"You dare ask my name, mortal? Do you know what it is to speak the names of stars, to call upon the true beast?"
The voice crashed through him like a tidal wave of sound. Each word was heavy enough to warp the air, to make the walls around him flex and shiver. Speaking in here felt dangerous—like every syllable might carve a mark into the living world he stood inside. Fear brushed along his spine, cold and instinctive. His breaths came shorter for a moment, lungs tightening under the pressure of that ancient presence.
But fear was not the only thing he felt.
He looked into the star's burning light, into the suggestion of a vast eye beyond it, and saw past the raw power. He saw age. Loneliness. The particular sharpness of something that had been watching for too long with no one daring to truly look back.
"Isn't knowing someone's name," he asked, voice steadying, "the only way to start a friendship?"
Silence fell.
It was not an empty silence. It was thick and layered, like the pause between the first drop of rain and the storm. The entire living mountain seemed to hold its breath. Acid pools stilled. Internal winds quieted. Even the faint glow in the veins of the walls dimmed, as if everything were waiting to see what this ancient being would do.
Then laughter returned.
It did not crash down like cruelty. It rolled through the world in a deeper, warmer tone, surprised and almost delighted. The ceiling shook. The coral forests shivered, casting off small showers of light. The star's glow flared bright for a heartbeat.
"It has been ages since anyone spoke to me like that," the voice said. "Friendship. Once, mortals begged only to survive me, not to stand as equals. Yet here you are, and you have my attention, Noctis."
Around the star, shapes deepened.
What had been only hints of structure now resolved into the impression of an enormous head forming from the darkness—a vast, draconic silhouette. Scales like thunderclouds shimmered into view, each one large as a house, edges glowing faintly with trapped lightning. A single eye, larger than any lake he had seen, opened fully. It was vast as a small sea, its iris swirling with intense intelligence and an old, aching sadness that seemed to have no bottom.
"I am Ragna," it said at last. "King of all Divine Beasts. Watcher and mender of what trembles in this universe."
The title carried weight. It wasn't boast; it was history spoken aloud.
Noctis bowed.
The motion came naturally, before he even decided to make it. His muscles remembered the shape of respect his conscious mind could not fully recall. His spine bent, his head lowered. Something in his bones whispered that he had stood before great powers before, and that this was how one acknowledged them without breaking.
"Ragna, King of Beasts," he said quietly. "I'm honored. I would tell you my story, but…"
The words frayed.
He trailed off, the emptiness inside his memory rising like a tide. The star's glow dimmed slightly, as though clouds had passed over a sun. The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop.
"You deny me, after all I offer?" Ragna's voice rumbled.
The walls shook. Acid surged higher in their pools, slapping against the edges of living rock. Veins of light flickered in agitation. Noctis' heart hammered in his chest, each beat a drumstroke against his ribs. Instinct screamed at him to step back, to apologize, to make any sound that would calm the storm.
He did not break.
"I'm not refusing," he said, forcing air into his lungs. "I… lost my memories. There are wounds inside me I still don't understand."
The confession tasted like iron.
For a long moment, only the creature's slow breathing answered him. The great body rose and fell, the entire world flexing with each inhale and exhale. The star's light steadied, neither brightening nor fading.
Then:
"I see," Ragna said, and the anger eased out of the voice like heat leaving cooling metal. "Come closer, then. Touch this star. My sight is old, but it can reach beneath what you know."
Noctis hesitated.
The star was more than light. It was intent, focused into a single burning point. Touching it felt like stepping willingly into a blade's edge. But this was why he had come, even if he had not known it at the time—to stop running from whatever he was.
He stepped forward and reached out.
His fingers brushed the star. It was impossibly hot and impossibly cold at once, like plunging his hand into fire and ice together. It throbbed under his touch—not like an object, but like a heart.
Memories detonated.
They did not arrive in order. They did not come gently. Scenes crashed through his mind, overlapping and colliding:
Streets where he starved, ribs sharp under too-thin skin, eyes tracking every discarded scrap of food.
Battles where he should have died, where the world tilted sideways and blood became the only color that mattered.
Hands he held—some small, some calloused, some shaking with fear. Faces he lost, pulled away by violence, by time, by choices he had made or failed to make.
The burn of the Unknown Core behind his ribs, pulsing like a second heart that had nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with survival.
Each fragment hit with the force of impact.
He staggered, knees nearly buckling under the incoming storm. He saw himself from within and without, as if Ragna's gaze were pulling him apart and examining each piece.
Ragna inhaled sharply.
"Your limits," the beast said, and now there was clear wonder threading through the thunder of its voice, "are unknown, kid. Like his—the wanderer, the one who broke the old fate."
The word "unknown" rang differently now, heavy with new meaning.
"Who?" Noctis asked, fighting to stabilize his breathing. "Who am I like?"
Ragna's laughter did not boom this time.
It echoed softly, turning inward. The star's light dimmed to a gentler glow, as if remembering something far away.
"You're not ready to know," Ragna said. "There are beings even I cannot reach. Your time will come. When it does, your story will shake gods loose from their thrones. But my strength wanes. My ascendance ends soon."
The voice softened, still vast but threaded with fatigue.
"As you are now, I give you a trial. Master it, and you will command my next child. And take these."
Light swirled in the air before him.
It coiled into three lines, each one a different color, twisting and braiding through the dim. Then the light hardened, condensed, and became solid. Three translocars floated in the air, hovering between him and the star:
One silver and razor-sharp, edges clean and cold as the line where dawn meets night. Its surface reflected nothing clearly, only suggestions, like a blade waiting to decide what it would cut.
One green and warm, pulsing with a gentle, steady light like a heartbeat. It smelled faintly of soil, rain, and growing things—worlds where life refused to die.
One gold-and-blue, shimmering with impressions of paths that did not yet exist. Tiny images of futures flickered across it and vanished: cities rising, forests burning, oceans turning to glass, hands reaching for each other in darkness.
"Use them well," Ragna said. "They carry the breath of new worlds."
The beast's voice began to fade, not all at once, but like thunder rolling farther and farther away across a valley. The great body under and around him seemed to relax, sinking deeper into its long, slow dream.
"Prove yourself, Noctis," the voice continued, now distant. "Show this universe what 'Unknown' can become. When your emotions are whole, when you are ready, come to me again. I will wait at the center—where all trials end, and all new ones begin."
The last words vibrated through him like a promise etched into bone.
As the mountain-beast's immense breathing slowed—a shadow passing beyond the edge of time—Noctis stepped back. The star dimmed further, shrinking into a smaller, steady glow. He clutched the three translocars to his chest, feeling the weight of them shift between promise and burden with every breath.
A new kind of test had been laid before him.
The living corridors blurred. For a moment, the warmth and sound of the Cataclysm Beast's interior folded away. When the world settled again, he found himself alone. The beating heart of the creature was distant now, a faint echo far behind.
He stood at the border between worlds.