Trials of the Damned

Chapter 25: Trials of the Damned

Shiro's eyes shot open, but the world around him had shifted. The air had thickened, growing heavier, as if each breath now required a toll. His skin prickled, his senses heightened, but there was no escape. He staggered to his feet—his legs shaking under his own weight. But when he looked around, the landscape had changed once again. The twisted flames still licked the sky, but now there were shadows—long, tall, stretching toward him like fingers that wanted to pull him down into the depths. And there—just at the edge of his vision, standing far enough away to be obscured by the darkness, were figures. Shiro froze. They were familiar. Too familiar. He blinked, and his breath caught in his throat. There they were. The people from his past. The ones whose lives he’d ruined—whose pain he’d caused. His mother. Her face distorted with tears, her eyes pleading for something, anything. The friend he had betrayed—his back bent under the weight of guilt, staring at Shiro as though he could see straight through him, into his soul. And then, the others. Victims. Those whose lives had been shattered by his callous actions. Their forms blurred in and out of focus, a silent parade of broken people who existed only as phantoms in his mind. Shiro tried to move, to run. But his legs were like stone, frozen in place. One of the shadows stepped forward. It was his mother, her face a mixture of sorrow and disgust. “Do you remember me, Shiro?” Her voice was soft, but the sting in it cut deeper than any blade ever could. “Do you remember how I begged you to stop? How I begged you to care!” His chest tightened. He wanted to scream, to apologize, to explain—anything to make it stop. But it only got worse. The figures—his victims—began to step forward one by one, their forms growing more defined, more solid. They surrounded him, their eyes burning with judgment. “You’re nothing but a coward, Shiro Hoshigaki,” one of them said, its voice cold, like ice piercing his heart. It was the friend he had betrayed. “You’ve always been one. Too afraid to face the consequences of your actions.” Each word, each accusation, hit him like a hammer, breaking him down bit by bit. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he could say. Every part of him screamed for forgiveness—something he didn’t deserve. “Did you really think you could escape from this?” another voice asked, and this time it was the voice of the god. “Did you think you could outrun your past, your karma?” The air shifted again. The ground trembled beneath him. Shiro’s heart raced as he tried to back away, but the shadows pressed in on him from all sides, their accusing eyes burning with an intensity that threatened to consume him. “You’re not worthy of salvation,” his mother’s voice rang out again, louder this time. “You never were.” The world began to close in. The shadows, the accusations—they were too much. And then, just as he thought he couldn’t take anymore—just as his mind threatened to shatter under the weight of it all—the darkness split apart. He was falling. Falling through endless space. There was no light. No sound. Just a suffocating, endless descent. His chest tightened, and he could feel his lungs screaming for air. His body was being pulled apart by the weight of everything he had ever done. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, everything stopped. Shiro slammed into the ground, hard. His body screamed in agony, but when he looked up, he was somewhere else. The air was different here—cool, calm, almost peaceful. But the peace felt wrong. Out of place. And standing before him, as though he had been waiting, was the figure of the god himself. The darkness had taken on form—a tall, hooded figure with eyes glowing like embers in a dying fire. The voice from before came again, this time from the god’s mouth. “You have been weighed, Shiro Hoshigaki.” His voice was deep, resonating within Shiro’s bones. “And found wanting.” Shiro tried to speak, to ask what this meant, but his voice caught in his throat. Every word, every sound, felt distant. Hollow. “What is this?” he managed, his voice rasping as if his throat had been torn open. “Why am I here?” “You stand at the crossroads, boy,” the god replied. “You’ve suffered. You’ve caused suffering. But now, you must choose.” Shiro’s heart pounded in his chest. “Choose what?” The god tilted his head, his eyes burning with knowing. “Choose your fate.” The ground beneath Shiro’s feet began to shift again, crumbling away, revealing a vast abyss beneath him. The shadows of his past loomed at the edges of his vision, waiting. His pulse quickened. He could feel the pull of the darkness, the call to abandon everything and accept it. It would be easier. So much easier. But then, a vision flashed through his mind—of his mother, of his friends, of everything he had ruined. He wasn’t sure he was worthy of salvation. He wasn’t sure he could ever be. But one thing was certain. He had to try. And as the abyss beckoned, Shiro made his choice.

Shiro stepped forward—one trembling foot at a time—into the crumbling path ahead, even as the abyss howled below. Each step felt like walking across broken glass; each breath tasted like regret. But he kept moving. Because surrender would mean accepting that he was only the sum of his sins.

The god watched, unmoving, his ember-like eyes tracking Shiro’s every motion. Not judging. Not guiding. Simply observing, as if Shiro were both the experiment and the result.

The path narrowed. Then split.

To his left: a stairway descending into shadow—pitch black, pulsing like a heartbeat, lined with voices whispering sweet release. Promises of silence. Of forgetting. Of oblivion.

To his right: a jagged trail bathed in a sterile white glow. The light wasn’t warm—it was blinding. Harsh. Every angle of it screamed exposure. Truth. The kind that scorched more than it healed.

Shiro faltered.

“What happens if I fall?” he whispered, not to the god, but to the silence itself.

The god answered anyway. “You’ll be reborn in suffering. Again. And again. Until the lesson roots itself into the marrow of your being.”

Shiro turned his eyes upward. There was no sky—only an endless ceiling of broken memories, looping like film reels above his head. The worst moments. The most shameful. The ones he thought he buried so deep they’d never crawl free again.

But here, in this place, everything rose. Nothing stays buried.

He took the right path.

The light was searing. Every step forward stripped something from him. The faces of those he’d wronged whispered in the wind, not in blame now—but in memory. They weren’t condemning him anymore. They were waiting to see if he could carry the weight.

Shiro fell to his knees halfway down the trail. Not from weakness, but from something worse: clarity.

His hands trembled as he stared at them—those same hands that had pushed people away, that had acted out of fear, out of selfishness, out of pain.

“Why me?” he muttered. “Why give me this choice?”

The god’s voice came from all around him now, and it was no longer a whisper. It was a roar beneath his skin.

“Because no one escapes their karma, Shiro Hoshigaki. But some are given the chance to confront it.”

Shiro gritted his teeth and pushed himself up. The pain was still there. The shame. But so was something else.

Resolve.

He reached the end of the path.

And standing there, at the threshold of something new—something unknown—was himself.

Not a shadow. Not a dream.

It was Shiro, as he might’ve been. As he could be.

Eyes clear. Posture steady. Bearing the same scars—but not ruled by them.

“You’re not real,” Shiro said, voice shaking.

“No,” the other Shiro said. “But neither are you. Not yet.”

They stared at each other in silence.

And then—suddenly—the world trembled, and a great light broke through the void above. The god began to fade, consumed by that light, his voice one last time echoing like a divine decree:

“The trial is not over. It has only just begun.”

Shiro blinked—

—and he was back.

In the real world. On his knees. Covered in sweat. Surrounded by the cold breath of night.

But something was different.

The air no longer felt heavy.

And for the first time in what felt like eternity...

He could breathe.

His breath came in shudders, raw and jagged, like it was being torn from his lungs. Shiro collapsed to his hands, the ground beneath him cool and damp—solid, real. A stark contrast to the void he had just come from.

But even as he inhaled, trying to convince himself that he had returned, something inside him refused to believe it.

His fingers curled into the earth.

It was dirt. Soft, moss-covered.

But it shouldn’t be.

The last thing he remembered of the real world was screaming—voices, a ritual, and the unbearable sensation of something inside him breaking open.

He raised his head slowly.

The landscape around him was a warped reflection of the shrine he had discovered. Twisted trees curled skyward like skeletal arms. The sky was fractured—black clouds swirling in unnatural patterns, stitched together with veins of crimson lightning that never quite struck, always hovering, pulsing.

He wasn't out of the trial.

He was deeper in it.

Somewhere between reality and illusion. Somewhere the gods could still reach him.

"You're starting to see," came the god’s voice—not loud this time, but right beside him, as if it had never left his side.

Shiro turned his head sharply, but there was no one there.

Only the sound of his own panicked breathing. And the faint rustling of something moving just beyond the trees.

“You think you chose,” the voice said, now in front of him, circling like a vulture. “But you haven’t made a choice. You’ve only stepped onto the path.”

Shiro rose to his feet, swaying slightly, sweat dripping from his brow. He clenched his fists.

“I did choose,” he said. “I chose not to run. Not anymore.”

A silence followed. Thick. Mocking.

And then came the laughter—not the god’s, but his own voice. But warped. Echoing.

From the trees emerged another figure.

It was him.

But twisted.

His mirror self from earlier, the one who had looked noble, resolute—was gone.

This one was pale. Hollow-eyed. Blood trickled from his mouth and eyes. A crown of broken glass dug into his skull. And his hands—red to the elbow, twitching.

“You think you’re better now?” The doppelgänger hissed. “That guilt makes you pure?”

Shiro stepped back, his pulse racing. The thing moved in a blur, circling him like a jackal.

“You begged for death once,” it whispered. “Remember? That night in the bathroom, razor in hand. The blood in the sink. That was real. That was the truth.”

Shiro clenched his jaw, shaking his head. “That wasn’t me.”

“Oh, but it was. It is. I’m the version of you who didn’t lie to himself. Who didn’t pretend that trying makes up for the damage done?”

The god’s voice returned, distant now, but unmistakable:

“To ascend, one must slay their shadow.”

Shiro’s twisted reflection lunged, and they collided.

It wasn’t a physical fight—not really. It was rage against regret. Self-hatred turned into fists. Memories as blades.

Each blow the shadow landed came with a vision:

His mother’s sobs behind a locked door.

Daiki’s voice cracking after the betrayal.

That girl in middle school who never spoke again after what he’d done.

Shiro dropped to one knee, his eye swollen shut, blood dripping from his mouth.

The shadow raised a jagged shard of glass high above him.

“You don't deserve redemption,” it spat. “You only deserve to remember.”

But then—he heard it.

Not a voice.

Not a command.

A heartbeat.

Steady. Strong. Not his own.

Someone believed in him.

The image of Daiki, from weeks ago, sitting beside him at lunch despite the weight of everything between them.

Fuyumi, placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder after class.

Of his younger self—back before the anger, before the cruelty—reaching toward the light with innocent, trembling fingers.

Shiro surged upward, grabbing the shard with both hands. The shadow shrieked, twisting, fighting.

But Shiro pulled it close.

And embraced it.

“I remember,” he said. “I remember everything.”

The shadow froze.

“And I won’t run from it anymore.”

The figure convulsed, then cracked—like porcelain shattering from within. It burst into shards of glass and smoke, scattering across the windless air.

Silence.

And then—

A gentle breeze. The first real breeze since this trial began.

It brushed his hair aside, cool and cleansing.

The landscape shimmered. The twisted forest blurred, melting into itself like ink in water.

And then Shiro was standing alone again, in the center of the ancient shrine.

The torii gate is behind him. The altar before him.

It was dawn.

Birdsong echoed faintly in the trees. The sky—real, familiar—was painted in soft hues of violet and gold.

He staggered toward the altar, barely able to stand.

And there, resting on the stone, was a small, black stone talisman. Worn. Ancient. Still warm.

Without knowing why, Shiro reached out and took it.

It pulsed once in his hand. Then went still.

The moment he touched it, something opened inside him.

Not a power.

A presence.

Something vast. Dormant.

Watching.

Waiting.

He didn’t understand what had been awakened.

But he knew one thing.

This trial was over.

And something else was beginning.