The corridors of the labyrinth pulsed with heat, the very walls glowing faintly with embers that never quite erupted into flame. Alessia Krell moved through them silently, her breath steady despite the oppressive weight of the air. Sweat gathered at her brow, not from fear but anticipation. This was her trial. Separate from Ethan. Separate from the chaos of alliances and betrayals. Here, she faced something far more personal: herself.
She came to a junction, three paths splitting off in jagged directions. Her instincts screamed at her to go left. Her intuition had kept her alive through every fight, every ambush—but this time, something was different. She hesitated. The left corridor glowed more brightly, flickers of flame dancing like whispers. The right one was silent. Still. The center... exuded something she couldn't explain. Not danger, exactly. But memory.
Her hand brushed against the carved stone wall, and in that moment, the world twisted.
She stood in her childhood home. The air was cold, the fireplace dead. Her mother sat by the window, back to her, unmoving. Outside, snow drifted like ashes from a dying sky. Alessia took a cautious step forward.
"Mom?"
No answer. Only silence.
She moved closer, and as she reached out, the world shattered like glass.
She was in the arena again. Her hands were bloodied. A knife in one. A corpse at her feet.
"You killed her," said a voice.
She spun.
It was herself, or a version of her. Drenched in red. Eyes hollow.
"No," Alessia whispered. "I had no choice."
"There is always a choice," the echo said, stepping closer. "You chose survival over love. Again and again. You chose yourself."
The hallucination lunged. Alessia parried, their blades clashing with sparks. But she wasn't fighting a stranger. She was fighting every decision she'd ever made, every moment she'd buried beneath logic and necessity. Her combat intuition faltered. Her reflexes wavered.
She was losing.
The real Alessia fell to one knee, gasping for air. The labyrinth returned, the hallucination gone. But the wounds it had opened inside her bled fresh.
You chose yourself.
She clenched her fists. No. She had chosen what she had to. She wasn't a monster. She wasn't.
A deep breath. Another step forward.
The next room was circular, walled with mirrors. Each one reflected her differently. In one, she was a child, hiding beneath a table. In another, a soldier, cold-eyed and sharp. Another still, crumpled in grief, holding Ethan's lifeless body.
"Enough!" she shouted.
The mirrors cracked. All but one. It showed her as she was now. Scarred. Strong. Afraid.
She reached out—and the mirror opened like a door.
Inside was a garden. An impossible place, green and lush, the sky above painted in eternal sunset. In its center stood a woman: tall, cloaked in flame, her face hidden behind a mask of burning gold.
"You have walked the path," said the woman. "You have faced your reflection. But will you embrace it?"
Alessia raised her chin. "Who are you?"
"A spark of what you may become. A judge of what you already are."
The flames around the woman surged. "To ascend, you must accept not only your light, but your shadow."
From the garden's edge came movement. Another Alessia stepped forward—this one burned, broken, eyes wild with regret.
"If you were me," the real Alessia said, "you would have done the same."
"I am you," said the shadow. "And I never forgave us."
The two Alessias charged.
They fought, not with weapons, but with memory. One wielded every betrayal, every abandonment, every selfish choice. The other answered with resilience, with pain endured, with choices made for the sake of survival.
It was not a battle of strength, but acceptance.
In the end, Alessia embraced her shadow. Held her. And in doing so, the shadow dissolved into flame—and that flame entered her.
The woman in gold nodded. "You are whole."
The garden faded. The labyrinth returned.
And Alessia Krell opened her eyes.
Power pulsed behind them.
But the trial was not yet over.
From the far end of the chamber, the walls parted like a blooming flower. Alessia stepped through cautiously and found herself standing on the edge of a great stone platform, suspended over an abyss of molten light. On the other side of the chasm stood a massive obsidian door, veined with glowing gold symbols that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
A voice boomed, not in sound but in sensation—deep in her bones, in her blood.
"The soul that denies itself cannot wield true power."
From the shadows beyond the door, something stirred.
A beast. No, not a beast—a memory given form.
It emerged: a giant wolf-like creature, fur black as void, eyes a thousand fragments of all the people Alessia had failed. Her unit commander. The friend she left behind. Her father.
It roared, but the roar was silence itself. It charged.
Alessia didn't flee.
She ran to meet it.
Their clash was a storm. The creature struck with the weight of guilt, with the ferocity of all her buried blame. But Alessia now held more than reflexes and instinct. She held acceptance. She fought not to deny her past—but to own it.
Each strike she landed turned the creature translucent. Each parry weakened its roar. She was unmaking it, piece by piece, by refusing to hate herself anymore.
At last, she drove her blade into its chest—not out of anger, but mercy.
The creature looked at her one last time and vanished into golden light.
The obsidian door opened.
Alessia stepped through, into a new chamber. At its center was a pedestal, and atop it, a small vial of glowing liquid—divine essence.
A whisper came: "Drink, and rise."
She reached out, her fingers trembling—not from fear, but awe—and drank.
Flame seared through her veins, and Alessia collapsed.
When she rose again, her eyes shone with the light of the Ascending.
She was no longer just Awakened.
She was Chosen.