Ryu's pulse hammered in his throat as he pushed himself up from the cold church floor. The sound of the rift's creation had been deafening - a thunderous tear in reality itself - yet none of the other orphans stirred. That realization sent a trickle of unease down his spine, but it was quickly drowned out by the roaring tide of anticipation. This was his chance. His only chance.
Moving with practiced silence, Ryu slipped through the dormitory, his bare feet making no sound on the worn wooden planks. The church doors groaned slightly as he pushed them open, the night air biting at his exposed skin. Before him, the rift pulsed with unnatural energy, its edges crackling with ruby-blue electricity that sent stray sparks dancing across the cobblestones.
The portal itself was unlike anything Ryu had heard described in the tavern tales. While most rifts were said to glow with elemental hues - fiery reds or watery blues - this one was pure darkness, a void given form. The black mist swirling within seemed to absorb the very light around it, creating a sphere of unnatural shadow.
Ryu's hands trembled, but not from fear. Seven years of punching that damned tree. Seven years of swallowing his pride. Seven years of waiting for this exact moment. He raised his hand, watching as the dark mist curled around his fingers like a living thing. The moment his skin made contact, a jolt of energy raced up his arm - not painful, but profoundly wrong, like touching something that shouldn't exist.
With a final glance back at the only home he'd ever known, Ryu stepped forward.
The transition was instantaneous. One moment he stood in Santaf's church square, the next he was... nowhere. An endless void pressed in from all sides, so complete that Ryu couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed. His body felt impossibly heavy, as if the darkness itself was trying to crush him into nothingness.
Then came the voice.
"Hello there, little thief."
The words slithered through Ryu's mind rather than his ears, dripping with amusement and something darker - a predator's glee. Ryu spun, fists raised, but there was nothing to fight. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
"You do not take power," it continued, the words vibrating through Ryu's bones. "You bargain for it."
Ryu forced his breathing to steady. This was it - the Rift Master the stories spoke of. "Fine," he ground out. "Name your price."
Laughter echoed through the void, sending shivers down Ryu's spine. "We shall see if you even have the right to wield my power."
The darkness began to shift, swirling like ink in water. As it receded, the voice delivered its final warning: "If you pass my trial, you will gain power beyond anything you could imagine. If you fail..." The words hung in the air like a executioner's axe. "I shall have your life."
Then the world reformed around him.
Ryu gasped as solid ground materialized beneath his feet. He stood in a forest, but like no forest from his world. The ground was a deep, unnatural purple, covered in bioluminescent flowers that pulsed with faint light. Towering trees with black bark and violet leaves stretched toward a sky devoid of sun or stars - just an eternal twilight frozen at the edge of night.
The air was bitterly cold, carrying a metallic tang that set Ryu's teeth on edge. He rubbed his arms, his breath misting before him. "Alright," he muttered. "Trial. Right."
He waited, expecting some grand announcement, some impossible challenge to present itself. But as minutes stretched into half an hour, nothing happened. The alien forest remained still, silent except for the occasional rustle of leaves in a wind Ryu couldn't feel.
"Bastard!" Ryu finally shouted, his voice swallowed by the oppressive atmosphere. "If you want me to do a trial, at least tell me what it is!"
Only silence answered.
Gritting his teeth, Ryu began walking east - chosen at random, but direction was better than standing still. As he moved, he took stock of his surroundings. The glowing flowers provided just enough light to navigate by, their illumination revealing twisted roots and strange, vein-like vines that crept along the ground. The trees seemed to watch him pass, their gnarled branches reaching like skeletal fingers.
After what felt like hours (though the unchanging sky made time impossible to gauge), a sound cut through the silence - a scream, raw with terror.
Ryu's body reacted before his mind could process, years of street survival sending him diving behind the nearest tree. Peering around the trunk, his blood turned to ice.
The clearing ahead was a slaughterhouse.
Bodies - human bodies - lay scattered like broken dolls. One knight had been cleaved clean in half, his entrails spilling across the violet grass in a grotesque parody of the glowing vines. Another's limbs had been torn off with such force that one arm still twitched several feet from its torso.
But worst of all was the survivor.
A man in shattered armor dragged himself forward with his one remaining arm, his legs ending in ragged stumps just below the hips. His face was a mask of blood and madness, his lips moving in a continuous whisper: "Save me... please... save me..."
Ryu's hand twitched toward the dying man, but before he could move, the ground trembled.
Something was coming.
The beast that stepped into the clearing defied description. Seven meters tall at least, its body was a nightmare collage of muscle and jagged bone plates. Charred black skin stretched taut over a frame that seemed designed for maximum terror - its head was kind of like a boars but with two horns and it stood on two feet, it had two arms one of them had three claws while the other holding an axe.
It moved with eerie grace for something so massive, collecting the corpses with disturbing care. Ryu watched in horrified fascination as the creature lifted each body, examining them almost... thoughtfully... before stuffing them into a sack made of stitched-together human skin.
The survivor's whimpers grew more frantic as the beast approached. "No no no please no-"
The monster paused. Its massive head tilted. Then, with deliberate slowness, it turned toward Ryu's hiding place.
Ryu stopped breathing.
The creature's lips peeled back in a grin that split its face nearly in half, revealing row upon row of needle-like teeth. It took one step toward Ryu's tree. Then another.
Somewhere in the back of Ryu's mind, a realization clicked:
This wasn't just a monster.
This was the trial.
And it had just found him.