The air burned as it touched his skin.
Kael's eyes blinked open to a skyless ceiling, veined with glowing fissures like cracks in a dying star. The chamber around him pulsed with a low hum—not mechanical, not magical—but something older. Something alive.
He was lying naked on cold obsidian stone. No doors. No exits. Just a circle of jagged pillars surrounding him like ancient sentinels.
"Initiating Trial of Flesh. Candidate: Kael. Tier Zero. No Foundation Formed."
A voice rang out—not from the walls, but from within his bones.
Kael sat up, heart thundering. The last thing he remembered was falling through the storm above the floating monolith. That, and the pressure—like a god had placed its hand on his chest and pushed.
"Trial?" he muttered.
The air shimmered before him. Without warning, the ground split—and something crawled out.
A beast of sinew and bone, its eyes empty but seething with hunger. It stood on four malformed limbs, each step cracking the floor beneath it. No fur. No flesh. Only raw muscle soaked in ichor, as if the creature had been born directly from pain.
"Defeat the primal guardian. Survival required. Time limit: 300 heartbeats."
Kael's body moved before he could think—pure instinct. He dodged the first swipe, barely avoiding claws that sliced through the air like swords.
He rolled, grabbed a shard of rock, and hurled it. It bounced off the creature's skull, doing nothing.
"I have no weapons… no power…"
The beast charged again. Kael ducked beneath its jaw and slammed his elbow into the exposed nerve cluster behind its shoulder. It howled. He followed with a knee to the throat, adrenaline overriding pain.
But the beast didn't go down.
Instead, it coiled back and slammed its tail into his ribs. Kael crashed into the pillar behind him. Blood gushed from his mouth.
His hands trembled. He was going to die. In a place not even real. In a body that still didn't feel like his own.
And yet—
"Why am I not afraid?"
He rose again. Eyes calm. His heartbeat slowed. The beast came—and this time he didn't dodge. He stepped into its attack, grappling the arm mid-swing, twisting, breaking it, using its momentum to drive the creature into the ground.
The chamber shook. The pillars flared crimson.
Kael drove his knee into the beast's spine. It shrieked—and in a final motion, he jammed a broken shard of bone into the base of its neck. The thing went still.
Silence.
"Trial of Flesh: Completed."
Kael fell to his knees. Breathing ragged. Bloodied, bruised, but victorious.
"What the hell was that thing…?"
A light appeared—suspended mid-air. A burning sphere of golden fire. It pulsed once, and Kael felt it—acceptance. Not just by the trial, but by something greater.
"You have proven your will to survive. Proceed to the Astral Forge."
The ground beneath him shimmered. A sigil formed beneath his body—shifting, complex, and ancient.
Then the world dissolved in light.