There was no sound, no light, no life, just nothing. Nothing but an impenetrable darkness that had no end.
It seemed familiar at first, even calming, like it was the one place he was meant to belong. Empty, pure, untainted by things such as people and colour.
Here, direction offered nothing, and even the slightest movement felt impossible to him, as if the very idea of control had lost its anchor.
He could have scoffed at that sensation, and yet he no longer felt fear.
He felt at peace.
He was free... because in the trial, he had no body.
No eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no limbs to push him forward.
Formless, it was as though he were a cloud in the sky, unaware of what lay above or below.
But he was aware, and eventually, as time passed, even that feeling became obscure within the dark abyss.
And when it did, only a strange lucidity remained.
'Seven... Seven days,' that was all Oren had, all he had left.
'No, wait...! What time is it now!? How much time do I have left?' He didn't know.
He tried to look around, to move just a little, maybe come across a clock of some kind, but failed.
It was obvious that his longing had nothing to do with a clock, so searching for one would be pointless.
Still, he had expected more from the trial. It was his first one, yes, but why was it so empty?
As he thought this, a strange warmth flickered within him.
'It can't be. Am I really that dull... for my own trial to be nothing but a void?'
He laughed quietly in his mind.
He couldn't wrap his mind around it. Everything felt unnatural... fascinating.
He should have been worried, but all he felt was an insatiable curiosity.
It seemed all he had was his consciousness, but it also felt like it was a place meant for him, a place of the mind, a trial of thoughts.
A place where a single thought resembled a sputtering flame, battling the currents of a boundless ocean.
His very consciousness was small, fragile, like it was projected, cast like a shadow, and yet there was no light.
His vision blurred unexpectedly.
'How am I seeing with no eyes?'
Dumbfounded, he did not know how or why. Because Oren could not comprehend it.
Yet he suspected he remained chained by his own wants. His thoughts and emotions were what preserved him.
'What is happening?'
The void did not answer.
It did not even acknowledge the question.
With sight alone intact, he felt compelled to look around, because why would he be given sight and nothing else?
But Oren could not ignore it. He was enamoured by his surroundings, entranced. He could not simply look away, for wherever he looked, he would inevitably stare into the void.
And it would stare back.
And since his consciousness inside the trial seemed vulnerable, he felt no different from an ant about to be trampled beneath the feet of towering humans.
Despite this, if he had a face, a whimsical smile would have been there.
He could not take such a sacred thing for granted.
But to leave the trial, he also needed a body. Without a mental anchor, he felt an innate sense that he would drift apart.
'Will it work?'
He suddenly moved, startled thoughts blooming throughout his entranced mind.
But before they could scatter, he began gathering them, imagining limbs, not in flesh and skin, but as something shaped.
A form imposed that should have only worked in imagination, but in this place, he was no different from a flowing river of thoughts and ideas strung together.
The task of creating it was not difficult. It was no different than setting a goal, his own being not falling apart.
With this goal, he wanted to remain complete.
There was no resistance. He merely gathered himself together, creating an outline to hold his consciousness.
His feet and legs came first to ground himself, then arms to reach into the void, and finally a torso to keep them attached.
He remained headless, for creating a head was meaningless.
He already had sight.
Thinking of a body felt delusional, but the relief was certainly real.
'It did! Yes, heh... how wonderful.'
So that's what they meant by "pull yourself together."
Oren frowned.
Moving through this place felt strange, as if caught in the currents of a vast ocean, unable to swim despite knowing how.
He finally broke free from the sluggish currents and stepped forward, intrigue lingering in his mind only to find nothing waiting for him.
'Will my trial be peace... is that what I longed for? Or will it be something else?'
It could be anything. Anything he had ever desired across his lifetime as an Antherion.
Centuries of experience, lifetimes far beyond that of a mortal who dies within a hundred years.
And here, he could not deny his feelings.
'This desire...?'
'It can be anything, can't it.'
But as Oren thought that, a single word formed in his thoughts.
It slipped away for a moment, then returned, quietly intriguing him.
'Nirvana...'
'Does it exist? A place said to be as welcoming as the heavens themselves?'
Oren stepped forward again.
...Nirvana.
The word lingered in his mind.
'It does. It has to... it exists here, I just know it, and I will find it!'
The thought struck deeper, taking hold as everything else began to fade.
'I want it...'
'No...!'
The desire surged, overwhelming, leaving no room for fascination.
'I need it.'
The thoughts echoed in Oren's mind as he moved through the black expanse like a ghost.
Again and again, he moved relentlessly.
But it was not the surge of curiosity that carried Oren forward.
No, what pulled Oren forward was his desire.
His nirvana.
But with that deep, astounding desire, doubt was birthed. And a sudden wistfulness consumed his curiosity.
He was alone here. Would he always be so small? So tiny in comparison to the world?
'I am alone now... I am unworthy. My efforts here would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Will I really be capable of reaching nirvana alone?'
'Will I actually be able to become enlightened?'
Oren froze, then twisted his formless body toward where he had been standing a moment before.
Maybe it was only the feeling of absence swallowing whatever trace of Oren there was, yet he could have sworn he had felt something there. The uncomfortable feeling of something watching lingered.
To distract himself, he began counting his steps. It was the best way to keep clarity. That way, if hallucinations were to bombard Oren's mind, he would not be lost in them.
One step. Two steps. Four steps. Eight steps. Twelve steps. Twenty-two steps.
'Ahh, such a place worthy of beholding nirvana...'
Oren stopped.
Trying to bury the ominous feeling, he asked as though someone were there to answer.
'Am I worthy?'
He wasn't. He would never be.
Oren was weak, feeble, so indescribably alone.
He was human... no one.
He might as well have been a speck of light in an endless field of nothingness, unworthy of blazing past the darkness that consumed him.
'I am human. How can I possibly do anything worthy of enlightenment, of nirvana? How can I reach it? How can I do something as grand as passing the trial and flourishing in this cursed world?'
He asked himself... but in the next moment, he realised the way he sounded, how swayed he was by the words he had just thought.
'Something is wrong.'
I'm still too attached.
'What happened to becoming unattached?'
Oren had said to Sable that he had overcome his desires... was that a lie?
Upon recalling his last moments before the trial, a strange clarity returned to Oren. Though the desire to keep moving still tugged at his mind, it did not linger.
Instead, it was like guidance, an omen of destiny. Oren knew what he wanted... it was hard to determine if his desire was truly worthy of becoming his trial.
He had always wanted pea...
Nirvana after all.
And if every step carried Oren deeper into a place designed for him, then all he had to do was endure.
'But haven't we endured too much already?'
Oren continued walking, waiting for the trial to adapt to him.
To reveal what Oren was connected to.
That was only an assumption, though. At the moment, he felt somber, but at any moment, it could change.
Before Oren realised it, he had already reached forty-two steps. In a blur, he reached seventy-four.
'Or is it seventy-five?'
...'Seventy, maybe.'
With a sudden sorrow filling his thoughts, a question brewed in the core of Oren's mind.
'...'
But before the thought could form, he dismissed it, as always, yet this time the unspoken thought clung to him like something alive.
He looked up, then to the right.
After that moment, he noticed something.
There was nothing there. It was simply a matter of understanding.
There was no light, no distance.
Oren had no sense of direction.
For all Oren knew, he could have died already, and this was the afterlife.
Oren could have failed the trial.
'This is so... unfair...'
It was all too true. It was pitiful. He was pitiful... pathetic.
His gaze remained still. It was as though Oren had forgotten how to feel anything else.
'I will die here. I will die without knowing how long I endured this serene hell, how close I got to winning.'
Hopeless, Oren's thoughts began to blur.
'I am so sad... so pitiful. If I do not change quickly, the trial will condemn me. Nirvana will slip even further away. Everyone will turn from me. And I will not make it back before the end of the Sunwane... no, I must.
If I do not... I will die here!'
With those gloomy thoughts, Oren moved again.
But what moved him was not sadness.
It was desire, a longing that chained him with regret, a yearning that felt like his own, and yet Oren wondered whether it truly belonged to him.
As he pressed onwards, the void remained empty.
But something... in the passing of an instant had changed.
Oren stepped forward slowly, his apparition moving again and again, swaying as though he were lost in a daze.
Yet with every step, hope filled his mind with piercing vitality, and his determination grew stronger, becoming an unrelenting force that pulled him forward.
For in the distance, something was growing, just like Oren's own desire: a boundless light, a flame, and yet it was something far more unsettling.
He did not know what it was or how it came to be. It might have been there since the beginning of the trial.
All he knew was that it was warping the void whilst illuminating it.
And within that impossible radiance, Oren felt it.
As though his own desire had been answered by something that should not have been there at all.