The air was thick with ash and tension.
Kael stood at the threshold of the Trial Grounds, a long-forgotten place buried beneath the crumbling ruins of the Old World. They had traveled for two days past the last mapped zone, guided only by the Codex's ever-shifting glyphs and the echo of whispers only he could hear. What waited ahead was not a dungeon, nor a battlefield — it was something older. A test not just of strength, but of identity.
Before him stood a monolithic gate of obsidian stone, etched with spiraling patterns that bled faint crimson light. The closer he stepped, the more his skin tingled, as if the very atmosphere recognized his blood.
Sera stepped up beside him. "Are you sure this is the place? It feels… wrong."
"It's called the Bloodbound Trial," Kael said quietly. "Only those marked by the Codex can enter. I have to go alone."
Alaric clenched his massive fists, bristling. "Then this reeks of a trap."
"It probably is," Kael replied with a half-smile. "But the Codex led me here for a reason. If I don't keep pushing forward, everything we're building falls apart."
There was nothing left to say. With a glance back at his closest allies — Sera's eyes filled with veiled worry, Alaric's with the silent promise of vengeance if something went wrong — Kael stepped forward.
The gate pulsed. The patterns lit up like a heartbeat, and then with a groan that shook the ground, it opened.
Darkness swallowed him.
The interior was not a corridor or a chamber. It was… a void.
Kael found himself standing on a circular platform of blood-red stone floating in a sea of blackness. Stars twinkled in the far-off horizon, but the sky was empty of warmth. The air here did not move, and his own breath echoed like whispers off invisible walls.
Then came the voice.
"Blood remembers. Flesh forgets. Spirit endures."
It spoke not in sound, but in thought — ancient and cold, like cracked stone under ice.
A figure rose from the shadows before him. At first, it resembled Kael — same frame, same eyes, same presence. But its skin was etched with burning veins of molten crimson, and its smile was a grim, predatory thing.
"You seek ascension?" the shade asked.
Kael drew his blade without speaking.
The shade mirrored the motion, forming an identical weapon — down to the notches on the hilt and the curve of the edge. The voice spoke again.
"To rise beyond what you are, you must bleed for what you are not."
Then the trial began.
Kael launched forward first — his Void Step sending him in a burst of flickering speed, aiming a diagonal slash across the shade's midsection.
But the moment his blade struck, it was met — not by steel, but by an exact mirror of his own attack. The clone moved like him. Thought like him. Anticipated him.
Kael staggered back as the shade twisted its sword in a motion Kael himself had never consciously executed — but instinctively recognized. A perfect counter.
He blocked just in time, sparks flying from the impact. The force sent him sliding back across the red stone platform, boots scraping against its surface.
"Not just a copy," Kael muttered, narrowing his eyes. "It's… me. Every version of me."
The clone grinned again — and then it moved faster.
The battle unfolded like a reflection in broken glass. Every time Kael adapted, the clone did too. Every time he called on the Codex's power, the clone responded in kind. Their blades danced and screamed with every strike, each moment a test of instinct and will.
Kael ducked under a spinning slash, then used Void Step to reappear behind the clone — only for the clone to explode into shadow and reform mid-air, coming down in a heavy overhead strike that cracked the platform.
It wasn't just about strength. It was about resilience. About creativity. About heart.
The clone didn't just mimic Kael's skills. It mirrored his doubts. His fears. Every moment of hesitation Kael had ever known — his failure to save his brother, his helplessness during the Collapse, the pain of being Nullborn — the clone weaponized all of it.
As Kael faltered, a voice whispered at the edge of the void:
"Is this your limit? Are you merely a reflection of pain… or its conqueror?"
The clone pressed the advantage, forcing Kael onto the defensive. His muscles burned. His vision blurred. Blow after blow rained down, and for a moment, the darkness felt absolute.
Then he remembered something.
Sera's face when she reached out her hand to him beneath the Spires.
Alaric standing firm against the world, unshaken in his loyalty.
The look in the eyes of the people following him — not as a chosen one, but as someone who refused to break.
Kael rose again.
This time, he didn't try to outthink the clone. He let go. His movements became less like techniques and more like a storm. He weaved between attacks with grace born not of calculation, but of conviction.
When the clone lunged with a fatal thrust, Kael leaned into it — allowing the blade to pierce his shoulder, just enough to close the gap.
He grabbed the clone's arm and drove his own sword through its chest.
The clone gasped, flickered — and then smiled.
"Blood accepts you. Flesh remembers. Spirit rises."
The clone vanished in a cascade of crimson light.
Kael fell to one knee, gasping. His blood spilled freely across the red stone, and where it touched, the runes around the platform ignited in blazing gold.
From the center of the void, a new figure emerged — not a reflection this time, but a towering being draped in robes of ash and flame, with a crown of hollow bone.
It extended its hand toward him.
"Ascendant of the Code. You are found worthy."
A glyph carved itself into Kael's chest — not with pain, but with an overwhelming surge of clarity. His eyes burned white as knowledge flooded him: the next evolution of Void Step, the beginnings of a new path called Phase Rift, and the whispers of a greater truth behind the Codex.
He understood now. Each trial wasn't just about gaining strength. It was about reclaiming lost fragments of the world. Of himself.
When he awoke outside the Trial Gate, Sera was the first to catch him before he collapsed. Her hands trembled as she felt the warmth still radiating off him.
"You were gone for three days," she whispered. "What happened in there?"
Kael's eyes flicked open — glowing with faint gold beneath the white.
"I fought myself," he said. "And I won. But it won't be the last time."
Far across the continent, in a throne room bathed in obsidian and starlight, a figure stirred.
News of the Bloodbound Trial's completion had reached the ears of the Obsidian Synod — one of the oldest enemy factions tied directly to the origins of the Codex.
"He's ascending faster than the Prophecy predicted," murmured the veiled woman on the throne, her voice like frost over steel. "Then we must accelerate our own plans."
Beside her, a monstrous being with three faces — past, present, and future — opened its many eyes.
"Let the next trial begin. But this time… let him bleed for more than just his soul."