The trial did not end with that single confrontation. Once the shadow dissolved and the floor opened again, I descended further, only to find that each new hall demanded something different from me. There was no repetition, no comfort in pattern. Every chamber was designed to test a separate aspect of my foundation, as though the structure itself was examining me piece by piece.
One hall stripped everything away except my body.
The moment I entered, I felt the laws within me fall silent. I could not draw upon space, time, devour, or any elemental control. Even my domain remained unresponsive. A shadow emerged at the center, its presence steady and physical. There was no distortion around it, no construct forming behind it. It stepped forward and attacked with nothing but raw strength.
I smiled.
It had been a long time since I had relied purely on muscle and bone.
We clashed head-on. Fists collided. The ground cracked under our steps. It was a direct exchange of force without tricks or layered techniques. Every strike carried weight. Every block tested endurance.
I allowed myself to enjoy it, letting my body remember what it felt like to move without relying on laws. When I finally drove my fist into its chest with enough force to fracture its form, the shadow shattered cleanly. Another human soul appeared, bowed, and dissolved into me, strengthening my own in a steady, measurable way.
The next hall challenged my mind instead of my body.
The space shifted the moment I stepped inside. The white walls dissolved into endless corridors, twisting paths and mirrored turns. The structure rearranged itself constantly, passages folding and unfolding in response to my movement. It was not a simple maze; it was an illusion built to exhaust perception and fracture focus.
Psynapse answered immediately.
I expanded my perception outward, ignoring what my eyes showed me and instead sensing the subtle inconsistencies in the flow of energy. Illusions relied on distraction, on drawing attention to surface detail. I narrowed my awareness to the smallest fluctuations, tracing the faint seams between real and false.
The corridors dissolved as I walked, unable to maintain coherence under sustained scrutiny. Within minutes, I reached the center, where another shadow waited. This one attempted to split into multiple reflections, mirroring my movements to confuse me, but a focused burst of essence ended it quickly. Its soul joined the others, and I moved on.
Another chamber tested endurance in a different way.
The air thickened as soon as I entered. Pressure descended from above, crushing downward in increasing layers. The ground grew unstable beneath my feet, shifting between ice, molten stone, and void-like emptiness. Gravity fluctuated without rhythm, forcing constant adjustment. The environment changed repeatedly, demanding adaptation from moment to moment.
I activated Absolute Elemental Shift without hesitation.
When the floor burned, I shifted into lightning and moved across it without resistance. When gravity intensified, I altered my state to disperse the load. When freezing winds howled through the chamber, I adjusted my internal flow to neutralize their bite. The pressure increased steadily, testing my constitution rather than my creativity, but I moved through it with steady confidence. My body had already endured far worse.
One by one, the halls continued.
A chamber that required controlled sealing to stabilize collapsing structures.
A chamber that demanded precise polarity balance, forcing attraction and repulsion into alignment without explosion.
Seven halls in total.
Five more shadows faced me during those trials, each tied to the theme of its chamber. None of them relied solely on brute strength. Each required the correct response to the test before the fight could even begin. By the time the final one fell and its soul merged into mine, I could feel the cumulative effect clearly. My soul did not grow taller yet.
But it grew denser.
Without hesitation, I walked toward the next descent, expecting another staircase or another chamber waiting below. Instead, I stepped into a hall that was completely different from the ones before it. There was no opening in the floor, no shadow standing at the center, no immediate instruction pressing into my mind. The space was wide and dimmer than the previous halls, its walls covered entirely in murals. At the very center of the floor lay a single red circle.
I slowed my steps.
The murals drew my attention first.
They were not ancient scenes or unknown figures. They showed me.
Every wall carried a detailed depiction of my progress through the structure. One mural showed the hall of law fusion, the violet and silver orbs hovering before me. Another showed the reflection domain cracking under repeated strikes. One captured the illusion maze, my Psynapse extended while corridors dissolved around me. Even the hall of raw physical combat was there, frozen in paint as I drove my fist into a shadow’s chest.
I blinked, studying the images carefully.
Had these murals existed before I entered the structure? Or were they being formed as I progressed, recording each step in real time? The precision of the detail suggested observation rather than memory. Every expression, every movement, every shift in stance had been captured perfectly.
Yet something else pulled my focus.
The final mural. It was positioned directly ahead, larger than the rest. It showed me standing on a mountain peak.
The same peak I had seen in Theras’s vision. The same black sword embedded at its summit, a silver line running through the center of the blade. In the mural, I stood before it, not touching it, simply facing it.
I frowned.
There was no sword in this hall.
I stepped closer to the mural and examined it carefully. My painted form stood upon a red circle at the base of the mountain. My gaze lowered slowly to the floor beneath me.
The red circle at the center of the hall matched the one in the mural.
Without overthinking it, I walked forward and positioned myself directly atop the circle.
The moment my foot settled into place, the hall trembled.
The murals flickered, the images distorting briefly as the red circle beneath me flared brightly. Before I could react further, the space around me shifted violently, and the hall vanished.
I found myself suspended in the void.
Cold emptiness stretched in every direction, vast and silent.
In front of me floated the inverted pyramid-shaped landmass through which I had entered this place. The ruined city lay at its broad upper surface, broken structures and cracked streets clearly visible even from this distance.
I did not move. I simply watched.
A low groan echoed through the void as the landmass began to shift. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, the entire structure tilted. The city above leaned forward as the inverted pyramid rotated.
I remained suspended in place, observing without interference.
The rotation continued steadily.
Ten degrees.
Thirty.
Ninety.
The ruined city slid downward, disappearing from my direct line of sight as the structure continued turning. When it completed the full one hundred and eighty degrees, the shape before me was no longer an inverted pyramid.
It was a mountain.
A perfect, towering peak rising from a narrow base, its summit sharp and clear against the emptiness of space. The ruined city now lay hidden beneath it, part of the structure’s underside.
My eyes lifted to the top.
There.
At the summit, partially embedded in stone, was the sword.
Black blade.
Silver line running through its center.
Even from this distance, I could recognize it immediately. The same sword Theras had stood before. The same sword from the murals.
And for the first time since I entered this structure, I understood. I had not been descending deeper into a ruin.
I had been climbing a mountain from the inside.