Draemir woke feeling more rested than he had in days. For the first time since entering the trial, he hadn’t been jolted awake by thunder, shivering in the mud. Instead, he found himself lying in a bed—a real bed, soft enough to cradle his weary body, even if it was dusty. He hadn’t even bothered to brush off the grime before collapsing last night, but honestly, the dust didn’t bother him. He’d slept in worse places.
He sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and glanced around the small, bare room. There was nothing here besides the bed. No personal belongings, no decorations, not even a chair or table. Just stone walls and silence.
‘Whoever lived here was quite the minimalist,’ he thought wryly.
But as that thought drifted away, a deeper, more unsettling one replaced it.
‘What am I even doing?’
He’d wandered through a wasteland, survived the perils of a storm, and found this abandoned temple that seemed to be filled with more questions than answers. But he still had no idea what the point of all this was. He hadn’t come any closer to understanding the objective of his ascension trial. Was he supposed to uncover something here? Fight something? Conquer some hidden fear? The officer had given him some advice before he’d entered, but…
he struggled to remember the specifics.
What did the officer say again? Something about… a “tailored experience”?
That phrase sounded right, but it didn’t exactly explain much. Draemir huffed, feeling a flicker of frustration. This trial didn’t feel tailored to him—it felt like he’d been tossed into some random nightmare with no instructions and no way forward. If there was some kind of purpose to this, it was eluding him entirely.
‘What else did he say?’
He frowned, trying to recall the conversation. He remembered standing in the basement of the police station, facing the officer’s grim, somber expression. But at the time, he hadn’t been listening closely; he’d been too busy bracing himself for what felt like certain death. The details had all seemed irrelevant, just words to fill the time before his fate was sealed. Now, though, he was regretting not paying closer attention.
‘Maybe I should have listened more carefully,’ he thought with a sigh, rubbing his temples.
He hadn’t thought he’d survive this long, and now that he had, he felt lost. Stranded in a world that seemed more interested in testing his endurance than giving him any clear goal.
He sat there for a while, his mind churning as he tried to piece together fragments of what the officer had said. Most of it felt like a blur, lost in the haze of fear and resignation he’d felt at the time. But then, one part of the conversation surfaced—a memory that seemed to spark something inside him.
“My special powers!”
Draemir’s eyes widened. How could he have forgotten that? One of the most important things about surviving an ascension trial—one of the coolest things—was the awakening of abilities, powers that were unique to each person who managed to make it this far. They were supposed to be something tied to his soul, a glimpse of his abilities if he survived. He’d heard whispers and rumors from others who’d managed to scrape together information about the trials. People who survived returned with… abilities. Gifts that marked them as far from mundane.
He could hardly believe he’d forgotten something so crucial.
But… there was an issue.
‘Hm.’ He frowned
The excitement faded slightly as a new realization dawned on him. He didn’t actually know how to activate these supposed powers. Much less what they even were. It wasn’t like he’d been given a manual on “special trial powers.” The officer had mentioned something about looking inward, about it being akin to instinct, but he hadn’t exactly explained what that meant.
He didn’t quite feel different from before… so he didn’t know where this “instinct” was.
‘Well. I don’t have anything else to do right now.’
Draemir sat cross-legged on the bed, closing his eyes, feeling a little ridiculous. Focus inward, he told himself, trying to quiet his mind. He didn’t know what he was looking for—some kind of inner light? A voice? A sensation? He concentrated, reaching for any flicker of energy, any strange feeling inside him that might reveal his own special powers.
For a moment, nothing happened. Just the quiet hum of his own thoughts, the sound of his breath filling the stillness of the room.
But then… there was something. Faint and distant, like a spark at the edge of his awareness. It was small, barely more than a flicker, but it felt… different. Foreign. He concentrated harder, reaching for that spark, trying to bring it closer.
As he focused, the sensation grew, warming in his chest, spreading outward like the first hint of a flame catching hold. It was faint, but unmistakable—a pulsing warmth, steady and rhythmic, like a heartbeat. The ache of exhaustion faded slightly as he centered himself on that feeling, as if whatever he’d touched within himself was feeding him, strengthening him, just a little.
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Draemir didn’t dare move. He held onto that warmth, letting it fill him, steadying his breath, his mind. It wasn’t much, but it was something—proof that the officer’s words had been more than just a random guess. There was something inside him.
Honestly, it kind of weirded him out.
But as quickly as it came, the warmth began to fade, slipping through his focus like water through his fingers. He struggled to hold onto it, to pull it back, but the sensation flickered out, leaving only the faint echo of its presence in his chest.
He opened his eyes, feeling both exhilarated and frustrated.
‘So it’s real,’ he thought. ‘But I don’t know how to control it.’
Still, it was a start. He’d felt something—a power that hadn’t been there before. Maybe with practice, he could bring it back, find a way to harness it. He didn’t know what it would do, or how it would help him in this trial, but the knowledge that it was there gave him a flicker of hope.
Draemir stood up, feeling a new sense of purpose. The temple around him might be a mystery, the trial’s objective still a puzzle he couldn’t piece together, but he had something to work with now.
A special power that was his! Something he could use if he figured out how to use it.
‘Maybe this trial wasn’t just about surviving,’ he thought. ‘Maybe it was about discovering what I’m capable of.’
With a newfound resolve, he walked back toward the door, ready to continue his exploration of the temple. This place was ancient, filled with secrets he didn’t understand, but he had one now, too—he didn’t exactly understand it at all, but it can fill the time he isn’t exploring.
Sometime later, Draemir found himself back in the workshop.
After combing through every room he could access, finding nothing but dust and shadows, he was growing frustrated. The temple was vast, its corridors winding and interconnected, yet every room seemed to hold the same eerie emptiness. He was certain the key to completing the trial lay somewhere within this place, but the temple itself was like a puzzle without edges, without any obvious way forward.
‘It has to be something about this temple,’ he thought, standing in the center of the workshop and taking a long, frustrated breath. Maybe it had something to do with understanding the god or whatever this place was dedicated to, but if that was the case… well, he didn’t even know where to start.
But in the absence of a clear goal, his curiosity had grown. The mystery of the temple—the strange symbols, the abandoned throne, the haunting eye motif—was becoming more fascinating than it was frightening. After all, there wasn’t much else to do here besides drink from the fountain, watch the storm outside, and sleep. And so he’d returned to this “workshop room,” as he’d come to call it, with a new resolve to try and piece together what he could.
The room was just as bare as before: dusty shelves, empty tables, and the same strange markings on the wall. But Draemir was starting to get creative. He approached the wall where the symbols were carved, running his fingers over the rough stone, studying each shape with new intent.
‘Maybe I can figure this out,’ he thought, squinting at the jagged lines as if staring hard enough would reveal their meaning.
“Alright… let’s see here… you… mean… uh…” He muttered aloud, tracing a line of symbols with his finger, trying to make sense of them. The words felt ridiculous as he spoke them—he didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing.
But as he examined the wall, he started to notice something. Among the scattered symbols, one familiar shape stood out: the half-closed eye. It was etched near the beginning of the carving, and then repeated in several places down the length of the wall, woven into the strange script as if it were a punctuation mark or a sacred symbol.
He stepped back, taking in the full length of the wall. That eye… it was everywhere. Not just here, either—it had been above the entrance to the temple, emblazoned on the banners flanking the throne, carved into places of prominence throughout the temple.
‘This eye-half-closed thing has to be the objective!’ he thought, a spark of excitement flaring up. ‘It’s everywhere!’
But then the excitement faded just as quickly, replaced by confusion. He stood there, staring at the symbol, trying to will it to reveal its secrets to him.
‘Okay, so the eye is important,’ he thought. ‘But what am I supposed to do with that?’
The realization was like hitting a wall. He had finally figured out that the half-closed eye was central to this place, that it was the key—or at least a clue—to whatever he was supposed to be doing here. But that was it. He didn’t know why the eye was important, or what it represented, or how he was supposed to use this knowledge to complete the trial.
He turned back to the wall, staring at the half-closed eye, feeling a strange compulsion to understand it.
‘The eye… half-closed.’ He tried to imagine it fully closed, and then fully open, wondering if that would mean something. ‘Does it represent seeing something? Or not seeing? Is it watching me? Or is it waiting for me to… to see it?’
The thought hung in the air, filling him with an odd sense of anticipation.
After a moment of staring at the text, he gave up. It wasn’t that he was done with it, he simply understood that staring at a wall of text you can’t understand doesn’t bring you closer to understanding it.
‘Maybe… maybe I need to focus elsewhere, distract myself for a bit.’ he thought, the idea returning to him.
He’d tried once before to connect with his “soul core,” that damned thing he suffered to for a week as it developed in his chest. It was one of the only symptoms of being infected, besides the fatigue, after all.
he’d felt it for a fleeting moment in the bedroom. It hadn’t come easily, and he hadn’t been able to hold onto it for long, but now was as good a time as any to practice.
He took a step back from the wall and sat.
Closing his eyes and forcing himself to take a deep breath. He let the silence settle around him, shutting out the faint roar of the storm outside, the emptiness of the temple, the chill that seeped from the stone. He focused on that spark he’d felt within himself, that warm pulse that had flared up and then slipped away.
Slowly, he reached inward, letting his awareness sink into his own mind, his own soul, searching for the location of his soul core.
For a long moment, there was nothing—just the stillness of his own breathing, the faint echo of his heartbeat.
And then, like a flicker of light in the darkness, he felt it again.
A faint warmth, pulsing in the center of his chest, growing stronger as he focused on it. He concentrated, trying to draw it closer, to feed it with his intent, his will.
The warmth spread, filling his chest, radiating outward like a slow, gentle flame.