The world changed the moment Avin’s eyes opened.No longer was he simply seeing — he was perceiving, every detail unraveling into the true shape that had always been there, waiting to be revealed.
At first, he thought it was a trick of exhaustion — the aftereffect of too much strain. But then he blinked, and the veil between worlds tore open.
Behind the examiner stood it.
A towering, translucent being that bent its massive frame to keep from piercing the ceiling. Its form shimmered like smoke and glass, humanoid in silhouette but far from human. Its limbs were grotesquely long, the arms dragging like ropes of muscle and shadow, and it leaned on its knuckles like a monstrous gorilla, the ground faintly cracking under invisible weight.
And then there were its eyes.Three of them — one in the center of its forehead, two perfectly aligned below it.Each glowed a different color: the left a piercing green, the right an icy blue, and the uppermost a burning crimson.They were alive. They moved, darting independently, scanning the hall, the students, the walls — even Avin himself.
Avin’s heart dropped into his stomach. "What the hell is that...?"
The realization crashed into him like a cold wave — this was what the figure had been using all along. This invisible monster, this unseen god of punishment that lifted students and crushed them like paper dolls. Every time he had killed someone, it wasn’t with his own hands... but with that thing behind him.
For the first time, Avin found himself wishing he hadn’t looked.Sometimes, the dark was safer than the truth.
The figure spoke again, his voice smooth, unaffected."Now that we all know and respect the rules..."He snapped his fingers. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ novel fire.net
At once, hundreds of sheets of paper shimmered into existence in front of each desk. Quills and ink pens followed, hovering briefly before dropping gently into waiting hands.
The air shifted. The only sound left was the soft scratching of pens. Everyone looked down, eyes fixed on their papers, unmoving. Avin did the same, not daring to look anywhere else. His breath came in slow, shallow pulls.
He turned the first page.
It was filled with intricate, looping symbols — a language he had never seen before. And yet, somehow... he could read it. The words didn’t feel foreign. They felt like they’d been carved somewhere deep in his mind long before this moment.
He blinked hard and tried to focus. Maybe it was because the "original" Avin — the one whose life he had inherited — had learned this language. Maybe his brain was just catching up. It didn’t matter. He had to write something.
But as his eyes scanned the questions, his confidence evaporated.
In Orphic cosmology, Chronos was said to generate Aether and Chaos before creating a cosmic egg. What was the being that hatched from this egg, and how did that being’s nature symbolically reflect Chronos’ role in the cosmos?
Chronos is often conflated with Cronus, the Titan father of Zeus. Which Hellenistic texts or traditions are responsible for this conflation?
In art and alchemy, Chronos is depicted with a serpent biting its own tail. Explain the symbolic significance and its relation to the cycles of existence.
If time is unaging, how can it change?
Each question felt like a foreign weapon aimed at his head.He knew the words. He didn’t understand a single one.
He exhaled shakily, pressing the pen to the paper. "Maybe... maybe the other Avin knows," he muttered to himself. "Maybe I just have to let it out."
So he wrote.And wrote.Words he didn’t understand flowed out of him in long, sweeping lines. His handwriting changed mid-sentence — unfamiliar, foreign, as if someone else was holding his hand. Symbols and glyphs spilled across the page like blood.
He was so lost in it that he didn’t notice when the air above him began to distort.Didn’t notice the faint tremor in the ground.Didn’t notice the shadow looming over his desk.
"So..." a voice said above him, smooth as oil. "You can read it, after all."
Avin froze.The pen slipped from his fingers.
Slowly, painfully slowly, he lifted his head — and found himself staring directly into the eyes of the examiner.
His breath stopped. He couldn’t even move. The figure was right there, towering over his desk, watching him with a calm intensity that felt worse than anger.
He tried to speak, but his throat locked up. His body went cold — not from fear alone, but from certainty. He was going to die. There was no other reason the examiner would notice him.
He remembered the others — the man who coughed, the students with telepathy — how they were erased like they were never real. He had accepted death before, but this one felt personal.
The examiner tilted his head slightly. "When did you know you could read the—"
And then, his voice broke apart.
The sound glitched — twisting into static, then into meaningless noise.Avin’s eyes widened. The man’s words melted into muffled, distorted gibberish, just like the voices he had heard before. But this time, the horror was different — this wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t some creature in the forest.This was a human.
Or something close to it.
The examiner sighed, pressing two fingers to his lips as if silencing himself. "Ah," he said softly, his tone strange. "It seems He is starting again..."
He looked down at Avin, the corners of his mouth twitching in faint amusement. "No matter. You have his eyes."
Avin’s heart skipped. "What... what do you mean—?"
The man didn’t answer. Instead, he looked down at Avin’s paper. His expression shifted — confusion first, then something unreadable. His face flattened into neutrality again.
"You have everything wrong."
Avin blinked, looking at the paper. "Is... that so?" he muttered weakly, trying to laugh it off, though his voice cracked.
The examiner raised a single hand and snapped his fingers.
Avin’s paper glowed faintly. The words began to shift — the sentences rearranging themselves, symbols dancing into new formations until the answers looked entirely different. He didn’t understand what was written, but he could feel that it was right.
The examiner’s tone softened. "There," he said. "That’s better."
Avin looked up. "Why... help me?"
The man’s faint smile returned. "Pass the last challenge," he said quietly, "and come find me in the library."
And just like that — he was gone.
The world snapped back into place.The man stood once more at the platform, overlooking the hall as if he had never moved from there. The giant creature behind him was invisible again, fading back into the fabric of the unseen.
Avin sat frozen, staring down at his now-silent paper. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. He didn’t dare touch it again — didn’t dare move at all.
Was this a trick? A trap? Or something else entirely?He couldn’t tell anymore.
But one thing was certain:He had just seen something — someone — who knew far more about him than anyone should.
And that, somehow, terrified him more than any monster ever could.