The third door wasn't just glowing.
It was pulsing like a heartbeat.
Not red.
Void-black.
Ren stood before it, arms crossed, trying to look braver than he felt. "So. Last one?"
Keeri nodded grimly. "Final Echo Trial. The hardest one."
Clomp offered another damp waffle. "This one may cause identity dread, narrative vertigo, and spontaneous existential jazz."
Ren took the waffle and tossed it over his shoulder.
"I'm good. Let's go see who I don't want to become."
[Echo Trial #3: "The Catalyst Collapse"]
✦ Warning: High divergence projection. Possible anti-heroic resonance.
✦ Viewer Discretion Advised.
❖ Temporal Prediction Layer Activated: You are viewing a you that might be.
❖ Scenario:[Wanderer Omega]
Everything turned gray.
Skyless.
Soundless.
Ren stood on a battlefield of broken worlds. Shattered moons. Trees made of bone. Towers that bled starlight.
And in the center of it all…
Him.
An older Ren. Taller. Radiating raw power like a living storm.
He stood alone, cloak in tatters, surrounded by corpses made of crystal and smoke.
In his hand?
Not a sword. Not a staff.
A map.
But it wasn't paper.
It was glowing. Alive. Shifting. The map showed everything. Worlds. Lives. Fates. And his fingers…
…were burning it.
"Stop," Ren whispered.
But the older version couldn't hear him.
"They all betrayed me."
"Every god. Every world. Every friend."
"So I rewrote the map."
"Now they evolve around me."
"I'm not the Catalyst. I'm the core."
His voice was thunder and heartbreak.
The older Ren raised the living map—and began to erase the names of entire realms.
Keeri gasped beside Ren. "This is… you?!"
Clomp whispered, "A version of him. One that lost everything and rewrote the story by force."
Ren's legs shook.
"Is that what I become if I stop trusting? If I forget why I travel?"
A flicker in the void caught his eye.
Someone—small, distant—ran toward that dark Ren, trying to stop him.
A girl with a notebook.
The erased one.
But she was too late.
The trial shattered.
Ren collapsed back into the Gallery, panting.
Smoke curled from his fingertips.
Keeri caught him. "Ren! Talk to me!"
He looked up slowly. His eyes glowed for a second, then faded.
"I saw who I could be," he said. "And I don't want to be him."
Clomp crouched beside him, whispering gently:
"But you needed to see it. You needed to know there's a fork in the path. Now choose the other one."
A quiet moment passed.
Then Ren grinned.
"I'm not the core. I'm the problem they didn't see coming."
Keeri smiled. "That's more like it."
The Warden's voice echoed once more:
"Echo Trials complete."
"You may now enter the Path Beyond."