Arky no longer understood what was happening. One moment, he was playing Genshin Impact in front of his laptop. The next, he had been dragged into Teyvat itself.
After being sealed within the cubic spatial construct, he found himself trapped in a vast void.
At first, he drifted through emptiness. Then, without warning, he was standing on a crimson battlefield, a spear clenched in his hands. Hilichurls surrounded him, along with Mitachurls and various elemental lifeforms.
Before he could even process what was happening, a hilichurl's club slammed into his head.
Pain exploded through his skull. Blood spilled down his face as his body collapsed. He was beaten again and again until everything went dark.
The pain, the stench of blood, the sounds of battle. It all felt horrifyingly real. For a moment, he was certain he had died.
Then the battlefield shattered like broken glass.
And he was back at the beginning.
That was when he realized the truth. His mind, perhaps even his soul, was trapped in a loop. Every time he died, the world reset.
At first, he died quickly. Again and again.
But slowly, things changed.
He learned how to survive. He learned how to fight. He killed, was killed, and returned once more to the beginning.
Each cycle honed his instincts. Somehow, his spear never broke, and with every repetition, his mastery over it deepened.
Eventually, after countless deaths, he stood alone on the battlefield. Every enemy lay slain.
For a brief moment, he thought it was over.
He was wrong.
The scenery shifted, and the battlefield dissolved. When his vision cleared, he stood on a vast plain, surrounded by a new kind of enemy waiting for him.
This time, it was Abyss Mages. Pyro, Hydro, Cryo, Electro. You name it, they had it.
Just wonderful.
Before he could even blink, he was trapped inside a Hydro Mage's bubble.
Water crushed in from all sides, stealing his breath. He suffocated to death.
And then it reset.
Days turned into months. Months into years.
Every attempt ended the same way. Whenever he closed the distance, the fuckers teleported away.
Fireballs, lightning, freezing winds. Death came fast and often.
His mind began to wear thin.
Just as he was about to give up, something stirred deep within his heart.
Badump! Badump!
A Pyro Mage hurled a fireball toward him. Instinctively, Arky raised his hand to defend himself.
The fireball froze in midair.
He gawked as it began to glitch, its form breaking apart as if reality itself had rejected it.
The flames decayed, unraveling into nothingness before vanishing completely.
Then an Electro Mage struck him down moments later.
And so it began.
It was not training. It was torture.
Trial after trial, death after death, learning to wield that strange power.
Sometimes he pushed too far, burning through too much Soul energy, only to collapse from exhaustion and die again.
It was strange. He did not learn the power.
He understood it instinctively.
Errors in systems, flaws in structure, points where reality could be undone.
After what felt like countless years, he finally erased every Abyss Mage from existence.
Before he could even rest, fragmented memories flooded his mind.
He saw the battle between Asmoday and a being named Xai'reth.
Scenes that made no sense. Images overlapping, voices echoing. His head felt like it was about to split apart.
One memory made his heart skip.
The creation of the Shades.
Through Xai'reth's eyes, Arky glimpsed an androgynous being who radiated divinity itself.
Golden eyes and long white hair marked the being, who gradually assumed a male form as his counterpart transformed into the Four Shades of Life, Death, Time, and Space, each sharing the same divine features except they were females.
Xai'reth was different. He was the first Shade ever created, an exact replica of that being, yet with long black hair and silver eyes.
The one who had created him was: Phanes, the Primordial One.
And yet, Xai'reth was rejected. His existence was a mistake, a failed attempt at creation.
He had been intended to serve as Celestia's enforcer, yet his power opposed Order itself. He existed to erode structure, unravel authority, and spread disorder.
Because of this, Phanes deemed him a failure and went on to create the other four Shades to properly govern the realms according to the Heavenly Principles.
Xai'reth was later imprisoned in a cosmic prison by Phanes himself.
That prison shattered when the 'Second Who Came' descended upon Teyvat and waged war against Phanes.
Just as Arky's mind was on the verge of collapse, the memories stopped.
He found himself standing in a ruined world, surrounded by lifeless machines.
Ruin Guards. Ruin Serpents. Automatons scattered across the land.
Weakened and disoriented, he died almost immediately.
Then it reset.
Time passed. He died and killed, over and over, enduring the trials until at last he stood upon the floating island of Celestia itself, high above the clouds.
Arky took in his surroundings.
White pillars rose toward the sky, and at the far end stood a grand white door. It looked exactly like the game's starting screen.
Above him floated the Four Shades, guarding the door.
'So this was the end of the trial.' He thought.
Arky glitched, and in the next instant, he appeared beside Naberius, the one who held the Authority of Life.
He died immediately.
Istaroth slowed time to a crawl. Ronova and Asmoday struck together, overwhelming him before he could even react.
The trial reset.
He was back atop Celestia.
Fight after fight, he died. The combinations of their powers were the worst he had ever witnessed.
When he killed Naberius, Istaroth reversed time and reset the result.
When he tried to interfere with her authority over time, Asmoday severed the space where his error formed, and Ronova delivered the final blow.
When he went after Istaroth instead, Naberius restored her to life, and all four ganged up on him at once.
There was no opening, no mercy.
Arky had long since gone numb. Dry jokes muttered to himself were the only thing keeping his mind intact. Even then, he could not stop himself from cursing.
"What a bunch of fucking cockroaches."
After countless deaths, one truth became clear.
Alone, it was impossible for him to defeat the Four Shades while they fought together.
If this was what the Shades were capable of, then facing Phanes or the Usurper would be far worse.
Time continued to pass.
He fought, he died, and the world reset once more.
And still, he could not win.
Five hundred years passed since the day he had been kidnapped from his world.
The trial finally ended, not with victory or defeat, but with a stalemate against the Four Shades.
* * *
Rain drizzled lightly outside, but the harsh wind made it seem as though the sky itself was angry at the world.
Inside one of the lavish guest rooms of Dawn Winery, a boy lay in deep sleep upon a large bed.
Suddenly, his upper body jerked upright. Long black hair spilled down his shoulders with the abrupt movement as his eyes snapped open.
The dull gray in them vanished, replaced by a shimmering silver glow.
The room started to get distorted at once. The air trembled, wooden beams groaned under invisible pressure, and the walls glitched as if reality itself were malfunctioning.
For a brief moment, it felt as though the entire room might be erased from existence.
Then the distortion stopped.
The boy clenched his jaw and forced the power back down.
Arky drew in a deep breath, then slowly released it.
"Haaah… I never thought breathing real air again could feel this good," he murmured, the corner of his lips lifting faintly.
The naive, ordinary boy he once was no longer existed. In his place stood someone who had fought, died, and repeated that cycle more times than sanity should allow.
Physically, little had changed. Aside from his hair and eyes, his body remained the same as it had been before. It had been frozen in time and space within the spatial construct.
His mind, however, was another story.
It had been trapped in a brutal loop designed by Xai'reth, a crucible meant to temper his successor, forcing Arky to gain control over his new powers while experiencing the true cruelty of Teyvat.
Even Xai'reth likely never imagined that Arky's mind would endure until the very end.
The trial had been crafted with a fail-safe. If Arky ever truly gave up, the trial would end, and he would sink back into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Yet one of Arky's worst, or perhaps best, traits was his perfectionism. Once he began something, he could not bring himself to abandon it halfway. He needed to see it through to the end, down to the last detail, until it was complete.
Even so, he came dangerously close to breaking during his battles with the Abyss Mages. His mind was fraying, his resolve stretched to its limits.
And in that moment, when he stood on the very edge of surrender, his Authority of Entropy awakened, dragging him back from the brink and saving his sorry ass.
Arky sighed as he lifted his gaze toward the window, where the storm clouds loomed beyond the glass.
"If you're still alive out there, Xai'reth," he muttered quietly, "you'll be the first one I kill for making me live through that shit."
He closed his eyes once more, letting the cool air fill his lungs.
For the first time in five hundred years, the world felt real again.