The next step came not with descent, but with weight.
Joe stood before a colossal gate embedded in a wall of twilight. The stone shimmered with colors that didn't exist, and around the arch, names were etched in spirals that twisted the eye if stared at too long. Some names glowed faintly. Others bled. One pulsed—the one Joe had chosen.
Veilborn.
As he reached out, the gate responded. His sixth eye opened again, not with pain, but with solemnity.
"You carry your name," the Warden said, standing just behind him. "That gives you shape. But not purpose."
"Then this trial is about purpose?" Joe asked.
"No," the Warden said. "This one is about cost."
The gate cracked.
A wind blew out—not air, but memory. It passed through Joe and stole a breath from him. Not physically. Deeper. A small piece of laughter he barely remembered from childhood. A sliver of music. A scent he once loved.
He staggered.
"This gate consumes," the Warden said. "Every truth you accept must be paid for with something forgotten."
Joe clenched his fist. "That's not fair."
"It is exact."
The gate opened.
Inside was a corridor of glass, lined with reflections—not of Joe's past, but his futures. Some golden, some monstrous. Some dead.
He walked forward.
Each step tore something small away—his sister's voice from a birthday long ago, a scar's meaning, the name of someone he once loved. In return, clarity.
One reflection stepped from the wall and spoke.
"You won't come back from this," it said.
"I don't want to," Joe replied.
At the center of the corridor, a throne waited. Not regal—raw, skeletal, made from old stone and shattered promises. Upon it sat a figure cloaked in shimmering white, face hidden.
Joe approached.
"You come bearing name," the figure said. "But names are keys. Do you accept what comes next?"
Joe hesitated.
Then nodded.
The figure raised its hand. The final seal on Joe's palm split open. The seventh eye.
Joe gasped.
The corridor exploded in light.
He saw the world beneath the world. The truth behind the fracture. The reason for the trials. The echo of something buried in him far older than he was.
And then he blacked out.
When he woke, he was alone, lying beneath a sky that wept stars.
The Warden was gone.
But a new mark had formed on his chest—above his heart.
A circle of flame.
End of Chapter 8.