfoot wasn't stone or ash. It was smooth like glass, but warm, like it breathed. The sky above pulsed between violet and gold, clouds glitching between shapes that almost looked like words.
Kael blinked up at the swirling horizon. "Did we just walk into someone's fever dream?"
Rowan scanned the air with his backup device, then frowned. "This isn't a zone. It's a framework layer. The code's unfamiliar."
Aya crouched and touched the glasslike ground. Vines sprouted behind her as usual, but these ones shimmered. They didn't bloom from ash. They grew through light.
"The rules are different here," she said softly.
Silas hovered just above the surface, wings still active but dimmed. "Welcome to the forgotten layers."
Jaden took a few steps forward. The world didn't resist.
If anything, it responded. Light pulsed beneath his feet, tiny ripples of code following each movement. He felt it tugging at the edge of his awareness, like the world knew him.
Niko moved beside him. "It's not hostile. But it's not neutral, either."
Rowan tapped through his readings again. "I'm not detecting danger yet, but there's a strange signature. It's like the environment's built to test us."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Oh good, more tests."
They continued forward until the path broke into a suspended platform, high above an endless drop. The far edge floated in the distance, disconnected.
No bridges.
Just space.
But across that void, a shimmer of motion.
A figure.
It stood still, entirely wrapped in banded glass like stained circuitry. No face. No limbs. But unmistakably watching.
> Zone Thread Detected
Trial Type: Pattern Reconstruction
Participants: 6
Failure Consequence: Total Reversion
"That's new," Rowan muttered. "Reversion?"
Silas's jaw tightened. "If we fail, it resets us."
Kael scoffed. "They really said memory wipe as a punishment?"
Niko glanced at Jaden. "We're not losing anything else."
The platform under their feet lit up. Six glowing tiles rose from the ground, one beneath each of them.
Then the air filled with images.
Familiar ones.
Moments from their past, some shared, some secret. The time Kael nearly burned the food and tried to lie about it. Aya quietly fixing Rowan's collar mid-argument. Silas leaning against a crumbling wall pretending he wasn't injured. Niko laughing, rare and real. Jaden whispering a promise to an unconscious stranger during their second week in the field.
Each memory appeared briefly above them like a card in motion.
> Trial Start
Reconstruct your path. Prove your bond.
Aya reached out instinctively toward her tile, and the images swirled.
"It wants us to sequence them," she realized. "To show the story."
Rowan's eyes scanned the patterns. "It's not just a memory test. It's measuring emotional consistency."
Jaden nodded. "We don't just remember each other. We trust the timeline we built together."
"Then let's not mess it up," Kael said, stepping onto his tile fully.
One by one, they moved.
The world dimmed.
Each of them became surrounded by projections, small reconstructions of shared moments. Their trials played out in personal space, but the emotions leaked across. Silas felt Niko's hesitation when she first joined. Aya felt Kael's burning pride masking insecurity. Jaden walked through Silas's quiet gestures, the way he always stepped between him and danger without being asked.
No voices told them what to do.
The memories knew.
They had to place them in order, not of time, but of meaning.
It was hard.
Not because they didn't remember, but because the system demanded truth. No exaggeration. No dramatization.
The day Jaden almost left the group wasn't at the end of their arc. It was a beginning. Kael placing trust in Rowan wasn't dramatic. It was quiet, and that made it count more.
They worked in silence.
Each choosing honesty over pride.
Each confirming each other's path.
When the last image locked into place, the light snapped upward.
---
> Pattern Accepted
Trust Thread Stabilized
Reversion Cancelled
The platforms connected. The void pulsed and the figure of glass stepped aside.
Silas looked at Jaden, a hint of something unreadable in his gaze.
"You led that," he said.
Jaden gave a tired smile. "You followed."
---
They stepped onto the next platform.
Beyond it, the world twisted again. But this time, there was no sky.
Just darkness.
And red text rising in the distance like a sun made of warnings.
Something massive was waking.
But for now, the team stood together.
Unbroken.
End of Chapter 29 : Skyglass Horizon
Author's Note : Chapter 29
Me: "Let's ease into the new world slowly."
Chapter: launches a memory trial over a bottomless void with a glitch judge
Also chapter: "Please emotionally rank your trauma in the correct order. You have six seconds."
Anyway. No one's dead. Everyone leveled up emotionally. So I call that character development with ✨flavor✨.
Ano na babad na babad na ako
"What now? I'm already completely soaked."
-sky_xyn