I wasn't ready.
But I had never been ready, not really. Not when I died. Not when I woke up in this cursed world. Not when I stood in front of a mirror and saw a face that wasn't mine—but now was.
The moment the mirror shattered, the cathedral behind me crumbled into dust. The world shifted beneath my feet, turning the misty village into a hollow void.
And in that void, the ground rebuilt itself—stone by stone, until I stood atop a wide, circular platform suspended in a sea of red fog.
Runes spiraled outward beneath my boots.
And the figure at the edge of the arena finally moved.
It was tall.
Humanoid in shape, but wrapped in strips of parchment—each strip inked with phrases I couldn't read. Its face was wrapped too, save for a slit of burning light where its eyes should've been.
In one hand, it held a broken sword.
In the other—a mirror shard.
I didn't need a narrator to explain what this was.
This was my Trial.
The first Eclipse.
The Trial of Pattern.
