The last ten steps slipped past—each one feeling as though he were piercing through time itself.
Kael arrived.
In a place he had never known, never imagined, never once encountered in the fragments of memory that had already been torn from him.
Before him stood no ancient museum. No military ruins. No relics of forgotten technology.
Instead… a narrow, sunken cave. It sloped downward like the choking throat of the world itself. Damp moss clung to its walls, sharp gravel scattered across the floor, and the air carried a strange, stale scent of earth—as if it had been sealed away and forgotten for ages.
This place felt older than any ruin he had ever crossed. Quieter than even the loneliest memory he still possessed.
Kael took two more steps forward.
Krauck… Krauck.
His boots pressed into ground that seemed to resist being touched.
His eyes swept across the space with an unease he had never felt before, tracing the contours of stone and the descending path ahead—faintly lit by sparse purple-flamed torches embedded in the walls, aligned like symbols of something that defied explanation.
"…Did I just step into a hidden cave?" he murmured, barely believing it himself.
"The smell's strange—like iron and dead roots. This place doesn't feel… like part of the outside world. Could this be—"
Whhoooouusssshhhhh—
A sudden cold wind surged from behind him.
It wasn't a natural draft.It was a silent cry—an unspoken message that pierced straight through to his bones.
Kael turned sharply, just as the portal he had passed through began to fade, dissolving into an unseen fracture of the world.
He froze, eyes narrowing toward the mouth of the cave.
That wind… there was something deeply wrong about it.
He didn't hear words, yet something within him understood.
His instincts warned him—this was a sign of something ominous, though he couldn't yet name it.
There was something carried within that wind. Invisible, yet unmistakable. Cold. Heavy. As though it bore an ancient, unresolved anger.
It whispered like the breath of an old wound, scraping against a refusal to be forgotten.
"If I can't return through the portal like before… then I'll have to find another way... or something that can tell me why he brought me here."
"Outside… and within this cave," Kael glanced faintly over his shoulder, "there must be something I'm meant to know."
Whhoooouusssshhhhh—
The wind came again. This time it didn't fade—circling endlessly within the suffocating space.
"I need to get out of this cave. I need to see what's out there."
There was no clear threat. Yet Kael felt himself being pushed—not by fear, but by a deep, aching curiosity.
A silent calling, one only a fractured soul could hear.
And so he moved.
Step by step, he climbed the slope toward the dim light at the cave's mouth—without fear of dangers he could not yet see.
.
.
And the moment he emerged—
FWUUUUUHHHH—!!!
The wind howled like the scream of banished spirits, a vortex of mist devouring his vision.
ZRAK—!!
KRAA—BOOOOM—!!!
Lightning tore through the darkened sky, the ground trembling as though the heavens themselves refused to remain silent.
What lay before him was not freedom. Not relief.
It was a world writhing in pain.
A sky drowned in thick fog, gray storms spiraling across the horizon, the wind shrieking like suffering that would never end.
From atop a rocky rise, Kael stood upon hardened earth—like a small island drifting in a nameless sea.
"…My suspicion was right."
His hair and long cloak whipped violently in the storm.
"This isn't an ordinary place… it's like a world beyond dimensions I've never seen before."
All around him stretched an endless blue-violet ocean, and the shattered remains of colossal pillars scattered across the land—like prayers that had been denied their answers.
And at the very center of that chaos—standing firm, unmoving—
A black-gold sword was driven deep into the heart of the world.
Its hilt rose toward the split sky, as if serving as an axis between reality and something far beyond it—like a dimensional nail hammered down from above to keep existence from collapsing entirely.
It was not a symbol of awakening. It was a verdict. An absolute judgment already passed.
It was not a symbol of power.
It was a warning.
Not to be summoned. Not to be grasped—but to be avoided.
This place had once rejected law, reality, and meaning itself. And the sword stood as proof that such defiance had been judged in full.
"The sky is torn, and the storm doesn't merely fall—it's born from the wound up there. The raging sea that never rests… that sword isn't an object. It's the remnant of a will too strong to die," he said quietly, as though he understood the truth behind what he was seeing.
Above, a deep-blue tempest spiraled around the sword's blade—not as punishment, but as reaction.
As though the sword's very existence disrupted the balance of the heavens, forcing clouds and lightning to revolve around it.
Crimson lightning lashed out from the vortex—not as judgment, but as energy reality itself could no longer contain. Each flash split sky and sea alike, shaking the long-fractured Aetherial Logic to its core.
Below, the ocean battered the sword's base without end—wave after wave crashing against it, as if the world itself were trying to reject something embedded far too deeply to ever be removed.
Kael lifted his gaze, staring intently at the sky of suffering he was never meant to witness.
"…What is this place called?"
There was no companion. No voice answered.
Only himself—and a world that felt as though it had just awakened from a nightmare far too real to forget.
Something far removed from normality.
Something that was… not merely a place—nor a trial awaiting a result. It was a verdict already passed, long before he ever arrived.
〈 Vareth's Hollow 〉
This was not a world. It was a wound.
Vareth's Hollow was the remnant of a collapsed will of reality—a territory born not from life, but from what had been left behind. A suffering sea. Winds that carried echoes of trauma that never healed. And a black-gold sword piercing its heart, standing as a marker that this was where something ended… or where something that should never exist began.
No map recorded it. No living being remembered it—save for those who had lost more than just their bodies. More than reality. More than meaning. Those who had lost their very destiny.
Kael remained standing.
Amid petrified ruins and a sky split open like a raw wound, the thing that made his body tremble was not the cold—
—but the realization: 'He should not be here.'
Or rather—some other part of himself had left behind an unspoken message, whispering: 'You must leave. Before everything begins again.'
"…I need to get out of here… and go deeper into that cave," he muttered, half to himself.
"There has to be something hidden in there. Or… suffering I'm meant to face alone."
Without overthinking it, Kael turned and prepared to leave.
Then his steps halted.
His gaze was pulled toward something that should have been impossible to miss—a corpse.
Something he should have noticed from the very beginning.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"…A body?"
A human skeleton sat slumped against the stone wall, draped in a pitch-black cloak torn apart and buried in layers of time-worn dust.
One skeletal hand still clutched a long staff of aged wood, carved with unfamiliar symbols—whether it had been a support, or a weapon never given the chance to be used, he couldn't tell.
The skull bowed forward, as though asleep in a defeat it never had the chance to resolve.
Kael approached slowly.
He frowned in disbelief. How had he not noticed this earlier? Even the stench of death… it had been rotting here long before he arrived.
"Don't tell me… this cave—"
Near the skeleton's hand, a sheet of yellowed paper was wedged between its broken fingers.
"Huh? A note?"
Kael picked it up. Dust crumbled from its surface like the ashes of memory. The paper was fragile, yet intact. When he turned it over—rough handwriting greeted him. The black ink had nearly faded… but the message endured.
First Record — Handwritten
Kael read it in silence.
"Day 2."
"If this is a trial… then I failed before I ever understood its rules."
"We were awakened… not as heroes, not as envoys. But as tools meant to be seen. Judged. Wagered."
"I don't know who brought me here. But I know the feeling they carried… Not hope. Guilt."
"If someone is reading this… go deeper. Maybe you're stronger than we were. But never believe strength alone will be enough."
— Ashver Dyne, Reconstruction Unit Delta K-07
Kael fell silent. The light in his eyes dimmed.
Slowly, he folded the letter and placed it back upon the skeleton's chest—as if returning a final message to its rightful owner.
"…So I'm not the only one who was sent into a place like this."
He furrowed his brow. "He called it… a 'trial'?"
"If what they meant by 'being wagered' was… becoming puppets, moved around just to be watched… then maybe he didn't die because he lost. Maybe he died because he couldn't overcome the other side of his own fear. And just like I said… this letter is telling me to go deeper too. But… does that mean the ones before me were told the same?"
His gaze drifted toward the darkness at the end of the cave's passage. Yet his thoughts remained unsettled.
"No… I can't draw conclusions from a single note."
"…Yeah," he answered himself quietly. "Something's definitely wrong."
Whhouuushhhh…
A breath of wind flowed out from within the cave once more—but this time, it was gentle. As though calling him inward.
"…Alright. I'll find out myself."
Kael steeled his resolve.
And then he stepped forward, treading over damp stone as he descended deeper into the cave's path.
***