Cel gasped - a desperate, rattling inhale that should have drowned in blood.
But his lungs filled cleanly. No wet gurgle. No spike tearing through muscle and bone with each breath.
His eyes snapped open.
Swirling mist. Silver moonlight washing over broken ground.
His soul's landscape.
The realization hit a second later, followed immediately by his hands - flying to his chest, fingers scrabbling across skin that should have been torn open, searching for the wound that had killed him.
Nothing.
The burns covering his arms - gone. The cuts from crystal edges - gone. Even the impaled hand he'd used to anchor himself through the furnace heat had healed completely, leaving no trace it had ever been destroyed.
But the memory remained sharp as the crystals themselves.
His fingers curled against his chest, nails digging into unblemished skin hard enough to hurt - just to feel something real, something that proved this wasn't another illusion.
His breath slowed. Steadied.
'Over. It's over.'
The thought felt hollow. Distant. Wrong, somehow - too simple for what he'd just endured.
He'd survived.
Cel's gaze drifted upward to the moon hanging full and radiant above him. Its pale light cast everything in shades of silver and shadow, gentle and honest. No warmth trying to fill the cracks in him. No promises. Just light that showed things as they were.
He let himself breathe. Just breathe. No running. No fighting. No creature hunting him through impossible terrain.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered himself down until he lay flat against the cracked earth, moon filling his vision.
Just him and the quiet.
Minutes passed - or maybe hours. Time felt strange here, unreliable.
Eventually, Cel rolled onto his side, then slowly pushed himself up.
His gaze swept across the space around him.
Before, this place had been nothing but endless fog - thick and suffocating, swallowing everything beyond a few paces. An empty void with no features, no landmarks. Just him and the distant moon, suspended in formless gray.
Now, the mist had thinned.
Dry, cracked earth stretched beneath him, split by deep fissures that webbed across the ground like old scars. Jagged stones jutted up at irregular intervals.
Ruins.
Not the ancient structures from the trial, but something personal. Something carved into the foundation of who he was.
Cel's fingers traced along a crack in the stone near his feet. The edges were rough, uneven - violence frozen in rock.
Between the fractures, small flowers with bluish-white petals bloomed, reaching toward the moonlight from the deepest cracks.
He stared at them for a long moment.
The mist shifted.
Cel's head snapped up, body tensing before his mind caught up. But the presence was familiar - graceful footsteps, unhurried and light.
Selina emerged from the mist - white robes trailing through the thinned veil like she was stepping through a curtain. Her silver mask that covered the upper half of her face caught the moonlight, reflecting it in pale crescents. Below, her serene smile held the same quiet warmth it always had.
Cel's shoulders dropped slightly. Some tension he hadn't named eased at the sight of her.
She stopped a few paces away, hands folded at her waist, regarding him with that calm smile. What remained of the mist curled around her hem like a cat seeking attention.
"Congratulations, Chosen One."
Cel flinched.
Not from the words themselves, but from hearing them - truly hearing them. Clear. Crisp. Every beautiful syllable distinct.
His hand flew to his ear. The silence that had wrapped around him since the crystal shriek, the thick cotton that had muffled everything into nothing… was gone too.
"You have completed the trial." Her voice carried the same gentle certainty as always, like stating the moon would rise tonight.
No fanfare. No celebration. Just acknowledgment - as if surviving that nightmare was expected.
Cel nodded slowly, processing the words. His hand moved absently to his chest - where the spike had been.
"I did." The words came out flat.
Silence stretched between them.
Cel pushed himself to his feet slowly - movements careful, deliberate, like he wasn't quite sure his body would obey.
His eyes swept across the landscape without focus.
Selina tilted her head slightly, as if reading something in his stillness. "You seem troubled, Chosen One."
His jaw clenched.
"Troubled?" His hands curled at his sides. "Lets see."
"Four suns tried to cook me alive. The crystals' hum made me deaf. My own reflection tried to break my mind. That sphere spent the entire time guiding me exactly where it wanted me. And then that thing with the fairy-like appearance impaled me on a crystal spike."
His breath came harder.
"So yeah. I'm a little troubled."
Selina stood perfectly still, hands folded, the mist curling around her robes like it was content just to be near her.
"What was even the point?" The words came out sharp as broken glass. "Other Chosen don't go through this. They get their blessing the moment they turn sixteen and enter their soul."
He kicked a small stone, sending it skittering across cracked earth.
"But not me. No—I get a trial. I get dragged through nightmare after nightmare just to prove I'm worthy of the weakest Goddess of all."
He turned away from Selina, staring at the broken landscape.
"What the hell was it for? To break me down? Bleed me dry? Tear open every wound just to show me something I already knew?"
"I already knew my father hated me," he continued. "That he thought I was worthless. That I'd never be enough."
His nails dug crescents into his palms.
"I already knew my mother wouldn't save me. That she'd just stand there and do nothing while he beat me half to death."
The flowers rustled softly in a breeze that shouldn't exist here.
"I knew my sister was too young to understand. That all she could do was cry." His breath hitched. "And my brother…"
"...I knew he wouldn't do anything either."
Cel's eyes stayed fixed on the cracked ground beneath his feet, watching a thin fissure split the stone like frozen lightning.
"I knew they abandoned me long before they actually left me to die."
The truth of it sat heavy in his chest - solid, undeniable. The trial hadn't revealed anything new. It had just forced him to feel it all again. To relive it.
Selina remained silent. Not uncomfortable. Not pitying. Just... present.
The mist shifted around them both. Minutes passed.
Eventually she moved closer, her steps barely disturbing the silence. She stopped a few paces away, close enough that he could see the slight rise and fall of her breathing beneath those pristine robes.
"You have returned." Simple. Matter-of-fact. "But you are not the same as before."
Cel let out a sharp breath through his nose. "Am I?"
His arms crossed over his chest, fingers digging into his skin. The anger was still there, coiling tight beneath his ribs, hot and sharp. But something about it felt different now. Less wild. Less desperate.
More... controlled.
His gaze drifted to the cracked earth.
"I thought..." He stopped. Started again. "I thought if I survived, I'd feel different. Stronger, maybe. Or at least... certain about something."
His jaw worked.
"But I just feel tired."
Selina remained silent, patient as moonlight.
Cel's fingers loosened slightly against his arms. His shoulders dropped.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this," he said finally, voice quiet.
Selina's hands shifted slightly at her waist. "Perhaps that is something you must discover on your own, Chosen One."
"Maybe." He paused. "Or maybe there was no lesson. Maybe it was just pain for pain's sake."
"Do you believe that?" Her serene smile widened.
The question hung in the air between them.
Cel didn't answer immediately. The mist curled between them, patient as Selina herself.
"...No," he admitted quietly. "I don't."
Because if he did - if he truly believed his suffering meant nothing - then what was the point of surviving it?
His gaze lifted to the moon hanging full and radiant above them. Its pale light washed over everything, gentle and honest.
"I'm still angry," he said, and the words came easier than expected. "At my family. At the cultists. At everyone who saw what was happening and looked away."
Selina remained perfectly still, listening.
"But I'm here." His voice steadied. "I survived. And that has to mean something."
"It does," Selina said softly. "More than you may yet realize."
Cel's gaze found one of the flowers growing from a crack in the stone. Small. Delicate. The kind of thing that should never survive in a place like this.
But it did anyway.
"What happens now?" he asked.
Selina's lips curved - barely perceptible, but genuine.
"Now, Chosen One, you receive what you have earned."
She gestured toward the moon.
"The Moon Goddess's blessing."