He crumpled to the ground, knees striking the cold concrete with a lifeless thud, lungs straining as he sucked in broken, freezing breaths that carved through his throat like splinters of ice.
His body trembled uncontrollably, not from exertion alone but from something deeper— something far more primal— rattling within his bones like the whisper of death.
Shingen stood a short distance away, watching him with unreadable eyes.
No pity, no fear, just that thin layer of disquieting calm that never seemed to crack.
For a moment, though only a flicker, something shifted behind that gaze.
A twitch of amusement?
A flash of approval?
A surprise?
It passed before it could take shape, and silence returned to his face like a mask he had worn a thousand times before.
"I didn't know you could do that," the boy choked out, still clutching his wrist, which throbbed as though it had just borne the weight of another world.
Shingen laughed, but it was not the laughter of joy or disbelief— it was low and deliberate, soaked in something dark and knowing, the kind of sound that lingers in the corners of a room long after the voice has gone.
There was a weight to it now, his tone rich with veiled meaning, as if he had foreseen this moment all along and merely played the fool until the boy's eyes were ready to see.
The boy's voice cracked as he stared up, face pale and eyes wide, his breath hitching in spasms.
"W-What… what was that?!"
Every syllable shook with rising terror, his mind clawing for sense, for reason, for something to cling to amid the unraveling storm.
But Shingen offered no answer.
Instead, he turned away without pause, without hesitation, as if the boy's fear was a dull afterthought, irrelevant to the path that now lay open.
"You'll understand eventually," he said, and then, without even a trace of sound, he vanished.
No breeze, no movement of air or dust— only absence.
He was gone the way nightmares leave you at dawn: without mercy.
And then it came.
A single word, spoken not by Shingen, not by any human tongue, but by something else— something that existed outside the boundaries of breath and voice.
"Congratulations."
It wasn't spoken so much as delivered, injected straight into the boy's thoughts like a slow, coiling venom.
The sound echoed in no direction yet struck every corner of his consciousness at once.
It wasn't merely cold— it was clinical, hollow, artificial, as though some vast, detached intelligence was attempting to mimic the emotions of living things and failing with quiet indifference.
The tone scraped along his skull like a scalpel of ice, leaving no wound but still managing to carve something out of him.
His breath faltered.
Muscles stiffened.
A frozen, mechanical fear spread like rot.
He jerked his head around, eyes wide and frantic, scanning every inch of the broken concrete and dancing dust for a source— anything, anyone.
But there was nothing.
Only the silence, the hollow space where reality had thinned.
And then came the light.
No flame, no warmth.
Just a spectral glow that shimmered into view before him, hovering in the air like a ghost that had learned the language of machines.
It pulsed once, calm, steady, and patient.
Then, slowly, like a judge pronouncing a sentence carved into stone, the words began to form:
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
His lungs seized, his entire body tightening in revolt.
[INHERITANCE DETECTED]
[FRAGMENT ABSORBED: ???]
The words drilled through him with surgical precision, unraveling every thought with their sterile inevitability.
Panic surged violently in his chest, blooming like wildfire in a dry forest.
His heels scraped backward across the floor, desperate to escape the presence that now felt less like information and more like a predator in disguise.
But the screen drifted forward with fluid, calculated grace, following him not like a machine but like something that wanted.
It pulsed again, once, twice— syncing to the rhythm of his fear.
[Welcome to God's Trials.]
His hands clawed at the floor, fingers bloodied and raw as he tried to find anything real, anything grounding, while the air grew dense and choking with static pressure.
"N-no, no… What is this?!" he cried, voice trembling into silence.
But the entity did not respond.
It only hovered, watching without eyes, waiting without breath, and it was in that stillness that something older— something vast and impossibly aware— brushed the edge of his soul.
It didn't speak. It didn't move. But he felt it.
Like being noticed by the ocean itself, by a storm too large to comprehend, he felt its attention weigh down on him.
Then, beyond the trembling borders of his vision, something began to unfold— something not meant for him to see.
A vision, sharp and intrusive, invaded his mind like a memory that was not his.
Shingen stood again, but this time in a realm far removed from the cold concrete room.
He stood among warriors unlike any the boy had ever imagined.
Their bodies radiated power that made the air around them shimmer, their weapons alive with etched runes and whispers of arcane language.
Some bore the quiet, disciplined wrath of assassins.
Others held the stillness of predators that had already killed a thousand times.
One had eyes like molten gold.
Another towered like a mountain carved into flesh, with shoulders broad enough to break buildings.
A priestess glowed with gentle malice, her robes trailing fireflies of light.
And in the midst of them all was Shingen, smiling— not kindly, not cautiously, but with wild, unsettling glee.
His grin stretched too wide, too hungry, the grin of someone who had long since stopped fearing the abyss because he had learned to dance in it.
There was no joy in that expression, only the sharp, dangerous thrill of chaos taking shape.
And the boy, broken and shaking, realized the truth far too late.
This wasn't the end. This wasn't even the beginning. This was the invitation.
The boy stared in mute confusion, his brow knitting tighter as the scene before him grew increasingly incomprehensible.
His eyes tracked Shingen's every movement, but none of it made sense— none of it fit within the boundaries of reason or reality.
What kind of nightmare performance was this? What grotesque choreography had Shingen invited them to witness on this battlefield suspended between worlds?
He leaned in slowly, pressing his forehead to the frigid metal of the window frame, and whispered in disbelief, his breath fogging the glass.
"He's not even trying to hide it anymore…"
Then it happened again— just like before.
No wind. No burst of sorcery. No chant, no sign.
Shingen simply ceased to exist.
One blink and he was gone, swallowed by the empty air as if the world itself had turned its back on continuity.
It was the third time now.
And yet each time it happened, it felt as if reality lost another thread of its tapestry.
A gasp rolled through the onlookers.
The priestess stumbled back, eyes wide and unblinking, her limbs shaking violently, her body barely held together by will alone.
The red-haired warrior shouted something, though the words were lost to distance and dread, and he hoisted his flaming blade in rebellion— perhaps against fear, perhaps against fate.
A heartbeat later, the sky tore open with a scream of violence.
A shockwave exploded across the field.
The very air seemed to rupture, laced with the howl of steel slicing through flesh and the splintering of bone.
The boy recoiled, heart slamming against his chest like a drumbeat of terror, as dust swirled skyward in slow, choking spirals.
The earth cracked beneath unseen power.
One soldier flew backward, sword breaking in half before it even touched the ground.
Another tried to summon a barrier— an incantation etched into a glowing sigil— but his voice was cut off before the spell could live.
Shingen had reappeared behind the priestess.
No warning. No sound. Just a shadow made flesh.
His hand fell onto her shoulder, not as a blow, but a statement.
A cold, final punctuation.
She let out a sound— more sob than scream— not from pain, but from the knowledge that she would not finish her spell.
That no one would.
The magic flickered and died in her hands, fizzling like sparks drowning in water.
Her knees gave out.
Her body folded slowly to the ground as if dragged by gravity alone.
The red-haired warrior lunged, flame roaring across his blade, fury etched into every sinew of his being.
But Shingen only glanced sideways, a slow turn of the head, not with concern, but almost with boredom, as though the man was a stormcloud on the horizon, not worth hurrying over.
Then— collision.
Steel struck steel.
The sound rang out like a temple bell struck by a giant.
The battlefield froze as if time itself hesitated.
Sparks erupted in a shower of orange fire.
The earth groaned beneath their feet.
For one instant, it looked like a duel between equals.
But it was a lie.
In the span of a third heartbeat, Shingen's form twisted— unnatural, marionette-like, devoid of human rhythm.
His heel rocketed upward into the warrior's gut with such brutal precision it seemed choreographed by death itself.
The impact echoed— a wet, meaty crunch that made the boy clamp his hands over his ears too late.
The warrior lifted off the ground, flailing grotesquely, eyes bulging with disbelief.
Then came the spear, swung like a club, not aimed to pierce, but to demolish.
It struck his back with a snap that sounded like a tree trunk splitting.
His body folded midair, spine shattering inward, and he hit the ground with such force that the very soil exploded around him.
Dirt, blood, and shattered rock shot outward in a radius of devastation.
For a long moment, no one moved. Even the wind seemed afraid.
When the dust cleared, the red-haired warrior lay crumpled inside a shallow crater, limbs twitching faintly, mouth ajar as if to scream— yet silence spilled out.
His life had already fled.
From the edge of the field, another fighter bolted forward, twin blades glowing with frost, each step a blur of killing intent.
He came from the shadow like a dagger thrown by the void itself.
But Shingen didn't so much as glance.
With absent grace, he sidestepped, dragging the spear through the dirt like a painter's brush.
The tip lifted only slightly— just enough.
The charging warrior impaled himself upon it, his momentum doing all the work.
No cry. No resistance. Only a strangled breath as his lungs collapsed inward.
His body slid off the shaft like meat off the bone.
And just like that, silence fell again.
Only the priestess remained upright, barely.
She knelt atop fractured stone, her hands drawing shaking runes into the thickened air, pale threads of desperate healing weaving toward the corpse of the fallen warrior.
Her magic shimmered weakly, flickering like a candle trapped in a windstorm.
The boy couldn't breathe. This wasn't a battle. It was a massacre.
Executed with precision that bordered on divine cruelty. And at the center of it all—Shingen.
He was still, unbothered.
But his gaze shifted. Slowly with cold, without rage, and no grief.
Just...interest. Detached and inhuman.
His eyes locked onto the priestess with a look that dissected, as though he was watching an insect squirm beneath a microscope.
His golden irises gleamed, not with triumph, but with an emotion far more terrifying: calculated amusement.
"You're wasting your strength," he said, his voice soft, too soft.
It crawled across the battlefield like molten metal across ice— slow, and searing.
She flinched, but still she moved, trembling fingers carving out symbols in the air that flared and dimmed, her body shaking under the weight of despair.
Tears slid down her face, mixing with the dirt that stained her skin, but she kept going.
The earth beneath her groaned again— no longer from violence, but from fear, as if the planet itself wished to bury itself away from him.
Shingen stepped forward, and the air thickened, pressing down on everything like a suffocating blanket of lead.
"You know it won't work," he said again, more softly this time, almost as if he mourned the fact himself.
"But still you try. You always try."
Her magic faltered— not from lack of skill, but from a heart breaking beneath its weight.
She was drowning in hopelessness, and every thread of light she summoned flickered weaker than the last.
And then, he smiled.
Not a grin, not cruelty, but a quiet satisfaction.
As if he were watching the end of a play written long ago.
The air shivered.
A roar erupted from the flank— a towering brute, his body distorted with rage and unnatural force.
The monstrous warrior hurled forward, arms mutated into claws dripping with crimson energy, leaving scorched lines across the ground.
He moved like an avalanche.
His scream shattered windows and logic.
But Shingen didn't retreat.
He stepped into it.
A blur of black and red.
The claws swung, tearing chunks from the earth, but Shingen was already there, within the strike zone.
His spear cut upward, not to defend, but to destroy.
The claws cracked, splintering like glass.
The beast staggered.
Shingen stepped in, drove the spear into his gut, and dragged it skyward, slicing open the beast like a sack of rotten meat.
He fell, twitching, gurgling, forgotten. And again, Shingen's eyes weren't on the body.
They were on the priestess. Still fighting and failing.
She whispered prayers into the dark, golden light barely dancing on her fingertips, fading more with every word.
Shingen tilted his head slightly, as if seeing something curious in a dying flame.
"Why?" he asked, his voice barely audible, brushing past her like a ghost.
"Why do you still try?"
The question lingered, bitter and sharp.
"Still wasting strength?" he continued, stepping closer.
"Is it for them… or yourself?"
Before the answer could form, before her voice could rise, Shingen vanished— gone like breath in winter.
But his words remained, clinging to the air like frost, burrowing into her chest with the weight of a thousand regrets.
And somewhere, deep in the void he left behind, it was no longer clear if his pity was for the dead—
Or for the living who refused to let go.