Chapter 680
Cut off from the outside, alone in a black void of darkness with no way to feel my body or know when time will pass, all I can do is wait.
The round's name was Isolation, so my best guess is that I must endure and not crack under the pressure of endless time without stimulation.
On its surface, this seems like a quite simple and straightforward first round for the trial.
All I have to do is sit and wait, but the daunting underside of this is that there is no timer signifying how long exactly I have to wait.
The worry that the outside world is moving on without me doesn't seem like an issue, as the tower's rules stated the third and final trial won't start until all challengers are present; and I trust my Inner Circle to stand their ground outside.
If Ember is in a similar situation as me, I trust that he will be just fine as well. As he's most likely lived more lifetimes than I can comprehend, waiting in an endless void may not be very difficult for his psyche.
I've been through something like this before, inside the Titan's Domain the first time I fell inside by accident, not knowing when I'd ever make it out of that solid white box.
Even returning to train, the isolation definitely changed me, but it was possible...
However, as these thoughts race through my consciousness, the fact that the difficulty of this trial was calculated beforehand just like the first one does give me a tinge of unease. My definition of long isolation may be far different from my battle partner's.