Leo expected silence.
A white room. A portal. Maybe even a towering beast to face alone.
Instead, he was met by the Tower's voice—cold and absolute.
"Trial Initiated.""Objective: Kill them all."
Before he could ask who, the light faded.
And Leo found himself in a fortress courtyard.
Identical to the one he'd just left.
Same stone paths. Same banners fluttering. Same faint warmth of twilight wind.
But it was empty—for half a breath.
Then—
They appeared.
One by one, stepping out from arched doorways, climbing stairwells, dropping from ledges.
Not beasts. Not monsters.
People.
Leo's eyes widened in disbelief.
They looked like the other trialists. The ones he'd just been eating beside. Talking with. People who had laughed with him. Shared rumors. Swapped stories.
They were copies. Or at least… that's what Leo hoped.
Because they weren't hesitating.
They came at him immediately.
The first wore flowing robes and teleported in a blink—reappearing behind him with a blade already slicing down.
Leo spun, parrying on instinct, the force of the impact sending a jolt through his arms.
Strong. Stronger than he realized.
The second landed on a ledge and raised her hand. Spikes of ice shot from her palm in a wide scatter. Leo ducked under one, vaulted a broken crate, and surged forward, striking the caster through the chest before she could cast again.
She dissolved into motes of light.
No blood. No scream.
Just vanishing.
A replica… thank the Tower.
But there was no time to reflect.
A brawny fighter wielding twin hammers charged next—his blows creating shockwaves that cracked the ground. Leo moved like water, slipping past, spear dancing as it clipped the man's thigh, then shoulder—until another thrust dropped him.
More light.
Another came at him—whip-wielding, fast, vicious, manic laughter on their lips.
Then another. And another.
Each one came with a different talent. A trick. A technique. A purpose.
Some wielded elements—ice, fire, shards of crystal.
Others fought barehanded with unnatural speed, or changed shape mid-attack.
All of them were real enough to kill.
But Leo didn't falter.
He moved like a thread through a storm—dodging, parrying, striking.
He couldn't afford to hesitate. Not even once.
These weren't allies. Not here. Not in the Tower's twisted game.
This was a purge.
One he had to survive.
And with every opponent who fell, Leo realized something unsettling:
They had all been stronger than he'd known.
Their smiles back in the courtyard had hidden real power.
Talents sharpened in secret.
The courtyard was chaos.
Ice shards shattered against stone. Flame roared past his shoulder. The ground cracked under the force of another hammer blow as Leo barely spun aside, spear lashing out to catch the wielder in the ribs.
They fell, dissolving into light—just like the others.
But there were still more.
They came in waves, their movements coordinated, relentless. Each copy attacked with the full force of the real trialists' strength—some moving with blinding speed, others twisting physics with strange talents. One hurled explosive pulses of sound, another turned their body to mist and reformed behind him mid-swing.
Leo was bleeding now—his arm torn, ribs bruised, breath ragged.
And yet—he moved.
When desperation should've turned into panic, something else took its place.
Flow.
Not the slow, deliberate kind he practiced.
The real thing.
He didn't see paths.
He became them.
His body reacted before thought. A pivot here, a duck there. One heartbeat to parry, the next to thrust. Every strike came at the perfect angle—not perfect by chance, but by rhythm.
He was in it.
That same feeling he'd touched at the end of the last trial—but deeper now. Alive.
Blades missed him by inches. A spike of flame parted around his shoulder as he slipped beneath it, letting momentum carry him into a rising sweep of the spear. Another foe down.
He moved like wind carving through stone—graceful, inevitable, free.
His instincts stopped searching for safety.
They sought continuity.
And with each fallen enemy, the pressure grew—but so did his clarity.
Pain, exhaustion, confusion—they dulled into background noise, overridden by a single unrelenting truth:
Keep moving.
One leapt from the battlements, throwing down spears of lightning.
Leo spun beneath them, lunged, and drove his weapon into their chest mid-fall.
They shattered like glass.
Then silence.
Just breath.Stone.Dust hanging in the twilight air.
The courtyard was empty.
Dozens of enemies. Dozens of attacks.
And he was still standing.
He dropped to one knee, bracing himself with the spear, sweat pouring down his face. Blood dripped from his knuckles.
But he smiled.
Not from joy. Not from triumph.
From that fleeting, perfect stillness that only came after the flow. The echo of something true.
He had survived.
Alone.
And then, slowly—too slowly—he stood again, gripping his spear with a steady hand.