Lysandra held her ears over her head, eyes squinting as the transition began.
The memory was forming. She could feel it taking shape around her like invisible hands pressing.
The scene materialized in fragments. Shadows coalescing into recognizable shapes. A glitched room. Faces she knew. Blood on marble floors.
Then everything stopped.
"Something is wrong." The voice of the trial echoed around her.
Clint's cheerful voice took hold in the emptiness. When Joshua found him in the space, the guide's golden eyes had taken on a frantic quality.
"That's... odd," Clint murmured, tilting his head as if listening to a sound only he could perceive. "Something is interfering with the memory sequence. I've never seen that before. In all my years here, I've never—"
Everything flipped upside down.
They stood in a place that had no name. Grass of silver moss stretched beneath their feet, soft and reflective. Above them hung a sky that was neither sky nor void—simply an eerie shade of red mist.
In the distance, Joshua could see the demon realm's outline. Mountains of black stone. Towers that hurt to look at directly. Closer, he could see the human territories—green and gentle.
"The paths beyond."
Joshua saw Lysandra kneeling before her father, but older. Harder. There was blood on her armor and sorrow in her eyes that had calcified into something else. Rage, maybe. Or resignation.
He saw Joshua himself, standing among human soldiers, but his eyes had changed. They were hollow.
A voice cut through—Lysandra's voice but twisted with betrayal and horror.
"Why did you kill her, Joshua?"
The image shattered. Reformed.
"The paths beyond."
Lysandra's hand reaching for something—a crown, maybe—but pulling back at the last moment. Her fingers trembling. Her face twisted with anguish as she turned away from it.
Joshua's voice answered, cold laced into his words.
"Because she was always going to choose them over us."
"The paths beyond."
Another fragment. Joshua lying on ground made of ash and bone, breathing but barely. Something had burned through his armor. Fire that burned white, not orange.
Lysandra screaming his name, but she couldn't reach him. Something held her back. Something powerful.
A third figure materialized in this fragment—tall, regal, with a smirk that mirrored the hollow expression on older Joshua's face.
Darius. The Demon King.
And his smile matched Joshua's smile perfectly. Like they shared a joke the world wasn't meant to understand.
"As was planned, Your Majesty," older Joshua said, and his voice carried the weight of thrones and blood oaths. "The kingdom fell. And from the ashes, we rebuild it in the image of something far greater than this pathetic realm ever was."
Darius laughed.
"The human prince plays his role beautifully."
"'Human' is a gracious term to describe me."
"The paths beyond."
The visions broke apart like ice under spring thaw.
But before they could scatter completely, a new figure appeared in the space between memory and reality. Towering. Ancient. Wearing the kind of power that made kings bow.
Its body was formless, a shifting silhouette larger than any tower in the demon realm, with two eyes of white light burning like stars.
But standing beside him was someone else. A figure of such immense power that looking directly at it felt like staring into the sun.
Tonic.
The two beings regarded each other with the familiarity of old adversaries.
"I know what you are," the godlike entity said, its voice carrying the weight of ages. "I know what you've bound yourself to protect, Tonic. And I wonder if you understand the price of that binding anymore."
Tonic's white hair caught the light as he tilted his head. His expression remained passive, but his orange eyes burned with intensity.
"Why are you here? Has he really interested someone like you?"
The being's form twitched with something that might have been anger or amusement.
"Answer me first. Will you stop me?"
"If you force my hand." Tonic said, words full of spite.
"Then I will wait for a time where you can't."
The visions shattered entirely, scattering into nothingness before either Joshua or Lysandra could fully process what they were witnessing.
The otherworldly place dissolved.
They found themselves back in the binding chamber, Clint standing before them. But something had changed in the guide's expression. The cheerful mask had slipped completely.
His golden eyes glowed with an intensity that made Joshua's skin crawl. And when he smiled, it was terrible—a dark, knowing smirk that suggested he'd just witnessed something far more interesting than any trial was supposed to allow.
"You weren't supposed to see that," Clint said softly. His voice had lost its playful quality entirely. "The Trial of Memory doesn't show futures. It shows only what is. And yet here we are."
He stepped closer, studying Joshua, his face just inches away from the prince's.
"Something is very wrong with this human here." Clint's smile widened into something predatory. "The trial itself is breaking around him. Memories that haven't happened yet are bleeding through. The system designed to protect these trials from outside interference is failing."
He turned to look at Lysandra, then back to Joshua.
"I wonder what you really are, Prince Joshua Vale. I wonder if you even know."
Before either of them could respond, a large white light erupted, engulfing everything—the binding chamber, Lysandra, Joshua, Clint himself. The light burned with a purity that seemed to erase matter itself.
The transition was violent. Absolute.
[QUEST: SURVIVE THE TRIAL OF MEMORIES: COMPLETE!]
[REWARDS - 1200 XP, New Branching Path The Seer]
[LEVEL UP!]
[LEVEL UP!]
[LE—vE—]]