Everett sat frozen.
Not from the cold—but from the scale of what he'd just heard.
It felt like someone had dumped the universe on his shoulders and asked him to carry it home without spilling.
Grimbleshank dropped the ladle into the soup pot with a satisfying plop. "Most don't understand it. Most don't try. But those who're chosen? They get one chance."
He hopped off his canister and stirred the pot with a wooden spoon that looked more like a club. "Want soup?"
Everett blinked, still processing, but his body answered before his brain. "Uh… sure."
Grimbleshank whistled and scooped a ladle of the bubbling concoction into a jagged ceramic bowl shaped like part of a monster's skull. "One half-portion of Skyworm Survival Slop, coming right up."
Everett accepted it cautiously. The broth steamed against the icy air, smelling vaguely like burnt algae and industrial despair. He took a sip.
It was awful.
It tasted like spicy regret and mild poison, but it was warm. And oddly comforting.
"Thanks," he muttered.
"It gets better around the fifth bowl," Grimbleshank said with a wink. "Or so they say."
Silence lingered between them, punctuated only by the crackle of soup bubbles and the distant screech of something being devoured a few streets over.
Everett looked down into the bowl. "So… this trial. Is there a way to win it?"
Grimbleshank laughed. "Boy, if I knew that, I'd be taller."
He grinned, baring surprisingly sharp teeth. "But if you want advice from a short cook with a long memory? Don't aim to win. Aim to survive. Survive long enough… and the rules change."
Everett stood up, the slop warming his chest like a slow-burning fuse.
He didn't know what would come next. But he now understood one thing:
This wasn't just a trial.
It was a legacy.
And he was already inside it.
---
Somewhere Else
The sun did not shine in the Realm of Frost.
And yet, Guruji Gopalan found himself in a vast desert of cracked white sand, where the wind howled like unpaid interns whispering cosmic gossip.
His white robes billowed. His staff tapped against the cold ground.
"Oṁ Hanumate namaḥ," he chanted softly, breath forming little mantras in the air. "Guide me through this illusion, my lord of wind and monkeys."
He sat cross-legged atop a stone shaped suspiciously like a frozen egg.
Silence.
Then, a shift.
The wind circled him in solemn reverence. His eyes rolled up, his voice deepened. He was in prophecy-mode.
"Beware, Guruji Gopalan… for your path lies under fractured skies.
Between the second sun and the seventh scream…
Shall rise the—"
A low rumble.
Guruji blinked.
Far off, a Komodo dragon the size of a tram emerged, tongue flickering like a divine warning.
"Ah," he murmured, "the lizard of karmic consequences."
It roared.
Guruji bolted.
Robes flapping, staff forgotten, and prophecy unfinished, the Oracle of Unfinished Prophecy sprinted across the frost-sand like a sacred chicken late for temple.
> "IT'S ALWAYS DURING THE IMPORTANT PART—!"
Each of the beast's footsteps sent sigils flying into the air.
> "Between the two eclipses lies the doorway to—AAAHHHH—!"
Then—he saw it.
A sinkhole. Vast. Dark. Humming with a cosmic vibration like the universe clearing its throat.
Guruji skidded to a halt at the edge. The beast roared behind him.
His eyes glazed again, caught in the current of vision:
> "Fortune shall find the seeker with clean hands and muddy feet.
Riches in form unseen, wisdom in form unwanted—
BUT BE WARNED—"
A slip.
> "WHERE FORTUNE DANCES, MISFORTUNE WAITS IN HER—AAAAHHHHH—!"
The earth gave way.
Guruji plummeted into the sinkhole, vanishing into the shimmering dark. His scream faded into echo, followed by an eerie silence.
The Komodo dragon sniffed, lost interest, and wandered off in pursuit of a floating sandwich.
Guruji Gopalan did not fall normally.
He spiraled sideways through curving space, robes spinning like cosmic laundry. Stars winked. Sanskrit hummed through wormholes.
Then: Light. White-hot, roaring, blooming outward.
A white hole tore into existence in the alleyways of Everett's frost-crystal city.
With a radiant thump, Guruji shot from the sky—like the universe had sneezed him out.
He crash-landed directly into Grimbleshank's soup stall.
BOOM.
Ladle. Bowls. Dwarf. Slop. Chaos.
Everett stumbled back as the Oracle landed in a holy heap of radish noodles and glowing prayer beads.
Guruji lay sprawled on the cobblestones, blinking up at the fractured sky.
"I have… arrived."
Grimbleshank rose from behind the wreckage, covered in broth. "That's it. I'm done. I quit soup cosmology."
Everett rushed over. "Who… are you?"
Guruji sat up, eyes glowing faintly. "I am the Oracle of Unfinished Prophecy. I speak, therefore things happen. Usually... weird things."
Everett opened his mouth, but Guruji raised one hand and intoned:
> "A shadow shall pass over the city's light,
A mirror will break, and so shall night—
But beware the whisper that comes with three eyes…"
He blinked. "Wait… what was I saying? Ah yes. Do you have any chai? I think I swallowed a radish whole."
Everett stared at the glowing heap of prophecy and noodles. Maybe staying in place didn't always lead to irrelevance. Sometimes, it got you a holy man launched from space.