A slight quaking of the air pulsated around Malcolm, pulling him from his reverie. It was over. I’ve passed whatever this was. I’ll be sent back to my tiny one-bedroom apartment and wake up from this nightmare - not that waking up to my life is any better.

  Malcolm closed his eyes and let the quaking consume him. His skin felt as though it was ripped clean from his body, but the pain was oddly muted. Abruptly, the quaking stopped and Malcolm opened his eyes.

  The environment around him has changed again. No longer devoid of matter, there was now land stretching infinitely in the distance. The heat bore down on him despite there being no sun in the sickly red sky. An oppressive glow cast by a red-tinged sky washed over the cracked earth beneath his feet. Malcolm knelt down and ran his hands over the ground, feeling the dry, barren clay beneath him. It’s so real.

  He stood and inspected the vast desert, expecting something to happen. He took a few steps forward. Then a few more. Malcolm broke out into a sprint, desperate to go somewhere - anywhere but here. The world seemed to shift around him as he ran, keeping him stationary. Malcolm was a hamster running on a wheel. With limbs that felt like lead, Malcolm gave up. There was nowhere to go.

  Malcolm’s mind, still foggy from the previous trial, had but one singular clarity: he was going to have to face another trial.

  The familiar voice boomed in the red desert sky: “Confront your strength.”

  The ground rumbled beneath him in short intervals. Pebbles tumbled into the cracks in the soil. Scanning the horizon, he spotted a shape lumbering toward him. At first, it was just a silhouette, but as it drew closer it coalesced into a towering creature - skin grey like jagged rock and eyes that burned with an angry, molten glow. It was easily as tall as a house with trunk-like arms that propelled it forward like a gorilla.

  The creature roared in the distance, and the very air around him shook with anticipation.

  A wave of dread crashed into Malcolm. He yelled up at the sky, “You’re joking right? I’m supposed to fight that?”

  No response came for the sky above.

  Malcolm turned back to face the monstrosity, now only a dozen meters away. This wasn’t a fight he could win. Surely, it wasn’t a fight anyone could win - least of all him. Malcolm was weak, and he always had been. Exhausted and facing something so monstrous, his primal instincts screamed at him to run. Yet, he knew he couldn't. Running only ever made him weaker.

  The creature charged at him, each step forward sending clouds into the air in small explosions of dust. Desperation setting in, Malcolm tried to dodge, to leap out of the way of the massive fist descending on him, but his movements were slow and clumsy.

  Crunch.

  Malcolm lay on the hard clay, racked with pain. His lower torso had been crushed - now nothing more than a flattened mass of gore. He tried to scream, but blood had already filled his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. His vision blurred and darkened as he gradually lost consciousness until all he could see were the two molten eyes of the beast staring back at him.

  He died.

  Malcolm opened his eyes. The desert was back. The pain was gone. His body was whole.

  “What the..”

  The voice boomed out across the sky: “You have failed. Try again, but do not forget - this trial is meant to test your limits. You will face the beast once more.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “No,” he repeated, louder, panic rising.

  It was too late. The monster was already upon him, roaring with a fury that made the air vibrate.

  This time, Malcolm managed to dodge the crashing fist, tumbling to the right. The impact shook the ground, nausea surging through him, but forced himself up. There was no time to hesitate.

  Hesitation meant death, and…

  The creature's massive jaws snapped forward, separating Malcolm’s head from his body.

  “You have failed. Confront your strength.”

  Again and again - maybe a hundred times, maybe a thousand - Malcolm faced the beast. He died each and every time. Limbs torn off. Skull crushed. Slashed by stony scales. He bled out more times than he could count. Once, the stony beast just roared at him until his eyes and ears bled. That one was among the worst.

  Nothing he tried had any effect. He had no weapon, no means to hurt the beast. Despite its size, it was faster than it had any right to be.

  “You have failed once more. Confront your strength.”

  A smaller creature rose from the ground - no larger than a man - its body made of semi-solid clay. It had no face or discernible human features. It dragged itself across the ground like a snail, leaving a trail of residue.

  Malcolm wasn’t any more confident facing this challenge.

  In life, Malcolm had always been frail. He never got into any fight he couldn’t win - which meant he got into no fights at all. It was part of the reason his father had always looked down on him.

  “You have no backbone,” his father would say. “You are a descendant of the Graves family. You must fight for your place in this world. Weakness has no place among us.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Malcolm had tried, when he was younger, to stand up for himself. He had tried to fight back against the bullies and the ridicule he faced on a daily basis. It had only earned him bloody noses - and even more attention. Eventually, he had learned to blend into his surroundings. If the world overlooked him, it would leave him alone.

  The amorphous blob of clay faced him now, bobbing side to side like a metronome. Malcolm saw his weakness reflected in the sheen of the creature. He steeled his emotions and charged.

  The fight lasted only seconds. Malcolm coughed blood as he looked down at his chest - a spike of clay piercing straight through his heart. His head sagged, and he died. Again.

  Malcolm faced the clay monster innumerable times, for what felt like weeks on end. He never once got close to defeating it. As soon as he came within striking distance, he would be skewered by spikes of clay that shot out faster than his eyes could see. He tried every strategy he could formulate. He tried preemptively dodging, hoping the spikes would miss. They never did. Malcolm had stayed beyond the range of the spikes and pelted it with rocks, but if he didn’t face it directly, the creature would fire clay bullets at him instead - which somehow felt worse than the quick death from a direct assault.

  “You have failed. Confront your strength.”

  “Stop doing this to me,” he shouted back, as a flock of birds with teeth began circling overhead. They swooped down in pairs, tearing flesh from his body until he died of his wounds. Again and again, they attacked, picking him clean to the bone. Again and again, he died. Pain was a constant in this place.

  He failed again, and a dog-sized crystalline insectoid crawled out from one of the larger cracks in the ground.

  Next came a black snake with two heads. A green toad with bulges that burst and sprayed acid. A centipede with razor-sharp legs that cut him to pieces as it wrapped around him. A stag that shot bolts of lightning from its horns.

  More and more creatures appeared - each one tearing him to pieces, burning him to ash, or killing him painfully in a myriad of ways. Malcolm was done. He would rather die - for real - than have this continue. He pleaded with the voice in the sky to end his suffering, but received no response.

  He wanted out of this nightmare he was trapped in.

  Am I doomed to fail? Forever stuck in an endless cycle of pain and suffering? How long have I been here?

  Death. Reset. Failure. Despair. Death. Reset. Failure. Despair.

  On and on, he died, was revived, and was forced to fight again.

  A swarm of leeches covered his body, draining every last drop until he was nothing but an empty husk.

  A leafy plant struck at him with venomous vines from underground, filling him with toxins that burst his blood vessels and caused internal hemorrhaging.

  It continued, endlessly. Malcolm fought back each time - but with less and less energy. He would never win, so what was the point?

  Malcolm reset again after dying to an asshole of a little red fox that, for some reason, had developed quite the taste for eyeballs.

  The red desert was gone.

  In its place stood a dimly lit ruin. Crumbling stone pillars leaned at precarious angles, the ground underneath them cracked and uneven. Moss and rot covered every surface. The air was humid and reeked of decay. Thin rays of light filtered in through the cracks in the stone ceiling above, casting pale beams on his despair.

  After countless deaths and resets, the voice that echoed through the ruins sounded almost indifferent: “This will be your final test. Face your strength. Face your fear. Face what comes. Or face your judgment.”

  From the shadows of the ruins, a creature emerged - a small, emaciated rat. It looked hungry. It looked at him.

  Its body seemed barely held together, sinew clinging to bones as if held in place by its desire to feed. Baring sharp, white teeth, it snarled - a sound much too deep for something so small.

  This time, the creature wasn’t a towering monster or fearsome predator.

  It was a rat.

  A tiny, hyper-aggressive rat with rotting flesh, bloodshot eyes, and a ridiculous appearance that hardly registered as a threat.

  “Hey, little guy,” Malcolm chirped to the rat.

  Hardly registered as a threat - until it moved.

  It darted with a terrifying speed that caught Malcolm by surprise.

  Malcolm, broken and exhausted, could barely think. He hurled himself to the side as the rat pounced, missing his shoulder by a fraction of an inch. It slammed against the wall behind him, momentarily disoriented, then turned and lunged again, this time latching onto his left leg with its claws and sinking teeth into his skin.

  Malcolm howled in pain and kicked, dislodging the creature from his bleeding limb. The rat, a blur of motion, was soon upon him again scratching at his ankles, tearing flesh from his calf.

  It hurt.

  A lot.

  He tried to kick the rat again, but it was easily able to dodge his attempts.

  Malcolm stumbled back, too slow, too weak.

  The rat lept, sinking teeth deep into his arm, tearing through flesh. He screamed, blood spilling onto the stone floor as it gnashed and clawed, relentless.

  Every part of Malcolm’s body screamed in agony. His vision was blurred. His breath came in ragged gasps.

  There was no retreat.

  He had to fight.

  This was his final chance. If he failed, who knew what would happen?

  The rat kept coming at him with overwhelming speed. Malcolm’s body was shutting down, but desperation fueled him.

  He kicked out blindly.

  His foot connected with the rat’s skull - hard, driven by raw desperation.

  It was not enough.

  The rat skittered into the shadows, and Malcolm, off balance, crashed sideways into one of the cracked support pillars.

  There’s a groan of stone.

  A whisper of falling dust.

  Then the ancient archway gave out.

  A sizable chunk of ceiling collapsed - not on Malcolm, but on the rat, which had crouched in the shadows, preparing to pounce again.

  There was a wet crunch.

  Then silence.

  Malcolm, unable to comprehend what had just happened, sat up and gasped for breath, trembling eyes searching for the rat. His body was slick with sweat and blood. His gaze fell upon the mangled corpse of the rat, pinned beneath the fallen rubble.

  Still. Broken. Lifeless.

  Malcolm hadn’t won. Not really.

  But the rat was dead.

  And Malcolm was not.

  That was enough.

  The voice returned, its tone neutral and disinterested: “You have completed trial… in your own way, but understand this: strength is not simply given. It is carved out from pain.”

  The ruins vanished. The rat disappeared. The oppressive air diminished.

  Malcolm was alive, but he felt no real sense of victory. His survival was more luck than anything else.

  He could barely stand, but he had crossed another hurdle - whether or not he was ready for whatever came next.