The makeshift knife thunked into the zombie’s head, actually embedding itself there. Alex had never used a weapon before, unless you counted toys. He’d certainly never thrown a bladed weapon at someone’s head.

As it turned out, it was actually pretty easy to do. At close range it was almost impossible to miss, and while the large, heavy, shiv didn’t hurtle point-first into the zombie’s eye or anything, it certainly took a large chunk out of its face. It left a large gash along one side, hopefully ruining an eye. Better, the impact staggered the monster. A vigorous yank on the cord around its ankle had the zombie sprawl prone again, twitching slightly as black blood bubbled from the knife wound. It seemed almost… confused. As if this wasn’t meant to happen.

The zombie lunged again, slower this time, and Alex was forced to drop his end of the cord as he leapt back. With a final glance back at the horrific creature, he took a couple of quick breaths and resumed his jog away. The zombie moaned, scrabbling along the ground. Significantly slowed, it soon fell behind.

Alex jogged alone for another few minutes before he heard the notification, slightly slowed but too afraid to stop completely.

Stage Seven Complete.

Aberrant solution detected. Automatically concluding the trial, awarding bonus point. Congratulations, you survived.

It wasn’t optimal, but it was the best he was going to get.

Trial of Endurance Complete.

The trial of wisdom was weird. The first stage had been a small room with three painted wooden doors leading out of it. The golden wisdom key had been conveniently sitting in one of the keyholes, along with two other keys, a white one and a black one. The moment Alex removed the third and final key, the central door with the quest key vanished.

The other two doors remained as stage two commenced. Alex looked at the keys he’d taken, then frowned and slotted them back into the matching doors. Stage three begun.

Well this seems easy.

This time, there were two grey doors in front of him. The handle of the first had been loaded with a blade trap which sliced his palm when he went to turn it. He had gasped and wrapped his bleeding hand in his cloth cord, only then noticing that a third door was embedded in the wall behind him. This one was golden, and opening it progressed the trial.

Lesson learnt, always check behind you. And above, I guess.

Stage four featured a green door along with a massive pile of green keys. Alex had thought he would have to sort through them all, but on inspecting the green door he realised it was already unlocked. He opened it and the stage ended. He suspected that some of the keys in the pile might have ended up locking it.

On stage five the trial seemingly diverged from the door theme, and a massive buffet appeared in front of him. It was covered in all sorts of appetising colours and foods, with some fruits he recognised and some that he didn’t. A huge slab of meat sat in the centre, some sort of skewered animal. It looked delicious, and while the pool was keeping him sustained, Alex hadn’t actually eaten real food since Earth. He’d hesitantly picked up a grape and let it roll between his fingers.

Well. I'm sure as shit that this food is poisoned. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

But after almost an hour of searching the room and the table for a clue, he had nothing. So, against his better judgement, he tentatively nibbled at the top of one of the grapes. It tasted delicious, and a golden door appeared which would allow the stage to progress. He considered eating more before leaving, but instead tossed the grape on the floor. His stomach moaned, but you could never be too careful.

Stage Five Complete. Do you wish to leave the trial?

Not yet. Definitely not yet.

This whole trial had him feeling off balance, but he was gaining an appreciation for what it was assessing. Perceptiveness, decision-making, and the softer side of rationality?

Commencing Stage Six.

The food vanished and five open grey doors appeared, each leading into darkness. He had to look at them each from an odd angle before he saw the trick – only one of them had a handle on its back side. He stepped through and the door slammed shut after him, leaving him in a cupboard-sized space without light. He turned the inside handle and stepped back into the main room, not wanting to imagine what would have happened if he’d chosen a door without one. This trial was scaring him in a very different way to its predecessors.

Stage seven featured a single doorframe with an hourglass next to it, standing in the middle of the room. Sand began falling instantly, rapidly draining most of the way in under fifteen seconds. Alex stepped through the frame. The hourglass froze and the stage progressed.

I need to know when to act decisively and when to wait.

The banquet room reappeared for stage eight. It was seemingly identical, but felt even more wrong than last time. It took a full fifteen minutes of poking around before Alex realised… he couldn’t smell any of the food. The revelation was enormously disconcerting. An exit door appeared, as if it had been waiting for him to have the thought. He was glad he hadn't jumped to trying the food again.

The ninth room had looked exactly like his bedroom, and he’d woken up in his own bed to the sound of his digital alarm clock. It was raining outside, and he was warm in his pyjamas. Relieved to be awake after what felt like a very long dream, he’d glanced at the clock to turn it off and lie back down.

Wait, why is it ticking down?

Shocked by the realisation, he’d leapt out of bed and dashed through his bedroom door, which he now realised hadn't ever been painted gold.

Stage Nine Complete. Do you wish to leave the trial?

Shaking a little, Alex decided not to. This was fucking creepy, but he could do it. He took a deep breath, grounding himself in reality and preparing for any further illusions.

Commencing Stage Ten.

He stood in front of his mother on an ICU bed, and his heart broke in half.

“Alex? Oh… there you are. Always late, just like your father.”

He ran from the room before he could lose himself in it, tears blurring the golden door in front of him.

“Alex? Where are you go—”

The door slammed shut behind him, and the stage ended.

The banquet returned again on stage eleven, present to all his senses. But this time, the table was covered in human body parts, and a fat man sat there gnawing on an arm.

One of the severed heads on the table was his mother’s. Right next to his little brother’s. His fourteen year-old brother. The fat man was munching on what looked to be a skinny, youthful arm.

Rage, horror, and sickness flooded Alex, and he found himself holding a long, rusted, red sword that glowed with an otherwordly, consuming energy. It felt hungry.

Fourteen, when the flare hit.

The flare.

The thought caused him to snap his head around the room, spotting the golden door directly behind him, the hourglass sitting next to it almost depleted. He dove through it, the sword vanishing as he choked back tears.

Stage Eleven Complete. Do you wish to leave the trial?

No. He wasn’t leaving this trial. Fuck this system and fuck whatever was constructing these visions.

I’ll show them. They can’t beat me down like this. IT’S NOT REAL.

He fixed the knowledge in his mind as the next stage begun.

Commencing Stage Twelve.

The vision this time was abjectly horrific. It was every one of his worst nightmares and more, every torment he’d heard of being inflicted, sometimes over the course of decades, on everyone he loved. It all flashed before his eyes in instants.

It was so all-consuming that Alex couldn’t even see his surroundings, just the endless hellscape of torture and pain.

But shakily, he breathed in. He'd prepared for this. They’re just illusions. He reached out a hand, and felt the familiar wall of the room he was in. I’m still in the trial. He closed his eyes and walked with his hand on the wall, stepping through scenes of murder and worse, feeling blood splatter and shower his ragged white tunic with every step. Some got in his mouth. It’s not real.

His hand alighted on a doorknob, and he twisted it and stepped through. The stage ended, the gore vanished, and he elected to keep going.

Alex entered stage thirteen with his eyes closed in preparation. He knew it might not be wise, but after what he'd seen in the last trial he couldn't bring himself to open them. But it didn't matter, because in this stage he was the one committing the atrocities. He could literally feel his body moving, hear people around him screaming as he tortured and killed them with phantom limbs. Familiar voices.

But with his eyes closed, it was slightly easier to ignore the sensation of the phantom limbs moving. He kept his real hands pressed firmly on the trial wall, focusing on that sensation to the exclusion of all others. Again, he traced the wall and found the door.

He felt himself doing things which would make most grown adults cry, and was struck with waves of irrational guilt.

I have to look. I have to know.

So, before he opened the door out of the thirteenth stage, Alex opened his eyes and took in the illusions he was being presented with.

The raw shock of what he saw almost made him faint, the images seared into his mind. He could see and feel himself tearing his loved ones apart, painting art with their limbs, profaning their corpses. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Alex remembered when he’d once seen an ISIS beheading video on social media when he’d been a young boy, laughing with his friends before watching it on a dare. He hadn’t told anyone, but watching it had haunted him for weeks, making him feel hollow whenever he thought about it. What he saw now would haunt him for lifetimes.

But he forced his eyes all the way open. He knew, on a rational level, that this was an illusion, and he knew that in order to progress he’d need to resist such things.

It'll only get worse.

So he stood, one hand on the door, watching and feeling himself pulling the fingers off one of his best friends while she screamed for mercy. His eyes had been open less than a second.

This is not real. None of this is real.

But the longer he watched, mesmerised by the sick scenes, the more he realised what frightened him about it.

But it is possible. True evil exists, and people commit it. None of this is new.

His mind flashed to historic events he’d read about: the holocaust, the rape of Nanking, world wars. And he knew that while what he saw was an illusion, it represented something that did exist – the very worst of humanity. It was easy to focus on things like zombies and giant ants, even when they'd been purely fictional on Earth. But people never wanted to consider the darkest capabilities of those who looked just like him, who had feelings just like him. Who enjoyed what they did.

With that thought, the illusions vanished, leaving a single red key lying on the ground of the empty, square room.

Shaking violently, Alex picked up the key and accepted stage fourteen, too shell-shocked to form the thoughts required to decline. He’d begun to forget where he was, who he was, numb with the depth of the revelation and the horrors he’d seen.

Stage fourteen, to his intense relief, presented him with five coloured doors and a strange tablet. The stone slab hung in the air before them, inscribed with glyphs.

There was no timer, and it took a full couple minutes of dry-retching and shivering before Alex had recovered enough to examine the tablet. As usual, the meaning of the strange symbols translated effortlessly into his mind as he looked at it.

Gates of blood and poison reward the harrowed and sage,

But end their journey in this place.

Perpetual haze is the double-edged blade of age,

Matching memories and rewards erased.

Void leads the worthy to truest insight,

And white leads to peace eternal, oblivion.

The red key crumbled in Alex’s hand and three of the doors in front of him opened. Red, his reward for willingly taking in the previous stage's harrowing scenes. Grey, which he sensed would remove his memories of what he'd seen in exchange for partial progress in the trial. Finally, white, for those who could neither bring themselves to forget nor continue.

The black and purple doors remained closed and locked; their requirements apparently not met.

Alex looked longingly at the grey door, imagining what it would be like to forget what he’d seen in that last room. He even glanced at the white door for half a second.

No. I might be shaken, but I’ve earned this. If what I saw was real, then I need to be strong. To stop it.

It might take time, but he was visualising the trauma, the evil he’d been through, as something he could defeat. He would gain the power to purge that sort of horror from the world. Before he could change his mind, he walked up to and stepped through the red door, accepting the trial's end.

Stage Fourteen Complete.

Concluding Trial. Congratulations, you survived.

Trial of Wisdom Complete.

Alex walked slowly over to his pile of dirt, gathered what felt like decades ago now. He slumped down and lay on it, curled up in a ball, and finally began crying. Not just because of what he’d seen, but because of what he knew to be true.

I’ll never see my family or friends again.

He stayed there for some time, completely uncaring about the golden key still nestled in his cloth belt. It was the first time he’d cried in years.

When he got up, he felt just a little bit better. He was going to beat this damn challenge.

Alex had abandoned his clockwise approach to save the intelligence trial for last before luck, but by this point the whole thing no longer felt like a game. Indeed, he was still getting flashbacks to the horrors in the trial of wisdom, the things he’d felt himself doing.

While crying for a while had helped, he’d decided to climb into the hidden loft to sit below the powerful inscriptions on its roof. They radiated safety, security, and light. While Alex knew that in all likelihood they existed to reinforce the challenge walls and provide amenities like the pool, he still found the strength of the concepts they projected to be calming. They were relaxing to look at, and eased his mind somewhat, so he deliberately let himself be drawn in by them as he meditated.

He was snapped out of his reverie by a pang of thirst. He had no reliable way of keeping track of time since he hadn’t been using his ring, but he knew that he would only be hungry after not having touched the golden pool for a while.

Half a day? A day? Shit. Ah well, I think it was worth it. I feel a lot better.

Indeed, he felt significantly calmer now, and his breathing had steadied. He climbed down from the loft and was filled by dread at what he saw.

The golden pool was empty. His three days had elapsed, and it turned out that he'd spent far longer in the loft than he'd planned.

Nothing to it, he gathered all his remaining tools except for the golden box and keys, and walked through the portal to the trial of intelligence.

Like the wisdom trial, the intelligence trial took place in the centre of a shifting, square room. But unlike the wisdom trial, the instructions were completely, blessedly clear for progressing every stage.

Welcome to the Trial of Intelligence. Pull the correct lever. Commencing Stage One.

Two stone levers with polished wooden handles materialised on the wall opposite him. The wall above each one was marked with a glyph… were those the numbers ‘2’ and ‘4’?

A third arrangement of glyphs emerged, embedded in higher in the wall.

How many levers are on the wall?

Alex looked around the room. He checked for traps. He checked for invisible levers. He activated his [Seeker’s Ring], noting that it pointed towards one of the levers. He frowned, unable to see the key he was looking for. He considered pulling that lever, but it was the one that said ‘4’, which seemed like the wrong answer.

Instead, he inspected the mechanism closely. It took him a few minutes to find the trick – the ‘4’ lever’s handle was screwed on, and by twisting it he was able to remove it from the shaft. The golden key had been hidden in a cavity under the handle and fell out to clatter onto the marble floor. The handle evaporated in his hand and reappeared back on the lever, secured this time.

As he picked up the key, Alex checked his quest log. (6/6). Well, that was that dealt with. His stomach growling, he pulled the lever with the glyph meaning ‘2’, and passed stage one.

If I have three swords, and I sell one sword, how many swords do I have?

Which weapon type was mentioned in the previous question?

If I have eleven hammers, and I buy fourteen, how many hammers do I have?

An additional lever appeared on the wall for stage four, the options being '11', ‘25’, ‘46’, and ‘20’. Alex snorted and pulled the correct lever. It looked like the trial was just one big, multiple-choice logical reasoning and memory exam. Finally, he was optimistic. The stage three question had surprised him slightly with its reference to the previous stage, so he’d begun committing every stage’s details to memory as a precaution. He had experience memorising far more complex pieces of information than the word 'sword'.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have anything he could write with, or he’d be writing things down. He considered scratching notes into his skin but was a bit worried that the system would consider that an aberrant solution, probably for constitution. Plus, he no longer had the pool to heal him.

What is five times two?

There weren’t many details to commit to memory anyway. He developed a mnemonic and would only pull a stage’s lever once he was sure he could recite the details of that stage one hundred percent reliably.

What is (156 / 12)?

That question had been phrased in terms of the number of boxes a farmer could fit on a cart. But as with all of the glyphs so far, these were being interpreted directly by his mind, which meant he had some control over how they appeared to him. He'd begun conceptualising of them in modern Earth’s mathematical notation, finding it more comfortable. The trial didn’t seem to mind, although the glyphs wouldn’t allow him to simplify the concepts all the way into an answer. It did allow him to filter out the annoying flavour text.

On stage seven another lever appeared, and the nature of the question was a little more esoteric. But the major blow was that an hourglass appeared, the sand in it moving at a glacial pace.

Complete the pattern.

A pattern of four glyphs hung in the air in front of him. Each one, he sensed, represented a beast of some sort. The glyphs gave him flashes of insight into their natures, and he realised that they grew smaller in size from left to right, and were all red. A final glyph meaning ‘unknown’ hung to their right, and Alex pulled the lever with the smallest, red monster.

This is like one of those stupid online IQ tests. The glyphs aren't even difficult to read.

Complete the pattern.

This time, it was just the Fibonacci Sequence but with every number multiplied by two. It took him all of five seconds to realise this, and he pulled the lever marked ‘26’, advancing the stage. The hourglass had barely started to trickle, but did seem to shrink with every successive problem.

Take (dx/dy) (8x) (1-5x)^2

By the time he got to stage ten, two questions had involved calculus. Well, not strictly – they'd been framed in terms of a farmer segmenting his paddock with limited fencing and a woman filling a jug from the well. But Alex knew calculus when he saw it, and the glyphs translated neatly into his preferred notation.

This is like… late high school difficulty. How is this stuff on stage eleven? Plus, this timer is slow as all fuck.

He supposed that someone who actually went to the gym regularly might have had analogous thoughts in the strength or endurance trial. Cheery, Alex solved the stage eleven question. It had been some sort of matrix convolution problem, presented as a logic puzzle.

I'm solving these mathematically, but that one felt like it could have been written by a philosopher.

He supposed that maths was often just formalised logic, but he was good at it, and it clearly worked. As he did, he took care not to make stupid mistakes in his reasoning, recalling previous exams he'd been stung in. The questions were no longer effortless, but they weren't too bad either.

Stage twelve had been a combination of memory and logic, requiring him to pull every lever which had so far been pulled an odd number of times. He was glad he’d maintained that mnemonic from earlier, although the timing was still a bit tight.

With the pool gone, mistakes will be permananent. But I've got this.

Commencing Stage Thirteen.

An eighth lever appeared, and the wooden caps of all eight shifted, changing to become painted with colours. Oddly, a few were the same colour.

Three levers must be pulled. The closest correct lever to the green lever is two positions away, and the blue lever is...

…

The script continued for some time. Oh great, it’s one of these ones. Classic. He’d used to enjoy doing these for fun. Never with quite so many variables, though. With the hourglass in the corner trickling, Alex got to work.

He examined the glyphs, memorised the order of the levers, and then methodically applied himself to solving the problem. He suspected that even an idiot could get this one eventually, but the time limit had shrunk a lot over the last few stages.

Then again, I have always underestimated how stupid the average person is.

After ten minutes of thinking Alex flipped the second, fourth, and eighth levers. The wording had been a little tricky, and he noted that the green lever itself had been one of the correct answers. Certain in his answer, he stepped back as the stage concluded.

The timer had had under a minute remaining, by his judgement.

I had the answer for a bit at the end there, but I kept confirming things. I don’t want to find out what happens when I pull the wrong lever. This is pretty hard without working-out paper, though.

Stage Thirteen Complete. Do you wish to leave the trial?

This is already a high score! I can do at least a one or two more.

Commencing Stage Fourteen.

Stage fourteen was the strangest yet, and simply required him to memorise a few glyphs embedded in the question. Unfortunately, those glyphs were thrumming with power. While not as overwhelming as those on the roof of the atrium, they radiated energy which made Alex’s vision blur and swim. Time slipped away as he found himself absorbed in them, and his subconscious was screaming at him to look away.

Dragging his eyes back to the hourglass, he found he could hold the memory of what he’d read just long enough to pull the matching lever. The glyphs had been a description of some sort of sheep-like beast, not inherently complex but simply imbued with an overwhelming amount of energy.

Stage Fourteen Complete. Do you wish to leave the trial?

Alex looked back at the hourglass, which had frozen. There was almost nothing left in it.

Do I want to find out what happens when the timer expires, or if I make a mistake? The other trials had gotten lethal quite quickly, and he didn't have his pool any more. This last stage had been the closest so far.

If I continue, I'm going to make a mistake. I suspect I'll get an optimal bonus for a mistake-free run anyway.

So despite every shred of ambition in his body, he directed the thought at the system – yeah, all right. I've done well. I wish to leave.

Concluding Trial, awarding bonus point for optimal solution. Congratulations, you survived.

Trial of Intelligence Complete.

Alex was not much of a gambler, and he had a box to open.