It began with light.
Not the golden warmth of dawn or the gentle blaze of midday—
but a storm of celestial fire, descending from above with such magnificence that no one on land dared blink.
People all across the world held its breath.
Across cities, mountain temples, nomadic plains, and distant isles, the suns aligned—three halos nesting within one another, like a divine eye awakening. And from that blazing trinity, the heavens detonated into a storm of sparks.
No wizard's artifice, no man-made fireworks could match this. These were not fireworks of powder and noise.
These were Sparks of Life.
They poured down like comet rain, billions of them, each spark drawn to a single soul—each soul clutching one thing with trembling hands:
A tome. A mortal's expression of truth.
From afar, one could see it clearly: every youth caught in that heavenly downpour was of the same age—eighteen.
Boys with defiant eyes. Girls with dreaming hearts.
Chosen.
Judged.
Ignited.
The land pulsed with a strange reverence. The earth did not tremble, but it listened.
Older generation of people who had once undergone the same ritual in their youth stood in silence, watching the event unfolding once more with bated breaths. Reminiscent, concerned, aloof- variety of expressions mixed, all directed towards one scene - Heavenly Trials.
For one thing had not changed since the beginning:
The Heavenly Trial had come, as usual.
Those who succeeded today would soar beyond the clouds.
Those who failed would be forgotten, swept into the ash of history.
---
Even beneath the crust of the earth, where light was outlawed and time itself dragged like chains—
the Heavens reached.
Abyss Prison, the monochrome world of unbroken routine and inescapable silence, stirred.
Deep within its cold, perfect corridors, in the bleakest quadrant—Cell K6—a spark fell.
Not a soft spark. Not a gentle ember.
It was a pillar of brilliance, a vertical flame cutting through gloom like a sword made of sunrise.
The light crashed into the cell, flooding the walls carved in madness and meaning.
It caressed the blood-written script.
It warmed the cracked floor.
It painted shadows that hadn't danced in decades.
In that moment, every prisoner in Cell K6 stopped breathing—not out of fear, but out of something far stranger.
The Warden, the artificial entity who ruled the Abyss like an emotionless ghost, materialized nearby. Its usual routine—impeccable, precise, machine-like—faltered for the first time in an age. Sensors surged. Alerts rang. Yet no interference code could be triggered.
The Warden's logic core analyzed the signal:
Heavenly Trial: Confirmed. Classification: Divine Protocol.
In that instant, even the Warden—the eternal observer—did not interfere.
It did the only thing it could.
It began recording.
Every flicker, every breath, every heartbeat within Cell K6—archived with a meticulousness bordering on desperation.
And yet, within its metallic algorithms, a silent truth echoed:
This recording will never capture the essence of what is unfolding.
The light is not data. The trial is not pattern.
This... is beyond comprehension.
---
The Heavenly Trial had descended.
Upon empires.
Upon students.
Upon prisoners.
Upon the one who rewrites his fate in blood.
And the question, ancient and unchanging, once again stirred in the hearts of mortals:
"What is your Desire?"
The first question.
The first weight.
And the trial had only just begun.
---
The sky had exploded in fire.
But in the mind of Kael, the world had gone dark.
Not the suffocating dark of fear—
but an endless black. A void of still water and quiet sky.
No wind. No heartbeat. No edge to grasp.
Just an ocean beneath him and a sky above, both swallowing infinity.
He floated.
Or perhaps, he was submerged. It was impossible to tell.
Then, without warning, the sun appeared.
Not gradually, not gently. It ignited into being—
a vast, unknowable orb that burned with no flame and shone with no shadow.
Kael could not look away.
Whether by awe or by decree, his eyes—his very soul—were fixed upon it.
It was not light.
It was judgment.
And from that celestial furnace came no thunder, no sermon—
but a single question, one so ancient it carried the weight of epochs.
"WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?"
The words did not echo in the void.
They bloomed within his heart, like fire through dry grass.
Kael gasped.
Thousands of thoughts detonated within his mind—
Memories. Ambitions. Doubts. Shame. Love. Loss.
Each one surged like waves, clashing and swallowing the other.
He tried to speak.
He tried to think.
But the moment he formed a coherent answer, it dissolved—
Too shallow.
Too false.
Too proud.
Too broken.
The Heavens did not rush.
They watched.
Patient, eternal, unblinking.
Time was meaningless to them.
Only truth mattered.
---
Elsewhere: Ayna
Not far from Kael, across the class, under the same triple-haloed sky—
Ayna stood still as a statue, her book clenched tight to her chest,
yet her spirit was far from the academy's grounds.
She too stood in that vast black space.
Sea and sky. Endless and colourless.
And then—sun. Ignited from a spark into her soul.
Her breath caught in her throat.
It was not warmth she felt, nor terror.
It was the gravity of being seen by something that could not be lied to.
She felt as if she were made of glass. Every fragment of her life laid bare.
The countless roles she'd played,
the masks she wore even when alone,
the subtle lies she'd told herself to survive.
All meaningless under that gaze.
Then came the question:
"WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?"
Her knees gave way.
The question did not strike her ears, it pierced her essence.
Desire?
She had always known what she wanted. Hadn't she?
To protect.
To grow strong.
To never be helpless again.
But when she reached for those answers, her hands came up empty.
Because those were surface desires—sculpted by fear, shaped by the past.
The Heavens wanted deeper.
She clutched her chest, where her heart seemed to scream without words.
The Heavens did not press.
But neither did they relent.
The trial had begun.
---
And in the Depths of the Abyss
Far below, beneath cities and sacred peaks, buried in silence and steel—
Neo sat within the cold walls of Cell K6.
He hadn't stirred in days after completing his Heavenly Tome.
But now—light.
A single spark had brought illumination.
Now the sun of judgment had followed it in.
Endless, Colourless, Black World. His sea of consciousness, or so it was termed by scholars. There on a Obsidian Throne, sat Neo. His eyes Crimson, a mad grin on his face. Behind him, another identical figure knelt, bound in shattered chains.
And then- a spark ignited into a brilliance comparable to Sun.
It did not care for his chains.
It did not recognize the walls of his prison.
It Questioned, without exception.
"WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?"
The kneeling figure trembled and the figure seated on the Obsidian Throne laughed. The once buried ambition, dreams that seemed like nightmares instead - all of it resurfaced bit by bit under the call of Heavens.
---
Across the world, every youth, every dreamer, every forgotten soul—
now stood under the watch of the sun, the eye of the Heavens.
And the first question would burn them clean.
One question.
Billions of lives.
One trial.
The next question, when it came, would be harder still.
---