The air in the Veil Rift crackled like torn silk as Kael stepped through the gateway.
His boots touched jagged ground — black crystal shards stretched endlessly beneath a bleeding red sky. The Shattered Isle loomed ahead, a land fractured into floating segments drifting in chaotic gravity. Screams echoed faintly across the broken landscape, though no mouths cried them.
[Anchor Trial – Soul Fragment Detected]
Aspect: Grief
Synchronization Level: 0%
Warning: Emotional Collapse Likely.
Kael clenched the pendant Irelia had given him, its silver thread glowing faintly. With every heartbeat, he felt it tug — not toward danger, but toward something lost.
A ruined bridge stretched across to the nearest floating shard. Each step he took made it creak under his weight, not from decay — but from the pressure of unspoken memory.
At the center of the shard stood a cracked monument, pulsing with pale blue light. Beneath it lay a girl. Young. Familiar.
Kael froze.
It was Selene.
No — not her. A reflection. A memory.
"Kael…" she whispered, her voice raw with sorrow. "You said you'd protect me."
His pulse thundered. He remembered this. The night the orphanage burned. The night he failed.
"I wasn't strong enough," he muttered, voice shaking.
She sat up, tears streaming down her face. But her eyes — her real eyes — were stitched shut with silver thread.
"You left me."
The ground trembled.
A ripple burst out from the monument, revealing dozens of other figures surrounding them — all versions of people he had lost. Selene. Master Roran. Even Lyria, her body half-consumed by flame. All blaming him.
"You weren't there…"
"You hesitated…"
"You chose yourself…"
[Trial Initiated: The Mirror of Grief]
Objective: Endure. Do Not Fight. Accept.
Kael gritted his teeth. His instincts screamed to run, to fight, to deny. But the system was clear — this wasn't a battle of blades.
He dropped to his knees.
"I did leave you," he whispered, looking at the Selene-mirror. "I was weak. I failed."
The figures paused.
"I carried your deaths like armor… but I never faced them. I just kept running forward, pretending it gave me strength."
The sky above dimmed. The figures stopped their advance.
"I won't run anymore."
The girl's stitched eyes slowly unraveled — revealing hollow sockets of light. Then they filled with stars.
She smiled.
[Aspect of Grief: Synchronized – 100%]
New Ability Unlocked: "Soul Anchor – Echo Memory"
Description: Harness grief as emotional anchor. Recall the strength of lost bonds to resist mental corruption.
The shard began to disintegrate as the monument cracked and released a blinding pulse. Kael stood as the wind howled around him — not screaming this time, but singing.
He'd passed the trial.
Back in the Sanctuary of Threads
Irelia watched the shimmering tapestry shift.
"He claimed the second piece," she murmured.
Behind her, a figure emerged from the shadows — cloaked in rusted thread, his eyes veiled in burning cloth.
"He's moving too fast," the figure said coldly. "You're accelerating the convergence."
Irelia didn't look away from the tapestry. "He has to. The Devourer stirs."