"The Twelve Celestials?"
"Yesss, we are cosmic great entities that are all majestic and beautiful, and we are so so so strong too!"
"And where do you come from?" Adam asked, his analytical mind finally rebooting.
"I'm not sure, but I think we are the ability of a curse!"
A curse?? Adam stopped breathing. Don't tell me... I copied this? Other than the gravity power? What is happening exactly?
"Did you just say curse?" Adam started pacing in a tight circle, his finger resting on his chin, a bead of sweat forming on his brow.
"Absolutely and conculutely!" Little Lion declared, proudly inventing words.
"So are you saying that you belonged to someone else and I copied you?"
"Copied?? I don't understand, pew pew!" Little Lion suddenly flipped backward, hovering completely upside down and looking at Adam inverted.
I see, Adam analyzed. He doesn't have context. He is part of the innate power of the curse itself, so he obviously isn't aware of the outside world. He just thinks I own this power and knows nothing about the real world or how I got it.
"Forget it, my bad. What I meant is to ask how does this curse work exactly? And where are your other companions you just talked about? You said Twelve Celestials, right?"
"WELL, WELL, WELL," Little Lion stopped flipping. He righted himself and zipped around to hover behind Adam's shoulder. "We are currently just eleven! I think you already grabbed one of us. Well, we never saw him before too anyway."
Oh my god, my head is gonna explode. What is this thing saying?
"Grabbed one of you? What do you mean? This is the first time I heard you exist!"
"Yess you diiiid, don't lieeee!" Little Lion teased. "You already grabbed Libra out! Though I never saw him before. I think he doesn't exist, tho. Maybe you are not lying after all. But why do I know we are twelve? No, I'm suuuuuree we are twelve... twelve, twelve, twelve."
LIBRA?? WHAT DOES HE MEAN LIBRA? LIKE A BALANCE SCALE?
Adam fell into a stunned silence for a few seconds. Then, a massive, heavy piece of the puzzle finally clicked into place in his head.
Ohhh... does that correlate with the gravity?
"Hey, Little Lion," Adam asked cautiously. "Does this Libra friend possess some kind of gravity power??"
"OWW YESS HE DOES! SO YOU DID TAKE HIM! I KNEW I WAS RIGHT! How does he look like? Did you summon him? Is he cute?"
"No, I didn't summon a creature. I think the friend you are talking about doesn't have a physical form. I think he is just a concept."
As he finished his sentenced, Adam finally completed the puzzle.
I understand now, the gravity was just a part of this curse, so I didn’t copy multiple curses, I copied just one after all. What could it be?
"OH, I SEE! SO THAT IS WHY I NEVER SAW HIM!" Little Lion nodded rapidly. "So he is an exception from us! Oh, oh, I see, I see. Smart Little Lion understands now! That is why you took him without going through a trial!"
"A trial??" Adam asked, surprise flagrant on his face.
"OHH yes, I didn't continue the explanation! Let me get to the cool part now, should I?"
The little lion drifted away from Adam and moved to the center of the dark corridor. He threw his tiny paws upward.
Instantly, the palace responded. The dark stone walls groaned and shifted, illuminating with a brilliant, stellar glow.
Adam took two steps backward as the very architecture of the corridor rearranged itself. Before him now stood three massive, towering doors, positioned side-by-side.
Carved into the heavy stone of each door was a glowing constellation of stars.
Adam’s eyes swept over them. The door on the far left depicted two ethereal fish, bound by a stellar cord, swimming in a continuous loop. The door on the far right bore the distinct, curving horns of a celestial ram.
But the door in the center was already wide open. Its stars depicted the unmistakable shape of balancing scales. Inside, there was nothing but total darkness and emptiness, a void where a Celestial had once resided.
To the side of the three doors, a grand staircase engraved with intricate star patterns swept upward. However, halfway up, the steps vanished into a thick, impenetrable bank of celestial clouds, signifying that Adam did not have access to the second floor yet.
"These are the doors of the first chamber!" Little Lion announced proudly. "Behind them reside the two remaining Celestials! You must succeed in the trials to tame them, and they will become your loyal summons. As you see, you already took Libra without a trial! The other two have actual physical forms, not like him. You must prove yourself worthy!"
"Where are the others? You said you were twelve."
"You must first tame these two! And then you can advance to the second chamber in the upper floor! And then the third one! And then the fourth one! And then the FINAAALE ONE!"
"Wait," Adam narrowed his eyes, doing the math. "You said twelve. If each floor has three Celestials, doesn't that mean there should be four floors?"
"Well, the fourth floor has only two doors! My companions there are very, very, very strong! While the fifth floor is the home for only the last Celestial. I am not allowed to talk about him, though. It's forbidden in here."
I see, Adam clenched his fists, staring up into the clouds. So he must be the strongest one among them, forcing me to tame all the others before arriving there.
"Hey, Little Lion."
"YEAAA, WHAT IS IT?"
"You know..." Adam looked down at his own hands. They weren't broken here. He wasn't bleeding out in the dirt. "Since this epoch began, everything has been so dark and traumatic. But right now... this is the first thing that got me excited."
Adam looked up at the towering doors, a fierce, undeniable spark finally igniting in his voice. "I'm all fired up."
"YAAAYY! Let's do this! Do you want to start a trial now? Which door would you choose?"
"Let's take them both,".
"Let's start with this one," Adam said, his eyes hardening with resolve. The memory of Zeren crying, and of Renn and Sable fighting blindly in the smoke, burned in his chest. He didn't have time to hesitate.
He strode toward the door on the far left, the one bearing the constellation of the two bound fish. He pressed his palms against the cold, starlit stone and pushed.
The heavy doors groaned, parting just enough for a blinding light to swallow him whole.
Adam stumbled forward, the grand corridor instantly vanishing. He found himself standing on a vast, mirror-like surface that reflected a dark, violently stormy sky. There were no walls, no horizon, just an infinite expanse of shallow water rippling perfectly beneath his boots.
Suddenly, a voice boomed from the heavens. It was trying incredibly hard to sound ancient, echoing, and terrifyingly majestic.
"BEHOLD, MORTAL!" the voice thundered, cracking slightly on the last syllable. "YOU HAVE ENTERED... THE TRIAL OF THE APHRODITE! I AM THE ANCIENT... wait, my throat hurts. Ahem. I AM THE OMNIPOTENT VOICE OF, "
Adam blinked, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. He couldn't help it; a snort of laughter escaped his lips. "Little Lion? Is that you trying to make your voice deep?"
The booming voice stuttered. "W-WHAT? NO! I AM THE... THE MYSTICAL NARRATOR OF THE COSMOS!" The pitch accidentally spiked back into a cute, squeaky squeal. "Stop laughing! You're making me lose aura!"
Adam chuckled, shaking his head. "Alright, alright. I'm sorry, oh Omnipotent Narrator. What is the trial?"
The voice cleared its tiny throat, aggressively forcing the bass back in. "THE MYTH: TO FLEE THE ULTIMATE MONSTER, TYPHON, THE GODDESS OF BEAUTY AND THE GOD OF LOVE TURNED INTO FISH. THEY TIED THEMSELVES TOGETHER WITH A SILKEN CORD TO SWIM TO SAFETY."
Adam’s breath hitched as the dark sky above him literally tore open.
It wasn't a beast that descended. It was a conceptual horror. It had no defined biological shape, shifting wildly between a storm of jagged shadows, gnashing maws, and suffocating atmospheric pressure. It was the absolute embodiment of destruction, Typhon.
"THE TRIAL: THE FRICTIONLESS ESCAPE!" Little Lion’s voice dropped the act, turning genuinely urgent. "You cannot attack it! Your strikes will do absolutely nothing! You must survive for twenty-four hours using only evasion!"
"Twenty-four hours?!" Adam yelled, his eyes widening as the horror lunged at him with the speed of a falling meteor.
He threw his hands up, and violently pulsed his gravity resonance directly at the descending nightmare.
And it absolutely nothing. The concept of weight simply did not apply to a living storm. The gravity passed right through it.
The monster slammed into Adam.
There was a fraction of a second of pure, unadulterated, blinding agony. His bones pulverized, his flesh tore, and his consciousness was violently extinguished.
Adam gasped, his lungs violently expanding as he shot up into a sitting position.
He was breathing hard, sweating profusely, his hands clutching his chest. He looked around wildly. He wasn't on the infinite mirror. He was sitting on the cold floor of the Palace's main corridor, right outside the closed door of Pisces.
"Ooooh, you got squished fast!" Little Lion squeaked, hovering right in front of his nose.
"I... I died," Adam stammered, his heart hammering against his ribs. The phantom pain of being obliterated was still searing his nerve endings. "I felt it. I felt everything."
"Yup!" Little Lion nodded cheerfully. "But you can't die-die in the Palace of Constellations! Your physical body outside is safe while your soul is in here. If you fail a trial, you just get kicked back out to the hallway! But it hurts a whole, whole lot, doesn't it?"
Adam stared at his trembling hands. There was no death here. But the pain, the exhaustion, the psychological terror of being ripped apart, that was entirely real.
He looked up at the stone door. He thought of Noah, who had endured his own horrors in the City of Light. He thought of the Mouthless man pinning him to the earth.
I can't afford to be weak, Adam thought, his jaw setting into a hard line. If I have infinite tries, then I will die as many times as it takes to master this.
Adam stood up, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and pushed the door open again.
Attempt 14. Adam’s boots splashed frantically across the infinite shallow water. He had been running for six straight hours. His lungs were burning, his vision swimming with exhaustion. The massive shadow of Typhon swept horizontally across the domain. Adam dove, but his legs were too heavy. The edge of the storm clipped his torso. He was instantly ripped in half. Darkness.
Attempt 42. Adam stood on the mirror, gasping for air. Fourteen hours in. He had memorized the early attack patterns, weaving through the descending maws of shadow. But as he sprinted, the air resistance felt like thick mud. He was fighting the atmosphere itself to move fast enough. He tried to slide, but the friction of the wind dragged him down. The conceptual horror slammed down from above, flattening him into a bloody smear on the glass. Darkness.
Attempt 66. Adam woke up on the corridor floor, screaming. He curled into a ball, clutching his head as the phantom sensation of being eaten alive by shadows slowly faded.
Little Lion floated nearby, unusually quiet, his large eyes filled with pity. "You can take a break, you know... You've been doing this for a really long time."
"No," Adam rasped, forcing himself to his feet. His soul felt bruised, his mind fraying at the edges, but the spark in his eyes was blindingly bright. "I'm missing something. The trial is called the Frictionless Escape."
For the first time since he started the trials, Adam took a deep breath and took a break, trying to figure out how to manage this impossible task, there should defently be a trick to this.
They turned into fish. They swam.
Adam stood up, in his face, a determination like never before.
"Are you going again, did you figure it out, tell me tell me tell me, what’s your plan."
He pushed the door open again.