The golden void dissolved into white.
The first thing they saw was not the mountain, but the sky tearing itself apart.
The sun rose from the west, streaking across the firmament like a comet before disappearing in the east. Snowflakes jumped from the ground, defying gravity to return to the embrace of the clouds. The flow of time was violently reversing, rewinding centuries in a single heartbeat.
Time slowed, stopped, and then resumed its usual pace.
Then, the cold hit them.
It was a physical blow, a razor-edged gale that stripped the warmth from their souls in seconds. It did not matter that they were spiritual projections standing in a memory. The cold of this place was conceptual. It was a cold that promised the end of all things.
The voice of the Spell resonated in the air. It was not the mechanical system voice they were used to, but something older — a dispassionate chronicler reciting a tragedy.
A lonesome dark mountain stood tall against the raging winds.
Nephis blinked, shielding her eyes against the phantom snow. She found herself standing on a jagged ridge of obsidian, overlooking a desolate, frozen pass. The Sovereigns and the Cohort stood beside her, their robes whipping violently in the gale.
Above them, the Spell continued, its voice heavy as the stone beneath their feet.
Jagged and proud, it dwarfed other peaks of the mountain chain, cutting the night sky with its sharp edges. A radiant moon bathed its slopes in ghostly light.
The moon was too bright, too cold. It illuminated the world in stark monochrome.
Here, the sun offered no heat and the night offered no shelter. Here, life was measured in steps.
Nephis looked down from the ridge. Below them, a miserable trail of footprints was being rapidly buried by the drift.
Keep walking, and you live for another minute. Stop, and you become part of the road.
Following the footprints, her gaze landed on a line of figures trudging through the knee-deep drifts.
They were skeletons wrapped in frozen rags, their skin black with frostbite. Their ankles were bound by heavy iron chains that dragged through the ice, leaving deep, jagged furrows behind them.
"Slaves," Solvane murmured, her silver eyes sweeping over the miserable procession. The ancient War Maiden sounded unimpressed, her gaze detached. "Mundane cattle being driven to the slaughter. There is no glory to be found here."
"Look at the guards," Morgan pointed out, her red eyes sharp as she analyzed the flank of the caravan.
"Awakened," Anvil of Valor stated, his tone indifferent. "Weak ones. Their technique is crude. But against mundane chattel, they are gods."
Then, the atmosphere shifted.
The Spell seemed to pull their attention to the front of the line, forcing their eyes to focus on the figure leading the caravan.
He was not a hulking monument of iron. He was a young soldier riding a white horse, wearing a simple leather cuirass and armed with a spear and short sword. He had bright red hair that stood out like a flame against the gray desolation, and his face was handsome, dignified, and noble.
He looked like the male lead of a historical drama — someone born to be a hero.
"He really does have the look," Kai admitted, though his voice lacked its usual charm. He looked at the screen with a mix of professional recognition and personal distaste. "Perfect jawline. Righteous eyes. If I saw him at a casting call, I'd say he was born to play the savior. But... he is leading a slave caravan."
Kai gripped the air where his bow should be, his knuckles white.
"It's a pretty mask on an ugly reality. I hate it."
As the image of the young soldier became clear, Cassie gasped.
She took a staggering step back on the ridge, her hands flying to cover her eyes, even though she was no longer blind.
"His thread..." Cassie whispered, her voice trembling with awe. "It is blinding. I have never seen a thread so thick, so golden... he is a sun in the Tapestry."
"Who is he?" Nephis asked, squinting at the young soldier below.
"He is one of the chosen," Cassie said, her voice shaking as she recited a truth that felt older than herself. "Fate has no use for those who are merely strong or wise. It does not care for sages or saints. It only cares for those who are Fated."
She lowered her hands, her golden eyes burning with reflected light.
"The strings wrap around him so tightly that they are suffocating the world. He is blessed by Fate... and cursed by it. Everything he does echoes across the Tapestry, shaking its very foundation. He... he cannot die."
From the snow at their feet, a dry, rattling laugh echoed.
"Of course he can't."
The bleached skull of Eurys rolled forward, the ghostly red flames in his sockets flaring. The nonchalant sarcasm was gone, replaced by a deep, bitter recognition.
"He is my brother," Eurys rasped. "He is Auro of the Nine."
The silence that fell over the group was heavier than the crushing pressure of the deep ocean.
"Another one... " Daeron of the Twilight Sea breathed, his slit pupils trembling as he looked from the skull to the soldier. "First the Immortal... and now the young Hero. To find two of the Nine drawn into this single weave of sorcery... one as a witness, the other as a memory... this is no coincidence. This is a convergence."
Noctis stopped drinking from his empty cup. He leaned forward, his chaotic grin vanishing into a look of solemn recognition. "The Nine were constants. They were the anchors of the world's destiny during the Doom War. If he is here... then this is no ordinary dream."
Below them, Auro stopped. He looked back at the line of slaves, his expression one of pained nobility, as if carrying the weight of their suffering on his own shoulders.
The Spell's narration deepened, taking on a tone of heavy reverence.
He was the Hero. The Chosen One. The pillar of light in a world of shadow.
"Auro of the Nine..." Ki Song murmured, her dead eyes narrowing as she assessed the young soldier. "A being woven from pure destiny. To challenge him is to challenge Fate itself."
"A script..." Mordret mused, his voice smooth and dripping with venomous amusement. He stepped out from behind the Sovereigns, looking at the shining Auro with cold, mirror-like eyes.
"How boring. The world loves its shining knights, doesn't it? It hands them destiny on a silver platter."
He glanced at the blurry, shivering figure and his smile widened — not out of kindness, but out of curiosity for the chaos to come.
"I wonder... what happens when the script meets a stain that refuses to be washed away? Break him, little shadow. Shatter that perfect reflection."
Rain glanced down, feeling a strange coldness at her heels.
While the Sovereigns and Witnesses stared at the shining Hero with varying degrees of wariness and respect, her shadow was behaving differently.
It wasn't looking at Auro. It was facing away from the screen, its dark arms crossed in a posture of utter, bored dismissal. It tapped its foot rhythmically against the obsidian rock, as if waiting for a bad joke to end.
"You don't like him either, do you?" Rain whispered to the silhouette.
The shadow stopped tapping. It turned its head slightly toward the shining Hero, then made a gesture that looked suspiciously like a shrug of disgust.
Then, their attention was drawn away.
The Spell pulled their gaze from the shining, invincible Hero to the very back of the line.
To the straggler.
There, trailing behind the others, was a small, shivering figure.
But unlike the sharp, high-definition reality of the mountain and the shining aura of Auro, this figure was... wrong.
He was a blur of shadows against the crisp snow. A smudge of darkness that refused to be defined. One moment he looked like a solid human boy, the next he wavered like a reflection in disturbed water.
He was smaller than the others, clearly malnourished, his ribs visible even through the wavering distortion of his form. He wore nothing but a thin tunic that offered no protection against the freezing gale.
The Spell was struggling to render him. It was fighting against the void where his Fate should have been.
He was not a person. He was a contradiction in the world's logic.
The contrast was sickening.
On one side, Auro of the Nine — a legend, a hero, a being fated to survive by the laws of the universe. On the other side, a nameless, shivering blur holding a broken chain.
"Why..." Rain whispered, her hand trembling as she pointed at the unstable figure. She didn't know who he was, but the sight of a child in such a hellscape twisted her gut. "Why is there a child here? He's just a boy."
"He has no Essence," Saint Jest observed, his jovial face unusually serious. "He is completely dormant. He isn't even an Aspirant."
"A dormant human?" Daeron frowned, looking at the environment. "In this cold? With Awakened guards?"
Then, realization dawned on the ancient Serpent King. His slit pupils contracted.
"This isn't a random memory," Daeron rumbled, his voice filled with disbelief. "A dormant soul... a trial of survival... the Spell testing a candidate..."
He looked around the confused assembly, his gaze landing on Nephis. She wasn't looking at the Hero or the guards. She was staring at the shivering Blur with a look of dawning, horrified understanding.
Daeron followed her gaze, the pieces clicking into place.
"Nephilim," Daeron rumbled, addressing the only one who seemed to understand. "This... this is his First Nightmare."
"First Nightmare?" Effie choked out. "Bullshit. My First Nightmare was fighting a few wolves in a forest. But this? He is a starving slave freezing to death in a blizzard. Even an Awakened would die here."
Noctis tilted his head, looking between Daeron and the valley below, utterly confused. "First Nightmare? You speak as if this is a ritual. Is this the nature of the sorcery that brought us here?"
"It is the crucible of the new age, Sorcerer," Daeron explained grimly, his eyes fixed on the Blur. "A trial where the Spell forces a soul to reenact history. If they survive, they Awaken. If they fail..."
"They die," Ananke finished softly, clutching her oar. "The Spell is benevolent, but it is not kind."
Nephis stepped closer to the edge of the ridge. Her eyes didn't track the Hero. They tracked the Blur.
She watched as the wavering figure stumbled. She watched as he caught himself on the heavy, broken lengths of rusty chain dangling from his wrists.
And then, she saw it.
The Blur didn't look down at the snow in defeat. He didn't look at the Hero with hope.
The smudge of darkness lifted its head. It looked at the guards. It looked at the terrain. It looked at the chains in its hands.
A burst of static noise scratched against their minds—the sound of a corrupted audio file trying to play.
...stupid... freezing... heavy... useful...
The thoughts were garbled, broken fragments of a voice that didn't exist in the system.
"He isn't despairing," Nephis whispered, a chill running down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "He is calculating."
Suddenly, the ground beneath the slave caravan shook.
A vibration traveled through the mountain, deep and rhythmic, like the heartbeat of the earth itself. The slaves stopped, their heads snapping up in terror. Even Auro of the Nine paused, his hand drifting to the hilt of his short sword.
"What is that?" Kim whispered, clutching her side.
"Ambush," Jet stated, her eyes scanning the ridge above the caravan.
A roar echoed from the peaks — a sound so loud it shook the snow from the cliffs. It was not the roar of a beast, but the sound of wet, tearing meat and grinding iron.
"Above!" Morgan shouted, her instincts flaring.
From the high ridges, shadows began to detach themselves from the mountain. But they weren't creatures. They were projectiles.
Massive boulders and jagged shards of heavy ice, some as large as wagons, came crashing down the mountainside.
The bombardment slammed into the caravan.
The sound was deafening. Screams erupted as slaves were crushed instantly, their frail bodies turned to red mist under the weight of the stone. The Awakened guards scattered, their glowing weapons useless against the avalanche.
But amidst the chaos, one figure did not scream.
The Blur remained upright.
While the world around him dissolved into panic, the wavering shadow gazed up at the night sky, his form flickering violently against the darkness. He didn't run. He simply took one measured step back.
In the next second, a piece of ice the size of a man's torso hit the ground exactly where he had been standing and exploded, showering the empty space with sharp shards.
He hadn't flinched. He had anticipated.
"On your feet, fools! Get to the wall!"
The veteran soldier — the one who had whipped the Blur only hours before — was shouting angrily, trying to get the slaves to move towards the relative safety of the mountain slope.
However, before anyone could heed his command, something massive came crashing down, sending a tremor through the stones beneath their feet. It fell right between the caravan and the mountain wall, plunging everything into silence for a few seconds.
At first, it looked like a lump of dirty snow, roughly round in shape and as tall as a mounted horseman.
"What is that?" Rain whispered, taking a step back.
As she watched, the lump of snow moved. It unfurled long, nightmare limbs and rose, towering over the stone platform like an omen of death.
It had two stumpy legs, an emaciated, hunched torso, and disproportionately long, multijointed hands. Two of them ended with horrifying bone claws, while two shorter ones ended with almost human-like fingers. Its fur was yellowish-grey and ragged, thick enough to stop steel.
On its head, five milky, white eyes regarded the slaves with insect-like indifference. Beneath them, a terrible maw crowded with razor-sharp teeth hung half-open, viscous drool running down its chin.
But what unnerved the audience the most were the strange shapes endlessly moving, worm-like, under the creature's skin.
"A Tyrant," Solvane hissed, her silver eyes narrowing. "A creature of the Fifth Class."
"An Awakened Tyrant against dormant slaves?" Anvil of Valor's eyes grew cold. "That is not a trial. That is an execution."
In the valley below, the Blur stared up at the monstrosity. The Spell projected his distorted, static-filled thoughts, a moment of pure, stupefied clarity.
...Well... that is just... too much...
As soon as the thought finished, hell broke loose.
The creature moved.
It didn't roar. It simply lashed out, slashing its massive bone claws directly at the Blur.
Nephis gasped, her hand instinctively reaching out as if to pull the boy back from the edge of death.
But down at Rain's feet, the shadow did not reach out.
It did not panic. It did not mimic the fight.
Instead, the dark silhouette simply turned its back on the memory.
It crossed its arms and leaned casually against the air, refusing to watch.
It wasn't an act of cowardice. It was an act of supreme arrogance.
The Shadow knew how this story ended. It knew that the monster lunging through the snow wasn't the hunter.
It was the prey.