He knows before he even steps through that this one’s going to be the worst of them.
It’s not a feeling he can point to and explain — nothing about the doorway looks different from the others, just another seam in the grey where the Hall of Reality ends and whatever’s next begins.
But something about the ache behind his ribs, the same ache that told him fire was coming, then nothing, then a bending he didn’t have a name for, is sharper here.
Insistent.
Like it’s trying to warn him off before he’s even close enough to look inside.
𝐻𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒, the System says, and for the first time since the Gate, it doesn’t offer a recommendation right away.
That, more than anything, is what makes Kael’s stomach go cold.
“You’re quiet.”
𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡𝑜 𝑝ℎ𝑟𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦.
“That’s not reassuring.”
𝐼𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒.
𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐻𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑠, 𝑏𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑.
𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑠𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓, 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝.
Kael flexes the fingers he has left — five on one hand, none on the other, a wrist that ends in cold dark instead of skin — and steps through anyway, because there’s never really been another direction to go in down here.
Forward, or nothing.
He picked forward back at the Gate, and he’s not about to unpick it now, one hand short of whole.
The Hall doesn’t look like much at first.
A corridor, long and grey, not unlike the tunnel that started all this.
Except the corridor doesn’t hold still.
Kael takes one step and the far end of it is suddenly ten steps closer.
He takes another and it’s twenty steps further away.
Time inside this place isn’t moving wrong, exactly — space is, folding and stretching around every motion he makes, like the Hall can’t decide how far he’s actually supposed to be traveling and keeps changing its mind mid-stride.
He stops.
The corridor stops with him, settling into something almost normal-looking, and for a second he lets himself breathe.
Then he sees himself walking toward him from the far end.
Not a construct.
Not the fire-shaped rival from the last time something wore his face.
This one moves like he does, breathes like he does, and when it gets close enough Kael realizes with a lurch that it isn’t a copy at all — it’s him, minutes from now, already past whatever’s about to happen, walking back the way he came like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Don’t,” future-Kael says, before Kael’s even opened his mouth. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“Whatever you’re about to ask me, don’t. I can’t tell you anything. It doesn’t work that way.”
“You’re — what, ahead of me? Behind me?”
“Yes.” Future-Kael’s voice sounds tired in a way that unsettles him more than anything else in this Hall has managed.
“Both. Neither. I stopped trying to make it make sense about four minutes from now, your time, which is also right now, from where I’m standing. You’ll understand once you’re standing here instead of there.”
𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐻𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑒, 𝑜𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒, 𝑜𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑑, the System says, quiet, careful.
𝐼𝑡 𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔.
𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢.
𝐶𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑝𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐻𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑟𝑒 — 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑠.
“Wonderful. Thanks.”
Future-Kael’s already moving past him, close enough that their shoulders almost brush, and as he passes he says, low, almost gentle: “The wall’s going to come down on the left. Not the right. You’ll want to go right. Don’t.”
Then he’s gone, folded back into wherever the corridor keeps its extra distance, and Kael’s alone again with a piece of information he didn’t ask for and doesn’t know whether to trust.
He starts walking.
The corridor stretches, contracts, plays its trick again, and somewhere ahead he can hear something starting to groan — stone, or something that used to be stone, shifting under weight it shouldn’t have to hold.
Left or right.
He has maybe ten seconds to decide, and every part of his training, every instinct built over three years of reading rooms for exits, is telling him the same thing his future self just warned him against.
You should trust the information, he thinks, and immediately doesn’t trust the thought either, because it arrived a little too easily, a little too much like something placed there rather than something he reasoned his own way toward.
The groaning gets worse.
He has maybe five seconds now.
He thinks about the version of himself that just walked past — tired, worn thin, already carrying whatever happens next like an old weight he’s used to.
If that’s really him, minutes ahead, then whatever choice future-Kael made already happened, already shaped the man who just walked past looking that exhausted.
Which means either the warning saved him from something, or it’s the exact reason he ended up that tired in the first place.
There’s no way to know which.
That’s the whole trap of it.
So he does the only thing that’s ever actually worked for him in this place — he stops trying to solve it like a puzzle, and decides instead like a man, quick and imperfect and his own.
He goes left.
The wall comes down on the right, exactly where he isn’t standing, close enough that the wind of its collapse throws him off his feet anyway.
He hits the corridor floor hard, rolls, comes up gasping, and understands, distantly, that the warning was true — just not in the direction he expected to need it. Read this novel at novelping dot com for the best experience.
𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒, the System says, something almost like relief in the flatness of it.
𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐻𝑎𝑙𝑙’𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒.
𝐼𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡.
He doesn’t get the chance to rely on anything a second time.
The corridor folds one final time, hard, and the world stops being a corridor at all — becomes, instead, a single suspended moment, stretched out impossibly long, every second taking an hour to pass, his own heartbeat slowed to something he can count between breaths like a bell tolling somewhere far away.
He understands, in the middle of that stretched, endless second, exactly what this Hall actually wants from him.
Not to move fast.
Not to move right.
To hold himself together while time itself refuses to behave the way anything is supposed to.
So he holds.
It costs him something he doesn’t have a name for — not pain exactly, more like a kind of fraying, some part of him thinning out at the edges the longer the moment refuses to end, like he’s being asked to exist across more time than one person is built to occupy at once.
He grits his teeth against it, or thinks he does — time’s moving so strangely now he’s not entirely sure his own actions and his own awareness of them are happening in the same order anymore.
Then, all at once, it ends.
He’s on his knees in an ordinary Hall, breathing hard, and the sword he’s never once drawn in this entire Temple is somehow drawn now, held loosely in his remaining hand, though he has no memory of reaching for it.
𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑒.
𝐹𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑.
The System’s voice sounds strained, almost, in a way Kael’s never heard from it before.
𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒, 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡.
𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢.
𝐼 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑖𝑑.
“Neither do I.” His voice comes out hoarse.
“Little help, next time, if you figure it out.”
𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑑.
Kael sits there a moment longer, sword still loose in his remaining hand, one eye taking in a Hall that’s finally, mercifully, decided to stay one single size.
Somewhere ahead — not a Hall this time, he can tell the difference now, the ache behind his ribs has changed shape entirely — something vast is waiting.
Older than any of the trials.
Watching, maybe, the way the goddess watched him back at the very start of all this.
He gets up, slower than he has after any of the others, and walks toward whatever’s left.