The Cosmic Gym changed.
No longer a hall of levitating platforms or shimmering runic orbs—it now resembled a black star's core, dense, oppressive, alive. The floor was sleek obsidian etched with golden Avian symbols, glowing dimly like a heartbeat beneath pain.
The human-born team stood in formation—Jack, Henry, Sonia, Kennedy, Charles, Yyvone, Osei, and Ian.
And then—
BOOM.
The pressure fell.
Not like weight. Like punishment.
An invisible, screaming truth—the truth that gravity is not just mass, it is will. It was Airious's Will, daring them to earn their place.
Within seconds:
Jack's knees slammed the ground, lightning dancing erratically over his body.
Osei's instincts sparked, but he still dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
Sonia's colors faded, her emotions gasping for air, flickering gray.
Henry's electricity spasmed, short-circuiting into sparks that died before they flew.
Kennedy's frameworks bent, snapping back into formless code.
Charles's inscriptions tore themselves apart, the gravity crumpling entire glyphs.
Ian's sword trembled, then vanished into his skin. Even his soul couldn't stand.
Yyvone bled golden thread from her fingertips. Her barriers shattered before they could form.
> Ractor (hovering above):
"You cannot fight this weight. You cannot resist it."
> Hela (coldly):
"To Hollow Step... you must become nothing. Only then can you escape everything."
They writhed. Grunted. Faces red, veins bulging. Even Jack's divine lightning—usually his ticket out of every struggle—was betraying him.
> Jack (gritting teeth):
"I… can't... even THINK…"
> Charles:
"This pressure is rewriting my spine…"
> Sonia (weak laugh):
"I felt emptiness before. But this… this is existential collapse."
> Kennedy:
"We're being crushed by meaning itself."
The pain was cosmic-level intimacy. Not the pain of injury—no, far worse.
The pain of insignificance.
> Aprexion (appearing midair):
"Good. Let it in."
> "Feel the despair of being too heavy to matter. Accept the fact that the universe can erase you with one breath. Then, and only then… will you stop clinging to presence, and learn to Hollow."
Silence. Crushing silence.
Then… a shimmer.
From the deepest part of the floor, Yyvone's finger moved. Just barely. But it glowed—not gold, not thread...
It was null. A sliver of untouched space.
She wasn't resisting.
She was… accepting.
> Yyvone (whispering):
"I'm not trying to push back anymore. I'm... flowing into it."
The others twitched. Something clicked in the air.
Osei's instincts realigned—not to escape, but to merge with pressure. His breathing slowed.
Ian's sword reappeared, but it pulsed softly. No edge. Just intent.
Sonia's emotional spectrum went still, turning a pure, quiet silver. Euphoria made peace with despair.
Jack, lying flat, took it all in.
He closed his eyes.
Lightning hummed. Not in rebellion—but as prayer.
> Jack (internal):
"If I can't be stronger than gravity... maybe I can become its pause."
Then, the air bent.
Not a teleport. Not a flash.
He was simply… gone.
For a heartbeat.
When he reappeared, the gravity twitched.
> Ractor (smiling):
"One down... seven to go."
The Hollow Step had begun.
And the war outside would not wait forever.
The Cosmic Gym groaned—not in sound, but in spirit. The walls pulsed with runes reacting to the team's every twitch, their every gasp, like a sentient trial watching its prey crawl toward worthiness.
Yyvone and Jack, who had tasted movement, were slammed back down as if the gym was offended by their attempt.
> Jack (gritting his teeth against the floor):
"It… let me move… and then punished me for it?"
> Yyvone (face buried in the floor):
"We didn't master it… we just got lucky."
The gravity didn't just crush bodies—it read minds, weighed souls, and crushed anything impure.
And there stood Kainen, arms folded, watching with that soft, tired smile—the one he wore when watching children fall off cliffs to learn to fly.
> Kainen (to himself):
"Valitor cried the first time... Elexis swore he'd kill me."
"And yet they both became legends in that same pressure."
He turned to the Airien knights.
> "Even divine blood like Jack's can't skip the pressure. Nobody cheats gravity."
> Aprexion (arrow-pure tone):
"Gravity doesn't break people. It shows them what already is broken."
---
The human team convulsed.
Ian screamed, blood leaking from his eyes, the edges of his Slash Aura trying to slice space itself—only to recoil, unable to find a seam.
> Ian (coughing):
"Even my soul blade... is heavy..."
Osei's instincts fired like a thousand alarms, twitching his muscles to dodge, flip, roll—but there was no escape. No danger to sense. Only being, and being was unbearable.
> Osei (barely breathing):
"My body wants to move... but it's like my will is stuck in traffic."
Sonia flickered through colors uncontrollably—green, red, silver, gray, back to red. The emotional storm was backfiring, her emotions weaponized against her.
> Sonia:
"I feel everything... but nothing helps... I—I can't even feel brave!"
Charles, tears in his eyes, watched his inscriptions float off his skin and disintegrate. His mind couldn't even retain what they meant under this pressure.
> Charles:
"How do you encode willpower... when your brain is mush?"
Kennedy was mumbling in code, fingers twitching as if rewriting a script that gravity wouldn't compile.
> Kennedy:
"The Framework is crashing… I can't rewrite the rules if I don't believe I'm a variable..."
Henry sparked once. Then twice. Then nothing. His lightning tried to rebel—but he lacked the anger. The desperation.
> Henry:
"Jack… buddy… I don't know if I can…"
> Jack (barely whispering):
"You will. You're my storm twin… we ride this pain."
---
Then the room shifted.
Not physically.
Philosophically.
> The runes whispered:
"This is not punishment. This is the tax of greatness."
And they all heard it in their own way:
Jack saw his father's death.
Sonia saw her future self crumbling from unstable emotions.
Charles saw books he would never finish.
Kennedy saw code collapsing over a dead teammate.
Ian saw his blade shatter in war.
Yyvone saw people she couldn't save.
Osei saw himself too slow to stop someone's death.
Henry saw Jack dying.
The Cosmic Gym wasn't just training them.
It was showing them the worst version of themselves.
> Aprexion (quietly, to Con):
"Do you feel it? The tremble in their Avia?"
> Con (eyes flickering like mirrors):
"They are close… to cracking… or ascending."
---
And then—
A breath.
Not a deep one. Not a loud one.
A silent breath.
Yyvone inhaled peace. Not hope, not strength—just acceptance.
A golden thread looped from her hand. It pierced the floor.
And suddenly…
She was kneeling.
> Yyvone (eyes wide):
"I'm not fighting gravity. I'm becoming the space around it."
Her barrier appeared—but this time, inside out, folding space into her.
Jack followed. Not with lightning, but with faith. A storm at peace.
His body flickered. Not fast. Not instant.
Empty. Then reappearing.
A Hollow Step.
But not a full one.
Just a taste.
> Kainen (smiling with pride):
"You're learning. Suffering is the forge. But humility is the flame."
---
They were still struggling.
They would continue to struggle.
But somewhere, deep in that torment...
A step was forming.
A step not of power, but of identity hollowed clean.
The real Hollow Step was coming.
And the Ghouls?
They would feel it soon.
Meanwhile... in the Free Abyss...
Freedom has a taste here—
Not of peace, but of pure potential.
No laws. No weights. No gods above.
Just you, your desires, and what you're willing to become to fulfill them.
Klexis, once a noble prodigy, now The War Impulse, spun his dual hammers in circles so wide they tore rings in space. Their edges oozed Deviant vapor, black tendrils spiraling like laughing snakes.
> Klexis (grinning):
"This hammer doesn't judge anymore. It just obeys."
His Impact Affinity had been tainted, enhanced. Instead of causing clean concussive bursts, now every hit fractured something fundamental—laws of physics, truths, relationships.
---
Jair, bandaged and chuckling, limped around their floating sanctuary.
His face twitched with emotional scars, his limbs jittered with nerves he no longer numbed.
> Jair:
"The more I break, the more I sharpen. Isn't that a beautiful paradox?"
Each time his emotions slipped—pain, embarrassment, rejection—his Pain Clarity Affinity corrected his aim, heightened his instincts, and taught his muscles how to move like flowing trauma.
He bled to learn. And laughed as he bled.
---
Eugene, once called "the kid with wasted legs," now slid through folds of space like a comet on caffeine.
To him, distance was disrespectful. Space was nothing but an old illusion begging to be outrun.
> Eugene (mid-teleport):
"I'm not running anymore…
I'm just showing the universe how slow it is."
His trail burned behind him—not in fire, but in regret.
---
Eve Maid stood on a chunk of floating reality, hands behind her back, holding a glowing dart. Her Tranquil Touch still worked—but now the serenity was laced with unnerving freedom. One hit could unravel your emotional core and make you forget what you were resisting in the first place.
> Eve (to herself):
"Ian… I wonder if you'd love me if I was… this free."
"Maybe if I destroy enough walls… you'll look through them and see me."
---
Androsha was stretching in impossible ways—arms elastic, spine fluid, hair flowing like ink in reverse time. Her light purple skin shimmered with rebellion.
> Androsha:
"No more background role. No more 'we'll train you later.'"
"I'm rewriting this script—body first."
Her Organic Shift power let her rebuild her form instantly based on how she felt. Anger? Hardened bones. Sadness? Lethally soft attacks. Jealousy? A duplicate of what she envied, fused into her structure.
She was her own palette now.
---
Banjo, the oldest, sat atop a cube of swirling reality—watching the rest like a jaded professor.
Once a knight-in-training. Now a knight of No Code.
> Banjo (low voice):
"I spent years bowing to ranks that didn't even know my name."
"One ghoul showed me the truth... and I never looked back."
"The Airien system breaks more souls than it builds. And I? I refuse to be another cracked statue."
His Fracture Resonance Affinity let him create cracks in concepts—like "honor," "rank," "respect." One touch and ideologies shattered like glass.
---
They laughed. Joked. Trained. Or rather—
They learned the Shattered Arts.
A corrupted system of expression that didn't care for discipline or tradition.
No rituals. No meditations. No tier lists.
You feel it?
Then it's yours.
Shattered Arts were pure rebellion, dancing in sync with their Deviant Affinities.
And surrounding them were dozens of others—misfits, dropouts, abused warriors—learning, evolving, laughing in chaos.
> Klexis (mocking):
"Let the Hollow Steppers break their backs training…
We? We break the rules and keep walking."
---
Back at the Cosmic Gym...
Pain.
Grit.
Silence.
Jack hovered… then collapsed again.
Yyvone's barrier faltered.
Ian screamed through clenched teeth.
They were still trying to learn. Trying to master something that required letting go.
Hollow Step wasn't just about dodging gravity.
It was about becoming emptiness with intention.
And that? That takes loss.
---
> Aprexion (to Kainen):
"The Free Abyss is accelerating. Their Shattered Arts are evolving unnaturally fast."
> Kainen:
"Because pain is easy when it has no purpose.
But our team… they'll learn the cost of meaning.
And that cost… is what builds gods."