The world did not shift gently.
It shuddered, trembling as though some invisible titan was exhaling beneath its surface. The rays of light that Fake Kai dissolved into stabbed upward like thin threads of creation, then reversed, pulled into Kai's chest as if he were a bottomless well. His skin prickled, his bones buzzed, and for a heartbeat the air turned weightless until everything collapsed into a new reality.
The forest vanished.
Not burned. Not erased.
Dismissed, the way a painter wipes away a sketch that no longer matters.
In its place stretched a world of terrifying simplicity: a vast, endless plane of black flames, licking silently across the ground. They made no crackle, no roar. They behaved like fire but felt like water, a dark tide moving beneath a windless sky. And disturbingly, they did not hurt him. The flames curled around his ankles like cold serpents, tasting him, but not burning.
And at the center of this infinite nothing stood a statue.
His statue.
Cold stone carved into his likeness expression neutral, posture proud, eyes closed as though asleep. Symbols of some ancient, jagged script floated beside it, suspended in mid-air, moving with the slow rhythm of a breathing creature. They were unreadable, unfamiliar, and wrong. Every time he tried to look directly at one, his vision blurred at the edges, as if the symbols didn't want to be understood.
But none of that mattered.
Not compared to his hands.
Kai stared. Stunned. Shaking.
Two hands. Two complete arms. Both whole. Both real.
He flexed his fingers slowly, almost reverently. No illusion. No dream. The familiar weight, the familiar motion the hand he lost had returned as though it had never been gone.
He remembered the elders' words at the ceremony.
"All who pass the Trial undergo change. Some subtle. Some drastic. Some irreversible."
He didn't know which category he belonged in but gratitude flooded through him anyway. A quiet, fragile warmth in a world of cold flame.
Only after that small miracle settled in his chest did he turn back toward the symbols beside the statue.
That was when the voice came.
A voice of stone grinding against stone low, cold, echoing through the empty realm.
"Receive your reward for the trial."
Kai stiffened, looking around sharply.
No one.
Nothing.
Only colorless fire and vast silence.
Then, off to the far right half-buried in the black flames he saw it.
A broken statue. Its entire body shattered beyond recognition. Only the head remained intact, resting sideways in the flames as though staring into the earth. It should not have been able to speak. It should not have had a voice.
Yet the voice came again, calm and unblinking.
"Receive your reward for the trial."
Kai approached with hesitation and suspicion. The stone face did not move. The mouth did not shift. But the voice continued as if every word were carved directly into the air.
He stopped a few steps away.
"…Yes," he finally answered.
As if accepting an unspoken pact, the symbols floating beside the standing statue responded shifting, rippling, rearranging into new patterns. The air vibrated, thickening with the weight of meaning he couldn't understand.
The broken statue spoke once more, its tone sharper.
"Thief… what is your name?"
Kai blinked, thrown off balance.
"Thief? What thief? Who—?"
The stone head cut him off without emotion.
"Thief. What is your name?"
Kai stared at it, confusion twisting his thoughts.
Why me? What did I steal? What could even be stolen here?
He swallowed, his voice coming out dry.
"What did I steal?"
The fractured lips did not move, yet the answer was immediate.
"You have stolen a spark from the Pillars of Creation.
Thus, you are a thief of creation itself.
So answer… thief.
What is your name?"
Kai's eye twitched.
If you put it like that…
"…Kai Valeria," he said reluctantly.
Silence fell. A long, heavy silence that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Even the flames stilled, freezing mid-flicker as though the world itself was listening.
Finally, the stone head spoke again.
"Would you like me to read your reward?"
Kai paused, then nodded once.
"Yes."
The symbols beside the statue rotated in place, aligning themselves like constellations forming a sentence. The broken statue interpreted them in a mechanical, emotionless tone.
"Name: Kai Valeria
Stage: Awakening
(Would you like to proceed to evolve into an Awakening?)"
Kai blinked.
"…Pause."
The symbols froze.
"Repeat that part," he said.
Again the voice echoed:
"Stage: Awakening
(Will you like to proceed to evolve into an Awakening?)"
Kai frowned.
"…Am I not an Awakening already? I'm… in the Awakening trial!"
Silence.
The first silence had been heavy.
This silence was absolute.
The statue did not answer.
Would not answer.
It was not silence from ignorance.
It was silence from refusal.
Kai exhaled, a frustrated breath.
"Fine. Read everything again."
The symbols resumed shifting, and the voice recited:
"Name: Kai Valeria
Stage: Awakening
(Will you like to proceed to evolve into an Awakening?)
Element: Fire.
Blood Lineage: Crimson Eyes of Truth
(Will you like me to read you the details?)"
The words hung in the air like judgment.
Kai stared at his name, at the line declaring his stage, at the strange and ominous contradiction in it. A stage that asked him to evolve into itself. A paradox wrapped in calm, cold text.
And the bloodline,
Crimson Eyes of Truth.
His eyes pulsed faintly, an echo of the flames he absorbed, as if acknowledging their own name.
He breathed slowly, grounding himself.
One world had been destroyed.
Another reshaped.
And now even his own existence was being rewritten line by line.
Yet this time, he was not afraid.
Just tired. Curious. Alive.
And slowly, he whispered,
"…Show me the details."