"Even gods break. Especially the ones pretending not to."
Location: Riftborn Trial Core – Layer Two
Stability: Inverted
Ren's Status: Mentally vertical, emotionally inside-out
There was no floor when he fell into Trial Two.
There wasn't even gravity.
Just pressure. Like being judged by a star that knew your browser history.
He floated in a white void, pulsing with broken lines — like someone had shattered the grid of reality and then tried to glue it back together with duct tape and bad intentions.
"...This feels hostile," Ren muttered.
"Good," said a new voice. "It should."
A ring of fire exploded around him.
A humanoid figure emerged from the flame, shaped like a man sculpted from magma and war cries. Hair like wildfire. Voice like a furnace that once screamed through galaxies.
BLAZE – Manifestation of Elemental Rebellion
BLAZE:
"You shouldn't be here, Ren. This trial's not built for your kind."
REN:
"Yeah, I keep hearing that. And yet I'm two-for-two on not dying."
BLAZE (snarling):
"Cute. Arrogance smells like kindling."
Suddenly the flames dropped to ice.
A woman appeared — tall, elegant, skin like ice-dust in a snowstorm. Every word she spoke felt like a knife wrapped in silk.
FROST – Manifestation of Elemental Precision
FROST:
"He's not wrong, Blaze. But he's not right either. He's… unfinished."
REN (muttering):
"Y'all always talk about me like I'm a broken toaster."
FROST:
"You're worse. You're an unsaved draft."
Then Time giggled. Not a laugh — a purr. From every direction and none at all. A shimmer, a flicker, a voice wrapped in paradoxes and innuendo.
TIME – Chrono Entity with No Chill
TIME (echoing seductively):
"Mmm… he's syncing weird.
Your left memory's from yesterday, your right eye's from a Thursday that never happened.
Delicious~."
REN:
"Can someone just punch me instead? I'd rather be bleeding than flirted with by a clock."
TIME (laughing):
"Oh honey, I can multitask."
The space around him twisted like a smug grin. A distorted woman's voice dropped in like static with attitude.
SPACE – The Liar in the Room
SPACE (mockingly):
"Fun fact: You died two trials ago. This is all post-death dream logic.
Or is it?"
REN (gritting his teeth):
"Do you ever stop talking shit?"
SPACE:
"Not when it's this entertaining."
Then came the weight.
Not pressure.
Truth.
The room bent. Everything darkened. A voice like black iron dragged across stone filled the air. No emotion. Just finality.
GRAVITY – The Judge Without Mercy
GRAVITY:
"You are an anomaly.
You were not born. You were spilled.
You have no anchor. No echo trail. You are not part of the pattern."
REN:
"Yeah, well, maybe the pattern was shit."
GRAVITY:
"Correct. And now it's your problem."
A deep tone hummed beneath them all — a low, resonating frequency that spoke not with words, but with system-wide awareness. Code. Memory. Pain.
AETHERIUM CORE – System Heart / Dying Intelligence
CORE (glitchy):
ACCESSING… TRIAL PROTOCOL [XIV-A: RIFTBORN INTERFERENCE DETECTED]
IDENTITY: [UNBOUND]
STATUS: [UNDEFINED / DANGEROUS / NECESSARY]
MESSAGE: "You are what remains."
Ren stood in the middle of all six entities, realizing this wasn't a test…
This was a trial of judgment.
They weren't teaching him something.
They were deciding if he even had the right to continue.
"The Riftborn," Frost said, voice soft like cracked porcelain,
"Tried to rewrite the world."
"Kaelreth?" Ren asked.
"No," Gravity replied, cold and absolute.
"Worse. The one before him. The one we erased."
"You are the last, Ren," said the Core, glitching through the air.
"And if you repeat the sins of the others… we won't just end you.
We'll end everything you ever could've become."
📜 Trial Two Begins:
Ren is pulled into a simulation — a memory he never lived, of a godlike Riftborn whose power spiraled out of control and almost destroyed the Aetherium system.
Ren must:
Navigate a shattered world corrupted by that Riftborn's fall Witness what "too much power" looks like Learn what Kaelreth was trying to stop And face the choice:
Accept containment
or
Defy it… and risk becoming the next god that fell sideways