For a long time, there was nothing. No sound. No pain. Just silence and a deep, sinking emptiness.
Sylas floated in that void like a feather in still air. No hunger. No fear. Just peace… soft and quiet. A strange kind of peace he hadn't known in a long time.
But peace was never meant to stay.
Something thick and foul crept into his nose. A heavy stench that burned his throat. Rot. Flesh. Decay.
He coughed, violently. The darkness around him broke like thin ice, replaced by the throb of pain in his chest and the taste of death in his mouth. His eyes fluttered open, heavy and dry.
Everything was black.
His body ached all over. His skin was cold and damp. He tried to move, but his hand slipped on the floor beneath him. It wasn't stone… it wasn't dirt…
It was wet. Soft. It twitched slightly beneath his palm.
What the hell…?
He blinked again, forcing his eyes to adjust to the dark. Slowly, shadows began to shape. Walls curved above him—slick and pulsing faintly. The smell grew worse the more he breathed.
Then he saw it.
The walls weren't made of rock. They were flesh. Living, rotten flesh, stinking so badly, that it's impossible to breathe.
He was inside something. Something enormous. Because it was huge compared to any animal stomach—it's like he was in a subway: long, wide, and horizontally big enough to say it was literally cave-sized.
The realization hit like a hammer. His stomach twisted. He scrambled up, slipping on the slick surface, heart pounding in his chest. The smell was unbearable, and still he couldn't see well.
I'm inside a body… a living thing. No—no, this can't be real. Sylas said in a fearful voice.
But it was.
His breath came short and quick.
Is this… the trial? Sylas thought.
Is this what they meant by the Tenmares Trial?
What kind of nightmare is this?
Sylas had heard about Trial clearing rates—they were low. And mostly, newbies were sent into the Academy for survival guidance.
Sylas was ready to sacrifice himself to the Trial. He had nothing left to lose. His spirit was already broken—cracked open like a hollow shell with nothing inside.
If he died here, in this grotesque pit of rot and gore, no one would mourn. Not in this world. Not in the one he was torn from. He was just dust in the vast, uncaring universe.
He lay buried in a carpet of rotting flesh, its sticky, slimy texture already clinging to his skin like a second diseased layer. The stench was unbearable, thick enough to taste.
His eyes burned from it, his throat raw from every gasp. He couldn't tell what was worse—the sensation of being smothered alive or the feeling of being so completely forgotten.
His thoughts drifted.
What if I'd never been dragged into this nightmare?
Would I have lived a normal life?
A small house in the countryside... a beautiful wife with soft laughter... children who call me Dad.
The thought brought tears to his eyes—hot, bitter, unwanted. He had asked for so little. Just a quiet life. But even that was stolen by fate.
Why? What had he done to deserve this?
He closed his eyes and let go. No more resistance. No more movement. His breath slowed as the crushing silence of death embraced him.
But then...
A single thread of memory sparked in the dark. A distant voice—his own, younger, fearless.
"I'll make it one day. No matter what, I'll live my dream."
His eyes snapped open.
What am I doing here?
I have a dream... and if I still have a dream, it means I'm still alive. I just have to push forward. No one else is going to do it for me.
A flicker of rage kindled in his chest—not anger at the world, but the fury to keep going. Sylas groaned and tried to stand. But the floor was slick, like tiles soaked in soap and blood.
He slipped, crashing hard into the decaying mass below. It was too thick to walk on, too unstable to support him. So he crawled, inch by inch, every breath labored, every touch revolting.
Then, he saw it—light. Tiny particles of golden glow leaking through a crack in the flesh wall above. There was a way out. His heart leapt. But climbing was impossible. Every attempt sent him sliding down again, further smearing himself in the filth. His fingers clawed at the walls until his nails cracked, split, and bled. Pain exploded in his middle and ring finger. He lay still, defeated.
Until his hand brushed against something hard.
What is this...?
His fingers wrapped around it. A bone—thick, solid. He looked around. More bones. Bits of cloth. Shattered stone. A sick realization hit him. This place had been the end for many before him—humans, beasts, all digested in the same pit. But that meant tools. It meant hope.
Sylas's mind lit up. He tore cloth from the corpses around him, wrapping it around his palms and legs. He kicked off his shoes, letting his bare feet feel the texture of the wall. He snapped a jagged bone and held it tight. It would be his hook—his grip.
This time, when he climbed, he didn't slip.
Every inch was a war. The stench made him gag. His muscles burned. The bone dug into his palms, but he kept moving. The light grew brighter. His heart pounded with desperate joy.
I can escape. I will escape.
Sylas kept crawling, dragging his battered body forward through the suffocating darkness. Minutes passed. Then hours. Maybe more—time twisted in that place, slipping through his fingers like water.
The fleshy ground gave no hint of direction, only pulsing walls and sickening stench that clung to every breath he took. His knees were raw. His fingers bled. His arms screamed with each movement.
Still, he crawled.
Hope had long since turned into obsession. An exit had to exist. Somewhere. Anywhere. Otherwise, this place would be his grave.
Then—light.
Faint, flickering, almost a trick of the mind. But it was there. A dim glow trickled down from a gap ahead. Sylas's heart slammed in his chest. He pushed harder, faster, even when the ground threatened to drag him back.
And finally—finally—he emerged.
The opening yawned before him like the gaping maw of some ancient beast. Its edges were lined with teeth—not sharp, but tree-like, jagged and massive. The 'lips' of the passage looked like bark molded into a grotesque mouth. The entire thing was wide enough to fit a truck whole.
He collapsed just outside it, the cool touch of real earth beneath him. Grass. Soil. Wind. He sucked in air like it was his first breath in years, trembling from exhaustion and disbelief.
He was out.
Sylas's chest rose and fell, lungs pulling in breath after breath like they were tasting air for the first time. He lay sprawled on the cold earth, chest heaving, hands trembling. The wet, rotten grime clung to him, but the feel of grass beneath his fingers—actual grass—made his body shiver.
It felt like a dream. A cruel, vivid dream.
Fresh air, laced with soil and wind, brushed his skin. After what felt like eternity crawling through that hellish flesh tunnel, this—*this*—was luxury.
He turned his head, sluggishly, body aching like every muscle had been stretched and broken. And then he saw it.
The entrance.
His eyes widened.
It wasn't a tunnel. Not really. Not a cave. Not a passage. It was a mouth.
A mouth, rimmed with jagged, bark-like teeth. Its upper and lower jaws stretched high and wide like a grotesque gateway, big enough to swallow a truck without leaving a scratch. Vines and mucus still dripped from its gums.
Sylas's breath caught. Slowly, he followed the mouth with his eyes, scanning up and back along the monstrous body he'd just crawled out of.
It wasn't a whale. That's what he had thought at first, back when everything was dark and cramped and reeking.
It was a serpent.
"A giant... snake?" His voice was a whisper, barely more than a breath.
But no, this was no ordinary serpent. This thing had died long ago, and yet... its corpse had become something more. A prison. A tomb. A nest of flesh and horror. His mind reeled, the memories clawing back—walls of pulsing meat, the suffocating heat, the endless darkness.
"I was inside that…?" he muttered.
His knees gave out. He curled into himself, arms wrapped tightly around his body, trembling. He could still feel it—the way the fleshy floor writhed beneath him, the way the air had choked his lungs with rot.
His skin crawled with phantom sensations.
He didn't cry. He couldn't. His eyes were too dry, his soul too scraped raw. But something inside him cracked—quiet and deep. A small, fragile piece of himself that believed he would never make it out had shattered. And what replaced it wasn't relief. It was emptiness.
Still, he was alive.
But for how long?
He didn't get to wonder.
A sound echoed through the rotting valley—metal boots on damp earth. Voices, muffled but stern. Sylas's head snapped toward the noise. Through the scattered bones and sagging trees, he saw movement. A line of figures cutting through the mist and ruin.
Armor. Weapons. A banner that fluttered weakly in the wind.
A group of soldiers.
And at the front—two figures that stood taller than the rest. One clad in white and gold, radiating authority. The other bearing a sword almost too heavy for one man to wield.
Sylas's breath caught.
"People…"
He tried to stand, staggering a few steps before falling to his knees again. His body was too weak, too broken. But his voice still worked.
"Help…" he croaked.
Whether they would stop—or see him as something worth saving—he didn't know.
But in that moment, surrounded by rot and ruin, hope was a whisper. And he whispered it anyway.