Jack was contemplating about his current state. A truly Transcendent Human. One hovering between mortality and immortality.
Then... Suddenly... everything dissolved.
The hellish court. The skeletal guardians. The blazing throne. The crakling flames. They all were ripped away like cheap canvas.
One moment he sat on the flaming throne of judgement. The next, he fell down on his butt. Into a misty ground.
Jack quickly stood up and checked his surrounding. He was alone in a vast emptiness. Below him stretched a boundless expanse of ground covered in swirling, grey mist.
Above, the sky was choked with heavy, grey clouds. The air hung thick and damp. There was no sound. No wind. Just the oppressive stillness of nothingness.
The familiar voice boomed. As usual, it sounded ancient, resonant, and indifferent.
"Inheritance Trial for the Great Cloudfather. Phase 4 - Fog Trial. Construct a great maze of fog!"
The voice cut off as abruptly as it began. No instructions. No criteria. Just the command.
Jack, in his bulky human mercenary form, stood still for a moment. Processing the sudden shift. A fog maze? After the trials of strength, fate, and vengeance?
Just as he had guessed. The trial covered the domains held by Cloudfather. He was known as Sculptor of Strength. Father of Fate. King of Vengeance. Emperor of Fog. God of Freedom.
The last trial should be the Trial of Freedom.
But what to do with the current trial? He didn't mind delicate construction projects. He was a Steamrune Engineer in this form after all. But he usually dealt with metal and solid materials. Not... fog.
He looked down at the swirling mist at his feet. It pulsed subtly. Alive with a strange, ethereal energy. He looked up at the churning clouds. They mirrored the mist below. Heavier. Darker. Potential shapes hidden within their mass.
Construct a great maze. Could he just use his willpower and imagination?
He focused his will. Pouring his concentration into the mist directly in front of him. He pictured a solid wall. Opaque and four meters high. Stretching forward.
He pushed his mental energy. Visualizing the swirling vapor coalescing. Solidifying.
It resisted.
The mist churned faster. Recoiling from his mental touch like startled birds. He felt a dull pressure against his consciousness. A subtle but firm refusal.
It wasn't like pushing stone or bending metal. It was like trying to grab water with a bare hand. Impossible to hold. Impossible to force.
He gritted his teeth. This task demanded something he didn't really have. It demanded finesse. Sustained concentration. And an affinity toward this ephemeral medium.
He had finesse and concentration. Enough of them. But the last one evaded him almost completely.
He pushed harder. Narrowing his focus. He ignored the vastness, the overwhelming scale of the task. And concentrated solely on the section he wanted to build.
He envisioned the water droplets binding. The vapor thickening. Becoming more substantial.
Slowly. Agonizingly. The mist began to change. It became less transparent. Denser. It rose from the ground. A reluctant grey column.
But it wavered. Shimmering like heat haze. Unstable. It didn't hold its shape. It flowed back down. Dissipating before it reached even his waist height.
Frustration coiled in his gut. He was Jack Night. He could create a steamrune shotgun. He could create a working hoverboard. He could create an award winning Jack O'Lantern lamp. And he couldn't make a goddamn wall out of fog.
He tried again. This time lower. Broader. A wide base. A gentle slope upwards. Maybe trying to force it vertically was the issue. He visualized a mound. A raised platform of fog.
The mist responded slightly better. Forming a lumpy, uneven rise. But it was soft. It wasn't a barrier. It was just... slightly thicker fog. He could walk right through it.
A maze needed solid walls. Or at least walls that felt solid enough to block passage and confuse pathfinding.
He slumped his shoulders. The sheer scale of the void. And the difficulty of the task weighing on him. How was he supposed to build a great maze like this?
He stood contemplating the swirling grey for a long time. Minutes bled into what felt like hours in the timeless void.
The vastness was unnerving. There was no horizon. No sun. No moon. Just mist below and clouds above. Only he existed in this space. Facing this impossible task.
He had to simplify. Forget 'great'. Forget intricate patterns and dead ends. He needed a path. However rudimentary. He needed walls.
He focused again. This time on a straight line extending forward. He pictured a channel. A corridor flanked by fog walls. He would build one wall first. Then the other. Then connect them with turns. Simple, basic.
He directed his will towards creating a single, straight wall. Extending maybe ten meters forward. He visualized the wall. Just two and a half meters high this time. Just half a meter thick.
He poured his mental energy into it. Coaxing the mist. Pleading with it. Demanding of it.
The mist resisted less this time. Perhaps recognizing the reduced ambition. It thickened along the line he envisioned.
It rose slowly. Like smoke from a damp fire. It reached two meters. Held. Wavered. And began to sink again.
He swore under his breath. It was like trying to build a sandcastle during a tidal wave. And the wave was the very medium he needed to use.
He adjusted his technique. Instead of just visualizing the end result, he tried to feel the mist. To understand its nature.
It was fluid. Responsive to subtle shifts in energy. He needed to guide it. Not force it. Like directing water flow. Only with pure thought here.
He tried again, softer this time. He envisioned the path through the mist. The clear space he wanted to create.
Then he envisioned the fog moving away from that path. Coalescing into barriers on either side. He tried to create the negative space first. Pushing the fog outward.
This felt slightly more effective. The mist did seem to part where he focused. Creating a faint, shimmering channel. But the displaced fog didn't hold its shape.
It just spread out further. Thinning the overall density. The walls he wanted to form felt ephemeral. Ready to collapse at any moment.
He persisted. This was a trial. He had to succeed. He couldn't just stand here. He poured every ounce of his mental fortitude into the task.
His head began to pound. The effort was immense. A constant, draining push against an unseen force.
He focused on a single section of wall, maybe ten feet long. He willed the mist to rise, to thicken, to stay. He held the image fiercely in his mind.
Slowly. Agonizingly. A section of grey wall began to form. It was uneven. Undulating. And semi-transparent in places. But it was undeniably a wall.
Success. Partial and temporary as it felt.
He held that section. Reinforcing it with his will. While simultaneously trying to extend it. Trying to maintain one part while building another was exponentially harder.
The first section would begin to sag as his attention shifted. He felt like he was juggling smoke.
Hours passed. He lost track of time completely. His muscles ached from standing rigid for so long. His mind was burned with the strain. He was drenched in sweat. Even in the cool, damp air.
He managed to complete one side of the entrance corridor. It was ten meters long, two and a half meters high. A wavy, inconsistent barrier of grey.
It looked less like a constructed wall. And more like a solidified grey wave about to break. Maintaining it took constant effort.
If he relaxed his concentration for even a moment, sections would ripple and shrink. Threatening to dissolve entirely.
He started on the opposite side. This was slower. Harder. He had to split his attention. Maintaining the first wall while attempting to build the second. It felt like trying to draw two complicated patterns simultaneously with opposite hands.
He managed to build ten meters of the second wall. It was weaker than the first. Lower. More transparent. There was a three meter gap between the two sections he had managed to create. This was his 'maze'. A single, incomplete corridor.
He sighed. A ragged sound in the silence. This was pathetic. A great maze? He had managed just a single, leaky hallway section after what felt like an eternity.
Suddenly...
"Successful completion of Trial of Fog. A candidate inherited the Shard of Fog."
The voice resounded again. And quickly faded.
Jack froze.
Completed? Someone completed it? While he was struggling to build a single, shaky corridor section? Someone had built a great maze?
The mist around him didn't change. His half-formed wall still shimmered. Demanding his concentration. Which obviously he wouldn't give.
The trial was over for everyone. Someone else had won.
He felt a wave of crushing disappointment. Followed swiftly by irritation. All that effort... All that mental strain... For nothing.
He sighed again. He had tried. He had pushed himself in a way he hadn't before. And he had failed. Well, no one could always win.
But who? Who could have possibly completed this trial?
He ran down the list of faces he knew were his potential competitors in these trials.
Count Bellcroft? The grim noble with that dark karma? Was he capable of this kind of subtle, creative manipulation? It didn't fit his image. Unlikely. But not impossible. People had hidden depths, or perhaps strange, trial-specific aptitudes.
Silas Boulder? The suspicious mercenary with similar dark karma? Could he bend mist and clouds to his will? Silas was definitely strong. Capable in combat. But Jack hadn't seen anything to suggest this kind of power.
Still, like Count Bellcroft, he was an unknown quantity in this context. Jack was sure both entered the spatial crack before he did.
He thought of others. Had anyone else come through the spatial crack after him? He couldn't be sure. The expedition members? A few probably.
The one with the highest chance would be... Leon Drake? The young treasure hunting archeologist felt like a protagonist stepping straight out of an adventure novel. He had that vibe. Resourceful. Adaptable. With multiple types of power.
And then there was Chloe Chase. His first real friend on this strange world. The one who had inherited the Shard of Fortune from the Webmother. Could that translate into an ability to coax and shape something as ethereal as fog?
Maybe. Fortune wasn't just about luck. It was about things aligning for you. Perhaps the trial had simply shifted in her favor. Allowing her to manipulate the fog with impossible ease. It fit the unpredictable nature of a Fortune.
If Amaranth White was here, Jack was sure it would be her who completed the Trial. Her supernatural power was related to mist after all. And she had previously acquired the Shard of Mist. But he hadn't seen her in this expedition.
Count Bellcroft? Silas Boulder? Leon Drake? Chloe Chase? Someone else entirely?
He had no way of knowing. All he knew was that he had failed the Trial of Fog. Someone was faster. Someone more skilled in this particular, esoteric art, had won.
Another inheritance of the Cloudfather's power was claimed. And not by him.