Chapter 330: The Final Test (Part 2)

The darkness pressed close around Kai, memories still surging, but something had shifted since the last wave broke over him.

Before, he’d been able to hold them at arm’s length, recognize them as belonging to someone else.

He couldn’t anymore.

A battlefield formed around him, and he was standing in the middle of it, blood coating his hands, armor he didn’t recognize hanging heavy on his frame, a weapon he’d never held gripped tight in his fist. And yet somewhere underneath it all, a memory whispered with absolute certainty.

I fought here.

He froze. "...I did?"

The battlefield dissolved. A city rose in its place, massive and unfamiliar, people cheering in the streets. Someone called his name.

He turned, disoriented. "...Is this Mythal?"

It wasn’t. The faces weren’t people he knew. Yet the memory insisted this had been his home.

Then the city burned. He watched it collapse district by district, and somehow, impossibly, he remembered being the reason it fell.

The trial kept dragging him through other lives after that. One moment he was a warrior. Then a ruler. Then a hunter. Then someone with no power at all. Each version had lived differently, chosen differently.

Every single one had ended in failure.

One version sat enthroned amid a field of corpses, and it looked directly at him. "You should have saved them."

The scene shifted. Another version stood alone on a ruined battlefield. "You weren’t strong enough."

Another, standing in an empty room. "You trusted the wrong person."

Another, kneeling beside someone dying in his arms. "You were too late."

Another, standing before a leveled city. "You made the wrong choice."

Kai watched all of them, his breathing turning unsteady. "These aren’t—" He stopped. "—my memories."

He wasn’t sure anymore.

The space around him opened into something vast and empty, and hundreds of versions of himself materialized in every direction. Then thousands. Different clothes, different weapons, different wounds, different expressions. Some furious. Some hollowed out entirely. Some exhausted past feeling anything at all.

They all stared at him.

One stepped forward. "You should have saved them."

"You weren’t strong enough," another said.

"You trusted the wrong person."

"You hesitated."

"You chose the wrong path."

"You thought you knew what was best."

He looked around at all of them. "Which one of you is real?"

Nobody answered individually.

Then all of them spoke together. "Does it matter?"

His jaw tightened.

The world shifted again, and suddenly he stood in Mythal, whole and intact, hunters moving through the streets, people laughing somewhere nearby.

"...Mythal," he breathed.

He took a step forward. Someone passed close by, and he turned.

Lily.

"Lily?"

She didn’t respond. He reached for her, and his hand passed straight through, like she wasn’t really there at all.

The city vanished instantly. He stood on a battlefield instead, and Mira appeared beside him.

Then she was gone.

Raze appeared.

Gone.

Elden.

Gone.

Gabriel.

Gone.

Mayor Ko.

Gone.

Everything kept changing too fast to hold onto, and his breathing grew ragged. "Wait..."

Another world.

"Stop."

Another.

"I don’t understand."

Another.

"Which one is real?"

Nothing answered him.

The worst part came next. He started seeing pieces of his actual life bleed together with memories that weren’t his at all. He remembered fighting beside Lily, and mid-memory her face shifted into someone else’s entirely. He remembered Mythal, and the city warped into a different one he’d never set foot in. He remembered the hunters he’d fought beside, and their faces kept rearranging themselves. He remembered surviving the Six Calamities, and then, without warning, he was living them through someone else’s eyes.

He grabbed his head. "No..."

He shut his eyes. "That’s not what happened."

A voice answered instantly. "How do you know?"

He froze. The question wouldn’t let go of him. He remembered what he’d lived through, remembered it clearly.

But if the trial could plant false memories in his mind this cleanly, how could he possibly tell which ones were actually his?

Something stirred inside him. Distortion.

He recognized the sensation immediately, and for one hopeful second he thought, maybe it can find the best path through this. Maybe it can break this. Maybe it can tell me which memory is real.

Nothing happened.

He waited. The power kept reacting faintly, a pressure building behind his eyes that never resolved into anything.

There was no attack to dodge. No object to bend to his will. No enemy to read. No obvious optimal path anywhere in sight.

His eyes narrowed. "...What am I supposed to change?"

Nothing answered that either.

He felt Distortion continue to stir uselessly. For the first time since he’d first discovered it, he couldn’t even identify what the best outcome would look like. Escaping the memories, was that right? Destroying them? Remembering everything? Forgetting all of it entirely?

He didn’t know. And because he didn’t know, Distortion had nothing to push toward.

His expression shifted slowly. "...You can’t tell either."

The realization landed harder than any of the memories had. He’d grown used to relying on it, trusting that it would find some strange, impossible path forward even when nothing else could.

Here, there was no path. Only uncertainty.

And the trial seemed to know it.

The countless versions of himself closed in again, not attacking, simply speaking, over and over.

"You should have saved them."

"You weren’t strong enough."

"You trusted the wrong person."

"You failed."

"You will fail again."

He stumbled back. "Stop."

The voices only grew louder.

"You can’t save everyone."

"You can’t protect everyone."

"You’re alone."

His breath came ragged now, and every direction he looked showed him only himself, endless and unbroken.

He dropped to one knee, palm pressing against ground he still couldn’t see, head hanging low.

Give up.

Stop.

You can’t save everyone.

You’re alone.

He closed his eyes. For one long moment, he didn’t fight it. Didn’t argue. Didn’t try to prove any of it wrong.

He was simply exhausted. Too many memories. Too many voices. He no longer knew which thoughts still belonged to him.

His breathing slowed. His hand loosened against the ground.

For one brief, terrible moment, he almost let it take him.

Then something faint reached through.

A voice.

His eyes stayed closed. It wasn’t one of the countless voices surrounding him. Not Bahamut. Not another version of himself.

It was familiar.

"Kai."

His breath caught. The surrounding voices thinned for a moment, quieter.

He opened his eyes slowly. Nothing there.

Then, again, fainter: "Kai!"

His expression shifted.

A third voice joined it. Then another. None of them clear. All of them distant.

Mythal.

For one fragile heartbeat, he could hear it, actually hear it, the hunters, people calling his name, the same voices that had surrounded him before all of this began.

His eyes widened. "...Mythal?"

The memory flickered, thin as smoke. He reached toward it desperately.

Before he could understand what he was hearing, it was gone.

Silence swallowed everything again. His hand stayed extended toward nothing.

The darkness returned in full, the endless versions of himself gone for a moment, leaving only him standing alone in the void.

"...What was that?"

No answer came.

He didn’t know if it had been real. Didn’t know if the trial had conjured it too. Didn’t know if it was just one more memory, dressed up to look like hope.

The voices began drifting back.

Give up.

He didn’t respond.

You’re alone.

His eyes stayed open. But there was no determination in them yet. No breakthrough. No answer.

Only confusion.

His hand lowered slowly. The darkness closed in around him again.