Darkness, then an orange, scorching light flooded the space around him until it became all of existence.

  For an instant, Ori tried to treat it like a challenge, his body tensing as his mind rose to meet it.

  This was his trial. His opportunity.

  The Crucible answered such delusions with fire.

  Heat slammed into him with such totality that ‘pain’ became too small a word. Hair curled and vanished. Skin vaporised as subcutaneous fat spat, then caught. His eyes burst in bright explosions, a minor sensation compared full body sensation of being burnt alive.

  Even the air became an enemy, each breath sizzling his lungs as if breathing itself was forbidden.

  Panic surged as fast as the pain, and he could only clamp down on it as his rational mind fought the primal certainty that he was about to die.

  Trial.

  Opportunity.

  Fight.

  Ori pushed back against the burning with thought alone, building a wall out of stubbornness and spite. Even as his hands were scorched to the bone by liquid fire, he pictured himself as something harder, something impossible to burn. His delirious mind chased nonsense, cycling through the melting points of Iron, Carbon, Tungsten, before grasping for things that could not burn, concepts that could not melt.

  On the verge of madness, that original purpose became an anchor. His promise became a beacon brighter than the surrounding fire.

  And so he placed his trust in Freya’s knowledge, in the concept of Will, and wagered his will against the blaze.

  It had only been seconds, but it had sunk into his bones, moving like liquid, seeping into places pain could not normally reach. It was too pure, too clean. It was killing him, yes, but it was also a medium meant to remake not his body, but his mind and soul.

  As it pressed into his mind and spirit, a voice behind it demanded only one thing.

  Yield.

  Ori answered with defiance. He held on like a beggar clinging to the last scraps of food, certain that yielding was just as sure a death as the threat behind the mugger's knife, and that the longer he lasted, the better.

  Seconds, perhaps fractions of seconds, stretched into an eternity of strain.

  Then the strain exceeded him.

  Liquid fire poured through the last of his resistance. His mind went first, pain turning rationality into primal fear and madness, and then even that was taken.

  Then there was light, a dissolution so pure it threatened to take the memory of being.

  Then it was over.

  Before he could understand what had happened, Ori collapsed in a convulsing heap beside the Lifewell’s cold floor. For long, uncountable moments, he reassembled himself like a jigsaw tossed into the air, his consciousness scattered before sliding back into place piece by piece, while the Lifewell’s waters coaxed his flesh to forget what his mind still remembered.

  He had died.

  Died without even having a chance to do anything.

  When the memory of the pain finally dulled, Ori found the strength to cry. Emotions he had held back until now, self-pity, bravado, entitlement, defeat, fuelled a long-overdue breakdown. After a life of injustices, he had mistaken suffering for credit, as if the universe owed him something, as if stepping up would be enough. Now he knew better.

  Sorrow gave way to wrath. It was not only that it felt unfair. He had expected a challenge: to be tested, exploited, and given a chance. Instead, what he had faced was a lesson.

  There had been no trial, no challenge, only an instant no longer than a heartbeat, followed by fire and pain.

  Why?

  Then he remembered something from the trial’s instructions: a command that allowed him to check his progress.

  ‘Show my catalysts.’

  Aspirant has discovered the following catalysts:

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  ≥1000× [Will Odemid]

  ≥1000× [Light Odemid]

  ≥1000× [Will Halide]

  ≥1000× [Mind Halide]

  43× [Purification Halide]

  1x [Disintegration Halide]

  Aspirant has 8 more attempts of the trial remaining.

  To his credit, his hysterical laughter was only partly crazed. Predominant was relief: the worst ordeal of his life had happened for a reason, and there was some semblance of, if not fairness, then at least purpose to the trial’s whims.

  As he carefully assessed his memories of the trial, it seemed the medium itself was some sort of catalyst, or mixture of catalysts, one no mortal man could survive, not without a profound affinity for the scorching, liquid fire.

  Survival, or even lasting longer than he had, might have been impossible. Still, when he asked the construct about rewards, part of him had expected… something, and thus he asked.

  In those final fractions of a second, Ori had glimpsed something not entirely perceptible through his senses: the existential horror of knowing he no longer existed. Something beyond death or loss, a true understanding of never influencing or being influenced by anything again. Such a complete severance from causality might have broken him, and as a classically trained physicist and engineer, the thought of matter and energy no longer being conserved unnerved him more than it would most. Even so, a true respect for Disintegration remained, represented by that solitary catalyst. An opportunity that only destruction, within the trial’s unique environment and rules, could grant.

  Ori looked within himself, trying to sense whether anything had changed.

  It was almost imperceptible, perhaps a new awareness of light. And a sensation that, when he squeezed his fists, the air seemed to flex or warp around them.

  After the bitter relief, Ori forced his thoughts into order. The trials tested body, mind, and soul, and after that experience, he believed it.

  “Was the theme fire? Endurance? Destruction? Why? Was it random? Did I trigger that specific scenario? What could I have done differently?” Ori wondered to himself.

  Or perhaps there was a simpler, more deterministic reason. Had he let the imagery of the Crucible shape his mindset? He had gone in expecting a fight, a challenge, fire and pain, and he had been given exactly that: a refinement medium that wore the shape of fire, powerful enough to work on mind, body, and soul. It had not cared whether he could survive it, only whether his will could stay intact while everything else burned away. Maybe there had never been a fight to win, only a lesson in what this place was, and a warning not to waste attempts trying to outlast something no mortal was meant to endure.

  As Ori cringed at even the thought of going through that again, he realised something else had changed inside him. It felt like a mental blast door. It protected his mind, hardening it against the terror and abuse he now knew could be inflicted on him, but it also made him wonder if his ability to descend into the deepest conceptual abysses of the trial had been damaged for good.

  Was this his Will?

  Curiosity and a determination to master himself drove him to spend hours trying to remember how his mind had once felt like an open hand compared to its current clenched fist. There were no muscles to relax, but breathing and visualisation let him return to that state for a moment, hovering on the edge of the same surrender he’d felt just before, and during, his destruction.

  He relived every scrap of that pain, the conceptual violence of the self coming apart, then forced his mind hard again.

  After drinking from the Lifewell, Ori teetered on the brink of madness, driving into those raw, impossible memories eleven more times. In later attempts, he submerged his head in the fountain, trying to tie that mental state to something positive, something contradictory, with mixed results.

  Shaking, and increasingly convinced that probing what had happened in the last trial was turning into a form of masochism, he stood. The urgency returned. Before initiating the second attempt, he stopped to consider what he actually wanted.

  So far, he had been picturing impossible tests of strength and endurance in the harshest environments he could imagine. But what if he changed his expectations? Instead of visualising the suffering, could he focus on the outcomes Freya had all but promised?

  He had to try. After a few moments working out what those outcomes could be and fixing the images in his mind, he entered the trial for the second time.

  The world changed, and Ori found himself staring up at the most beautiful sky he had ever seen. It was deep and navy, bright with twinkling stars, luminous nebulae, and the feathering sweep of aurora. Puffy, dreamlike clouds drifted overhead, outlines bright as if backlit by sunlight. For a few seconds, he watched as if none of the last few days mattered, as if he was not inside a trial that would decide the shape of his life.

  He lay in a clearing surrounded by trees, oversaturated and uncanny in their proportions, while pink sparks drifted through the midnight garden. Whether the lights were insects, plants, or something else entirely, he could not tell.

  Before this second attempt, Ori had pictured a future where he was free, somewhere as far from the subterranean hellscape of demons and lava as possible. A place where he could wander unburdened by evil, surrounded by life rather than torment. So far, it looked as if the experiment had worked.

  As a twenty-three-year-old Peckham native, he was about as far removed from forests as a person could be, but he could appreciate this all the same. Perhaps growing up in London made the yearning sharper. In that moment, he promised himself that if he ever escaped, he would make walking through woods a regular habit.

  Ori let the feeling sink in, even knowing he had work to do, trials to complete, Freya’s life hanging in the balance, and a demonic prison still waiting to be escaped. Part of him needed this, a moment to feel whole and unburdened, as if it refilled some inner reserve he had been close to running dry of.

  He sat up and took stock. He still wore his clothes, but the belt that held his wands was empty. His keys and phone were gone too, though he hadn’t expected to bring anything useful with him.

  He listened and drew in a careful breath. The air smelled fresh and earthy and pine-heavy, like a forest after rain. There was little sound beyond the faint rustle of leaves and the quiet presence of insects. And if there were insects, Ori realised, there would be creatures that fed on them, and predators beyond that.

  He would not truly die here, but he had limited attempts and needed to make each one count. He also did not relish the prospect of being devoured, even if he respawned afterwards. With no wands, he had no way to defend himself. If there were predators or if the catalysts were guarded or required killing to earn, he might be in for a brutal learning curve.

  However, he had taken no more than ten steps before he noticed something glowing in the ground.