There is no turning back once you learn to use pain as fuel.
The silence came first.
Not the gentle hush of dawn. No — this was deeper. Total. Suffocating. Like the world had swallowed its own tongue and forgotten how to breathe.
Then came the pressure.
I didn't feel it at first, but I sensed it. A tightness around my lungs. A vibration through the marrow of my bones. It slithered along my spine like something alive, searching for a place to bury itself. When it reached the base of my skull, the voices began.
A thousand at once.
Some screamed. Some whispered. Others laughed. They overlapped like layers of cracked glass—shattered fragments of something ancient, furious, and half-mad. They weren't outside me. They were inside. Embedded in every nerve, every heartbeat.
At first glance, it looked like a simple vein — dark, swollen, the kind that appears under the skin when someone's choking, screaming, dying.
But it wasn't that.
This thing pulsing along the left side of my neck was alive.
It didn't follow the natural pathways of human anatomy. It didn't branch like capillaries. Instead, it spiraled — like a thorned vine growing in reverse, crawling from the base of my clavicle toward the hollow below my ear. Its surface wasn't just black — it was void-black. So dark it seemed to absorb the light around it, leaving a subtle shimmer like heat waves off asphalt.
When I touched it, it responded. Not like skin. Not like muscle. But like something halfway between tendon and parasite — fibrous, taut, and subtly twitching under my fingers.
Then came his voice. The one I could never mistake.
[You're listening without breaking this time]
The 14th.
Every syllable was wrapped in familiarity and dread. It didn't echo like the others — it cut. Clean and precise. A blade inside my mind.
I looked up.
And saw myself.
A puddle of stagnant water reflected a face that didn't belong to me. My skin had turned pale, almost ashen. My cheeks were sunken. Cracks lined the corners of my mouth. My lips were dry, stained with old blood. But my eyes—
They glowed.
Pale white. Cold and endless. As if someone had hollowed out the color and left only emptiness.
For a moment, I thought I'd gone blind. The world around me lost all saturation — drained of warmth, drained of time. Even the shadows seemed pale. Not black, not grey — but void. Like I was standing in a place reality had abandoned.
My reflection in the shallow water below me shimmered — two glowing orbs staring back. Not eyes. Not mine. Something older. Something deeper. They didn't blink. They didn't look scared.
Then the space around me began to bend.
I staggered forward, but my legs didn't obey. It felt like I was floating and falling at the same time — as if gravity had decided to collapse in on itself. The sound of the battle was still there, somewhere in the distance, distorted into high-pitched screeches and muffled booms like thunder beneath a frozen lake. Lights elongated into thin strands, lines blurred, as if the world had decided to spin faster than it could hold itself together.
And then the pain hit me.
First in my teeth. My jaw clenched so tightly I thought it would snap. Then came the blood — hot, thick, metallic — dripping from the corners of my mouth. Internal bleeding, I realized. My organs were screaming. My stomach felt like it had been punctured. My spine, like it was threaded with wires of molten iron.
The Fourteenth. The voice that had haunted the edges of my sanity, now echoing like a whisper against metal, clear and calm in the chaos.
[You feel it. The thread. Follow it.]
A thin line of violet sliced through the warped space ahead of me. Floating mid-air like a tether made of light and thought, curving through the chaos, bending and twisting as the creature in front of me moved.
It was moving fast — too fast. My eyes couldn't track it. My injuries slowed me, dulled my limbs like lead. But the thread didn't lie.
I moved.
Instinct, not skill.
The beast swiped at me — claws aimed for my throat. I ducked, just in time, knees buckling, vision blurring. Another swipe. I twisted sideways, following the thread's arc. The pain exploded in my ribs, something tore, but I didn't stop.
My emotions should've been screaming — fear, rage, confusion. But I felt nothing. Numb. Like my mind had stepped out of my body and left a weapon behind.
A dull, broken weapon still fighting because it didn't know how to die.
The creature roared. It moved with elegance now — brutal grace, inhuman speed. Every attack felt like a force of nature — just violence, but intention.
Clawed arms tore through the air beside me, slicing past my face by millimeters. The smell of burned flesh and decay filled my lungs. I ducked under another strike and planted my foot forward. The ground cracked beneath me.
I felt it.
I felt it — a pressure deep within my chest, dense and immense, like a black sun buried behind bone. It spun slowly at first, dragging something unseen through my veins, pulling thought and instinct into alignment. A raw force was waking inside me, not bright like fire or sharp like lightning, but cold, steady, and terrifying in its silence.
My fists clenched on instinct. Blue and black streaks swirled along my knuckles, wrapping my hands in something that shimmered between smoke and light. It was like holding liquid night —like a wave of energy. I didn't understand it, but it responded to me, vibrating with each breath, steadying me even as my limbs shook from exhaustion.
"DIE!!" I screamed desperately.
The creature hadn't stopped moving.
Its distorted shape surged forward, faster than I could fully register, but the thread — that thin violet line still curling through the air — shifted ahead of it like a warning. I lunged before I could think. My movements were sluggish, dulled by blood loss and cracked bones, but I followed the line with every ounce of what remained.
Its claw came for my throat. I dropped low, dragging my shoulder through the broken earth, feeling the razor wind of its strike graze past my scalp. Another swipe tore through the air to my left — I twisted again, stumbling sideways. My vision blurred, ribs screaming from the strain, but I kept moving, not because I knew how, but because the thread demanded it.
The creature lunged. I spun backward, barely avoiding the hit, but I knew I couldn't last like this. Each step drained me. My legs felt like they were dragging dead weight, my body refusing to cooperate with the speed I needed.
stepped forward once — a short, sharp motion. The ground cracked beneath my heel. My core ignited again, a burning spiral radiating out from my chest like a nova trapped beneath flesh. I pushed off, feeling the ground vanish behind me.
One breath — and I was in front of the monster.
I drove my fist forward with everything I had left. The blow missed by inches, but the force behind it didn't. The shockwave tore through the air, sending the creature stumbling back. The sheer pressure cracked the earth beneath its feet and flung debris in every direction like shattered glass.
I dropped to my knees, panting hard, blood thick in my mouth. The glowing around my fists dimmed slightly, but I could still feel the core pulsing beneath the surface. The power wasn't gone — it was just waiting.
I staggered to my feet and scanned the field. That's when I saw it — the spear. Broken, chipped, but still whole enough to pierce. I forced my legs to move, each step a war, and wrapped my fingers around the shaft, ignoring the sharp sting as the jagged edge bit into my palm.
The creature began to rise again. It was slower now — blood seeping from its wounds, its breathing uneven. But the rage in its eyes burned hotter than before.
I didn't give it a chance.
I raised the spear and hurled it, not with perfection, but with intent — and this time, that was enough.
"REACH!!" I yelled word for as long as I exhaled - The weapon sailed through the air like a bolt of fury and struck the beast dead in its eye.
The impact was deafening. Enought to surprise me.
A scream tore from its throat — a high-pitched, gurgling shriek that echoed like something primal and broken. It stumbled back, clawing at its face, legs buckling beneath its own weight before collapsing in a heap of twitching limbs and black blood.
I stood over it, trembling, my pulse hammering in my ears.
Then I heard him again.
[Well done]
The voice came from the darkness beyond — calm, slow, almost proud. The Fourteenth stepped into view, more visible now, cloaked in shadow that moved like smoke underwater. He didn't look at the monster. Only at me.
[It seems you walk the path of Force.]
My breath caught in my throat. "What… what does that mean? Give me a break."
[Every living being possesses an equilibrium — a physical boundary the body is built to respect. But your core has cracked through that limit. You've surpassed it, if only barely.]
I looked down at my chest. Beneath the skin, I could see it — faint, but glowing — a spiral of energy nested behind my ribs, dim pulses of blue and black light dancing through it like veins made of storm.
[This is your first step. The rank of Neophyte. It marks the beginning of your descent — or ascent — into the Void.]
"There are others?" I asked, my voice hoarse.
I coudn't see him but I was aware he nodded.
[Five classes. You stand in Class One: Neophyte, followed by Shadeborne. Class 2: Adept, Evolved, Class 3: Wraithborne… and Nightborne.]
"What comes after that?"
The entity's eyes flickered.
[You're not ready to ask that.]
Before I could respond, something in the wind changed.
[Unfortunately,] he said, [you're not alone.]
I turned — and froze.
Emerging from the mists beyond the broken rocks were the Echo Dwellers — the same ones from before. Dozens of them. Limbs like razors, mouths twitching, their eyes glowing with that dull hunger that had no end.
My breath hitched. My muscles screamed. Every instinct told me I couldn't keep going. That I needed to stop, to fall, to sleep.
But I didn't.
I stepped forward.
And for the first time — they stepped back.
[End of Chapter 11 - The Echo Trial (6) Final]
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