The group was tense.
Hadrin was gone and they were cast in shadow. The light from the broken idol piece was barely enough to illuminate their faces and the cracks in their resolve were starting to show.
Jerek paced the room. "We can't keep this up," he said. "Hadrin's dead. Who's next? You? Me? How many more bodies before we get out of here?"
"We don't have a choice," Elric said, leaning back against the cold stone wall. "You want to live? Then we finish what we started. Whining won't get us out of here."
Talia crossed her arms, her eyes far away.
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one the monk keeps picking. Maybe Kael should decide what happens next."
Everyone looked at Kael, who stood by the altar, staring at the idol piece. He hadn't said much since they got back. His mind was too busy untangling the threads.
He turned to them, his face blank.
"Arguing won't bring Hadrin back and it won't get us the rest of the pieces. We either do this together or we die here."
"Big words from someone who doesn't seem to care," Elric muttered under his breath.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Don't mistake calm for indifference. I'm trying to keep us alive. Can you say the same?"
Elric opened his mouth to reply but Talia stepped in front of him.
"Enough," she said. "If we're going to get out of this alive we need to stay focused. Let's get some rest and figure out what to do in the morning."
The group reluctantly broke apart and each found a corner of the temple to settle into. But sleep was a long way off.
Kael leaned against the altar, his mind a mix of doubt and mistrust.
The cracks in their dynamic were spreading but what bothered him more was how disconnected everyone seemed. Hadrin's death had been brutal—his screams still echoed in Kael's head—but the others treated it like a setback.
He replayed their reactions in his head, searching for genuine grief, but found none. Talia's calm, Elric's anger, Jarek's practicality—it all felt... wrong.
The whispers had started again, soft and far away, barely audible over the crackling of the brazier in the corner. Kael shivered, though it wasn't cold.
"I need to get this figured out," he said to himself.
Deeper into the night the group gathered around the brazier for warmth. The firelight played across their faces, casting shadows on the walls. The gathering carried tension but no one would break the silence.
Kael looked at Lina, who sat at the edge of the group. She was the quietest of them all—so much so one could forget she existed, rarely spoke unless spoken to. There was something about her that interested him—a weight to her presence like she carried the burdens of a life she rarely lived.
"Lina," Kael said.
She looked up, her face blank. "What?"
"I don't know much about you," Kael said. "Where are you from?"
She hesitated, her eyes darted to the others and back to him. "What does it matter?"
"I don't know," Kael said. "But if we're stuck here together I'd like to know who I'm fighting alongside."
Lina sighed and leaned back against the wall. "I'm from a small mining town on the edge of nowhere," she started, her voice detached. "The kind of place where hope die. Jobs disappeared, families fell apart and people turned on each other. It wasn't much of a life."
She stopped, her eyes far away. "When the Nexus opened to our world I thought... maybe this was my way out. A chance. So I left. Thought I could make something of myself in the Reaches."
Kael's blood turned to ice. His eyes went wide, his pupils expanding as her words hit him. His heart pounded and his stomach churned. The room seemed to shrink around him, the dancing shadows suddenly suffocating.
"Kael?" Talia's voice cut through his racing thoughts but he barely heard her.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "I see," he said, his voice steady despite the turmoil inside him.
Lina raised an eyebrow. "You okay?"
Kael nodded, though his mind was screaming no. "Yeah. Just tired."
Kael stood and picked up the broken idol piece.
"What are you doing?" Talia asked, her voice cautious.
"I'm going to put them in the monk's chamber" Kael said, his voice steady despite the unease creeping up his spine. "No point in waiting until morning. The monk hadn't asked me to enter yet but he seems to have no problem with me entering."
The group looked at each other uncertainly but followed him to the chamber where the mad monk remained.
"You sure about this? We don't know what will happen if you enter without the monk asking first." Elric asked behind him, his voice breaking the silence.
Kael didn't answer. He just stepped inside without waiting for the monk to call him.
The monk was there, as always, pacing the chamber in jerky movements. Its bony fingers gripped the edges of its tattered robes and its mumbling filled the room—a nonsensical chant of disjointed words and phrases that bounced off the walls.
Kael stopped just inside the doorway and set the idols down.
The monk didn't look up.
The others stayed outside the chamber, looking in as they always did, not wanting to enter.
Kael turned his head slightly toward them, his voice low and trembling.
"Why?"
Talia frowned. "Why what?"
Kael clenched his fists, his fingers digging into his palms as he forced himself to continue.
"Why were none of you ever chosen by the monk to enter? Why was it always me?"
The group was silent, their faces blank in the low light.
Kael took a shaky breath. "Your personalities... they've always been so bland. Never distinct, never profound. All surface-level assumptions I had of you when i had first seen you. And then—" His voice faltered, his throat tightening.
"And then I asked you about your world."
He turned to Lina, his eyes wide with dread.
"And you told me the same thing the couple back in the settlement told me. Almost word for word."
The chamber seemed to get colder. The monk's pacing continued, its muttering a relentless backdrop to Kael's unraveling.
Kael's hand trembled as he clenched his fist tighter, his nails biting into his skin. His voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible.
"From the very moment this trial began... I've been alone."
The words as it left his mouth, made a chill run down his own spine, feeling him with dread.
His gaze swept over the group, his chest tightening with a fear that bordered on hysteria.
"None of you are real. You're not the people I entered this trial with. You're all... others."
The group didn't react. They just stood there, staring at him with unnerving calmness.
Kael's breath hitched, his knees threatening to buckle beneath him. He forced himself to keep speaking.
"The sacred ground the texts said was safe. it's not the whole temple ruins, is it? It's just this chamber. This is the only place you can't enter, isn't it?"
His voice cracked, and he turned fully toward them, his back now to the pacing monk. The words died in his throat as he finally looked at them.
They were no longer human.
Their forms twisted and distorted in impossible ways, their features a terror inducing mockery of what they once were.
Talia's mouth stretched far too wide, her teeth jagged and blackened. Jarek's eyes were pits of shadow, oozing a thick, tar-like substance. Lina's limbs bent at unnatural angles, her joints cracking as she shifted.
Kael stumbled back, his gaze snapping to the floor as nausea surged through him. He couldn't look at them—he wouldn't. His chest heaved, and he fought the urge to vomit, his mind reeling from the horror before him.
"Why?" he choked out, his words barely making it past his lips. "Why go through all this? You've had so many chances to kill me. Why didn't you just end it?"
The whispers around him grew louder, overlapping and echoing until they became a mix of incomprehensible sound.
Slowly, the voices began to align, speaking as one—a voice that was both a whisper and a roar, a thousand tones blending into something inhuman.
"Because when the gods want to kill a man," they said, "they first make him mad."
Kael's heart stopped. His blood ran cold, his entire body trembling as the words sank into his being.
Behind him, the monk stopped pacing. For the first time, his muttering ceased