Nether Trials – Zethraxis

While Aria faded into the folds of her first trial, Zethraxis stood in a chamber of obsidian glass. Its walls reflected countless versions of himself. They were not mirrors, but echoes. In each, he saw a different path taken: a warrior engulfed by rage, another crowned in shadows, one burned to ash.

A deep voice echoed from within the shifting dark.

“Do you know how many ways you could fall?”

Zethraxis turned, fists clenched. “I don’t need this game.”

The voice chuckled, low and dissonant.

“This is no game. This is your inheritance.”

From the glass stepped a version of himself, fully consumed by the power of the Shadow Realm. Eyes like molten night, veins laced with otherworldly fire, power radiating with unchecked malice.

“You toy with power you don’t understand,” the shadow said. “You deny it, chain it, muzzle it like a beast. But you and I—we were meant to embrace it.”

Zethraxis felt the pull, subtle at first, like a whisper behind the eyes.

He summoned his weapon instinctively, but the shadow-form sneered.

“You think steel can silence truth?”

A blast of void energy struck Zethraxis, launching him backward. He crashed into one of the echo-walls, shards raining down in silence. Blood traced his cheek.

Pain. Real. This trial was not illusion.

It was temptation.

The shadow approached slowly.

“Don’t you feel it? That hunger in your bones? The call in your dreams? You think the council made you strong? It was me. This darkness is your spine. Your strength. Without it, you are nothing.”

Zethraxis rose with a broken lip and burning ribs, but his gaze was defiant.

“I am not your vessel. I am my own.”

The echo snarled and lunged, but Zethraxis let the blade fall from his hand.

Instead, he opened his arms.

The shadow halted mid-step, confused.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Zethraxis said quietly.

The entire chamber groaned, as if the Nexus itself reeled from that choice.

The shadow screamed and shattered, breaking into inked fragments that dissolved in the air. The obsidian glass walls cracked, and in their place rose a dim path leading ever deeper.

Zethraxis breathed, steadying his stance.

The hunger remained. The darkness within still stirred.

But it no longer ruled him.

It answered to him.

He walked on toward his second trial, where the true nature of that control would be tested again.

The shadows thickened as Zethraxis stepped deeper into the Nether Nexus. The veil of the realm rippled around him like water disturbed by thought, until the path before him twisted and fractured. No longer the arcane halls of the Nexus, it became scorched ground, windless air, and skies stained rust-red.

He knew this place.

The battlefield reassembled itself in fragments. Shattered stone. Burned trees. Weapons sunk into earth like gravestones. It wasn’t a memory—this place felt real. Too real.

Zethraxis moved forward slowly. There were no soldiers here. No commanding officers. Just silence, and the shape of a body lying in the centre of the ruins.

He stopped.

It was her.

Talia.

A tremor ran through the ground. Her fingers twitched.

Zethraxis took a step back as her body rose with an unnatural grace, limbs guided not by life but by the will of the trial. Her hair fell in thick, tangled strands around her face. Her eyes opened—clouded, empty—and yet they locked onto his with terrible clarity.

“You left me,” she said, her voice hollow.

He swallowed hard. “No... I tried to save you.”

She stepped forward, slow and deliberate.

“You chose the power. You let it in. You knew what it was doing to you. But still, you embraced it.”

The shadows on the ground began to coil, creeping up around her like a storm gathering shape. She raised her arm, and it was no longer hers. It was twisted, like something carved from obsidian, dripping with the same essence that now pulsed in Zethraxis’s blood.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Zethraxis flinched. The old guilt rose in him like bile. She had died screaming, caught in the chaos when he lost control. He had never said goodbye. Never buried her.

He took a step forward. “No! I avenged you with it.”

Her head tilted.

“Did you bring me back to life?”

“I… I didn’t know that was possible.”

The creature paused. “It’s too late now. You left me to rot in the streets we met. The streets I grew up in.”

Zethraxis composed himself.

“I didn’t leave you. I lost myself. I’m sorry, Talia.”

The battlefield wind returned, soft and cool, and with it, the clouds in Talia’s eyes faded for just a moment. Her true self flickered through.

She smiled—a sad, broken smile.

And then her form crumbled, scattering into shadow and light.

Zethraxis stood alone again.

In his hand, left behind in the dust, was a fragment of her pendant—the one she always wore around her neck. He closed his fingers over it, the edges digging into his palm.

The air around him thickened, swirling with an unnatural energy, distorting the space until it was no longer the ethereal labyrinth of the Nexus. Instead, it morphed into the familiar sights of his childhood—the humble streets of Elyria, his hometown, bathed in the soft, golden light of dusk.

The city was poor, its buildings crumbled, the air always a little heavy with dust. The people of Elyria worked tirelessly, their faces worn but their spirits unbroken. Zethraxis remembered it all too well: the small, simple home his parents had carved out of the city’s underbelly. He had not thought of it in years.

But now, it was here.

Before him, the worn path he had walked as a child stretched out, leading to the small cottage that had once been his family’s sanctuary.

His heart began to race.

He stepped forward, drawn to the cottage, each footstep echoing with memories. As he reached the door, a lump formed in his throat. He hadn’t thought about them in a long time. He had buried them beneath his rage and his need to rise above it all. But now they were here. Waiting.

With hesitant hands, he pushed open the door.

Inside, the cottage was warm. Soft firelight flickered from the hearth, casting dancing shadows across the room. The smell of freshly baked bread hung in the air, and the simple furnishings felt familiar, like something out of a dream he had not dared to revisit.

But as his eyes moved to the far corner of the room, his breath caught.

There, sitting in the dim light, was his father.

His father, whom he had buried long ago, had become frail and weathered, the light in his eyes dimming just as Zethraxis’s own had begun to burn brighter.

His father’s ghost rose from the chair, his spectral form flickering like a fading flame.

“Zethraxis… You’ve returned. I knew you would.”

Zethraxis froze, the words sinking deep into his chest. The pain of loss and the years of regret came flooding back.

His father’s figure was a mix of faint light and shadow. His face was soft, tired, yet there was pride there—pride for his son, but also sorrow. The unspoken weight of years lost, time wasted, never fulfilled.

“I waited for you to come back to us. To find yourself. But you were lost… weren’t you?”

Zethraxis struggled to speak. His throat tightened. He had so many questions, so much he wanted to say, but the words would not come. Instead, the reality of what had been—what he had failed to protect—crashed over him. His father’s death, his inability to be there, to save him.

Before he could process the emotions, he heard a sound behind him.

His mother’s voice.

She was standing in the doorway.

Her face was as sorrowful as it had always been, softened by age but still filled with a deep, aching love. She looked at him with eyes full of tears, but it was not just pain—there was understanding. She had always understood him in ways that even he had not fully grasped.

“Zethraxis... You’ve become something else, haven’t you?” she whispered.

He turned slowly to face her. His heart twisted.

Her voice cracked as she spoke. “We always hoped you would rise beyond the trials we faced. But not like this, son. Not at the cost of yourself.”

Her words pierced him like a dagger, pulling him deeper into the confusion that had plagued him since the beginning of his journey. He thought of the shadow that had been creeping beneath his skin, the power he had embraced to push forward. Was this the price of his strength? Had it truly made him stronger, or had it simply made him lost?

The spectral figures of his parents stood before him—his father’s fading light and his mother’s enduring sorrow. They were not angry, not accusing him, only grieving. It was the quiet mourning of time that could not be reclaimed.

“You’ve sought power, son, but it’s not power that will fill the hole in your heart. It’s the love you left behind,” his father said.

Zethraxis stepped toward his mother, his hands trembling. Her image shimmered in the low firelight. He wanted to reach for her, to beg for forgiveness for the years of neglect, for the way he had hardened himself to everything but the fight. But as he approached, she began to fade, her form slipping like sand through his fingers.

And then, in a whisper, her voice reached him again.

“You’ve always been enough, Zethraxis. You’ve just forgotten it.”

The trial was complete, but his heart felt heavier than ever.

The room fell still, and for a brief moment, he felt the touch of his parents’ love, their sorrow, their acceptance. His father's image disappeared first, vanishing into the fire’s glow, and his mother faded into the cool shadows of the room. Before Zethraxis could fully comprehend it, everything was gone. The cottage was empty, the hearth cold, and the only sound was the faint hum of the Nexus calling him onward.

Zethraxis stood still, heart heavy with the weight of the past, but a new clarity emerging in him. He was not just the power he had embraced, nor the shadows he had fought against. He was more than that. He was still their son.

But there was something gnawing at the edges of his mind. Something was not right. The world around him was too perfect, too constructed. The soft light of the hearth, the faint smell of bread, the comforting crackle of fire—this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

His father’s ghost had looked at him with pride, and for a moment, Zethraxis had longed to believe it. To grasp at the illusion, to let it consume him. But then the shadows shifted. His father’s spectral form seemed to flicker, his face twisting ever so slightly, and Zethraxis realized this was not a reunion. This was a trial.

The anger, the sorrow—everything that had driven him to this point—they were real, but this place, this moment, was not. The Nexus had crafted this vision from his deepest desires and his greatest fears. It wanted him to break, to believe in the illusion, to let the pain and love of the past hold him back.

He clenched his fists, grounding himself in the cold stone of reality.

This is not them. This is not real, he told himself.

He closed his eyes, fighting the pull of the memories, the need to embrace the reunion. His father’s voice, his mother’s touch—they had been real once, long ago, but this was a mirage. A trick.

He stepped backward, away from the fading spectres. His father’s face, once filled with pride, flickered once more, the edges of the illusion unravelling. Zethraxis breathed deeply, releasing the hold of the vision, his mind clearing.

“I know what this is,” he said, his voice steady.

The room darkened as the echoes of the illusion faded, leaving him standing alone in the void of the Nexus.

As the last vestiges of the vision vanished, Zethraxis felt a strange sense of peace settle over him. It wasn’t forgiveness from his parents that mattered—it was forgiveness from himself.

“I’m not who I was,” he said softly.

With the trial passed, Zethraxis was brought before the Nether Prism, where Aria waited.