The Echoframe pulsed.
[Final Trial: Survivor. Withstand the transformation. Adapt, or fade in your new universe.]
A new shudder passed through the void—like the wind moving shards in the dark, the world yawning open, demanding he become something new or be lost forever. The message weighed on him, heavier than all his wounds.
Noctis breathed, knowing full well that whatever came next would demand every shard, every fragment of his strength, even if he could never make himself whole again.
Noctis soared, weightless, through the blackened sky of the void. The air around him shimmered with cold energy, silent and infinite. He barely registered the freedom—there was no wind, only the emptiness beneath his flight, the unseen boundaries between worlds pressing in. Echoframe pulsed in his veins, a warning he could not ignore.
Without mercy, the pain struck.
First, his fingertips—bruised, battered by the trials—split apart with searing heat. Cracks spread up his arms, veins of fire weaving into bone. His chest tightened, ribs bending with every pulse, breath scraping inside him like razors. Noctis screamed, the sound devoured by the void. Each muscle, tendon, organ twisted, tore, shredding him piece by piece, memory by memory.
He struggled to hold himself together. For an instant, images flashed: lost faces, the ghosts of betrayal, the echo of hunger, each one stinging worse than flesh breaking. But Noctis resisted. His mind clawed at the agony—refusing oblivion, refusing surrender.
The pain intensified. Legs buckled mid-flight, bones liquefied, the world spun in colors only agony could invent. Every particle of him dissolved, yet he gripped the remnants of his self. His voice, hollow with torment, whispered into nothing: "I won't break. Not again."
A silent shudder wracked his form, the agony so deep it seemed no more human than ancient stone. Still—Noctis endured. The darkness pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Piece by piece, his body began to reconstruct, new and burning and raw, as if he was being born again from the void. He felt each cell, every nerve, forging itself anew—the price for surviving the final trial.
Noctis opened his eyes. Shadows welded themselves into unfamiliar shapes overhead—walls that may have been glass, stone, or nothing at all. The air was perfectly still, without warmth, without time, it was the void transformed as he have.
His first thought: emptiness.
His second: nothing at all.
As Noctis struggled to move, a flicker sliced the silence—Echoframe materialized before him, crystalline and precise, voice stripped of comfort.
ECHOFARME SYSTEM NOTICE:
"Assessment complete. You have lost your humanity, all feelings, all memories. To regain what was yours, fulfill all restoration conditions."
Current status: UNKNOWN.
Emotional feedback: irrelevant.
Noctis stared, mind numb, heart absent. He tried to focus—weren't memories supposed to hurt? Instead, only blankness answered.
He blinked, reading the emptiness on the Echoframe's interface. Every listed condition was marked UNKNOWN, a mocking parade of unanswered questions.
Just once, some flicker of his old self tried for a response, the hint of humor a ghost in the void:
"Great. Win the mystery prize with no clues and no feelings. Echoframe, next time, please include a cheat code."
A clinical chime registered the words.
"Sarcasm detected. Relevance: minimal."
Noctis felt nothing, yet some stubborn, lost piece of him whispered: If he survived hell to get here, he could claw his way out—even if the path was darkness, even if his self was erased.
And so Noctis began again, stripped to nothing, facing a world without meaning—until he found what could make him whole.
Noctis sat in the silent void and summoned his Echoframe interface, sights blurred and thoughts chillingly clear. The echoframe shimmered before him, awaiting command.
The Echoframe shivers into existence before your eyes—a rush of cool, colorless light.
You command it—no emotion, just the need for information.
The interface flickers and displays your reality:
ECHOFARME DATA
User: NoctisStatus:
Humanity: Lost
Feeling: None
Memory: FragmentedInventory:Eclipsed Relic (Translocar)Function: UnknownKey: LostNotes: "Rumored gateway to infinite universes. Power: immeasurable. Price: unknown."
Abilities:
Enhanced Physical Resilience
You've survived the unspeakable. What once broke your body now only slows you—injuries knit together, pain registers distantly, a fact instead of a warning.Adaptive Reflexes
Disaster never surprises you. Your body moves before your thoughts catch up, dodging, bracing, shifting—survival is automatic, almost mechanical.Survival Analysis (Logic Module)
Dangers light up in your mind like arrows. Your thoughts build structures from shadows, predicting attacks, finding exits, calculating the odds. Everything is stripped to its core: survive, adapt, move.Emotional Null Field
There's nothing to feel—not fear, not desperation, not hope. You solve, you execute, you continue.Inventory Integration
Objects in your hands become extensions of yourself, instantaneously cataloged, understood—except the Eclipsed Relic. It resists all attempts at unlocking.Memory Recall (Fragmented)
Ghost-memories sometimes flicker: a moment of safety, a voice in the darkness, an old tactic from forgotten days. They serve only purpose, never comfort.
You read. You register. This is who you are now—a name, a relic out of reach, abilities carved by countless, merciless trials.
In the silent void, knowledge is all you have—and that must be enough.
A subtle chime fractures the silence; text flickers across the Echoframe, bright and sharp as a blade in darkness:
DESTINATION REACHED.
You stand—if standing means anything here. The void stretches in every direction, infinite and formless, no border, no exit, just the pull of unknown distance.
You tell the Echoframe: "Show me the way out."
A pause. Then, the system's voice, cool and unwavering:
"This void is an extension of your imagination and dreams. Boundaries are shaped by your mind's perception."
You feel nothing but a faint pulse—a logical curiosity, an urge to test this claim. The endless black shifts, just at the edges; shadows ripple, a shape half-remembered, slips away before you focus.
"Imagination governs possibility," Echoframe says. "Constrain yourself, and the void remains your prison. Imagine escape, and the paths may appear."
You try to picture a door, a dawn, anything but this expanse of emptiness. The void resists—your thoughts are slick, ungraspable without emotion or memory to anchor desire.
Still, you persist. You imagine the surface of cracked stone, burning light behind an opening. The vision flickers—instantly, the air grows dense, the nothingness pressing harder, then thinning, a faint seam appearing in the darkness directly ahead.
"Progress detected," says Echoframe. "Imagination can shape reality. Emotion accelerates change. Restoration remains incomplete."
You take a step forward, more out of logic than hope, watching as the seam splinters further—proof that the rules have shifted.
Somewhere, deep within the void, possibility has been awakened.
You force the void to yield, sketching your escape with the remnants of will. The door manifests—an outline burning blue, blinding to the shadow behind.
You step through.
The atmosphere shifts. Logic cracks—and the world before you is rewritten.
You stand atop a jagged mountain, wind brushing against your skin like cool silk. The sky above is an endless purple, saturated and deep, edged with streaks of raw turquoise lightning. Where the sun should hang, there is a sphere of pure white light—so brilliant it casts shadows in reverse.
Spread below is a vast lake—its surface rippling with liquid crimson, reflecting the sky in shades that never existed. It is water, but it glows like blood, light shimmering up in patterns that make no sense.
The forest beyond twists upward—trees not green but pale silver, leaves flickering through every shade of violet and gold. Every trunk is alive, pulsing and spiraling as if dreaming all around you.
Creatures fly overhead—things with shimmering glass wings and tails of translucent flame. They spiral in impossible shapes, singing melodies that fold in and out of hearing, both joyful and strange.
You stand on the edge of wild beauty. Nothing here fits the world you remember—this is a landscape born of dreams and imagination, a place where logic is not king.
But inside, you remain the same: empty, unmoved, cataloguing every color, every impossibility with cold precision.
You glance once, registering the purple sky, the white sun, the red water, and the twisted forest—then turn away, untouched by wonder.
You walk into a world that could never be, alone with your logic and absence.