Second Genesis

"What did you do to him?!" Apollo growled, the aggression in his eyes making it obvious that he had been waiting for an excuse to target Grey.

To be fair to the idiot whose brain functioned like it was leaking out of his ears, it definitely looked like Grey had done something to Xerchen. The two of them had shaken hands, Xerchen had suddenly gone rigid and started staring at the world like ghosts were crawling out of the ground, and then his aura had exploded several times over.

Even the people who didn’t already think Grey was some walking disaster were looking at him warily now, because Xerchen had just put his own grievance aside for the sake of everyone here, and if Grey had attacked him anyway after the bastard single-handedly carried them through the last round, there was a pretty good chance the entire group would turn on him.

That didn’t mean Apollo wasn’t obviously trying to take advantage of the situation, though. Grey could practically see the little gears grinding in his head, desperately hoping this was finally the moment everyone realized Grey was the villain Apollo had definitely been calling him in whatever little diary he cried into at night.

Luckily, Grey didn’t have to answer.

Xerchen regained his focus and then slowly looked down at his hands.

His eyes were wide, and he flexed his fingers again and again like he was trying to confirm they still belonged to him. The lingering confusion he had always carried, the vague sense that pieces of his body and Frame didn’t quite fit together properly, had vanished, and in its place came something so clear that his mind almost felt overwhelmed from the rush of it.

Then his Abilities started sprinting forward.

The aura around him surged, his black-hole-like Resonant Frame deepening with every breath, and Grey’s eyes narrowed as he felt Xerchen approach the edge of something.

’Command Class.’

Xerchen was about to break through.

BOOM.

A pressure descended from above.

Xerchen’s face paled and his back bent slightly beneath the force as a series of complex golden glyphs appeared around his body. They rotated in overlapping rings, each one locking into the next until his rising aura was suppressed completely.

"Those beyond the Vanguard Class are not permitted to step foot within these hallowed grounds," the halo’s voice echoed. "All breakthroughs and rewards will be delayed until the conclusion of the trial."

Grey’s lips twitched.

’Well, at least the fucker doesn’t get everything at once.’

Before anyone could react further, another circle of light vanished.

The next group was thrown to the Demons.

Maybe Xerchen’s performance had made everyone complacent, because the people standing inside that Region moved with confidence when their enemies appeared. They spread out, weapons formed in their hands, and one of them even smiled like they had already figured out the trick.

That smile lasted less than a second.

The first Demon punched through a man’s chest before he could finish raising his weapon. Its hand came out the other side holding something Grey was pretty sure used to be part of a rib cage, and before the corpse even hit the ground, two more Demons had already used the opening.

A woman’s head disappeared beneath a pair of palms.

BANG.

Her skull burst like fruit.

The rest panicked.

That was all the Demons needed.

Their mesh tightened instantly, three rushing left while two flowed right, every attack feeding into another until the group was drowning beneath a tide of limbs. One man tried to retreat and found a Demon already behind him, its claws digging through his back and ripping him open so violently that pieces of him slapped wetly across the stone.

Three exchanges.

That was all it took.

The final girl stumbled backward, her weapon slipping from blood-covered fingers. She couldn’t have been much older than Grey, maybe younger, and there was a look on her face that Grey recognized immediately.

She knew it was over.

The last Demon caught her around the waist with one enormous arm.

Her legs kicked once.

Its teeth sank into her neck. The sound was wet until it suddenly wasn’t. A crunching violence echoed through the silence.

Her eyes went wide, then dull.

The Demon held her there for several seconds, drinking while blood ran down its chest, and the confidence that had filled the arena after Xerchen’s victory vanished like it had never existed.

Nobody laughed now and nobody whispered about how easy the first battles had looked.

Grey slowly looked around.

That was when he noticed the empty circles again. More than half of them were empty.

At first, they had seemed irrelevant. Maybe some Empires hadn’t arrived yet, maybe some had chosen not to participate, maybe their Instances simply hadn’t opened.

But now the meaning was obvious.

The halo had prepared enough space for more than double the number of Regions currently present and yet those spots had gone entirely unused.

The people meant to stand in them were dead. No... they had been Culled.

Grey’s expression slowly hardened.

It didn’t matter if you were stronger than another Empire. It also didn’t matter if you ranked fifth, tenth, or twentieth among everyone gathered here.

There was some invisible line the angels had drawn. Cross it, and you continued. Fail to reach it and...

Grey looked at the girl’s corpse hanging from the Demon’s mouth.

... That was your reward.

To make it here, you only had to defeat one other group. You eliminate them and you go forward. That was what Grey had done while snowboarding down that mountain. So... it didn’t make any sense for so many spots to be empty unless this was the case.

The world flickered again.

Another bubble disappeared.

Grey’s gaze snapped toward it and the Elemental stood.

Veyrath rose from his rock without urgency, black armor swallowing every inch of his body except those burning red-gold eyes and hands. Flames shaped like footprints remained wherever he stepped, flickering for exactly three paces behind him before disappearing and leaving little piles of soot.

Grey’s pupils narrowed.

The stone itself was being burned away, eviscerated to nothing.

Veyrath stopped near the center of his Region.

A single Demon appeared across from him. Grey had already expected that. An equivalent number of Demons would appear given the number of participants.

And yet... his heart tightened.

This Demon was different.

It stood alone, but the pressure rolling from it made every other one Grey had seen feel like children. Even through the barrier surrounding their Region, Grey could feel the oppression winding tightly around his chest.

His eyes narrowed.

’What the fuck...’

Then the Demon smiled.

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