Where gods are worshipped, their corpses echo louder.
---
The path to Sector 3 didn't open with fanfare.
It simply appeared—a rippling shimmer in the floor of the ruined temple, like heat haze turned sideways. Silas touched it first, his hand phasing through like mist.
"Feels like walking into memory," he muttered.
Naomi stared at the rift. Her threads quivered.
"It's not memory," she said. "It's madness."
They stepped through together.
---
The Laughing God's Spiral wasn't a place.
It was a mind.
They landed in a city that bent upward into the sky—streets spiraled around a tower with no peak, buildings tilted like drunk thoughts, and color bled where it shouldn't.
People laughed here.
Endlessly.
But their mouths didn't move.
Their eyes didn't blink.
Naomi immediately summoned her threads. They didn't respond.
Silas tried invoking Envy—but his sin simply fizzled.
The Spiral bent rules.
A man with three faces approached them. He wore a crown made of teeth.
"New players," he said, all mouths smiling. "What'll you wager, what'll you scream?"
Silas stepped forward. "Where's the god?"
The man tilted his heads. "Which one? They all laugh now."
Naomi grabbed the man's wrist. Her fingers lit with threadlight.
He exploded into confetti.
Silas raised an eyebrow. "That's new."
"It wasn't me," Naomi whispered. "This place is alive."
The laughter grew louder.
Signs twisted mid-word. Roads changed beneath their feet. Logic unraveled.
They walked.
For what felt like hours.
Each step made them forget something small—Silas forgot the taste of blood. Naomi forgot her brother's name.
"You feel that?" she said, voice tight.
"Yeah," Silas replied. "Something's eating us piece by piece."
Then the god appeared.
He wore no face.
He was a carnival mask stitched onto a body made of limbs—hundreds of them.
"I am Jokriel," he said. "God of Delight. Prophet of Pain. And you—are delicious."
> [World Trial Initiated: Sector 3 – Laughing Spiral]
[Objective: Survive for 66 Minutes in the Arena of Joyless Joy]
Naomi blinked. "That's a joke, right?"
Jokriel giggled. "You'll be the punchline."
The arena shifted. Mirrors rose from the ground, reflecting not their images—but their regrets.
Silas saw himself, kneeling in the alley again, his spine snapped, screaming.
Naomi saw her mother, burning.
The crowd laughed.
Clones stepped out of the mirrors—perfect doppelgängers, smiling, crying, bleeding.
"Kill yourself," Jokriel whispered. "Or be killed by yourself."
Silas snapped.
He used Wrath without hesitation. His clone shattered in three blows, its grin splitting into shrieks.
Naomi hesitated. Her clone wept. It begged.
"I'm you," it sobbed. "I never wanted this."
Naomi whispered, "I did."
And severed its throat.
Blood painted the mirrors.
The god laughed harder.
Silas roared, unleashing Pride—distorting the space around him.
Naomi rewove causality and bent it inward, trapping the god's avatars.
Mirrors cracked. The arena buckled.
Jokriel screamed—not in joy, but terror.
"You're not players," he wailed. "You're—"
"Endings," Silas said.
They struck together.
Black threads and sinfire.
Jokriel burst into pieces of carnival paper, scattering to the wind.
> [World Trial Completed: Spiral of Joyless Joy]
[Reward Obtained: Echo of Laughter – Passive Immunity to Insanity Fields]
[Path Unlocked: Sector 4 – The Garden of Drowned Stars]
Naomi dropped to her knees.
"I forgot your name for a second."
Silas crouched beside her. "What name?"
"Yours."
He smiled.
"Then let me remind you."
She looked at him, exhausted.
"Say it."
"Silas Creed."
She breathed out.
"Okay. I remember again."
---