The suspended arena was no longer a desert of runes and sigils… it had turned into a maze of bloody walls, liquid mirrors whose surfaces rippled like pools of blood. With every ripple, a face appeared, and with every face… a new nightmare came out.
Hundreds of copies of Ashen surrounded Ashen himself.
But these copies were not silent reflections… they were living beings made of blood, each one more deformed than the other:
One without skin, its flesh exposed and dripping blood.
Another half bone, half clotted blood.
A third with a severed head dangling from a bloody thread like a waterfall.
Their laughter was not laughter but mad weeping. A sound that cut the soul, a mixture of crying, screaming, and cackling, like an orchestra of absolute madness.
— "You're just a curse…"
— "Why did you live while your clan perished?"
— "Everything you're doing now… is meaningless."
— "You'll vanish sooner or later… so why resist?"
The words were knives.
But the real pain was not in his ears; it was in his soul.
Each copy extended a bloody hand, its fingers like daggers, and stabbed it into his spiritual chest. They did not wound his body but his very soul. They pulled pieces out of him—his memories, his dreams, even moments of his childhood.
Ashen screamed, a scream no one heard, but it shook his entire being.
— "Aaaaaah!"
He saw himself in the mirrors as a child, running in the village with his friends, laughing… then the scene split apart. The laughter turned into blood, his friends slaughtered one by one, their blood flowing over the mirrors until it covered him.
— "You should have died with them."
— "If you were strong… you all would have survived."
— "But you were too weak to save even yourself."
Each sentence was another chain around his heart.
Each word dragged him deeper into the abyss of despair.
The copies did not stop at mockery… they began fighting over him, each one trying to tear him apart more. Their fingers sank into his soul, ripping it like old cloth.
Ashen felt himself evaporating.
His soul was tearing, scattering, turning into shards.
But he… did not surrender.
Amid the pain, amid the madness, he remembered his father's face as he fought to his last breath.
He remembered his mother's scream as she shielded his sister from death.
He remembered his grandfather's torn body covering him with his own.
Bloody tears fell from his eyes as he whispered in a voice full of madness:
— "I will not vanish… not before I drown the sky in regret and feed the earth with blood."
But the copies did not stop.
Their laughter grew, their madness burst.
And they began merging together to form a single being.
The mirrors shattered, their blood flowed into the arena and covered the ground.
From the blood, a bloody giant rose, its form the same as Ashen's… but twisted, its face cracked, its eyes empty, its mouth split from ear to ear.
Ashen was standing before his own bloody self.
— "I am you."
— "I am the hatred you hide."
— "I am the desire you deny."
— "I am the filth you live with."
The voice of the copy was an echo of his own, but deeper, more insane, more savage.
— "You don't deserve life… but I will live it instead of you."
The bloody giant rushed at Ashen.
Its fist was not a hand… but a mass of blood burning with savagery.
One blow… shattered his bones.
One scream… nearly tore his soul apart.
Ashen fell to the ground, his body breaking, his soul being dragged out of him.
The bloody copy knelt over him, sank its fingers into his chest, and pulled out his spiritual heart, then lifted it high.
— "This is mine."
Ashen felt himself collapsing completely.
But at that moment…
He remembered the vow.
The vow he made over his clan's corpses.
That he would avenge them.
That he would not let their blood be wasted.
The last spark in his eyes did not go out.
Even lying in his own blood, even as his soul was being torn, he kept staring at the copy with unbreakable defiance.
He whispered in a hoarse voice, barely hearing himself:
— "I will not vanish… not before I make the world bleed."
Suddenly… the copy stopped.
The fire in its eyes trembled, as if it had seen something it could not bear.
The arena shook, the mirrors shattered, the blood exploded everywhere.
And the lower eye, the Eye of the Soul, released a bloody beam that covered everything.
Ashen was drowning in the light, his soul trembling, his body shaking.
But amid the pain, amid the madness, he stood his ground.
He refused to fall.
And within the noise, within the collapse, he heard the echo of the Heavenly Dao whispering inside him:
— [Whoever wants savagery… must drown himself in a hell without mercy.]
— [You have entered the trial… but will you leave it alive?]
Ashen, covered in blood and scars, slowly raised his head.
In his eyes… a spark of refusal, a spark of defiance, a spark of someone who will burn everything to win.
The trial was not over yet.
But the flame in his heart burned brighter than ever.