As Leon looked around him ,a low hum vibrated through the floor . Slowly, lights began to bled into the darkness, illuminating the scale of the room. It was massive—easily stretching up to three hundred meters into the distance, with no visible exit in sight.
Then, the air itself ignited.
There was no warning, no spark. One second the room was clear, and the next, a roaring sea of orange flames consumed the entire chamber.
Leon screamed. The fire washed over him, bringing with it an agonizing, flesh-melting heat. He thrashed against the stone, his eyes tearing up as he instinctively dug his fingernails hard into his own forearms, drawing blood. But as he looked down, his skin wasn't charring. His clothes weren't turning to ash. There was no physical damage at all—yet the pain of being burned alive was absolute and unrelenting.
He forced his eyes open, looking to his left. Vane was already on his knees, his face purple as he clutched his collar, desperately trying to strangle himself to escape the agony. Evan was slumped over, completely unconscious on the scorched tiles. A few feet away, Sera was thrashing wildly, driven utterly mad by the pain as she ripped handfuls of her own hair from her scalp.
"The flames you feel are not of your physical realm," an ancient, resonant voice echoed, cutting through the crackle of the fire and their screams. "They cannot scorch your flesh, but they will sear your mind. This is a Trial and only one of you must win, Each fire will represent a different aspect ,you currently burn in the Mortal Fire. Survive it, or break."
Leon writhed, his knees buckling under the sheer weight of the torment. But as he forced his head up, his breath hitched. A violent shudder ripped through him that had nothing to do with the fire.
Kyle was moving.
While the rest of them were broken on the floor, Kyle was marching straight forward. His movement was unyielding, and terrifyingly calm. He didn't flinch. He didn't stumble. He just walked—five meters then ten, thirty, approaching the fifty-meter mark with the steady, rhythmic pace of a soldier on drill.
Leon stared in absolute horror and awe. He had always assumed Vane was the strongest of the swordsmen, but how wrong was he. He remembered now—when the spell had first dropped them here, the very first voice to cut through the haze of unconsciousness was Kyle's that was not a coincidence. The man was an unnatural prodigy. He possessed a spirit forged of absolute iron.
Not yet, Leon thought. His jaw locked, teeth grinding together with such desperate, violent force that a sharp pop echoed in his ears and the thick, metallic tang of blood flooded his mouth. I am not dying yet, Not here.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms gave out instantly, sending him crashing back onto the stone. The phantom fire didn't just burn his skin it felt as though it was cooking the marrow inside his bones, bringing his blood to a rolling boil with every erratic beat of his heart. His nervous system was in total revolt, screaming at his brain to just shut down, to pass out and escape the agony.
Through the suffocating, heat-warped air, he squinted. Ahead of him, the hazy silhouette of Kyle kept moving. Unflinching. Steady. It was infuriating. It defied all logic. But in that sea of sensory overload, Kyle's retreating back became the only solid thing left in the world. Leon locked his bloodshot eyes onto it, turning the swordsman into his anchor—if he takes a step, I take a step.
Leon forced his palms flat onto the scorching floor. A guttural, animalistic sound tore from his throat as he dragged his knees forward. Just moving a single meter felt like an eternity.
Ten meters. He collapsed, his cheek hitting the stone, gasping for air that felt like inhaling broken glass. Every muscle in his body seized and violently spasmed.
Move, his mind commanded. Move!
He bit down hard on his bottom lip, using the sharp, real pain to shock his system through the phantom inferno. He pushed up again.
Thirty meters. Fifty meters. He was no longer walking he was a broken animal crawling on all fours. Every inch forward felt like rusted fishhooks were buried deep in his flesh, violently dragging through his veins and tearing his muscles apart from the inside. He could no longer feel his feet they were just agonizing, dead weights he had to haul forward.
Behind him, the horrifying sounds of Vane gagging for air and Sera thrashing against the floor echoed over the roar of the flames. Leon shut it out. A cold, ruthless part of his mind severed his empathy entirely. He didn't look back. Looking back meant losing focus. Losing focus meant stopping and stopping meant dying.
Seventy meters. Eighty. Time lost all meaning. His vision narrowed down to a blurry tunnel, the world reduced to nothing but a suffocating orange blur and the rhythmic, impossible march of the man ahead of him. His fingernails chipped and cracked against the stone as he literally clawed his way across the floor.
Ninety meters. His mind was actively fracturing, the sheer volume of pain overriding every coherent thought until only one singular, primal instinct remained. Forward. Just forward.
With a final, agonizing heave, his vision swimming with dark, static spots, Leon dragged his heavy, ruined body inch by agonizing inch until he finally tumbled across the hundred-meter threshold.
The orange inferno snapped out of existence, instantly replaced by a blinding, suffocating Golden Flame without any delay .
The physical burning vanished, but the relief was a cruel lie. What took its place was infinitely worse. It felt as though a thick, sludgy black poison had been plunged directly into his heart. The venom pulsed outward with every frantic beat, filling his veins with a pressure so immense he felt they would violently rupture beneath his skin.
A heavy, suffocating malevolence crashed into his mind like a physical blow. It didn't attack his flesh it clawed at his sanity, prying open the deepest, darkest vaults of his trauma. Suddenly, he wasn't in a trial. He was back there.
The Golden Flame weaponized his memories. He saw his father's cold, unfeeling back turning away from him, the absolute absence of love in his eyes. He heard the fading, dismissive footsteps of his brothers and sister, their silhouettes shrinking in the distance as they left him behind in the dirt without a second glance. The feelings of absolute abandonment, of being utterly discarded and worthless, swelled up into a deafening roar in his head. You are nothing, the flame seemed to whisper in his father's voice. You were born to be left behind. The sheer emotional gravity crushed him. Leon collapsed to his knees, a raw, broken gasp tearing from his throat. His eyes turned entirely bloodshot, his vision swimming in a haze of despair and blinding rage. His fingers dug so deeply into his own palms that the skin tore, warm blood dripping in steady, dark rivulets onto the floor. The negative emotions were a mental quicksand, actively trying to swallow him whole and drown him in his own self-loathing.
Trembling, battling the phantom weight of his family's disdain, he forced his heavy head up.
Meters ahead, bathed in the same treacherous golden light, Kyle was still walking. Unshaken. Unflinching. His back was perfectly straight, an immovable pillar of pure, straightforward resolve against the mental onslaught. He wasn't even slowing down.
Suddenly a blurry face of a beautiful woman wearing a green gown radiating motherly aura flashed in Leon's mind , her eyes moved towards Leon as she spoke with conviction "My Leon would be the one to change the fate of the world , you will see Rudolf"
Unknowingly tears fell from Leon eyes , slowly The voice of the woman seem to wash away all negative emotions within him .
Leon's bloody hands clenched into tight fists. Is that you Mumma ? a small imperceptible smile formed in Leon's face . That's right your son will change his fate. A fierce, feral survival instinct ignited in his chest, burning hotter than the sorrow. With a violent, almost physical exertion of willpower, Leon dragged the faces of his father and siblings into the darkest depths of his mind. He shoved the grief, the rage, and the abandonment into a mental vault and slammed the heavy iron door shut over it.
Forcing his trembling legs beneath him, he stood. Every step felt like wading through chest-deep, freezing tar, but he dragged himself through the psychological sludge, his eyes locked dead ahead until he finally broke through the edge of the Golden Flame.
He crossed the unseen boundary, plummeting headfirst into the a roaring flame The Primordial Red Fire.
The heat here was beyond comprehension. But before Leon's brain could even register the absolute agony of the Primordial flames, the world snapped black. There was no ancient voice and no warning in just an instant, merciful severing of consciousness as he collapsed into the inferno.