The new environment was silent.
Eryndor stood alone beneath a sky without stars, surrounded by an endless field of pale grass that moved despite the complete absence of wind.
There were no mountains, no buildings, no visible walls, and no sign of the crystalline beast that had attacked him moments earlier.
He waited.
The Tower had taught him one thing already.
If it wanted him to move, it would give him a reason.
A message appeared before him.
[Trial Phase: Judgment.]
Eryndor narrowed his eyes.
Another message followed.
[Objective: Reach the destination.]
A distant light appeared on the horizon.
It was barely visible, perhaps several kilometres away.
Eryndor looked toward it.
That was all.
No enemy.
No timer.
No instructions beyond reaching the light.
He began walking.
For the first few minutes, nothing happened.
The field remained unchanged.
The grass brushed against his legs, and the distant light remained exactly where it had been.
Eryndor continued.
After some time, he stopped.
The light hadn’t become any closer.
He looked behind himself.
The place where he had started was gone.
Eryndor’s expression became serious.
The Tower wasn’t measuring distance.
It was testing whether he would recognize that the environment itself was changing.
He looked at the ground.
The grass was identical in every direction.
Too identical.
He crouched and touched the soil.
It felt real.
But the Tower could reproduce reality.
He picked up a small stone and threw it toward the horizon.
The stone disappeared after several seconds.
Eryndor waited.
Nothing happened.
He picked another stone and threw it behind himself.
This time, he watched carefully.
The stone traveled much farther than it should have before disappearing.
“So the distance isn’t real.”
The light in the distance flickered.
Eryndor stood.
He didn’t move toward it.
Instead, he closed his eyes.
The future memories inside him were tempting him to search for an answer he didn’t have.
He remembered countless trials from his previous life, but not this one.
That was important.
If this trial had never existed before, then it was another sign that the timeline had already changed.
The thought should have frightened him.
Instead, it gave him confidence.
He didn’t need to remember the answer.
He needed to solve the problem in front of him.
Eryndor activated Copy.
The concealed pattern he had learned earlier spread through his body.
His presence weakened.
The world around him became slightly less aware of him.
He didn’t use the ability to hide.
He used it to observe.
The field changed.
For a brief moment, lines appeared across the grass.
Thousands of them.
Invisible boundaries.
Eryndor opened his eyes.
“So that’s it.”
The field was divided into sections.
Some were safe.
Others were traps.
The distant light wasn’t a destination.
It was bait.
The real objective was to understand the structure of the trial.
Eryndor stepped toward the first boundary.
The moment his foot crossed it, the field changed.
The sky turned black.
The grass vanished.
A massive shadow appeared above him.
Eryndor immediately moved backward.
The shadow struck the ground.
The entire area trembled.
He hadn’t been injured.
The Tower had only demonstrated the consequence of choosing incorrectly.
Eryndor studied the boundary again.
Then he noticed something.
The safe areas weren’t random.
They formed a pattern.
Aetherian mathematical structures.
He had seen similar formations in his memories.
Not in the Tower.
In a ruined city, thousands of years into the future.
A civilization had used the same principle to create defensive barriers.
Eryndor remembered the result, but not the creator.
He crouched and drew the pattern into the soil.
One line.
Then another.
His memory supplied pieces.
His understanding connected them.
A path emerged.
Eryndor followed it.
The field changed repeatedly.
Sometimes the sky vanished.
Sometimes the ground became water.
Sometimes enormous walls appeared around him.
Each time, the same principle remained.
The Tower was changing the appearance of the trial while preserving its underlying rules.
Eryndor stopped trying to predict what would happen.
Instead, he searched for what couldn’t change.
That was the answer.
The next boundary appeared.
He stepped across it.
Nothing happened.
Another.
Nothing.
Another.
Still nothing.
The distant light was beginning to grow brighter.
Eryndor continued.
Then he heard a voice.
“Help me!”
He stopped.
A woman stood several dozen metres away.
Eryndor recognized her.
Not from the future.
From the Trial Space.
She was one of the people he had seen when he first entered the Tower.
She was surrounded by a field of darkness.
“Please!”
Eryndor didn’t move.
The woman looked terrified.
“I’m trapped!”
Eryndor studied the ground.
There was no darkness there before.
The Tower was testing him again.
He could remember what had happened in his previous life.
Someone had died during one of the early Tower trials.
But he couldn’t remember the exact circumstances.
He had assumed that memory referred to this woman.
Now he wasn’t certain.
The woman reached toward him.
“Please!”
Eryndor took a step forward.
The darkness expanded.
He stopped.
His eyes narrowed.
“If I enter that area, what happens?”
The woman stared at him.
“I don’t know.”
Eryndor remained still.
That answer was honest.
But it didn’t mean she was actually trapped.
He looked at the surrounding environment.
The Tower had already shown him that it could create false destinations.
False enemies.
False dangers.
It could also create false victims.
The woman suddenly screamed.
The darkness began climbing around her.
Eryndor’s expression hardened.
Every instinct told him to act.
But he remembered the lesson from the previous trial.
A decision was not correct simply because it was emotionally easier.
He examined the darkness.
It wasn’t attacking her.
It was surrounding her.
There was a difference.
Eryndor copied the concealment pattern again.
His presence faded.
The darkness didn’t react.
He smiled slightly.
“If you were really trapped, the trial would react to my presence.”
The woman looked confused.
Eryndor continued.
“But it doesn’t.”
The woman’s expression changed.
For a moment, her face became completely blank.
Then her body dissolved into light.
The darkness vanished.
A notification appeared.
[False subject identified.]
Eryndor exhaled.
The Tower was testing judgment, not compassion.
But that didn’t mean compassion was useless.
It meant compassion had to be guided by understanding.
He continued walking.
The distant light was now directly ahead.
This time, it was real.
He reached it.
The moment his hand touched it, the entire landscape shattered.
Eryndor found himself standing inside a vast circular chamber.
Hundreds of other awakened humans were visible around him.
Some were fighting.
Some were solving puzzles.
Some were sitting motionless.
Others were already injured from their own trials.
The Tower had placed them all in different challenges within the same shared Trial Space.
Eryndor looked around.
He recognized several faces from his memories.
But something was wrong.
One of them should have been dead.
Another should have possessed a completely different Talent.
A third was supposed to become an important figure in the future, yet the person standing before him seemed nothing like the person he remembered.
Eryndor stared.
The realization came slowly.
His memories were no longer a map.
They were fragments of a road that had already disappeared.
A person could make one different decision today and become someone entirely different years later.
A battle could happen differently.
A Talent could develop differently.
A city could survive.
A civilization could fall.
The future he remembered was not waiting for him.
It had already begun changing.
A young man nearby suddenly released a wave of energy.
Eryndor turned.
He recognized the Talent.
It was one he had seen in his memories.
Without thinking, he copied it.
Nothing happened.
Eryndor frowned.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
Then the Tower displayed a message.
[EX Talents cannot be copied.]
Eryndor’s eyes widened.
For the first time, the Tower had revealed a limitation he hadn’t discovered himself.
EX Talents were outside Copy’s reach.
That was important.
Very important.
He looked toward the young man again.
The Talent remained completely inaccessible.
Eryndor smiled.
“So there are things even I can’t copy.”
The realization didn’t disappoint him.
It made him more curious.
A Tower notification appeared.
[Trial progression: 72%.]
Eryndor looked upward.
The next phase was approaching.
Before it began, however, another message appeared.
[Core potential assessment pending.]
Eryndor became completely still.
His Core.
He had awakened his Talent and Race when the world changed, but no Core had appeared.
Now, for the first time, the Tower was preparing to determine his potential.
The chamber around him began to vibrate.
A faint light gathered beneath his feet.
Then another.
Then another.
Ten empty positions appeared around him.
Eryndor stared at them.
He didn’t understand what they meant.
The Tower itself seemed to hesitate.
[Beginning assessment.]
The first position illuminated.
Then the second.
Eryndor’s breathing slowed.
Something deep within his soul reacted.
The mirror pendant became colder than it had ever been.
For a fraction of a second, the entire Trial Space seemed to fall silent.
Then the Tower produced a message unlike anything it had shown before.
[Unknown interference detected.]
The ten positions disappeared.
Eryndor’s eyes widened.
The Tower tried again.
Nothing happened.
[Assessment postponed.]
He stared at the message.
“Postponed?”
The Tower did not answer.
The mirror pendant slowly warmed again.
Eryndor touched it.
A faint image appeared in his mind.
Ten enormous lights.
Ten distant presences.
And behind them, something far greater.
Something that did not feel like a person.
Something that felt like the beginning of everything.
The vision disappeared before he could understand it.
Eryndor lowered his hand.
He didn’t know what the Tower had almost seen.
He didn’t know why his Core assessment had failed.
But he knew one thing.
The Tower was beginning to encounter limits it had never encountered before.
And somewhere beyond the Trial Space, the world continued changing.
The future he remembered was becoming less reliable with every decision he made.
For the first time since his memories returned, Eryndor stopped trying to reach the future he had once known.
He would build another one.
The Tower opened the next trial.
And Eryndor stepped forward without looking back.