Judgement's gaze fell to the broken weapon at Kaelen's side.

The Blade of Eternity — or rather, what remained of it — rested in its cracked sheath, the once-seamless steel split jaggedly near the middle, veins of dull light flickering weakly through the fracture. For a long moment, Judgement said nothing, only staring at the weapon as if its very presence was forcing him to sift through centuries of buried memory.

Kaelen didn't move. The silence between them felt almost tangible.

Finally, Judgement spoke. His tone was slow, measured — as though weighing every word.

"That blade," he said, "i can feel that it is more than steel and edge. It is the scar left behind when the first truth of existence was broken. It is bound to the same essence that shapes all of Aetheris."

He lifted his gaze to meet Kaelen's. "Tell me… do you know the origin of the Twelve Concepts?"

Kaelen shook his head. "Well, before you told me about them, I've heard the names… judgement, knowledge, balance… but not where they came from."

Judgement inclined his head slightly, as if confirming a quiet assumption.

"Then listen well, for this is not a tale often spoken — and those who do tell it, rarely speak it twice."

The serene expanse around them began to shift. A white light flooded the ground beneath their feet, and images began to swirl in the air — vast landscapes, stars falling, oceans boiling, mountains rising from nothing.

"Before mortals… before Eternals… before the stars themselves," Judgement began, "there was only Him. A being not of form, nor of flesh, nor of the mana that permeates our realms. He was… Eternity."

The image changed. Kaelen saw something he could barely comprehend — not a figure exactly, but an infinite presence, radiating both crushing gravity and limitless light. It was neither man nor beast, neither young nor old.

"He was the first and the last," Judgement continued, his voice low with reverence. "He did not exist in the way you or I understand existence. He was existence. The pure will that bound all potential into a single harmony."

Kaelen's throat tightened slightly, though he didn't know why.

"What happened to him?" he asked.

Judgement's eyes darkened faintly. "Millennia ago, for reasons beyond even the grasp of the Twelve, He vanished. Not slain… not banished… simply gone. And in His absence, the whole of reality began to tremble. The laws that governed all things — life and death, time and war, dreams and dominion — threatened to collapse into chaos."

Kaelen's mind raced as he listened.

"It was then," Judgement said, "that His essence fractured… not by accident, but by His own final act before departure. He divided His eternal will into twelve aspects, each carrying a piece of what He once was. These became the Twelve Concepts — Judgement which I now represent, and the others: Knowledge, Balance, Origin, War, Peace, Life, Death, Dreams, Time, Dominion, and Order."

The white void shifted again. Kaelen saw twelve vast silhouettes standing in a perfect circle around an empty center. Even as phantoms, they radiated impossible power.

"We were not His equals," Judgement admitted, "merely custodians of what remained. Our task was to maintain the flow and shape of Aetheris in His absence… until such a time as He returned, or until the world no longer required His balance."

Kaelen's hand instinctively rested on the hilt of his broken blade.

"So this weapon… it's tied to all that?"

Judgement gave a slow nod. "Although, I don't really know who was the one that forged such a weapon, I can feel that the Blade of Eternity was once forged from the condensed will of Eternity Himself — tempered by the Twelve to be both a sword and a safeguard. When it shattered, so too did one of the few remaining conduits to His essence. That is why restoring it is no simple reforging… to mend it, you might endure a trial that will demand more than your life."

The vision faded, returning them to the calm, white space of the Crucible. Judgement's voice grew heavier.

"And Kaelen… if you fail, you will surely be consumed. And when it does, the Magic Pandora within you will be exposed to Endless without resistance."

Kaelen's grip on the broken sword only tightened. "Then I guess I don't have the luxury of failing."

Judgement's gaze remained locked on Kaelen, his silver-etched irises unblinking. The silence between them seemed to thrum with an unseen weight, as though the very air in the Crucible was waiting for the next words to be spoken.

Finally, the Eternal raised one hand, palm upward. A sphere of faintly shimmering light materialized above it, rippling with twelve distinct strands of color — crimson, sapphire, gold, silver, emerald, violet, black, and hues Kaelen had no name for. The colors did not blend; they spiraled around one another in a tense, unnatural dance, occasionally sparking with tiny bursts of lightning or fracturing into shards of shadow.

"This," Judgement began, his voice low and resonant, "is the remnant Concept Magic — the residual essence of the Twelve after the Ruptured Sky was born. Fragments of what we were before the sealing… raw and unstable, stripped of form, stripped of will. It is the very mana that carved open the wound you now know as the Ruptured Sky's core."

Kaelen's brow furrowed as he stared into the swirling sphere. The air around it felt oppressive, thick with a pressure that seemed to gnaw at the edges of his mind.

Judgement closed his fist, and the sphere dispersed into motes of light that faded into the air.

"This is your trial, Kaelen. You must enter the Core — the space where that Concept Magic still churns without restraint — and absorb it into yourself. Piece by piece. All twelve. Only by surviving their weight… their contradictions… their hunger… can you mend the Blade of Eternity."

Kaelen exhaled slowly. "Absorb… all twelve?"

"Yes." Judgement's tone was like iron striking stone. "Each Concept will resist you, for it has no master now, only the echoes of what it once was. Judgement will claw at you with the need to decide every truth. War will tear you apart with its lust for conflict. Time will try to erode you until nothing remains. And Dominion—" His gaze sharpened. "—Dominion will seek to claim your very soul as its throne."

Kaelen's fingers curled around the broken hilt at his side. "And if I fail?"

Judgement did not soften the truth. "Like I said earlier, You will be consumed. Not simply slain — unmade. Your body, mind, and essence will dissolve into the Core's churning ether, becoming just another fragment of the wound that birthed the Ruptured Sky. Worse… the Magic Pandora within you will be laid bare, ripe for Endless to claim."

A lesser man might have flinched, hesitated, searched for another path.

Kaelen didn't. His jaw set, his voice steady as he spoke the same words of affirmation.

"Then I won't fail."

Judgement tilted his head slightly, as if weighing the conviction in Kaelen's words.

"You understand," the Eternal said slowly, "that within the Core, time does not obey mortal law. A single heartbeat in the waking realm could be a month, a year… or a century inside. You may enter as the man you are now and emerge to find a world that has already forgotten you. Or…" His voice lowered. "…you may never emerge at all."

Kaelen's reply came without a flicker of doubt. "I've already lost too much to hesitate now. If Endless takes what's inside me, the people I want to protect… everything I care for… will be gone. I'll pay the time, I'll pay the pain — whatever it takes. Just open the way."

For the first time, something faint — not quite a smile, but a fragment of approval — crossed Judgement's otherwise impassive face.

"Very well, Kaelen Dragonyx. You will walk the path of the Concepts."

He extended his hand toward Kaelen. The space around them began to distort, the white serenity of the Crucible darkening as rifts of swirling color split the air. Twelve great chains, each one a different hue, descended from above, their links glowing with the sigils of their respective Concepts.

"The Core awaits you," Judgement intoned. "Once I cast you into it, there will be no return until the trial is complete. Steel yourself — for even I cannot follow you there."

Kaelen tightened his grip on the hilt of the broken Blade of Eternity. The weight of the moment pressed down on him, but it was a weight he welcomed.

"Do it."

Judgement's eyes flared like silver fire. "Then so it shall be."

The chains lunged, wrapping around Kaelen with crushing force. The air imploded inward, the Crucible shattering like glass — and Kaelen was torn from the white expanse, hurled into a maelstrom of swirling, violent light.

The sound that greeted him was not wind, nor thunder, but the overlapping voices of twelve infinite wills, whispering and screaming in unison. Ahead, deep within the storm, a pulsing sphere of shifting colors throbbed like the heart of a god. The Ruptured Sky's Core.

His trial had begun.