Nash frowned, rubbing his eyes tiredly before re-reading who signed the book.

Mazaeth, Lord of the Sky.

No matter how he doubted it, the content written in black ink on the old paper didn't change. The young man sighed as he began to get a severe headache, the implications of the existence of this book shaking his views on this world.

'Alright, let's assume the author of the book is not an impostor and indeed the Lord of the Sky...' Nash drew a deep breath, massaging his temples as he tried to make sense of everything before reading the book.

'Until now, I was under the impression that Mazaeth, Noroas, and Rodraxos were gods of their respective religions. If I had to guess, my father's — no — Dante Lord Dularfell's religion was either in Rodraxos, the Lord of the Battlefields, or Mazaeth the Lord of the Sky. Noroas, the Pale Lady, is King Aethon's religion. But then, why would a book written by Mazaeth just be placed in the middle of the wall, presumably in the middle of another god's trial?' Nash sighed once again, rubbing his tired arms before glancing back at the book. Hopefully, most of the answers he needed would be in there. With that conviction, he began reading the book of Mazaeth.

"The first thing you should all understand, as it should have been taught to you, is that the Trial of the Spider isn't made for humans."

Nash blinked, before letting out a disbelieving chuckle. What? What did it mean it wasn't made for humans?

"At first, the Narrow Path, as is the Trial of the Spider's true name, was intended as a learning guide to the ones who built the Citadel, the Arachitects."

The young man frowned, his finger following the lines as he kept on reading.

"The Citadel is such an incredible feat of architecture, it's only logical that it wasn't made by humans in the first place. The entire place is gigantic, each hallway, hall, and room are made in ridiculous proportions, as if intended for giants. Well, it's not an if, since the Arachitects were indeed titanic creatures. With intelligence rivaling the best minds of humanity, the Arachitects are parts of the Pale Lady's lineage, not a direct one, but still quite pure-blooded. With the sizes of houses and dexterity that allowed them to build anything they put their minds to, the Arachitects built the Citadel, a castle reaching over the sky, that can't be accessed by any human souls."

Nash couldn't help but smirk, thinking back to the many humans inhabiting the castle. It seems like something had happened to make the Arachitects leave the place up for grabs.

"As previously mentioned, the current pathway you're taking, the Narrow Path, was intended for Arachitects children to help them reach the top of the Citadel, a learning guide indeed. But after the Arachitects left the Citadel, it was left abandoned. After that, the Lord of the Battlefields, Rodroxas, took over the castle, building all of the elevators that enable humans to enter the Citadel. Those are stains on the glory of the Citadel, but at least they make the castle usable for us. Anyway, I digress..."

Nash nodded to himself. Indeed, the elevators were rather poorly built, one after the other for several floors until you could finally reach your destination.

'I wonder what made the Arachitects leave. Seeing how Mazaeth purposefully avoided the subject, it seems like either no one knows, or no one should know...'

"Things happened, and then I took over the Citadel and repurposed Noroas and Rodraxos leftovers to serve a simple purpose: train the Heirs of the Citadel."

Nash's eyes widened and he clasped the book's paper, almost wanting to rip it to pieces. So, he was doing this stupidly hard Trial, climbing something meant for a fucking spider because of this obnoxious guy, Mazaeth? And how could he just skim over the whole thing like that? "Things happened..."

No shit!

'Yeah, he's no god, just another madman in a world of insanity...' Nash sighed, forcing himself to continue despite his anger.

"I also added my own, but I'd advise taking it last. The order following the tradition as I created it shall be the Trial of the Battlefields, the Trial of the Spider, and to finish, the Trial of the Sky. If you've skipped the Trial of the Battlefields...well, good luck."

A cold bead of sweat pearled down Nash's forehead before quickly getting wiped away. What Mazaeth said was one thing, what would happen was going to be another.

"To equilibrate your chances, I've asked one of my loyal friends to create something to enhance your flexor digitorum profundus muscle. That's the mushroom growing to the side. Do your best to eat it whole, it will grow back in time for the next Heir, so don't worry about it. The more you eat, the longer its effects will be, so force yourself if you have to. Additionally, once you're back on the Narrow Path, there won't be another stop. Go get the Skysilk Weaver's egg, and eat it. That'll give you the second qualification for the Trial, as well as a considerable boost. And here's my last advice: don't look down. Good luck."

Nash frowned and turned the page, finding it blank. He stared at it for a few seconds before turning the rest of them frantically, finding the rest of the book empty. The young man cursed and threw the chained book against the wall, kicking it on the ground with renewed rage.

"Why do you even bother to put this shit into a book, damn it?!?" Nash hissed through his teeth, before calming down and looking at the huge mushroom growing on the wall. He looked back and forth between the book and the mushroom, and glanced at the rest of the way he had to climb, before drawing a deep breath of fresh and unpolluted air. After standing still for a few seconds, he steeled himself and ripped the thing off the wall, the mushroom's flesh squishy in his hands while remaining quite firm, enough to not be reduced to pulp by the harvest. Nash gulped, feeling his stomach grumble in need of food, before hesitantly taking a bite out of the mushroom. The mushroom had a slightly earthy taste while being quite damp as well, but besides that, it just tasted like a mushroom. Nash wasn't used to eating them raw, but it was certainly just a mushroom.

"A normal mushroom..." Nash muttered as he kept on shoving more bits of it down his throat, his eyes lost in the distance, "...A fucking normal mushroom that doesn't give any powers or anything. Just a useless, not even tasty mushroom. Fuck Mazaeth and his bullshit muscle, this is so fucking stupid..." He blurted out, almost wanting to throw the mushroom away but deciding otherwise at the last second. He had to keep his emotions in check and act logically. Even if the mushroom wasn't magical as promised, it was a source of food, and only the gods could know how much he needed it. Nash continued to eat mindlessly, soon finishing every single bit of the mushroom, even scraping whatever leftovers there were on the wall. After finishing everything, Nash took a few more minutes to digest and rest, before looking at the stairs he needed to take back.

He bit his lower lip, preventing another swear word from escaping his mouth, and reached for a crack in the wall to resume his ascent. As he did so, his sleeves slid down, revealing his slender arms and the black veins running down them. Reflexively, Nash almost leaped backward, but instead threw himself against the wall inside the alcove, choosing not to fall if he could. He hastily rolled up his sleeves, arms outstretched in front of him. From his fingertips to his elbows, black veins filled with a dark substance disgustingly streaked both arms. Nash's breathing accelerated as he watched the veins pulse and become increasingly darker, making it look as if a deposit of coal was present in his arms.

"What...What is this?!" He gasped, suddenly feeling terrible pain in both of his arms, making him feel like his veins were tearing from the inside, his muscles tensing and ripping without stopping. Nash rolled himself in a ball, clasping both of his arms against his chest as he pressed his forehead against the cold stone ground, heaving painfully as his arms were seemingly reconstructed from the inside.

After a few more minutes of suffering, the pain in Nash's arms dimmed down, letting him think once again. He gasped for air, enjoying the feeling of being alive as the torture was finally over. It felt like it had lasted for an hour when he knew it had been less than a dozen minutes. Nonetheless, the shortness of it didn't take away how painful it had been. Nash looked at his arms, finding them to be still as they were, thin and weak, and half the size of his forearms. Somehow, those were now much thicker, more dense, and more powerful, letting him feel as if he could rip and crush stones in his hands. Nash looked at the wall and pressed both his hands against it, forcing slightly and watching with an amazed gaze as his fingers dug through the stone, letting him use any surface as a usable structure to climb.

"This wasn't bullshit... Crap, that mushroom was magical..." The young man glanced at the wall where he ripped the mushroom from, before shaking his head in disbelief. His hate for Mazaeth lowered slightly, not enough for him to want the man/god dead, just a little less than before. Nash looked at the Narrow Path with renewed determination, before deciding to put to the test his new enhanced muscles. He carefully climbed over the first step, grabbing an already present crack and using it to almost launch himself into the air. Nash screamed in surprise before digging into the wall with his fingers, firmly stuck into the wall.

The young man grinned, and followed the Narrow Path's stairs, using his reinforced fingers to dig into the wall from time to time for each difficult passage, making the ascension considerably easier. The sun was still high in the sky, shining its cold light over him as he ascended the Citadel one stair at a time. He proceeded carefully but without wasting a second, as he knew that each moment spent climbing was a bit more of his stamina burning away.

'With the additional strength from the mushroom, this is surprisingly much easier. Nonetheless, I don't understand how I haven't torn one of my muscles already or hurt myself in some places with how much strain I'm putting on my body. I shouldn't be able to do such a physical feat, even less with how under-fed and how feeble this body is... I'll have to check that thoroughly if I have the chance,' Nash decided as he sunk his fingers in the stone wall, crushing it under his iron grip.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He used a second to catch his breath, both of his feet on one of the stairs extruding out of the wall, and looked upward to see what remained to be climbed. The clouds were still far, much too far in the sky, and the ground. Nash closed his eyes, restraining himself from looking down. Mazaeth's last advice had been not to look down, he was certainly not going to disobey it.

The young man drew a deep breath and looked back up, gritting his teeth as he reached for another crack in the walls. He pulled himself up, when the wall suddenly shook, dust coming out of it in a large cloud. Nash froze, before hurriedly lunging to the side, plunging his whole hand into another part of the wall as the place he was previously holding suddenly crumbled down. The large stone bricks dislodged themselves from the wall, falling in great empty under Nash's feet. The young man reflexively followed the stones fall with his eyes, a sudden sense of vertigo clutching his heart.

He couldn't see the ground anymore. No, it was more correct to say that it was hard to distinguish anything down there, all shapes blurred behind a strange, almost mystical veil.

'Is that fog? Shit, I'm...I'm high...' Nash forced his eyes to look back up as he turned his head back in the wall's direction, pressing his forehead drenched in sweat against the cold harsh stone. He gulped difficultly, trying to ignore that any fall would probably reduce his body into nothingness. With trembling hands, he grabbed at the next stone, pushing through the dread and fear, his teeth clenched tightly and his heart racing madly.

The wall beside him was still crumbling bit by bit, and from the looks of it, it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. Nash discarded the idea of waiting for the destruction to be over to use the small hole it would have created in the wall as a resting place, and continued upward, following the extruding steps. Mazaeth wrote there wouldn't be any other opportunities to rest, he couldn't waste another second fearing for his life, frozen like a statue above the emptiness. The sooner he would reach the top of the Citadel, the sooner he would be able to rest.

As Nash continued his ascension, he went through a few different stages of pain. The first was when he pushed through the tiredness of his limbs, grabbing yet another stone, pushing on yet another stair, ignoring the exhaustion, and charging through it. This worked for a moment, until a horrible pain, almost comparable to the one he felt when he ate the mushroom, began to ring in his arms, his chest, his back, and his legs.

"...Hah...Hah..." Nash gasped for air, his eyes bloodshot as he dug inside the wall with his fingers.

"...And...Here I was...Wondering why... I didn't feel... Any pain... Fuck me..." He heaved, using a few seconds to rest, holding himself with one hand and shaking his other arm in the hope of relieving himself of the pain. As he continued to breathe out heavily, he noticed he was producing a thin cloud of steam with his mouth. Nash paused for a second and focused on his surroundings, realizing that it had become much, much colder compared to the moment he began the climb. The temperature change was bound to happen at some point, but he never would have thought it would have been so soon.

He glanced at the sky, wondering how much time had passed when his blood froze inside his body. The sky was dark, with a hint of a magenta light as the sun began to see, soon to plunge the world into darkness. Nash's breath accelerated and he hurriedly looked back at the wall, climbing with desperation. The ascension was already close to impossible, with him risking his life with each meter he climbed...

How hard would it be if he couldn't see anything anymore?

Nash shook the thoughts out of his head, and continued with less carefulness, instead going for the less safe but more rewarding grips, powering through the exhaustion, through the pain, until he couldn't feel anything but his blood beating in his temples, the veins of his forearms bulging under the effort he was putting them through. The night fell, killing all of the young man's hope to reach the top before the end of the day, and forcing him to practically go in blind.

He almost wanted to cry at the harshness of this trial, when he remembered why he was doing it.

"Isla..." Nash hissed through his teeth, the scene of his comatose sister evaporating in blue mystical light replaying in his head. He had to get out of this place, defeat those Trials, and find her back.

He had to.

The pain, the exhaustion, any feelings gleaming in his eyes, all vanished, replaced by a cold and calculative light, his entire being focused on one goal.

Reach the top of the Citadel.

Nash dug through the stone, his reinforced fingers bleeding after all they went through, and climbed straight up, ignoring the Narrow Path. There were no footholds left to help him, besides some cracks or badly placed stones, making the ascension that much harder. But by going directly upward, he would go a few times faster than he previously was. Soon enough, his efforts began paying as he entered the clouds layer, making him unable to see anything but the wall, his surroundings hidden behind the thick smog.

The air was becoming rarer, making it harder to breathe, and his sweat was transforming into ice as it trickled down his neck, but Nash continued. He ignored the skin peeling off his fingers, the blood dripping from his broken lips, his eyelids trying to close by themselves, and continued, silently, ragefully.

Suddenly, in his concentration, he heard something. A noise in the fog, sounding like knives hitting stone, echoing dully around him. Nash froze, looking at his surroundings with a wary gaze, before hesitantly reaching for another stone. A creature suddenly surged out of the fog, lunging at him silently. Nash swore and smacked it away, the unknown entity falling down the Citadel's walls.

'What was that? I couldn't even clearly see what it was... Probably the size of both of my hands together, it was fast and dark...' Nash didn't have the time to wonder any further as another creature surged out of the clouds, the strange rattle of knives against stone echoing in the night as it charged at him. Instead of pushing it into the void as he had done previously, the young man instead tried to crush it against the wall to have a closer look at whatever that was.

His fist connected with it, breaking anything in its way before digging into the wall, effectively piercing a hole in the creature's body. Nash squinted, trying to find out whatever that was.

'It's hairy...thin and long legs alongside a large body...shit, eight legs.'

Cold sweat drenched Nash as the rattle of knives intensified, letting him know that there was an unknown number of spiders the sizes of his head trying to go for him. Nash discarded all caution and jumped up, his arms moving at extreme speed as he climbed the wall carelessly, trying to get out of the clouds as fast as he could. The rattle followed him from behind, making him want to do only one thing:

Accelerate.

Nash screamed in pain as a spider ripped a chunk of flesh out of his left leg, biting through his pants before the young man managed to get rid of it. He gasped for air, the feeling of being eaten alive much too familiar for his taste, and desperately reached up, continuing his climb the best he could while dragging his left leg behind. A rattle louder than the others, much faster and much scarier suddenly echoed from under Nash, motivating him to go even faster. He didn't even orientate himself with his sight anymore, only grabbing one stone after another, his fingers piercing through the wall as he pulled and pulled.

Suddenly, his sight was free from the clouds, letting him see the dark starry night above him. The winds intensified suddenly, pushing his body from left to right. Nash desperately pushed his fingers through the stone, his fingernails long gone. He looked down at the sea of clouds, finding a large, car-sized shadow slowly retreating in the fog, the rattle of knives following it. The young man sighed in relief, before looking back up at the Citadel.

He could finally see the top.

With renewed determination, he ignored the freezing winds that tried to throw him down the Citadel's walls and continued upward, benefiting from the adrenalin remaining in his body after that horrible encounter with the giant spiders.

'...Just a few more meters, I'm almost there...Come on...' Nash felt the strength in his limbs leave him, his eyes blacking out my moments when they weren't already filled with white dots all over the place when he suddenly felt nothing. He had reached for the highest stone, as always, but there was nothing there. Nash forced his eyes open, smiling weakly as he grabbed the ledge and pushed himself up onto it. He rolled on his back as he finally freed his arms from the constant strain they had been put in.

The winds whistled madly past his ears, but Nash could only hear his heart beating at impossible speeds as he struggled to breathe, each gasp of air feeling as if he had stolen them. He remained lying down like this for an unknown amount of time, half asleep and half lost in a fever.

'...I'm...Never doing some...climbing again...' He thought, grunting painfully as turned himself to the side, pushing himself up weakly. The first thing he saw was how bright the sky was, even though it was the night. There were so many stars, all shining brightly with their pale lights. A single, yellow moon, so massive it seemed like he could reach for it if he wanted, was hanging over the Citadel, taking most of the place in the celestial area.

Nash sighed, before looking at his surroundings. Now that he was over the cloud layer, he could see quite well, the cold moonlight illuminating the Citadel's roof nicely. Somehow, he had succeeded in reaching the very top, with no other constructions standing above him. The young man wanted to cry out of happiness but forced his tears back when he remembered they would probably freeze on his cheeks with how cold it was up here.

With skinless and bloodied hands, Nash hugged himself to try and conserve more heat, the wind piercing through his clothes like swords. He stumbled forward, trying to look for anything that looked like an egg when he reflexively stopped as he noticed a line stretching out just before his eyes. It was bright, the moonlight reflecting on it and making it quite hard to miss. Nash wanted to try and touch it but remembered what creatures he had met in the cloud layer, and restrained himself.

He gritted his teeth and glanced around, finding more of the bright lines, or should he say, webs, strung all over the prison's ceiling, extending into the sky to connect to...nowhere. There was nothing above him, what did the strings connect to?

Those thoughts disappeared when he found an oval object held together by multiple lines, barely bigger than his fist, almost floating in the air. It was an egg, seemingly simple if its dark color was ignored. Nash carefully navigated through the webs, not wanting to touch one, before looking at the egg with a closer look.

"...so that's what I'm supposed to take back to this bastard Aethon, or eat it if I follow Mazaeth's advice." Nash shook his head slowly, before trying to find whatever laid the egg. There was nothing but bright lines, no spider anywhere in sight, only the moon and the starry sky. And that egg.

Nash hesitated, before carefully grabbing the egg, making sure to be as slow as he could be to try and disturb the strings as little as he could. The egg was slightly stuck to the lines, forcing Nash to pull a little harder than he would have liked. The smallest of vibrations was sent as Nash got the egg, traveling down the string to the one who laid it. Nash felt a cold shiver creep in his back as the moon suddenly disappeared, obscured by a massive shadow that suddenly phased into existence.

Without waiting for another second to try and find out whatever that massive thing was, Nash shoved the egg down his throat, not even chewing on it as he forced it down, and ran toward the ledge of the Citadel. A screech ripped the air alongside the young man's eardrums, throwing him down on the ground as he lost his sense of equilibrium. He touched his ears, finding out that there was a substantial amount of blood flowing from them as a sound rang inside his head.

'...Deaf. I'm deaf.' Nash quickly realized as he scrambled to his feet, the ledge only a few steps away. He slid on the ground, unable to hear anything, and jumped down, turning on his way to pierce the wall with his hand. He glanced back at this moment, only to see an eight-legged building, obscuring all light. He gulped for a second, and the other, one of those eight-leg pierced through his chest.

Nash coughed in confusion, blood flowing from his mouth. He slid down the giant spider's leg, falling into the void. His body spun uncontrollably, the winds thrashing him to the side as he saw the top of the Citadel getting further away until he plunged into the cloud layer. He didn't take much time to get out of it, freefalling with a massive hole in his chest toward his death.

The young man looked at the ground approaching, and without even the time to be scared, he closed his eyes.

...

...

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[Death counter]

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[...1...]