Darkness was not the absence of light.
It was something alive.
Something that saw him.
Something that waited.
Alaric awoke to the feeling of weightless emptiness, as if he had been ripped from time itself. There was no ground beneath him. No sky above. No air to breathe, yet he did not suffocate.
It was not death.
It was something far worse.
Because he could still feel.
And what he felt was hunger.
Not his own.
But something else.
Something unseen.
Something that had been starving for an eternity, waiting for him to arrive.
A Soul Unmade
Pain came first.
A slow, deliberate agony that crept through his bones like frost inching across a dying leaf. His skin burnt and froze in equal measure; his thoughts shattered and reformed with every passing second.
He tried to move. His body was gone.
He tried to scream. His voice did not exist.
And yet, he was still here.
Suspended between nothingness and existence.
A soul unmade.
He did not know how long he drifted in that abyss. Hours? Days? Centuries? Time was irrelevant in this place, if it even existed at all.
Then, a voice.
A whisper, spoken not in sound but in understanding.
"You are not whole."
Alaric did not respond. He could not.
"You were shattered before you even entered this place. The glass did not break you. It only revealed the truth."
A figure emerged from the void.
Not a man.
Not a beast.
Something without a name.
Its form was fluid, shifting between shapes—a faceless shadow, a towering giant, a mass of writhing tendrils, an old man with hollow eyes.
It had no single identity, yet it was all of them at once.
"Do you know what you are?" it asked.
Alaric remained silent.
The entity smiled.
"A fractured soul. A vessel emptied by its own choices. A man who does not yet know what he is meant to become."
Alaric's thoughts felt stripped bare, exposed beneath the weight of something ancient. The memories of his past clung to him like brittle paper, each one fragile, ready to be torn apart.
He had come so far. He had endured the trials. He had survived the glass maze.
And yet, he felt smaller than ever.
"You are not ready," the entity said.
"But you will be."
The River of Ash
A sudden force dragged him downward.
The abyss around him twisted, folding upon itself like a living thing, devouring the void and birthing something new.
A river.
But it was not water that flowed.
It was ash.
Thick, blackened remnants of things once living, churning like liquid despair. And within it, figures screamed.
Some had faces he recognised.
The dead from his past.
The ones he had failed.
The ones he had forgotten.
The ones who had died so that he could live.
They reached for him, arms of soot and bone, their voices a thousand tortured echoes.
"Why did you leave us?"
"Why did you survive?"
"Why are you still whole when we are only pieces?"
Alaric fought against the pull of the river, but it had no bottom, no edge, no escape. The current dragged him deeper, suffocating him in memories he had buried long ago.
Pain was not just physical.
It was remembrance.
The weight of guilt sharpened into jagged shards, slicing into his mind with merciless precision.
He saw the faces of friends who had perished, lovers who had faded, and enemies who had bled beneath his blade.
Each one a wound that had never healed.
Each one was a choice he could never take back.
"You do not deserve to rise," the voices whispered.
"You do not deserve to be reborn."
Alaric closed his eyes.
And then, he let go.
Not because he wanted to die.
But because he knew the truth.
He had already died.
The Fire That Remains
Death was not the end.
Not for him.
Because deep within the abyss, beneath the weight of every shattered memory, something still burnt.
A single ember.
Faint. Weak.
But alive.
It was the fire of who he was.
And who he could still become.
Alaric reached for it.
And the world exploded in light.
The Awakening
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the river.
He was standing on solid ground.
Beneath him stretched a great desert of blackened sand, the sky above a swirling canvas of fire and shadow. The entity stood before him, unchanged, but no longer looming.
"You have walked the edge of nothing," it said. "And yet, you did not fall."
Alaric clenched his fists. His body was whole again.
"What did I just witness?" he demanded.
The entity tilted its head.
"The truth."
"What truth?"
It gestured toward the horizon.
"That the past is not your burden. It is your forge."
"And I am meant to be… what? Stronger?"
The entity smiled, but there was no cruelty in it this time.
"No. You are meant to be reborn."
And with that, the world shifted once more.
The sky darkened. The sands ignited. The wind howled with voices not of the past but of the future.
For the first time, Alaric understood.
He had not just survived the trials.
He had been reforged by them.
The puzzle of glass had shattered him.
The river of ash had drowned him.
But the fire within him had never gone out.
And now, it burnt brighter than ever.
"You are ready," the entity whispered.
"No
w go forth and claim what is yours."
Alaric turned, stepping forward into the fire—
And this time, he did not burn.