Upon reaching the fourth floor, Kaelis steps cautiously into a realm that does not seem made for human presence.
Beneath his boots, the ground is not stone nor earth, but glass — clear as water, thin as ice. With each step, the surface crackles under his weight, delicate fractures spiraling outward in quiet protests. The sound it makes is haunting, like the tolling of distant, broken bells — the mournful chime of a forgotten ritual, as if the place itself were grieving.
The air is dense, cloying with humidity, and strangely sweet. Not the sweetness of fruit or honey, but the intoxicating perfume of unfamiliar flowers — floral notes that twist and curl through the air like invisible vines. The scent is almost overwhelming, evoking both beauty and unease. These are not flowers born of soil and sun, but of magic and sorrow. Flowers from no earthly garden.
Above him, the sky has been replaced by a dome of milky crystal. It diffuses the light into a perpetual twilight — not bright, not dim. A golden-pale dawn that never grows into morning, never dims into dusk. The light is eternal, and because of that, deeply unnatural.
Surrounding him is a forest — but not of wood and leaf.
A glass forest rises in silence.
The trees stand tall and eerily still, their trunks smooth and pale, thinner than bone and as lustrous as carved ivory. Their leaves are delicate shards, translucent as dragonfly wings, suspended from branches that look ready to shatter at the slightest touch. When the faint wind stirs, the trees chime in response — each one giving off a different note, together forming a melody so sad and ethereal it seems to echo from another world.
It is a symphony of sorrow. A lullaby sung by the dead.
Everything in that place feels enchanted — as if created by the memory of a god who had once loved beauty but had long since gone mad. And yet, despite the wonder, Kaelis cannot shake the feeling that the entire forest is moments away from collapse. That one wrong step, one careless breath, might shatter everything around him into glittering ruin.
He moves forward, step by step, reverent and alert. Every movement is deliberate. Every breath measured. He is not just walking through a forest — he is walking through a cathedral of glass, where even thought must tread lightly.
At last, Kaelis reaches a clearing at the center of the crystalline jungle. Here, the light concentrates, pouring down from the milky sky above like a heavenly spotlight. The glass beneath his feet gleams with unnatural brilliance — the stage of a divine tragedy.
And at the center of that luminous space, he sees him.
A young boy.
Suspended in the air, held aloft by vines and roots of glass, like an offering to a god long dead.
His arms are spread open, as if embracing the world or surrendering to it. His legs are bound in intricate patterns by translucent branches that have grown around him like a cocoon. His chest rises and falls in slow, shallow breaths. His face is calm — heartbreakingly serene — but his eyes… they are open, and from them fall endless tears. Silent. Unstopping. As if he is weeping for something he can no longer name.
He does not blink. He does not flinch. He floats in the embrace of the glass, dreaming or imprisoned in a nightmare frozen in time.
The roots that hold him pulse faintly, as if they are alive. As if they breathe. Thorns of the same translucent material pierce his skin — but from those wounds bloom glass flowers, impossibly beautiful. Their petals glisten like starlight, fed by pain.
A cruel womb.
A monument to suffering disguised as art.
Kaelis approaches, heart heavy with instinctive understanding. This boy was not simply trapped — he had been offered up, consumed, and then discarded.
And to move forward... Kaelis knows, with a weight in his soul, he must confront him.
Then the boy speaks.
His voice is soft — impossibly gentle, too soft for a place that carries so much anguish. It drifts like a breeze through broken bells.
"They used me..." he says, as if reciting a memory that no longer wounds, only echoes. "They loved me while I was useful… Then they locked me here, in this prison of glass. Left me to rot in beauty. To be forgotten forever…"
Kaelis stands before him, uncertain.
His hands still bear the wounds of the previous trials. His mind is bruised, fractured by what he has seen, but it remains focused — a blade sharpened by sorrow.
The boy's eyes — ancient, endless, grieving — meet his with quiet hope.
"Please," he whispers, "free me."
Silence swells between them.
Kaelis feels the weight of the moment like a sword over his neck. Is this the test? A trap disguised as mercy? Or a plea that only the brave dare answer?
He hesitates, caught in the balance between instinct and compassion. His thoughts churn, wary of deceit — and yet, there is something in the boy's voice. A truth too painful to be false.
"If I free you," Kaelis asks, voice low, "what will happen to me?"
The boy smiles, but the smile is bitter, carved from old wounds.
"Pain," he answers simply. "You will feel the pain of understanding. The pain of existence. Of love. Of suffering. Of sacrifice."
He breathes.
"But you will also gain something the powerful always lose along the way… Empathy."
Kaelis lowers his gaze to his hands — battered, bloodied, trembling.
He had suffered so much already. He had lost so much.
And yet...
He kneels.
And begins.
His fingers find the first root — cold, sharp, unforgiving. He tears at it with his bare hands. It slices his skin, drawing blood that trickles down his wrists and into the cracks of the glass floor. Every thorn he pulls out digs deeper into him first. Every vine he severs hums with resistance, like it's mourning the separation.
The pain is immediate. But it's not just physical. No — it goes deeper.
With each broken root, a wave of emotion surges into him: shame, abandonment, loneliness so vast it stretches across lifetimes. He feels the boy's despair — as if it were his own. The humiliation of being cast aside after devotion. The aching silence of being erased from memory. The bitter truth of being worshiped, and then forgotten.
He bleeds. But not only from his hands.
He bleeds from the soul.
As if each glass root he cuts is tethered to something within himself.
And maybe… it is.
Finally, the last branch snaps.
The boy's body, freed from its crystalline prison, begins to fall.
Kaelis moves instinctively, catching him before he hits the ground. The boy is light — impossibly so. As if made of breath and memory. His warmth is fleeting. His weight barely felt.
The boy opens his eyes one last time and speaks.
"Thank you for not seeing me the way they did."
"Thank you for remembering I existed…"
"And forgive me… for the suffering still to come…"
And then, gently, beautifully — he dissolves.
His body becomes light, petals of glass that shimmer in the soft dawn light, caught by a wind that does not blow. They spiral upward, dancing like lost prayers.
And vanish.
No body. No trace. Only silence.
The existence of the former chosen one fades like a sigh.
The glass beneath Kaelis's feet groans — cracks spider across its surface — but it holds. Barely.
Kaelis rises slowly, breathing heavily, pain etched across his face, but his gaze steady. He turns toward the door waiting at the far edge of the clearing. Its outline pulses, inviting. Daring.
He walks to it without looking back.
And climbs.
But something within him has changed.
Not broken. Not weakened.
Something has been planted there. Something fragile — but alive.
Not a curse. Not a burden.
But a seed.
Not of strength.
But of something rarer.
Something sacred.
Compassion.