Abyss

A powerful cold wind descended from the high heights, sweeping down the mountain face. Upon which stood a lone skeleton on a path of corpses.

Alex looked around him, seeing the entire mountain face was covered with corpses in every direction. Even the pathway to the top was shrouded in thick fog.

Right on the first step of the pathway were all sorts of bloated corpses. Bodies of men and women, young and old, were strewn along the path, with visible signs of drowning. Alex watched as just beneath his feet lay the corpse of a young man. Rather than a corpse it was the still drowning body of the young man. He seemed to be drowning although he was already dead.

Seeing no other way up the mountain, Alex placed his now bony foot on the body before him and began climbing. But the very moment he applied weight to his foot, the body squished and bloody bodily fluids seeped out of the body. The bloating had caused the entire body to become edematous, their skin breaking at the lightest pressure, fouling up the place.

However, on the bright side the previous burdens, the chains, voices and spectral beings that haunted him in the earlier part of the journey, had disappeared. With nothing else happening around him, Alex began the quiet and creepy walk up the fog-filled pathways, stepping on the bodies of failed challengers, their will stuck in an endless purgatory.

The path he treaded looked like a mass graveyard for victims of a sudden magnitude 12 tsunami, which caught a city of millions unprepared. But as he observed the surroundings, he noticed some deviations. Some distance from the path, he noticed some bodies smoking as though a fire was burning them, some appeared suffocated with mud clogging their throats and eyeballs popping outwards from the pressure, their arms lying weakly by their side. Being supported by only a hint of lifeforce and eternally stuck in the moments of their last breath.

The whole scene was filled with these gruesome sights in every direction. The errieness is only enhanced by the absolute silence.

A silence that didn't last long, as soon Alex began to hear faint moaning around him and below his feet. The corpses had progressed into fully dehydrated corpses, lying ahead of him. Alex paused for a moment and observed the changes around him as he noticed faint signs of his flesh returning.

Alex continued to walk unhindered save for the now dehydrated corpses that looked as though they had been fried in a tub of oil and then left to dry under the sun. Some of them were so dehydrated, they resembled air-fried goods. Their skin and muscle layers flaked away under the mountain wind, some of them disintegrating under his foot. But no matter how badly destroyed they were, the moaning never stopped. Their life force rebuilt the corpse after Alex had left, keeping them in their eternal agony with death as an unrealistic hope. Their eyes were filled with the venom of despair.

Alex watched all this, his soul deadened by their pains, his heart hardened by their plight. He, a lone figure standing upon a mountain of corpses. Ahead some of the bodies were being muzzled on constantly by hordes of desert ants and mice. Whose moans increased in intensity, but Alex was wholly unmoved by them as he walked over them step by step.

Gradually the peak in the distance began to come into view. His flesh returned more and more the higher he climbed. With tendons appearing from thin air wrapping around his bones and muscles as well. It appeared as though the trial was over as no new difficulty appeared save for the multitude of corpses he was made to walk over to reach the top.

At this point, he seemed to be wading through a stream of never-ending blood. Along the path, some bodies were utterly and completely crushed with half of their skeletons breaking out in fractures. Still, these corpses were all by some unholy force, kept alive and in agony.

Up and up he climbed. Upon the bodies, he climbed with their will utterly consumed by despair. And as he climbed higher the sky grew brighter an indication that the fog was letting up.

Soon he noticed another change as he left the streams of blood. The air around him seemed to be filled with the sound of moans and chains clinking together. They merged into a bizarre orchestra of horror, as he saw what could only be described as a river of bloody metal chains, filled with body parts floating here and there like fish within a pond.

Alex soon realised that as he climbed along his pathway, he was witnessing the possible outcome for his soul had he failed. At any stage, he would have been thrust into this endless purgatory until the time of the trial had elapsed. His soul would be fragmented as a fee for escaping the trial realm as a failure.

Alex walked up as he thought deeply about the meaning behind these trials and he began having an epiphany. His soul flame began to tremble and glow a blueish hue.

Thoughts of his journey up the mountain buffeted him as he continued to climb. His flesh returned at an accelerated pace. He thought about many things, why the trial stages were unique for each individual, and why the realm chose the particular sequence of tests for him. An ocean. A desert. A sandstorm. A mountain path with strange obstacles and challenges. A stone, metal and wooden bridge. And he was now climbing atop a mountain of corpses. The review of the tests at this point seemed to be raising his strength and he began to speed up his climb.

The bodies beneath him at this point had turned to stark white bones with fading flames floating around them, like willow the whisps even under the increasing brightness, the flames still managed to make the sights more discomforting.

Still in a state of enlightenment, Alex's body had reverted wholly back to his peak state, with his clothes reappearing. The look in his eyes turning colder and colder emitting an unapproachable aura. Taking the final few steps, the state of enlightenment began to end and upon taking the very last step, he stood at the pinnacle looking over the entire trial realm. He closed his eyes and said solemnly,

"The pathway to peerlessness is strewn with uncountable bodies and the road to the peak is a lonely one."

On saying this he opened his eyes and looked over at the peaks in the distance and the ocean on the horizon ahead. His soul flame trembled vigorously, absorbing the energy present at the peak of all existence. Gathering its momentum, and at that moment the sun rose above the horizon and triggered by this phenomenon the energy contained within the soul flame combusted setting Alex's body ablaze with a sky blue flame. Alex bathed in this flame feeling his soul upgrade to a higher level of existence. The feeling of becoming stronger was intoxicating to him.

Alex felt at this moment that there was no greater feeling than that of growing more powerful. He lifted his face to the sky and spread out his arms as though to embrace the sky. The light of dawn shone onto his body illuminating him as he stood at the peak of the realm.

However, at the moment where his upgrade was almost completed, a sudden slight tremor was felt below his feet. Followed by a sinking feeling engulfing him, he opened his eyes to see what was happening and he saw himself descending into a bottomless abyss.

Indeed at the moment of relaxation at the peak of all existence, the abyss of despair that had been chasing him from the moment the trial began had consumed him.

At the peak, a blue-hued apparition of a baby appeared and looked down into the abyss staring at Alex as he descended into the darkness. Unable to control its joy at seeing Alex's fate it burst out into a laugh in the voice of a 3-month-old baby, but with the same feeling as with the other cups before. Bearing the same cacophony of frequencies.

Alex fell into a darkness that seemed never-ending. He looked above only to see a blue figure smiling down at him. Alex was still trying to process what was going on as he continued to fall faster and faster into the pitch-black hole. The slight light above him was now no more discernible. He was falling into this space that seemed to have no end or beginning. It was mentally jarring as the winds that blew past him as he fell seemed to dim his soul flame to extinguish it.

Alex fell for what felt like months, descending into further and further darkness. Until suddenly, the light of his soul flame remained but a slight blue ember and his memories had become completely distorted. A flicker of light appeared in the distance. Gradually, as he approached it he was surprised to discover it was a plaza enshrouded in a pristine white barrier.

As he approached the barrier he was blinded by the lights within it and crashed into it.

Shocked Alex got up and looked around him. Realising that he had been dreaming all this while.