Chapter 206: The Mysterious River Moon found himself standing at the edge of what appeared to be a river flowing through absolute void. It was an impossible sight to behold, something that only existed in imagination, or so he thought. A river with no banks, no source, no destination. It simply was, stretching forward into infinite darkness like a luminous path carved in the void. The river wasn’t made of water. Its substance defied easy description, part liquid, part light, part something else entirely. It flowed with colors that had no names, hues that existed between the spectrum his eyes were designed to perceive. The surface rippled constantly, as if responding to currents that operated on principles unrelated to physics or gravity. Looking at it too long made Moon’s perception ache, his mind struggling to categorize something that refused all familiar things he knew. Above and below and all around: absolute void. Empty space that pressed against his senses with suffocating completeness. But the river remained, defiant and radiant, a path through impossibility. The same voice appeared in Moon’s mind once again: [Walk this path. Each step forward is a step deeper into understanding. The further you proceed, the more you will comprehend. The more you endure, the greater your boon.] [There is no destination. There is no failure. Only the choice to persevere or stop.] ’How can there be no destination, it’s a path...how can path have no destination? What kind of test is this?’ Moon had expected to fight powerful enemies that would threaten his life, or solve a complex puzzle that many would struggle with, but that wasn’t the case. He was left with no clear objective beyond simply...walking. It seemed too simple. Which meant it was anything but. Still, there was only one way to find out. Moon stepped onto the river’s surface. His foot didn’t sink into the strange substance. Instead, it found purchase on something that felt simultaneously solid and liquid, stable and flowing. Like walking on frozen light that somehow still moved beneath his feet. He began moving forward, taking careful steps at first, testing the stability of this impossible path. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎 Immediately, Moon felt a difference. Walking here was unlike walking in the real world. There was a weight pressing down on him, and it wasn’t gravity. A pressure that settled across his shoulders, his chest, his entire being. It was minimal at first, barely noticeable, like wearing a slightly heavy coat. But it was there. Moon began to jog, accelerating his progress. The river’s surface accepted his increased pace without complaint, the strange energy-substance flowing beneath his feet in mesmerizing ways. For perhaps fifty meters, the jogging remained manageable. Then the weight increased. Not dramatically so, it was a gradual increase in the pressure bearing down on him. Moon’s pace slowed despite his effort to maintain his speed. His breathing grew slightly labored. The invisible burden grew heavier with each step forward. Soon enough, jogging became impossible. Moon could still walk at a brisk pace, but running was beyond him now. The weight had become too heavy, too intense. It felt like carrying a hill on his back. And the further he walked, the heavier it became. Not just on his body. But on his mind. At first, it was merely a sense of heaviness in his thoughts—like trying to think through a thick fog. Concentration required more effort than normal. Then it progressed to a dull, persistent headache. The kind that settled behind his eyes and at the base of his skull, making every thought feel slightly painful. Moon gritted his teeth and continued walking. But the headache only intensified further. What had been dull pressure became sharp pain. A splitting sensation, as if invisible hands were squeezing his skull from all sides, compressing his brain with relentless, crushing force. Each step forward amplified the agony, the mental pressure building to levels that made thinking painful. His vision began to blur at the edges. His breathing grew ragged. Every muscle in his body screamed against the weight bearing down on him. But Moon remained unbroken. He’d pushed through exhaustion, injury, and near-death more times than he could count. A headache, even one that felt like his skull was being slowly crushed, wasn’t going to stop him now. Moon continued walking the river, each foot lifted with a body that felt like it weighed fifty times its normal mass, each step taken with a mind that felt like it was being compressed into nothingness. The path stretched endlessly ahead. The pressure continued to build. And Moon kept walking. Because accepting defeat wasn’t in his nature. He would walk this path until he physically couldn’t anymore. Or until he understood what the World’s Flaw had wanted him to learn. Whichever came first. Time passed by at an insanely slow pace or perhaps it didn’t pass at all. In this void, temporal flow seemed as negotiable as spatial laws. What might have been minutes felt like hours. What might have been hours felt like days. Moon’s mind cleared of everything except the singular imperative: move forward. Thoughts about Selene, about Yara waiting outside, about the inheritance, about why he was doing this—all of it fell away like unnecessary weight being shed. His consciousness narrowed to a single point of focus: the next step. The next movement. The next increment of progress along this path. The river still stretched endlessly ahead, as if the concept of destination was itself an illusion. No matter how far Moon traveled, the path remained infinite, and unchanging. He was no longer able to walk. His legs had given out some time ago, he couldn’t remember when exactly. The pressure bearing down on him had become so immense that standing upright was physically impossible. His knees had buckled, sending him crashing down onto the river’s strange surface. So he crawled. Hands and knees dragging across the flowing energy-substance that formed this path through nothingness. Each movement was agony. Each inch forward required effort that would have broken other awakeners completely.