Note: I Have made some changes to the power system of my novels which I will implement in the new chapters and I plan to change they in previous once but it will take sometimes.
The palace began to fail the way rotten bone fails quietly at first, then all at once.
Cracks crawled along the mirrored walls, thin lines at the beginning, hairline fractures that looked almost harmless. Then they spread, branching, multiplying, veins of damage spidering outward as something beneath the structure pushed back. Flesh seeped from those cracks, pale and slick, blooming like obscene fungus fed by heat and rot. It clung to the mirror surfaces in pulsing masses, swelling, splitting, breathing without lungs.
Chunks of the palace broke free.
They did not fall.
They drifted upward, crashing against the inverted mirror ground that separated the floating palace from the flesh ocean below. Each impact sent ripples through the reflective surface, fractures blooming outward as if the mirror itself were tired of holding reality in place.
Those fractures opened.
From them poured flesh-fish by the hundreds, then the thousands soft bodies squeezing through spaces far too small, tearing themselves apart only to reform on the other side. Behind them came the flesh ocean itself, spilling through the broken mirror like a wound finally allowed to bleed. It rained downward into the palace corridors, slapping wetly against marble and glass, coating everything in a slick, living film.
The Trial was collapsing.
And Kai was running through it.
He tore through the ground halls at inhuman speed, boots barely touching the floor as he cut corners that should have broken his ankles and slid through corridors that warped under his passage. His breathing was sharp, controlled not calm, never calm but measured enough to keep him alive.
Black hair whipped behind him. Crimson eyes burned steadily, fixed on the distant opening that led to the main hall.
Almost there.
Then the palace chose that moment to remind him where he was.
The floor ahead of him split open.
Kai stopped so abruptly that the air cracked around his body.
Stone and mirror screamed as the ground ruptured, two massive tentacles erupting upward in a storm of debris and flesh. They were thick, longer than the corridor was wide, their surfaces a patchwork of human skin, fish hide, and something else that refused classification. Faces bulged from the meat at random angles some screaming, some smiling, some staring with eyes that didn't blink and didn't belong.
Both tentacles reared back.
Both opened their mouths.
From one, dark mist poured outward, oily and wrong, swallowing light as it condensed. From the other, water gathered thick, blackened, crawling with corruption that made it cling unnaturally to itself. The elements did not flow. They compressed, grinding together as if forced by a will that did not care what they became.
A blast was coming.
Behind him.
No. He didn't need to look.
He felt it.
The pressure shifted. The corridor warped. Stone protested.
The guardian was close.
Too close.
Kai stood there, frozen between threats, a small cube clenched in one hand, his dagger in the other. The cube pulsed faintly, its edges sharp, space folded tight inside it. The dagger hummed with residual heat, its blade nicked and stained from too much use in too little time.
"Of course," Kai muttered under his breath. "Because why wouldn't this happen now."
His Crimson Eyes flared brighter.
Reality peeled open.
It wasn't sight not exactly. It was understanding forced directly into his mind, layered images crashing into one another faster than thought. Possibilities stacked and overlapped, branching endlessly, each one screaming for attention.
Too many.
His vision fractured. His skull throbbed.
Blood slid from the corner of his eyes first, warm and thick. Then his nose. Then his ears, a steady drip that pattered onto the already-wet floor.
The chains around his wrists reacted instantly.
Black links surged outward, coiling tighter around his arms, anchoring him, limiting him. They bit into his skin, not painfully firmly as if saying that's enough.
Even so, three futures forced themselves into focus.
Only three.
The first:
He lunged forward, conjuring elements on instinct wind to twist, fire to burn, space to slip between the tentacles. For a heartbeat it worked. Then the walls split again. More tentacles. No room. No escape.
Dead.
The second:
He held his ground and fought. Burned through the tentacles with everything he had. The blasts detonated early. The corridor collapsed. And behind him, the guardian arrived.
Crushed.
The third—
Kai's jaw tightened.
"No," he said quietly.
He refused to look at it.
He knew what it was anyway.
The chains tightened another fraction, as if in agreement.
The future narrowed.
The blasts finished condensing.
The guardian's presence loomed directly behind him now, heavy and absolute, its water-veined body distorting the corridor just by existing in it. He could hear the subtle grind of stone, the whisper of liquid sliding under glass.
Pinned between annihilation and inevitability.
Kai exhaled.
A slow breath. Controlled. Almost calm.
"Well," he said, voice dry despite the blood on his lips, "this is officially above my pay grade."
He dismissed his dagger.
The blade vanished from his hand, dissolving into heat and light, its form collapsing back into raw energy. The chains remained, coiled around his forearms, humming softly, their links vibrating as if anticipating what came next.
Kai stepped forward.
He raised his hand.
Energy surged not wild, not explosive, but focused. It gathered from every corrupted current he could touch, every fragment of defiled power clinging to the palace, every scrap of world energy that hadn't yet been devoured. It burned through his veins like liquid fire and ice at once, tearing and freezing and flooding all at the same time.
His body screamed.
He ignored it.
This was the truth of the Conjurer stage.
Not control.
Not mastery.
But declaration.
Kai planted his feet.
Space bent.
The cube in his hand pulsed violently, its edges blurring as the pressure inside it spiked. The air screamed not metaphorically, but literally, a high-pitched whine as reality strained under the sudden demand placed upon it.
The tentacles lunged.
The guardian reached out.
Kai brought his hand forward.
And the world energy answered.