The winds of this strange world howled like a chorus of forgotten gods. Kael walked slowly along the edge of a floating obsidian cliff, watching the sky bleed in hues no sane eye could name. Violet suns blinked in and out of existence like strobe lights in a cosmic rave.
Each step he took echoed across space.
But even the Weave inside him trembled.
Kael, the Gatekeeper Ascendant. He who sealed rifts, who devoured Nihlari Prime. And yet here... here, he was a visitor. Not feared. Not praised. Just watched.
He found ruins—massive, cyclopean remains of something ancient. Temples carved from bones the size of cities. Broken statues of beasts that once wrestled stars into submission.
Floating around the remains were drifting beings—shadows in cloaks of galaxies, their faces hidden behind masks of time. Silent watchers. Too still to be alive, too conscious to be dead.
He walked past them. None moved. But he could feel it.
Judgment.
He kept moving.
He came across a lake made of memory. Reflections didn't show the present—but the deepest truths of anyone who peered in.
Kael knelt and looked into the shimmering liquid.
He saw himself—not now, but when he was broken. After Nihlari Prime. Body shattered. Rift-burnt. Hollow.
He clenched his fist.
"Not again," he whispered.
Further ahead was a field where weapons were planted like trees. Blades the size of mountains, spears made of collapsed time loops, bows that fired black holes.
Kael stepped into it, and the moment he did, the weapons sang.
Each one was a legacy. A memory. A grave.
Some of these weapons belonged to beings even more powerful than Nihlari Prime… and they had fallen here.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"I need to know who did this."
Then the sky bent.
Reality split—not like a wound, but like something opened its eye.
He looked up.
There, above the floating horizon, six colossal thrones began to fade into view—each one big enough to hold a galaxy.
And sitting upon them...
Silhouettes.
Unmoving. Unblinking. Watching.
Kael didn't flinch, but his breath slowed. The pressure was like standing beneath the weight of eternity.
One of them tilted their head.
The world around Kael went still. No sound. No light. Just... void.
And in that silence, a single voice whispered—not into his ears, but directly into the core of his being:
"You do not belong here, Child of the Loom."
Kael clenched his fist.
"I go where I choose."
"Then choose wisely. The Trials begin soon."
And with that, the thrones vanished.
Kael exhaled. The pressure lifted. The weapons around him were silent once more.
He looked up at the now-empty sky.
"Trials, huh…" he muttered. "Fine. Let's see what gods look like when they bleed."