In the Trial of Longing, there was no sound, no light, no life. Even feeling itself was obscure, indistinct within the dark abyss.
Oren had no body. No eyes to see. No ears to hear. No limbs to move.
Yet somehow, he remained aware.
Seven days… seven days, that was all Oren had.
All he had left. Yet, somehow, the sense of time no longer held meaning.
Direction offered nothing, and even the slightest movement felt impossible, as if the very idea of a body had lost its anchor.
But Oren did not need eyes to know there was nothing else… no one else.
Only a reflectionless void that held no hope, desire, or feeling.
A place where a single thought was as though a sputtering flame, battling the currents of a boundless ocean.
His vision blurred, as though he were not seeing with his eyes, but with a sense he had never used before. He did not know how, or why. He did not even need to know.
Because Oren could not comprehend it.
He was formless, relentless, and disturbing. Yet he remained chained by his own wants.
'What is happening? …Where am I? Who am—'
The void did not answer. It did not even acknowledge the question.
But Oren could not ignore it, as though it had him as much as he had it.
He was enamoured by it, entranced by it. He could not simply look away, for wherever he looked, he would inevitably stare into the void.
The place, whatever it was, was like the end, peaceful and yet horrifying…
In front of such a thing, his consciousness was scarce, like an ant about to be trampled beneath the feet of towering humans.
A strange warmth flickered within him at the thought.
'Am I really that dull… for my own trial to be nothing but a void?'*
He laughed quietly in his mind.
Yet the fear Oren felt was as peculiar as the void itself.
It felt unnatural… fascinating.
'This is wrong!'
He thought this, but if he had a face, a whimsical smile would have been there. He felt different, almost transformed, like he had undergone some change.
Even his senses no longer made sense here, no smell, taste, sound or touch, only his thoughts remained.
With sight alone intact, he felt compelled to look around, because why would he be given sight and nothing else?
He could not take such a sacred thing for granted.
He needed it to leave the trial, but he also needed a body. A figure to contain what he was, like a balloon holding in air.
He felt an innate feeling that he would drift apart without a mental anchor.
'Will it work?'
He suddenly moved, startled thoughts blooming around 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 pond of thoughts and ideas strung together.
This was the purest of Oren's imagination, enough to force his mind into shape. An outline to hold his vast consciousness together… a vessel.
His feet and legs came first, then his torso and arms, finally his face.
Then a sudden ease cleansed his mind. 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.
Oren wanted many things before. Countless things.
He had once longed, mourned, he had yearned, but even then they were controlled within the mind of an Antherion.
The only one that was out of his control was his desire for peace.
For rest… an eternal bliss.
The pull Oren felt was just like that urge, dominant and restless like the waves of an indomitable storm. Yet it also deeply troubled him, because Oren did not know what it was.
Despite the circumstances of his current situation, Oren was undoubtedly more mature than he was as an Antherion, here he could not deny his feelings.
'This desire…!?'
'I really can be anything, can't it.'
But even as Oren thought that, his attention had already narrowed. A single word almost formed in his thoughts. It slipped away for a moment, then returned, quietly intriguing him.
'Nirvana.'
What would have been his nebulous golden eyes gleamed faintly.
'Does it exist? A place said to be as welcoming and holy as the heavens themselves?'
Oren stepped forward again.
…Nirvana.
The word lingered in his mind.
'It does. It has to… it exists here.'
'I will find it!'
The thought struck deeper, taking hold as everything else began to fade.
'I want it—'
'No…! I need it!'
The desire surged, overwhelming, leaving no room for fascination.
'I want it so badly.'
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 insignificant. My efforts 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 to where Oren had been standing a moment before. Oren had sworn Oren had felt something there.
Maybe it was the feeling of absence, swallowing whatever trace of Oren there was. 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 a hallucination were to bombard Oren's mind, he would not be lost in them.
One step. Four steps. Eight steps. Twelve steps. Twenty-two steps.
'Ahh, such a place worthy to behold nirvana…'
Oren stopped.
Trying to bury the ominous feeling, he asked as though someone were there to answer.
'But am I worthy?'
He wasn't, he would never be, he was weak, feeble. So indescribably alone.
He was human... Oren was 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 significant? How can I reach nirvana? How can I do something as grand as to pass the trial and flourish in this brutal world?'
Oren asked himself... but even he could not answer in that darkness.
Oren shook his head.
'Something is wrong.'
These thoughts were simply incorrect.
Why were they so different? They were attached.
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, but 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 world to adapt to Oren. 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, but 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, so this was a matter of understanding.
There was no light, no distance.
Oren had no sense of direction.
He held no feeling either.
For all Oren knew, he could have died already and this was the afterlife.
Oren could have failed the trial.
'Fail, I'm going to fail. I cannot win this. 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, shedding like tears, tears significant enough to dismantle his imaginary form.
'I am so sad… so pitiful. If I do not change quickly, the trial will condemn me. Nirvana will slip 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 the 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 descended into the depths, the void remained empty.
But something… in the passing of an instant had changed.
Oren stepped again and again, his ethereal eyes shone faintly as a sudden hope filled his mind with piercing vitality.
For in the distance something was growing, just like Oren's own desire, a boundless light, not as fire but as something far more unsettling.
He did not know what it was, but it was not a flame that burned. It was bending the void whilst illuminating it, as if even nothingness hesitated to exist in its presence.
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.