Kai's stomach twisted as the world flipped upside down, the mirror sky above him a fractured dome of glittering shards. Every second dropped him deeper toward the grotesque ocean below an undulating expanse of meat, pulsing like the inside of a living wound.
If I hit that… I die. No question.
His fingers twitched desperately.
"Dagger!"
The weapon answered.
From far above, from where it had fallen into the reflective palace ground moments ago, the crimson-forged dagger burst upward a streak of red light punching through folds of flesh. Its returning trajectory cut clean lines through the putrid air.
But Kai wasn't calling only the dagger.
The chains came too.
Long, spectral chains erupted from the dagger's hilt, coiling around it like living serpents. They rattled, glowed faintly, and stretched toward Kai as if pulled by gravity and loyalty both.
He snatched the chain mid-air, letting the momentum yank him sharply upward before swinging the blade behind his shoulder.
He had one desperate thought:
Use it like a rope. Hook into the mirror sky. Stop the fall.
At the time, it sounded brilliant.
And so he hurled the dagger upward with all the force his falling body could muster.
The dagger spun,
a bright red spiral slicing the air,
and shot toward the shattered mirror sky.
Kai held the chain tightly, waiting for that grounding clink,
that reassuring bite into solid matter,
that promise of life.
Instead:
FWOOP.
The dagger passed straight through the mirror sky as though the reflective surface wasn't even there.
Kai blinked.
…
…
"…Oh."
That was when the terrible realization hit him—
The sky is a mirror.
A reflection.
Not solid.
Nothing for the dagger to hook onto.
"Wait WAIT!"
The dagger arced gracefully through the nothingness, slid through the mirror layer like a rock phasing through water, and then obediently boomeranged straight back toward him.
Kai didn't even have the strength to be angry.
He simply stared, deadpan, still plummeting.
Gravity, meanwhile, did not care.
The flesh ocean rushed upward.
The dagger smacked into his hand as if to say, Here you go, master, and Kai still falling looked down at the rapidly approaching horror.
The distance between sky and ocean wasn't far.
It only felt long because his thoughts raced faster than the plunge.
And then,
SPLOOOOOSH.
Kai hit the flesh ocean.
Except it wasn't water.
It was warm.
Wet.
Dense.
A consistency somewhere between thick blood and half-melted muscle.
It swallowed him instantly.
Everything went dark red.
Outside the Trial of Gods in the dark forest.
Three figures perched on separate branches of ancient, black-barked trees. The forest around them breathed like a sleeping beast one wrong sound, and everything could wake.
Zane stood balanced like a phantom, one leg dangling off the branch, the other bent casually. His single exposed crimson eye glowed faintly.
"The defiled's ahead," he said, accent thick and unmistakably foreign, the syllables strange and sharp. "A Ravager. Tree-type."
Catalina froze, fingers tightening around her staff.
Ray nearly fell off his branch.
Even the forest seemed to swallow the sound.
"…A Defiled Ravager?" Catalina whispered, voice trembling. "Here?"
She was only at Conjurer Stage.
Ray was still in Awakening.
And Zane… nobody truly knew.
He never spoke about his cultivation.
Never bragged. Never explained.
He simply existed, powerful and unreadable.
Zane tilted his head. "Yes. Rather large too. Multiple cores. Corruption density is… spicy."
They stared at him.
Spicy?
Who in the abyss describes a Defiled Ravager like that?
Catalina blinked. Twice.
Ray sighed and covered his face with a hand.
"…You're insane," Catalina said flatly. "We are not going after that thing."
Ray nodded vigorously. "He literally said Defiled. Do you know how rare that is? How dangerous? We'd be erased."
Zane shrugged, a lazy smile curving his lips. "Then we run? Or hide? Seems boring."
His British-toned voice only made it worse.
The world before the apocalypse had many languages, but after its total destruction, barely any remained. English had survived in fragments broken, twisted, scattered across continents. Very few could still speak it fluently, and those who did sounded strange to modern ears.
Zane's accent stood out like a relic.
A relic with a death wish.
Catalina stared at him, expression blank.
Ray stared at him, expression blanker.
Their silence was heavy, judging, exhausted.
Zane simply kicked his leg idly and rested his chin on his palm. "So? Shall we attack? Or sit around waiting for a defiled tree monster to wander up and snack on us?"
Ray finally snapped.
"You just told us the monster is a Defiled Ravager," he said slowly, painfully. "Why. Would. We. Go. Toward. It?"
Catalina nodded. "Exactly. Why would we look for trouble? We are not heroes. We are not legends. We are not suicidal."
Zane's smile widened into something sharp, confident, unbothered by reality.
"Speak for yourselves."
Ray and Catalina exchanged a look.
A look that said.
This man is going to get us all killed.
***
Back Inside the Trial
Under the surface of the flesh ocean.
Kai's body continued sinking like a stone into a world of pulsating meat.
The fish swarm dove after him.
The tentacles shook the ocean.
And far above, the mirror sky slowly sealed behind him, trapping him within the nightmare.