Trial of Morality

You step through the threshold or perhaps into it.

Stone softens beneath your feet, glowing faintly as the sigils thrum in your palm. The air here feels heavy with breath that doesn’t belong to you.

At first the chamber seems empty, but not for long. Ahead of you, veiled in a cloak of shadows, you hear a ragged, desperate sob. Another mortal, the first soul you see since you got through that rusted ring in the forest.

You approach and find a body caught beneath a latticework of carved script: letters raised like ribs, curling and clasping. The figure is neither wholly stone nor wholly flesh: one shoulder is bone-pale and still, the other shivers with the flutter of life. Their mouth moves without sound. Their eyes are closed, as though sleep could hide a wound.

When you hold out your hand towards the mysterious figure the sigils on your palm flare, not with light but with language: short, bright pulses that answer the script around the trapped one. It is as if the marks on your skin and the letters in the stone speak the same impossible tongue. The name etched at their center throbs, burdening you with the right and the weight to decide this soul’s fate.

The trapped person blinks at last. Their glance finds you and something like recognition passes over their face - neither relief, nor accusation - only something tired and small. Their lips part. You hear a word, or think you do; perhaps it is only a memory of a word: “Free…” or “Go…” The chamber leans toward you, expectant.

The sigils hum, restless. To free this soul, the marks must feed; either upon the bound or their bindings. The script can only be unwritten if something else is written in its place. You may pour yourself into the stone, let the sigils bleed away, your name dissolving to free the one beneath, or turn them inward, draw upon the life before you, release the soul and strengthen yourself.

The chamber waits, a single heartbeat held between creation and ruin.