Dorian watched the trial with mild interest. Statistically he was safely within qualification territory; it’d take a serious anomaly for half their number to qualify, which was the only way he’d get shoved out of the top 128. The contestants drifted up the artifact-powered elevator to the course, fidgeting and tugging at their smocks.

“Start on my signal,” said Zhang.

The sound cracked out. The contestants were off.

And a statistical anomaly appeared. A very serious one.

He sensed it first before his other senses took notice: an upwelling of qi so sudden it felt like the fabric of the universe pinched in on one spot. Alarmed, he looked up to see a Vigor boy from some no-name tribe bursting to the brim with qi, so much that his skin seemed to smoke gold incense. A chorus of shocked cries rippled through the crowd. It was a wonder one Vigor could contain all that pent-up power; it was begging for release, warping the air around him like heat waves. But that wasn’t what drew a sharp intake of breath from Dorian. He felt something nobody else did.

He was sure the tournament organizers, even the Profound Realm ones, were only privy to the surface facts: a great deal of qi stuffed in an unremarkable body. A curiosity, an abnormality, not a massive red flag. Dorian knew better. That qi was borrowed—and borrowed from somewhere impossible. A plane beyond the one in which they all stood.

The nature of the qi struck him like a slap to the face. Its energy was ancient and awesomely potent; it felt like staring into the core of a dying star. This was not a mortal’s qi but a God’s. This qi outstripped that of everyone present by at least three entire realms; save for a handful of beings, it outstripped everyone in this entire plane by one.

It was a tiny quantity, likely smaller than would fit on the head of a pin, which was the only thing preventing the boy from combusting in a shower of gore and bone and saintly fire. Even so its presence meant that this boy was akin to using a firework in a paper airplane flying contest.

“How…?” Dorian’s brows couldn’t go any higher. He felt as though his head was slowly being filled with wet sand. Gods almost never meddled in lower planes; to do so invited backlash from the heavens. To do so in this stupid, flagrant, public way was so inexplicable Dorian could scarcely believe his eyes. Someone had handed that firework to an infant.

When the race began the boy made no attempt at subtlety. He looked like he was barely in control of his muscles, much less his qi; his face was a grin stretched so wide it seemed freakish. He flew out like he was shot out of a cannon: straight-out, blisteringly fast, his qi leaving a wake of golden flame behind him. There was no evasion, dodging, strategy here. He simply barreled through it all. The whole of the course broke off on his skin, the blades of axes shattering to a thousand iron pieces against the sheer force of the qi, arrow traps steaming to nothing.

Five seconds, beginning to end, was his time. It took two more for Dorian to pick his jaw off the ground.

The boy turned around, smiling like he’d played a silly prank. There was a vast and total silence as the rest of the crowd processed what just happened. Even Zhang seemed at a loss.

Then the crowd broke into a deafening uproar. Exclamations crowded the air from all around, fusing to a jumbled, incomprehensible mess of sound. Dorian caught “Impossible!” and “how?!” and “Saints!” among the others in the back of his mind. The bulk of his attention was trying to square this with reality. He scarcely even noticed as the rest of the contestants finished their own races—only two more made it in, as predicted, keeping him safe at the edge of the qualification cutoff.

What were the chances that a god’s power surfaced here? In the midst of his run on a lower plane, of all places? Astronomically tiny, so tiny he struggled to wrap his mind around the whole ordeal. So tiny it’d make being struck by lightning look common in comparison. So tiny it’d never happened before this early on any run in a Lower Plane. The only times he’d ever encountered Gods’ energies in Lower Planes were within specific, well-fortified shrines placed at strategic spots where the distance between Planes was thinnest, and even then each instance was a carefully planned affair.

He struggled to believe this was coincidence. He couldn’t. He didn’t. There was trickery at play here. Was someone targeting him? Unlikely; as far as he knew there was no way to trace the reincarnation spell. If they were this was a piss-poor way to go about it.

For a second, the arrow incident from earlier flashed through his mind. His frown deepened. Were the two related? Was this who almost shot him? For what possible reason? He was certain he’d never met the sod in his life; they were distant as ships passing in the night. There was simply no motive. If the boy meant for assassination, why’d he choose such an unreliable venue—with healers at standby, no less? None of it made sense. If he was being targeted, the boy would’ve blasted him with that God-qi outright and saved them both the trouble. At his stage he certainly had no answer for it. His frown deepened further.

More likely, Fate was at work here. When a series of unlikely events were all strung together—like was happening to him now—it was always the result of some megalomaniac meddling with the workings of the universe, weaving strings of fate together that should’ve been kept apart. Likely he’d just been caught up in some cosmic malfeasance.

The malfeasance in question was strutting his way down, smiling cockily and waving to the crowd. The boy with the God’s power. Now that Dorian got a closer look at him, it was a man, clear-skinned, handsome, shoulders loose, an easy smile on his face. Heading back to his cohort of the next segment of the trial. His gaze slid over Dorian without recognition.

Dorian sighed. He wouldn’t have time to get to the bottom of this mess until after he’d sorted the rest of today’s Trial; he still had another event to go. This was the Trial of the Body, and they’d only gotten through Speed; there was still the Strength portion. He filed this matter away for later. Something peculiar was going on—but it need not concern him. Peculiarities in the Multiverse were legion. Perhaps he could finish his run while avoiding getting dragged into this one. Wishful thinking, maybe, but he let himself hope.

Still he resolved to keep a very close eye on this character. Pearl, his name was, by the ranking on the stone tablet. It’d be shoddy inference to link two unlikely incidents together for no other reason than their probabilities—nothing else about them seemed to match up, after all—but there was a not-insignificant chance that arrow was loosed by someone of Pearl’s strength. Dorian rubbed his chin. If there was one good to come of this it was that his performance was likely a faded afterthought in the minds of those present after that.

Zhang cleared his throat. “Congratulations!” he said, but his voice was drown in the hubbub. Looking a smidge annoyed, he spoke again. This time qi backed his shout, resounding like the bellow of a gong, and the crowds quieted once more. “Most commendable, most commendable. To come this far, you’ve done all your Tribes proud. Rest easy. All 128 of you now advance to the second half of the Trial: the Trial of Strength.” He waved his hand, and some invisible force drew all the artifacts present to his hand. They vanished into an Interspatial Ring.

“This Trial is a test of Strength. It is a much simpler affair than the last.” As Zhang spoke, several Festival staff took to the center of the field, cloaked in the shade of the obstacle course above. Each took out another artifact. These ones were stones so black they seemed to cast dark the same way a torch cast light. Spheres of night. The staff set them all gently on stone pedestals, all lined up in a row.

“Lift the ur-stone,” said Zhang softly. “That is all. The top sixty-four advance to the next day, the Trial of the Mind.”

These weren’t just any stones, Dorian could tell. These were stones drawn from qi-rich deposits, like a meteor or from deep underground; he could tell by the textures of the rock, but the giveaway was the pull they exerted. He had a hunch he knew how they worked.

“For those who’ve qualified: remain in your heats,” he said. “We’ll go in the same order.”

The first ones up confirmed his suspicions. They grasped at the ur-stone and pulled it up, but a burst of qi spread from within it as they did. Each subsequent inch seemed harder than the last until, panting, they were forced to relinquish the stone mid-air. They fell back as though secured by rubber bands to the core of this plane. Simple adaptive weights: the higher they were lifted, the harder they grew to lift.

This time, Young Master Yalta easily took first. Young Master Narong took third. Neither looked as unshakably confident as they were coming in; they weren’t fools. Neither knew the implication of Pearl’s powers, but they knew at the least they were up against some stiff competition.

This Trial passed without much fanfare. When Dorian’s turn came, he made certain to exert a solid fraction of his strength. The stone came four feet off the ground, enough to cement himself squarely in the upper-middle of the pack: 28th place, well clear of the cutoff. No mistakes this time. He left himself a huge margin for error, and as it turned out he wouldn’t need it.

Kaya, too, eked in under the cutoff: this time at 53rd. Hento wasn’t so lucky—however much he tried, his strength was not strength. He couldn’t get the stone more than two feet off the ground, and had to settle for a limp elimination. He seemed pleased that he’d even gotten this far.

“It’s all up to you two,” he said with a pain smile as he wiped sweat off his brow with a shaky forearm. “Do qualify for me, won’t you, dear?”

Pearl brought up the rear once more, but this time he didn’t drag out another strand of God’s qi. Either he had none left or he was conserving himself for later contests; either way, he landed 8th of the pack. He didn’t need higher—he’d made his point. He’d certainly be the center of attention for all the other competitors as they planned for the morrow.

Thus ended the first Trial, with far more questions than answers. Between his sneak attack and this anomaly performance, something odd was afoot. Little did Dorian know, this was only the beginning…