Felix stood in front of a dungeon cavern.
Alone this time...
The entrance looming dark and foreboding before him. The air was thick with unknown force, charged with weight of history. He could feel the pulse of the Holy Grail in his hands, its power resonating with the earth beneath him.
This...
This is the moment he had to prove himself through trials in fully grasping the Chalice and become one.
"Felix," Gerard's voice was steady, like the wisdom of ages. Speaking through him telepathically.
"Relics are not mere objects of power. They are keys–keys to a great understanding, keys to realms beyond one's comprehension. Remember, relics are meant to be gifts but can be burnens, and those who wield them must carry the corresponding weight."
Felix gripped his hand with the imprinted chalice tighter. Gerard had explained its importance–the Grail wasn't a relic in the traditional sense. No, the Grail was a key to unlock and create path towards the relics, hidden in every corner of the world. Relics that had been wielded by prophets, deemed deities, gods. Misunderstood by witnesses. The so-called humans were merely mortals, just like anyone.
The relics gave them abilities, but wasn't divine... a borrowed one.
"Those who wielded them," Gerard's voice continued, "believed they were gods, but in truth, they were no different from you and I. The gods of old, the Greek pantheon, such as, Zeus, Apollo, Hades, were nothing more than men who found a relic and chose to call themselves gods."
Felix was about to respond when the ground trembled beneath him, the air growing thick with the pressure of the starting trial. The stirring shadows...
Without warning, the first trial had begun.
••••••
Initial Trial:Tenacity
Felix took his first step onto the icy slope, and instantly, the temperature plummeted. His feet froze to the ground as sharp shards of ice whipped across his face. The mountain loomed ahead like a towering wall of stone, but the path was clear—up. He had no choice but to climb.
Each step felt heavier, each breath more agonizing. His feet ached with every movement, but he pressed forward, knowing there was no turning back. With every stride, the wind tore at him, threatening to rip him from the rock. The cold and the heat mixed—his feet, once numb from the freezing winds, suddenly began to burn. Slowly at first, but soon the searing pain intensified until it felt as though molten lava surged beneath his skin. The agony was unbearable. But he couldn't stop.
The trial was an illusion, he reminded himself. But that didn't stop the pain from being real. His mind screamed to turn back, to rest, to stop. But something deeper inside of him pushed him forward, past the limits of his body, beyond his will. His feet felt as though they were crumbling, turning to ash, but still, the burning wouldn't relent.
Days passed. Or was it months? Time had no meaning here. The agony, the cold, the struggle—they were all real. But the mountain itself was just a mirage, a test. Felix clung to that understanding, even as his body began to break down.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of suffering, he reached the summit. His legs shook, his chest heaved, but he stood, triumphant, despite it all.
••••••
Second Trial: Solitude
Felix blinked. One moment, he was standing atop the mountain, victorious in his struggle. The next, the harsh winds, the biting cold—everything—disappeared in an instant.
He was now adrift in an endless void. No land, no horizon—only pure, oppressive blackness. He was suspended in mid-air, weightless, untethered, as though floating in space itself. The world around him was utterly silent, not even the faintest hum or breath.
His senses, once so vivid, were gone. There was no cold against his skin, no air to breathe. His mind screamed for some sign of life, some proof of existence beyond this suffocating void. But there was nothing. Nothing but the crushing silence.
He couldn't feel his body, couldn't hear his thoughts. He could only feel the terrifying weight of his own consciousness, and that weight began to bear down on him. The emptiness pressed in, each second stretching out into an eternity. It felt as though he were both alive and dead, a paradox. His body no longer existed, but his mind—a prisoner to this space—remained.
Felix tried to move, but his limbs refused to obey. His thoughts began to fragment, spiraling inward.
Is this what death is like? he wondered. Or was this just a test of something far darker, more insidious? He was alive, but trapped in a prison of his own mind. A vast, empty prison that never let him rest.
For what felt like years, he floated in the suffocating silence, his mind racing for something to hold on to. He tried to remember the warmth of the mountain air, the sound of Gerard's voice, anything that could anchor him. But the memories slipped away, evaporating like mist.
He had learned to endure physical pain in the first trial, but this... this was something else. This was mental, a twisting, maddening kind of torture. There was no escape, no distraction. The silence was louder than any scream.
His mind turned inward, replaying fragments of his past. Faces of loved ones, memories of warmth, of laughter—each one blurred and distant. Every thought was like a crack in his soul, widening with each passing second.
His soul cried out for connection, for touch, for sound. But all that came back was the oppressive nothingness. The loneliness was overwhelming, suffocating. There was no one here but him, and that fact crushed him more than the vast emptiness.
But then, as the weight of despair threatened to consume him, a flicker of something appeared—a soft, almost imperceptible glimmer. It was faint, far off, like the first hint of dawn after an eternal night. A light.
It's not real, Felix told himself. It's just another illusion. Another trick to break me.
But something inside him refused to believe that. He latched onto the light, a fragile thread of hope in the otherwise endless black.
He focused on it, his entire being drawn to it, until it became his only reality. As he clung to that glimmer, the darkness began to recede, slowly at first, then more quickly, as though it were being drawn away by the force of his will.
The silence was broken. A hum, soft at first, like the distant beating of a heart, began to fill the void. His senses returned, slowly, cautiously. The weightlessness lifted. Felix could feel his body again, his breath returning, his pulse pounding in his ears. The darkness receded until, finally, he was standing on solid ground.
The void was gone. The silence had been shattered. The second trial was over.
Felix felt a wave of exhaustion flood over him, the emotional weight of what he had endured crashing down on him. He hadn't just survived isolation; he had confronted it, endured it, and come out the other side.
The first trial had tested his body, the second had tested his soul. And he had passed. He stood there, in the quiet aftermath, realizing just how far he had come.
••••••
He had weathered every storm, survived, and unknowingly disobliged. Now, heart-stilled and soul-scarred, Felix was facing the final trial.
Agony...