Immediately, Draemir attempted to refocus on his soul core. It took a moment to find that familiar warmth, but eventually, he felt himself pulled back into the radiance of his soul plane, surrounded once more by the endless white mist and the blinding "sun" at the center of it all.

Then, an idea struck him—something he hadn’t considered before. If he could hear and feel the outside world from within his soul plane… could he see it, too? Was it possible to somehow split his awareness between this inner world and the temple around him?

Cautiously, he withdrew a bit of his focus, urging his consciousness to step partially out of his soul plane without fully returning to reality. It was a strange sensation, like stretching his mind in two directions at once. He held onto the vast, empty whiteness of his soul, but let part of his awareness drift back to the temple, as if pleading his senses to bridge the gap.

It worked.

It felt as though his consciousness was split in two: one part anchored in the radiant, infinite expanse of his soul plane, and the other rooted in the dim, candlelit room of the temple, staring at the wall with those strange symbols.

‘A readable wall of text!’ he thought, excitement bubbling up inside him as he scanned the letters. Somehow, maintaining this dual state let him see the text clearly, translated directly into words he could understand. It was still challenging to hold the connection—he felt as if he were trying to balance on a tightrope with half his mind in each realm—but he was managing. For now.

He began reading, his eyes widening as he took in the words:

“The realm grew silent, his breath no more,

Once veiled in slumber, now broken and sore.

Soft lullabies faded, replaced by the cries

Of his children lost under starless skies.

His offspring bear his loss in strife.

Dreams turned to nightmares, death shadowing life.

Souls drift to void, their warmth stripped bare,

And choice yielded to fate, bound by despair.

Fate cast dreams to death’s quiet grace,

And death swallowed him in its embrace.

Soul wept aloud, for they knew the end—

A sorrow too deep for time to mend.

The path now dark, with futures unseen,

As corruption spreads where dreams had been.

The sacred realm stands on the edge of night,

Its fall assured, with no dreams left in sight.

He is dead. So am I.

Yet I linger, bound by threads that tie.”

He stared at the wall, unblinking, the words echoing in his mind.

‘…’

The silence in his head felt heavy, like he’d been struck by something he couldn’t quite process. It was a lot of poetic language that hinted at things far beyond his understanding—things ancient and tragic, a god’s fall and a world of dreams unraveling.

‘Fate cast dreams to death’s quiet grace,’ Was this poem talking about a god of dreams? His god, perhaps? The deity tied to his own soul affinity?

‘So… this god is dead,’ he thought, feeling a strange chill settle over him. The poem spoke of despair, of darkness swallowing a sacred realm, of dreams turning to nightmares… with no dreams left in sight.

‘Was this place built to worship a dead god?’

The realization sent a prickling sense of dread through him.

It was one thing for a god to be forgotten. But an entirely different thing for it to be dead.

And there was the other thing.

He was no closer to understanding what all this meant for him or his trial. What was he supposed to do with this knowledge? It was like he’d uncovered the first page of a story already three-quarters told, leaving him with no useable information to concluding this trial.

‘…This is how I die,’ he thought bleakly, staring at the cryptic verses with resignation. ‘I understood… absolutely nothing.’

And yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that these words—this lost god, this fall from grace—were important. That they were tied to this temple, and to however he can escape this trial.

But for now, all he had was a confusing poem, a dead deity, and a sinking feeling that the answer to leaving this temple might be more complicated than he’d hoped.

The days had dragged on in the temple, each one blending into the next, and with nothing but water from the fountain to keep him going, he could feel his body weakening. The oppressive silence of the temple, the empty rooms, the cryptic words on the walls—all of it felt like it was conspiring against him. It was like this place wanted to strip him of everything, to grind him down piece by piece.

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But he had one last thing he wanted to try, a faint glimmer of an idea. So, with what little energy he had left, he made his way back to the main hall and then to the narrow hallway leading to the entrance door. As he approached, the air changed—the cool, damp feel of it pressing in, along with the sound of the rain pounding against the temple’s exterior. The low rumble of thunder rolled in the distance, and as he stepped closer, it grew louder, almost as if the storm were waiting for him.

He stood just inside the doorway, staring out at the storm. It was just as vast and terrifying as he remembered it, an endless wall of rain and lightning surrounding the temple on all sides. Sheets of water poured from the sky, broken only by the brief, blinding flashes of lightning that illuminated the swirling dark clouds. It had been days since he’d left the storm behind, since he’d stumbled into the temple in search of shelter. And while the fountain had kept him alive for a bit longer, he knew that without food, his time was running out.

But he had one last hope.

Well… two, technically. But he wanted to try this one first.

He stepped back under the archway and looked up, his gaze settling on the symbols carved into the stone above the door. The first symbols he’d seen upon entering the temple. Repeating the process he’d used in the workshop, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reached for his soul core, slipping his consciousness into his soul plane and splitting his awareness between the white void and the physical world.

As he opened his eyes, the symbols above the door began to shift, the strange shapes resolving into words he could read.

“Temple of the Sleeper.”

That was all it said.

The words hit him with a cold finality, like a weight settling in his gut. Temple of the Sleeper. He didn’t know what it meant, but he understood enough to know that he was trapped in a place dedicated to a god—a god who was now dead.

He knew then that he was going to die here.

'Damn this!' he thought bitterly, clenching his fists. His whole body tensed, a wave of anger rising up from the pit of his stomach. He had survived the wasteland. He had survived the storm. Despite his frail body, he’d made it through every test and trial that had been thrown at him, including the endless, mind-numbing boredom of this place.

He moved back into the entrance hall.

He had even learned about his own soul, found his abilities he never knew existed. But none of it seemed to matter, because he still had no idea what he was supposed to do.

Looking out at the storm, at the torrential rain that beat down relentlessly, he felt a bleak sort of resignation creeping in. Was there any point in waiting here to waste away in solitude? Maybe it would be better to walk back out into the storm and let it take him. At least out there, he’d feel something in his final moments, rather than the numbness that filled this empty temple.

He sighed, feeling the heavy weight of his own despair pressing down on him. And then, almost without realizing it, he started to speak, his voice echoing off the stone walls.

“This is hell,” he muttered. “Why don’t I just walk out there and die? I was destined to die anyway. An outskirts rat like me has no place surviving an ascension trial. Why did this death sentence have to pick me?”

His voice grew louder, anger bleeding into his words. He wasn’t just mad about his fate—he was furious at the trial itself, at the way it seemed designed to drag him through endless dead ends and useless poems instead of simply killing him outright.

“It would have been kinder to put me in an arena,” he shouted, his voice echoing in the empty hall, “to make me face some terrifying beast and fail. At least that would be fast.”

He clenched his fists, the frustration building.

“Or they could’ve dropped me into some frozen wasteland and let me succumb to the elements,” he continued, voice dripping with sarcasm. “That would be slower, sure, but it would still be better than this. At least it’d be a clear death.”

He took a step toward the open doorway, voice rising even more.

“I could have walked through this storm, and some giant monster could have eaten me!”

As he shouted, his anger reaching a fever pitch, something strange happened.

The rain… all of a sudden wasn’t so loud. The thunder, too, seemed to recede, growing softer, less threatening. The rhythmic crash of the storm dulled, fading into an unnatural silence.

The air itself seemed to thicken, the oppressive weight of it pressing down on his skin.

A chill ran down Draemir’s spine, and his heart began to pound as sheer terror crept into his veins. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, a primal fear clawing its way up from his gut.

He… didn’t think he was alone anymore.

He didn’t dare move, his eyes fixed on the impenetrable wall of rain outside, watching, waiting, dreading what might emerge from the storm’s depths.

‘Uh. I think I messed up.’

Draemir’s bravado melted in an instant, replaced by a creeping, gnawing dread. Maybe he wasn’t ready to die just yet.

The storm outside had changed—he could feel it. The air was thick, surging with an unnatural intensity, as if something incredibly powerful were pressing down on the world, bending the storm to its will. The thunder was muted, the rain had softened, and there was a strange stillness in the air that felt… wrong. As if even the storm itself were quivering in fear of whatever was lurking out there.

He swallowed, his mouth dry, and took a single, slow step backward, his foot landing soundlessly on the stone floor.

‘Am I ready to die? I’m… not too sure anymore…’

A bead of sweat slid down the side of his face as he fought to keep himself calm.

‘Coward,’ he thought bitterly, but he couldn’t stop the tremor in his hands, the instinctive fear that crawled up his spine. Whatever was out there—whatever was making the storm cower—he wanted no part of it.

He forced himself to take another step back, his eyes locked on the dark, swirling curtain of rain outside.

‘It’s just a storm,' he told himself, even though he knew that wasn’t true. Something had changed. Something was there.

The silence pressed down on him, thick and heavy, the kind of silence that swallowed sound and suffocated breath. He felt trapped, like prey caught in a predator’s gaze, frozen between the instinct to run and the sickening realization that there was nowhere to go.

‘This trial was never about surviving the storm,’ he realized, the thought cold and sharp. ‘It was about surviving what lives within it.’

In his mind, he tried to summon that fragile connection to his soul core, to reach for the strength he’d had within himself, but his thoughts were scattered, his focus shattered by terror.

Another step back.

And then, as if in response to his retreat, something stirred in the shadows beyond the rain.