Damon's Ascension

Nyros raised his hand, and the colossal wheel suspended in the air slowly began to turn as the names of the virtues rotated in silence, clicking softly like the gears of a trap. It finally landed on a deep amber wedge that pulsed faintly with gold script.

"Conviction!" Nyros announced, stepping away as if to admire the drama.

The moment the word echoed out, Protizen's name glowed beneath it, marking him as the first participant.

A spotlight from nowhere shone down, illuminating the man clad in sleek armor that shimmered like black diamond.

He didn't flinch nor did he move, only his pupils - so dark they looked like holes punched into the world - contracting slightly.

Without being prompted, the stage beneath him changed and gone were the marbled tiles of the casino floor. In their place, a scene was conjured, one of a bedroom that was small, minimalistic and… familiar.

Protizen remained still.

Then, it all began.

A young boy - ten, maybe eleven - stood trembling in the center of the room. On the far side was a tall man in a sleek corporate suit stood with folded arms, his back to the boy. A woman sat silently with her legs crossed at a dressing table, not looking back.

Their features were blurred slightly, as if softened by distance or memory, but the emotions in the room were crystal clear.

"Final offer, Cyrus. If you kneel and promise to correct your course, we'll consider reinstating you in the household." The man said, voice cold and measured.

The boy trembled but did not speak.

The scene froze, then fragmented into a dozen more.

A teenage Protizen on the streets, punching a wall until his knuckles bled.

A drunken one in a club, smiling blankly at nothing.

An older one staring blankly at the Registration Bureau's entrance at the Ministry of Interior Affairs, hand trembling as he signed the name Protizen Echo in place of his birth name.

Then came the scenario.

A chair materialized behind Protizen. In front of him, a black screen lit up with a singular question.

"Would you abandon your name and kneel for a second chance… if it gave your younger self a better life?"

No timer appeared, nor did any voices pressure him.

There was only the silence of the arena and the gleaming, neutral faces of the pre-chaos alien observers… watchers with memories long enough to remember the death of stars, yet still eager to dissect the soul of a 31-year-old human failure turned warrior.

Protizen moved.

He didn't take the chair.

He walked forward, toward the image of the boy, who now stared at him with wide, uncertain eyes.

"I would not change a damn thing. That kid needed to break. He needed to fall, because what came after… was me." He said, tone precise, eyes unblinking.

He turned away from the projection, and it began to dissolve.

"I don't need a second chance. I need people to understand that I am my own anchor. Not them, certainly not you." Protizen said, louder now, facing the audience.

He paused, then added one final sentence that was not for them, but for himself.

"Conviction is not choosing the right path. It's choosing your path… and walking it even when it's wrong."

Silence reigned.

Even the ambient hum of the casino dimmed, as if unsure how to process what it had just witnessed.

Then came the votes.

A wave of psychic flickers passed through the crowd, a wave of unseen agreement.

And to the Vanguard Team's shock… the wheel flashed green.

Passed.

The first round had been cleared.

Felicia exhaled, lips parting slightly. "He beat it…"

Damon's brow furrowed, then relaxed slightly. "No, they let him."

Nicholas looked confused. "But why? That was genuine."

"That's the trap. That's how they build you up… so they can cut deeper next time." Felicia murmured.

Protizen turned to rejoin the team. His face hadn't changed, but Felicia could tell he was rattled beneath it.

Damon gave him a nod, nothing more.

Expecting a bunch of age old beings to be deeply moved by some tough words? Did you think this was a hollywood movie adapted from a western novel?

If you could peddle the belief that a 28 year old man who lost his parents and trained with Tibetan monks could perfectly control his mind and will, then what of beings aged longer than the lifespan of our species?

Nyros clapped twice. "A marvelous start, truly. Conviction made manifest. Raw, jagged, and imperfect… but real."

He smiled wider.

"Let us hope the next virtue is just as... entertaining."

The wheel began to move again, beginning its slow, deliberate spin once more. Each click echoed louder than the last now, like distant thunder rolling through a battlefield.

Names of virtues rolled past in blurs, from Pity, to Temperance, then to Empathy, and past Courage, before finally landing on a wedge colored in deep sapphire blue, its letters sharp and silver.

"Ingenuity." Nyros declared, as if amused by the concept itself.

This time, it was Henry's name that glowed beneath the wedge.

The energy around the platform pulsed once, and a ripple of flickering images passed through the air, coalescing into something more grounded and more intimate.

A kitchen that was messy and cramped - the kind with half-broken appliances and barely enough room for three people to stand side by side - appeared in the focus.

The scene was filled with faint music of an old pop song playing from a battered radio, along with the faint and sour scent of boiling cabbage.

Henry blinked, his usual wry smile fading just a bit.

A woman sat at the table, thin and tired, with dark circles under her eyes as she hunched over a pile of bills. A younger version of Henry, barely fifteen, crouched beside a small girl with tangled hair, showing her how to fold a paper crane.

The girl giggled, and Henry smiled… though even here, the energy of that smile was weak.

Then the scene shifted.

It was now a high school auditorium and it seemed like there was an awards ceremony going on.

Despite how hopeful he looked, the young head face lowered when his name wasn't called in favor of a disabled girl who scored behind him as the cameras snapped up the virtuous image.

The scene shifted again.

It was a hospital waiting room, with the little girl from before lying pale like a skeleton, her previous cuteness giving way to something morbid.

Henry sat beside her with dim eyes as he listened to his mother arguing with a doctor while holding a rejection slip, likely the third one this week from another so called health foundation.

Then came the moment of the test.

The stage shifted again, this time into a mock lab filled with blinking lights and half-functioning machines.

Floating above it was a translucent prompt:

"Rebuild the simulation device. Time limit: 90 seconds. Tools: none. Resources: limited. Outcome: if the device fails, the sick child will not awaken."

A holographic girl, barely seven, lay on a table behind the test rig, her eyes flickering weakly.

Interestingly, she looked just like the girl from the earlier memory.

A cruel setup for sure.

This was a physical puzzle masked as an emotional minefield.

And worse, Henry had nothing.

There were no tools, nor any instructions, nor was there any indication that he even had the expertise for this.

The rig was a mess with components misaligned, panels inverted, power fluctuating.

In this situation, anyone else might have panicked, or frozen, or tried to brute-force a solution.

But surprisingly, Henry did none of those.

Instead, he knelt beside the broken rig and began to talk.

"Alright, sweetheart. We both know I don't got the fancy degrees or flashy skills, but I do know one thing." He said softly, as if the girl could hear.

He began moving pieces.

He wasn't fixing things, not exactly. It seemed more like he was… rerouting?

He found a cracked interface crystal and used the reflective surface to bounce a diagnostic beam into a manual override port.

He disconnected a faulty power line, bit down on the wire, and redirected the charge using his own armor's internal energy core since he had copied Protizen's Ultra Armor right after seeing the test.

All while narrating aloud, like a bedtime story.

"You see, grown-ups like to think everything's about brute force or genius-level intellect. But half the time, it's about knowing what doesn't matter and focusing on what does."

He jammed an unstable conduit into a wrong slot, then reached behind the table to short out the voltage spike just before it surged.

It shouldn't have worked.

It did anyway.

The machine sparked and the girl's vitals climbed but time ran out.

And just before the prompt could dissolve, the device hummed to life.

Nyros leaned forward, eyebrows raised slightly.

The crowd began murmuring again.

Henry stood up and brushed himself off with a wry shrug. "Didn't build what you wanted, but I built what she needed."

He looked toward the crowd, eyes sharper than they'd ever seen.

"And that's what ingenuity really is, not really genius nor High IQ flair, but just the willingness to try anyway, even when you've got jack shit to work with."

Looking at this man, a mere Post-Chaos human, standing in a broken lab with the echoes of his darkest memories brought out to test and torment, still smiling despite it all… the crowd was silent.

The wheel pulsed green.

Another pass.

Kyle whistled low. "Damn…"

Xela's eyes were wide. "That… wasn't what I expected from him."

Nicolas smiled faintly. "No… but that's why it worked."

Damon didn't comment, but his expression shifted… just slightly.

Even Felicia, composed as ever, gave Henry a soft, approving nod.

Henry turned back toward the team, scratching the back of his neck.

"Whew! Alright, I did it! Who's next for emotional blackmail?" He joked, but his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

The game moved forward, but something about Henry had shifted in that moment and everyone knew it.