Night stared into the bottomless abyss, his silver hair cascading over his shoulders—framing a face carved by the agony of loss.
His silver eyes—once bright—were now dull, empty. Shadows lingered behind them like ghosts of a soul that had already died.
Tears slid silently down his cheeks, cutting paths through the dirt and ash clinging to his tattered clothes.
A hollow laugh slipped from his lips—dry, broken, cruel.
It didn't offer relief.
Only more pain, the pain which couldn't be healed anymore.
He couldn't stop sinking.
Couldn't stop the numbness from becoming everything he had, his mind slowly ached as everything slowly became a burden.
The world felt weightless, since everything felt so unreal.
As if time itself had shattered, and he was stranded in the fracture—where nothing lived, not even memory.
He had lost everything.
His parents.
His sister.
Loved ones and even his friends. The one he promised so many things to.
The promise he'd made to protect her echoed like a curse, the weight of it crushing him. He was tired of breaking promises.
What was left?
No hope.
No meaning.
No strength.
His hand trembled as it reached for the ground, fingers brushing against something cold.
A jagged key—small, sharp, and wrong—lay in the dust.
He should've thrown it away.
Should've let it rot like everything else.
Instead, he just stared.
And then, without a word, without a thought—
He stepped forward.
And jumped.
---
The air screamed around him as he fell.
Faster.
Deeper.
Colder—
Until—
Stillness.
He wasn't falling anymore.
He was drifting. Suspended in an endless dark.
Weightless. Numb. Swallowed by silence.
And then… they came.
Two presences emerged from the void.
One was pure shadow—shapeless, still, unmoving.
Its eyes held no judgment. Only pity.
It said nothing.
But its silence roared in Night's mind.
The other stepped forward—wrapped in calm, pale light.
It offered no warmth, only a fragile ease to the edge of his pain.
"Who are you?" Night whispered.
The figure's eyes were like stars behind clouds. Her hair shimmered like the edge of dawn.
"You seek the end," she said softly, "but your fate was sealed from the beginning. I'm sorry… I cannot stop it."
"I didn't ask for this," he murmured. "I just wanted it to stop…"
The shadow stood still, but Night felt its pressure—like the Void itself had leaned close. Listening. Waiting.
The girl didn't flinch.
She stepped closer.
"Even in despair… something in you chose," she said. "Your heart yearned for the truth. But truth is not something given—it must be earned."
"I have nothing left."
His voice was a breath.
"I just want to know why. Why I suffer. Why I'm like this."
Her gaze didn't waver.
"Then earn the truth you seek. It's inside you—but it won't reveal itself until you face it."
A door appeared beside her—no summoning, no movement—just a silent rupture in space.
Its surface shimmered, caught between black and white.
Like oil and starlight. Like everything that can't exist at once.
"Face your Trial," she said.
Night's jaw clenched. His fists trembled.
But he didn't reply.
He walked forward.
Toward the door.
Toward the unknown.
Toward the Trial.
"What you seek… will always return."
A pause.
Her voice softened.
"I'll stay with you until the end, Master.
My name is… Solenne."
Then the door swallowed him.
And the Trial began.
---
The Hex
It came after the wars. After the skies cracked and the earth folded inward, swallowing entire cities. After the breath of the world ceased before coming back.
After the fires.
The screams.
The silence.
The pain and sacrifices.
People vanished—gone without warning, soon they were deamed as no longer existing.
Since their prescence felt like a dream in the hearts of those who knew them.
When they returned, after pain and struggle, they were marked.
Their skin bore tattoos—delicate, intricate, beautiful in ways that felt… wrong in many ways. They were like evidence of their dissaperance.
Some glowed faintly.
Others pulsed—like they were alive, still in the end they were alive, they were the truth of the people who dissapeared.
No one knew where the marked had gone.
No one knew why they came back this way.
But they remembered one thing, the thing that made them stronger, that burnt away most of their fears.
The Trials.
Each Mark was a key—unlocking something far worse than death, the key to the door that once passed
....could never be closed again.
The Trials tore the soul and remade it, they were reborn.
Those who survived returned changed.
The rest… became Gates.
What recked the world far more than what had already been destroyed. They were nightmares and fears brought to life.
They tore rifts into the world—gates to a hell more worse than anything their world had ever experienced. They were deemed as the gates of hell.
Through them came horrors that didn't belong in time.
Twisted things.
Memories that never happened.
Wounds that wouldn't close.
Lifes that could have lived even through the suffering.
It was unfair, unjust and hurtful.
This was the Dread Hex. A living system that scarred the world and all in it.
It didn't just scar flesh.
It bled into the world itself—into stone, sky, and thought.
And the curse, like death. It was eternal, never changing and could never be removed.
But even then… something stirred.
From the ashes came the Seekers.
The marked ones who returned with purpose.
They had survived the Trials.
They had faced the Gates—and lived.
They remembered scraps of the old world.
Secrets of magic long buried.
Technologies once thought lost.
Methods to endure a broken realm.
With their knowledge, the world began to shift.
Cities reformed.
Nations rose.
Hope flickered in the ruin.
But power is never silent.
Some forces sought to control the Marks.
Others formed strongholds against the Abyss.
Whispers moved through the survivors—of factions rising, of pacts broken, of war brewing in shadow.
The Seekers were revered.
And feared.
Their bond to the Hex made them more than human.
But even they —
Could never stop all that had their eyes on the fragile scared world, ruined by fear and pain.