The Trail of purity
The sphere of silver light descended with the silence of a collapsing star, enveloping Aiden and Rin before either of them could react. It was absolute—cutting off sound, sight, and the oppressive feel of the decaying urban landscape. They were no longer on Floor 1; they were in the judgment chamber of the Goddess.
The air around them solidified into pure, shimmering light. Standing before them was a figure of cold, lunar beauty: Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and the Wild. She wore simple white tunics, but her presence was a force of nature, radiating an energy that was pristine, untouchable, and utterly judgmental.
"Hunters of the Eclipse Tower," Artemis's voice was crystalline, echoing not in the air, but in the depths of their souls. "You have defiled this sanctuary with the residue of demonic essence and, worse, the residue of broken oaths. To pass the domain of the Hunt, you must undergo the Trial of Purity."
Rin, his sword still drawn, felt the divine pressure pressing against his mana core. He was furious. This wasn't a battle against Ghouls or cultists; it was a psychological probe into the very wound Aiden had inflicted.
"Purity?" Rin scoffed, the sound grating against the silence. "We are reborn killers fighting a war for the Gods. We are nothing but sin."
Artemis fixed her gaze on Rin, her silver eyes like twin moons. "Purity is not innocence. It is the unadulterated nature of your purpose. Hunter Rin, your purpose is the Blade of the Rending Gale—swift, decisive, absolute. Yet your blade is choked by the dust of vengeance. You wield your warmth as a shield to hide a killing cold. This is impure."
She then turned her attention to Aiden, who stood stoically, his hands clasped behind his back in a posture of prepared defense.
"Hunter Aiden, Arbiter of Chronos. Your purpose is the precise calculation that maintains the integrity of the whole. Your heart is dedicated to the preservation of one man's soul, achieved through an act of supreme betrayal. Your logic is clean, but your soul is stained by a choice that denies your own worth. This is impure."
Aiden felt a cold sweat break out on his neck. The Goddess had cut straight to the truth he had tried to bury with two lifetimes of cold strategy.
"The trial begins," Artemis declared, raising a hand.
The silver light intensified, not burning them, but stripping away their physical defenses. A blinding vision seized Rin.
He was back on Floor 98 of the old Tower, standing beside the man he loved. They were surrounded by the Outer God's chaotic minions. Rin was fighting, pushing himself to the brink, his legendary Mana Crystal held tightly in his left hand—his failsafe.
Then, the sickening crunch of bone. Rin saw himself collapse, mortally wounded. He felt the cold shock of failure, and the sudden, overwhelming realization that Aiden, standing just feet away, had not moved.
He didn't move. Rin's mental voice screamed in the vision. He saw me fall, and he calculated the cost of intervention—and chose the mission over me.
The illusion of the previous timeline played out with brutal clarity. Aiden's cold expression as he calmly activated his Chronos skill, securing the artifact, and leaving Rin's dying body to draw the enemy's attention.
The vision then fractured, and Rin saw the cold choice through the eyes of the man who made it.
Aiden's Vision:
He saw Rin dying, but he also saw the invisible Fate Vector—the absolute temporal lock placed by the Outer Gods—which dictated that Rin's soul would be destroyed if Aiden saved him traditionally. He saw the red text of the Chronos's Reckoning algorithm demanding a total severance to save the soul.
Aiden didn't feel the pain of Rin's physical death; he felt the soul-searing agony of forcing his own hand to condemn his love. He felt the sickening lurch of the Chronos power as he rewrote the shared memories of their love, replacing them with the indelible poison of betrayal, all to ensure Rin's intact soul could escape and be reborn. The cost was astronomical: not only their bond, but Aiden's entire spiritual reservoir, which he willingly drained.
Rin, trapped in the vision, didn't understand the technicality, the why. He only experienced the depth of Aiden's sacrificial despair, the love that demanded he become the villain. The vision didn't show the betrayal as cold strategy; it showed it as an act of calculated, self-immolating love.
But Rin's core self-preservation—the anger that had sustained his rebirth—rejected the notion.
Lies! Rin's mental voice roared. A lie created to justify the abandonment! No true love requires such coldness!
The two visions collided, forcing Rin to feel the love and forcing Aiden to feel the hatred. Their mental space—their shared past—was the battlefield.
A terrible, mutual psychic shock ran through them. Rin stumbled backward, his hands flying to his head, his physical body shuddering as if struck by lightning.
Aiden, though prepared for the torment, took the full force of the shared hatred Rin projected. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the shimmering floor, gasping.
"Stop. The constraint," Aiden choked out, his voice raw.
Artemis didn't stop the trial. Instead, a silver bow materialized in her hands, drawn with an arrow of pure light aimed between them.
"Your rebirth is a gift, Hunters. It is also a fragile knot of fate that the Outer Gods, and my brother Apollo, watch closely. Your impure purpose threatens the balance of the Tower. Hunter Rin, you will shed your vengeance, or you will forfeit your power."
Rin finally found his voice, filled with a defiant, broken passion. "I will not shed my past! It is the fuel of my blade!"
"Then your blade will not be enough," Artemis countered, her voice hardening. "And Hunter Aiden, your absolute, possessive preservation of a single soul threatens the entire war effort. You will accept the hatred you manufactured, or you will forfeit your life."
She released the arrow. It didn't strike either of them. Instead, it struck the invisible space between them, bursting into a network of ethereal silver chains that wrapped around both their wrists.
[TRIAL RESULT: COMPROMISE.]
[CONSTRAINT APPLIED: FOR THE DURATION OF FLOOR 1, YOUR FATE WILL BE TETHERED. THE LIFE OF ONE HUNTER CANNOT BE PRESERVED WITHOUT THE ACTIVE SACRIFICE OR ASSISTANCE OF THE OTHER.]
[FAILURE TO ACT AS A UNIT WILL RESULT IN TEMPORAL ANNIHILATION OF BOTH SOULS.]
The silver light vanished. They were back on the ruined street. The chains were gone, but the psychic certainty of the tether remained. Rin felt his own mana core pulse, mirrored by an agonizing pulse from Aiden's core, which now felt intrinsically linked to his own.
Rin stared down at the collapsed, gasping Aiden, who looked more haggard than he had ever seen him, even in their past life's final battle.
"You have to be kidding me," Rin whispered, his voice shaking with a mixture of fury and despair. We are tethered.
Aiden slowly pushed himself up, his eyes burning with a desperate intensity that was not strategic, but purely possessive. "The Goddess… ensures my role. I must protect you, Rin. It is my purpose."
He was not asking for forgiveness, or even acceptance. He was stating an immutable law of fate, imposed by a Goddess, fueled by the love he couldn't deny and the hatred he had to endure.
Rin felt the cold hatred he had nursed for two decades start to fray at the edges, replaced by a terrible, painful pity. He turned away, unwilling to look at the ravaged face of the man who had betrayed and, simultaneously, saved him.
"Let's move," Rin bit out, his voice rough. "If I have to drag the Arbiter's worthless life through this floor just to save my own, then so be it."