Leaning into Selvar's body, the blade no longer shone.
Only the hilt remained visible in his chest as Oren fell into silence.
He went to look at the archer's face.
But, staring down at his friend, he no longer saw a face.
There were no grey eyes to peer into, and at that moment, the Enlightened archer's greatest strength faded into nothing.
His brows disappeared next, followed by his lips and nose, until the canvas of his face, which had once been beautiful, was finally empty.
The features that once identified Selvar had vanished.
'That was why his personality had changed so suddenly...?!'
Oren's expression twisted in fear as the features that once identified Selvar quietly vanished.
"You...!"
Oren's voice trembled as he exhaled hastily, holding Selvar by his shoulders and pushing his frail body away.
"You were just a tool in this false world!"
'He too had become one of those faceless puppets... But... I thought, no, I hoped that he was a candidate, so that we both could escape. In the end, I was wrong for feeling this way.'
However, in killing the archer, Oren thought that his Trial would end. In the past, before entering the revos verum, he had longed for connection.
Before, he had lost everything, everyone.
And now, he lost another.
'For what reason did I kill him...? Because there was a small chance he was going to capture me?'
He stared down at his hand that was covered in golden blood. What it was, he did not know, and he did not care for the strange hue of blood on his hands, but the result of it.
The death of his friend.
But losing another, and feeling such poignancy because of it, meant he had experienced the light of camaraderie.
And so, overcoming that longing would have been in disregarding his only friend.
However, looking around the cave, Oren saw no change in the surroundings, no visual proof of success or of the Trial ending.
'Was I not supposed to kill him?' he lamented.
Oren's breaths hastened as he tried to remain calm.
'He knew my name... He knew so much. Was he not what I was supposed to overcome?'
He glanced outside the cave's mouth.
'He really was right, the sun is shining brightly. It is radiant. It really is awfully beautiful today...'
He glanced at Selvar hesitantly, whilst desperately searching his mind.
'I must only have a few hours left.'
With that thought, Oren slowly got up, his legs weak beneath him.
As he steadied himself, he gently rested Selvar on the stone floor, letting go of his cold body, his golden eyes locking onto the entrance.
Oren turned, making his way there, onto the path outside.
'I, I need, I need to beat the Trial...! I can't die here!'
Thoughts pumped through his mind like blood.
'So what do I long for?' he cried inwardly, but he knew nothing about himself. His deepest, most ardent desires seemed to be running away from him.
He knew none of them.
He didn't know what he wanted.
He didn't know himself at all.
All he did was feel.
Oren's body tensed as he questioned.
'How am I supposed to know what I long for?'
His gaze remained on the ground, staring at the pebbles and weeds intently as he asked himself.
'Am I supposed to understand...? Understand what?! That this was wrong?! That this should have never happened...? That I should not be here right now? Is that my Trial?!'
His fingers curled slightly.
'That I should have simply faded away! That me falling into the Ruined Realm was all wrong and should have never happened to begin with!'
His gaze rose to the bushes and boulders surrounding the cave with contempt.
'But I already know this, that I should have never been human, and that I've never been human before...! I should have never been so connected to humanity, never so intertwined with their tiny lives.
I should have never learned what it was meant to be as one of them.'
He shut his eyes, trying to forget it all.
'But even in this Trial, even as the Demon, I, I longed to be seen as one of them. I tried to be a saint, and look where it's gotten me!'
He looked up past the maze of towering trees, across the fake sky, to the imitation clouds, to the crimson sun, dropping to the birds flying freely with their distant chirps.
He searched for something that no one else could feel or see. For all was involved in it. The Trial, he felt a vulnerability within the world, an absence that made him feel insane.
At that moment, it felt as though he was being watched by everything.
As if the floor beneath him had eyes, and the sun itself was observing him.
As though the sky had teeth and the trees were hair, and he stood within the mouth of some vast, deranged existence.
His lips parted as crimson sunrays shone across his pale, scarred skin.
'I know you're there.'
He yelled at the top of his lungs as he heard the fake sound of footsteps running towards him.
'I know you're watching! World. Trial. Longing.'
Then came the shouts from the men and women who had just reached the path, followed by the others who were still high in the mountainside.
"There he is, the demon. Kill him! Everyone."
He spoke shortly, his voice trembling with a sudden anguish.
"Why is this so hard for me, a human, to exist in this world? To beat this Trial? Why? Tell me! I know you are here!"
A gust of wind violently tore through the trees, reaching him in an instant, rushing past his body with enough force to make his clothes snap against him before vanishing into the distance.
The ground trembled beneath his feet.
The trees shuddered intensely.
Above him, the clouds twisted upon themselves, churning across the sky. In the distance, the sun began to fade.
And with its dissipation, the world began to disappear.
"Demon, Immortal Demon."
The puppets screamed and cried.
"Look what you've done! No, what have you done! Demon, change this now! Come back to Everdream! We all... desire... your return to Eve... to Erdream."
He watched as everything disappeared one by one, the humans, the mountains, the trees, and the clouds, all vanishing in the blink of an eye.
Erased out of existence without a sound.
There was no death, no movement, no trace left behind.
They were simply no longer.
Similar to thoughts, similar to puppets, they were forgotten in an instant after fulfilling their roles.
In the next moment, Oren found himself in a place that held no color.
No sky. No earth. No humans, just Nothing.
It was as though he were back within the Trial Grounds at the start of his Trial.
Only now, instead of a flame to illuminate the world, a maelstrom of light whirled through the empty space, twisting through the void as his perception of reality came apart at its seams.
Oren trembled.
'What... what's happening? Is the world ending?'
But the world had already ended.
'Where am I?'
A tremor ran through his body as he searched the abyss frantically, whilst he forced himself to remain cautiously composed.
Where he was could have been the Trial Grounds. On the other hand, maybe he had never left Everdream.
Just the scenery had changed.
'No, that's... impossible.' Oren's eyes narrowed.
Something had definitely changed.
He felt a subtle disconnection between himself and something that he hadn't felt in a long time.
His thoughts flowed freely through the nothingness, as they had in the Trial Grounds, allowing his worries to flow through him.
'Am I dying? Fading? Did I really fail at this chance of life...? Will I live to see the sun again? The Light Festival. They called it that... If only I could see it.'
His illusory body disappeared, little by little, dissolving into countless sparks, each one drifting away into the abyss, leaving nothing but a vast consciousness behind.
His thoughts surged through his being like a storm without beginning or end, carrying with them every emotion that had been buried beneath his expression.
Dread. Ire. Sorrow, relief, and regret.
Bewilderment and an unimaginable longing.
But also, he felt what he was. He could not describe it in one word, but it was mundane. He had felt it for a while now.
Yet, he no longer avoided the thought.
He no longer denied what he really was.
He had hated the thought for so long. However, through the Trial of Longing, he had gradually come to understand that even if he no longer understood himself with the same certainty with which he understood others, he knew this much:
He was no longer despised by the truth.
He was not a puppet anymore. He was not forced into this role. He was not the ignorant and naive Antherion he had once been.
Nor was he the divine being he had once called himself.
And for the first time in a long time, humans were not a collective in his mind.
They were individuals, just as he was.
There was more to them than that.
They were not so simple. They were special. They were unique. They were no different from what he had always thought himself to be.
And so he accepted his humanity with what little he could. In all of his tiny, minuscule heart, his acceptance was indistinguishable from the tumult of his thoughts.
And yet, beneath the chaos in his mind, Oren could feel something else.
Something distant, growing closer. Something that did not belong to the Trial around him.
It was new, but familiar.
A connection that was so delicate and so mundane that it felt real. Out of everything that had felt false in the Trial, this was the only piece of clarity he held.
A sensation so faint that, at first, he mistook it for another fragment of the Trial.
Then he felt it again.
Twitch.
Far away, beyond the abyss.
Something moved.
In the real world, a hand twitched, and two golden eyes slowly opened.