He still didn't understand the events that had brought him to this point.

  Aria Beach was a strip of coast composed of fine rock that the locals jokingly called 'black sand'. How it had gotten its name was a fact lost to all but local historians. With the siren infestation that had plagued it in recent weeks, it now seemed apt. Evergreens listed brokenly over the rocks and driftwood marked the tideline with the bleached bones of once mighty conifers. The waves didn't boom or roar here but whispered instead, foam racing up the black expanse driven by seething salt water.

  Brom made his way down from the road, boots crunching shells and dried kelp as he passed the high tide line and found one of the larger logs to sit himself on. Arms on thighs, he leaned forward a bit and just watched the waves, mind drifting a little bit. He wasn't unaware, his ears and eyes were absolutely peeled. Any minute now, something was going to explode out of the surf or the sand or fall on him from the sky. Then, for the first time in almost a month, the maddeningly vague quest text changed.

  [Quest: The Sea God's Test]

  - Return to Aria Beach on the night of the full moon! Stage Complete!

  [Quest: The Sea God's Test]

  - Survive the First Trial 0/1.

  No timer. No tip. Just survive. Nerves were strung tighter than piano wire, a current of nervous energy thrumming through him, causing his leg to bounce. The beach was quiet, still, the kind that activated the human survival instinct. Something, some predator, was lurking, and his forearms were covered in goosebumps as his neck prickled.

  When the man sitting next to him on the log cleared his throat, Brom startled so hard he ended up on his ass in the sand, looking up at the figure that absolutely hadn't been there a second ago. The guy was well built with a weathered face that wasn't conventionally handsome but uniquely striking, if a little pale. Whatever Brom was expecting when the stranger opened his mouth, Sam Elliot wasn't it. Yet that deep, steady drawl rolled across him straight out of some Old West narration.

  "You were born at sea, weren't you?"

  Brom stood, brushed his pants off, and sat back down on the log. If they were going to do the friendly chat thing first, he was up for that. The question made him think over his answer for a moment. "...you make it sound a lot better than it actually was. Yes, I was born on a harbor cruise, my mother was too stubborn not to attend." Brom had decided to show up two weeks early and crash that party. It was the stuff of family legend, a story his mother had never quite lived down. Even now, it got a chuckle out of Brom. "You can tell, huh?"

  A stupid question, honestly, but the other let it go with a good-natured smile. "It's my business to know these things." The stranger stood, short curls stirring slightly in the slowly increasing wind. "It's why you were worthy to take my test."

  Well, that explained why nobody else had triggered it. This might be a coastal town, but few women were like Lucy Jones, willing to waddle herself onto that boat despite her physical discomfort in support of her husband and their social standing. Most sensibly stayed home, labor bag at the ready, hospital and partners on speed dial. Just his luck, it seemed, how he came into this world might be directly connected to how he left it.

  "It all comes full circle."

  The stranger nodded. "I'm pleased you see it that way." For a moment, there was silence, only the whisper of the waves surrounding them. Then the stranger drew a breath. "Today, you take my test. Three trials that will break every part of you, stripping away the shell you've built around yourself and digging into everything that squirms in your head and your heart. You might think it's unfair, after all, your journey has just begun in this new world of yours, but that's why it's necessary now more than any other time. If something is growing wrong, the sooner you correct it, the better it becomes. People say the sea is fickle, maybe I am, but I am nothing if not fair. I give all men the same choice."

  He leaned forward, his hand resting on Brom's head in an almost fatherly way. "Sink or swim."

  Brom had experienced this sensation once before. When the world had ended, and he'd been in that blank darkness, but this time it wasn't the class sparks that broke up the nothing. A veritable river of stars poured down ahead of him, each a memory taken from his life. At first, Brom didn't understand what the point was until the replay looped and paused.

  "Your resentment started young. Before you even had a name for it, you saw that your brother was treated differently than you were. But look, truly look."

  Brom was forced to watch childhood memories again and again. Each time he struggled to feel the emotions his young self had felt, they were drained out of him, until he was only able to see them impassively. As if it weren't him in the memory but someone else's child. Young JJ had been bright and happy, playing catch with their dad and living for T-Ball, making friends with the other kids, and constantly bringing home good news from school. Mason was just a baby, one that needed extra attention and special formula for his sensitive stomach, leaving their parents ragged.

  It was understandable that Brom, too little for school but too old to be babied, fell between the cracks. They had praised him for his small achievements, but he didn't have very many of them at this stage, nobody's fault, just a fact of life. They had punished him when he started acting out, not cruelly but in hopes of curbing his behavior. The more they watched, the more obvious it became that the foundation of their ruined relationship had begun with a thousand tiny failures and misunderstandings.

  It only became worse as time progressed. Patterns became so much clearer now that all the feeling had been stripped out of them. JJ was a narcissist, but he was a smart narcissist. He learned quickly where the line between getting praised and getting punished was, and he flirted with it neatly. When his parents were too tired for him, that was fine, he had a circle of friends to leech his positive reinforcement out of. He made sure to choose options that got him that praise and validation from their parents, reinforcing a dynamic that would repeat for their entire lives.

  Mason, incredibly perceptive, grasped his path to survival quickly. He saw what happened when Brom tried to get a share of attention that JJ had already laid claim to, and he didn't want any part of that fight. Instead, he put his brain to work, competing in an arena where JJ and Brom were less capable. His brothers weren't stupid, they just weren't as smart as Mason. On top of that, embracing nature and the outdoors gave him access to interests that took him out of the Jones house. He simply wasn't there for JJ to fuck with.

  It was Brom's misfortune to choose rebellion and angst. He was the creative soul, the slightly neurodivergent one. He was the one who couldn't let go of 'fair' and find 'acceptable' instead. The one who walked into the traps that were always set for him by his golden boy brother. What was truly foolish was that he always expected a different outcome. As if years of repeated habits and negative reinforcement could be overcome so easily.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Ultimately, it was the fault of Lucy and Max Jones. They chose to play favorites. They were blind to the rot in the soul of their eldest. Blind to the withdrawal of their youngest. The middle child, rebellious, had made it so easy to focus their negativity onto him. Even with all that, though never, not once, even at their angriest, did they stop loving Brom. They didn't exploit him for the sake of the others. They didn't steal his opportunities. They weren't blind to his ambitions. They just never understood what he needed, why he couldn't be easy, and it wore them down over time. Eventually, his father cut his losses to salvage his pride, and his mother went along with it to keep the peace, her small actions not nearly enough to bridge the gulf in the relationship.

  "You're not a blameless innocent in this. How long did that phase last? How much goodwill did you squander to spite them? There were others who reached out, trying to give you what you needed. Your Uncle. Your Grandparents. You broke their hearts, too, with that behavior. Why are you still throwing away what they gave you?"

  "I never said I was blameless." His voice was awful in his own ears. "I was a brat as a kid, I was a shit as a teen, and I'm an asshole even now. I thought I was so damn cool that I knew everything. I thought they were the fucking worst pieces of shit ever. I couldn't wait to get out of this fucking town..."

  His laughter echoed, broken, watching those wasted and regretful years. He didn't have to feel those emotions to hate the choices he'd made. Nobody had ever asked him to give up on music, they'd wanted him to have a fallback plan. He was the one his father always wanted for the business. Young Brom had hated that, feeling that he was being trapped while his other brothers were given freedom to choose. It had never been about trapping him, it was just that, out of all three brothers, his future had been the least certain. Mason's grades had given him wings, letting him escape Cold Bay in a way Brom's bullshit never could. JJ's carefully curated checklist of life hadn't included blue-collar work, and he'd 'chosen a different career path' for himself. What had been a well intentioned attempt to show his son he still cared had been viewed by Brom as the anchor his father was tying to his feet, so he'd thrown it away and run.

  "But you didn't get out. Did you really want fame? Did you want the cheering crowd, the money, your name in lights? Was that what it was all about?"

  Brom felt like he was bleeding. He could feel it across his philtrum, taste it when his tongue went to wet his lips. The emotions crashed back into him, clawing to return to their proper places, now with new realizations. He clenched his fists, bringing them to his eyes and bowing his head. It was regret.

  It was wrath.

  That burning, biting anger that had fueled him. The spite that had driven him to be reckless. To view the world with incredible negativity. Everything he did was wrapped in regret. He loved to cook, he'd gotten good at it, but he couldn't just be happy that he could cook well. Brom couldn't just accept that joy in his own skill, he had to torment himself with it instead. Endless what-ifs surrounded it and sucked the color from it until being good at cooking was viewed from the skewed lens of being a wasted opportunity and not appreciated as a honed talent. He accepted all the negative titles given to him and wore them like demerit badges, with miserable pride, yet he swatted away any accolades like a peeved housecat.

  The angrier he got, the faster the blood dripped, the weaker he felt.

  "Do you want to be somebody, Brom Jones? Do you want to matter?"

  He felt the stranger's hands on his shoulders, pressing down on him. His legs trembled, his knees aching. The offer in those words was a trap. The soft voice and mild-mannered nature of the words were instantly revealed as a lie by the pressure exerted physically on him. Reinforcing weakness and discomfort, making it look like an attractive out. It was so manipulative. That old rebellion, not quite dead, reared its head in its usual fashion. "Your trial is shitty, and you should feel bad. Are you even a licensed therapist? You're the god of the sea, not the god of psychoanalysis. I don't think you're qualified to dig into my head and feed me an existential crisis wrapped in a bullshit narrative. If you're looking for a hero or a saint, I'm not your guy."

  Humor was his last bastion. His last defense.

  Dude. You know you're not funny, right? What the shit do you think you're even saying right now, man? Look, Brom, you're ruining your moment! You've got a bunch of folks that came to see an action sequence invested in your backstory of suburban neglect and small-scale tragedy, and you're running your mouth and killing the vibe! Do you have any idea how rare this is? Normally, action bros are bored off their ass when feelings get involved, don't ruin this man!

  Brom was not expecting the System to suddenly chime in, its mechanical couch-bro voice completely ruining any moment that he'd had going on. But it did make him realize one thing. This Trial wasn't about right or wrong. It wasn't even about putting demons to rest or assigning blame. It was never about 'fixing' him or making him accept his own failures and forgive those who'd wronged him.

  It was about letting himself grow and choosing a path forward he wanted to walk, not felt obligated to.

  And despite his attitude, the stranger hadn't punished him. Hadn't even said a word because Brom's lash out wasn't an answer to the question.

  Taking a deep breath, Brom steadied himself and gave a real answer to the posed question. "You know what I want to be? At home, with my cats. I want to fucking fix my roof and my porch. I want to go on fucking quests with my nephew just like when Uncle Mike took me out hunting. I don't want to be sad and angry all the time. I don't want to be the guy that can only fucking look back without moving forward. I just want to be Brom Jones, whatever that ends up meaning. Is that a good enough answer to your question?"

  For a long time, there was silence, the constellation of memories slowly fading out around them. That lazy drawl seemed amused as the words moved to fill the space around him.

  "Give it to me then. That resentment of yours. Let the tides wear the edges off of it. Will you do that?"

  Brom did not like the idea of giving up a piece of himself to get through this. Even if that piece of him was the baggage he'd been carrying for a lifetime. He looked back at those memories, wondering if they were really his memories. If they hadn't been altered and spat back at him. But that wasn't the point, they'd felt real enough. They'd hurt in all those soft places he'd tried to build up armor to hide. No, Brom realized, he wasn't funny at all. But given a chance... maybe he could learn to be? That's what this was about, learning to be Brom Jones. And to do that, he couldn't keep abandoning the awkward parts of himself just because they were hard to carry.

  "No. No, I don't think I will. It's mine to learn to live with. I need to figure out how to put it to rest myself."

  He felt those fingers on his shoulders flex. Felt the blood flow from his nose faster. Then, just as his legs were about to give way. It was all gone.

  [Quest: The Sea God's Test]

  - Survive the First Trial 1/1. Stage Complete!