Everose stood by the gate, the quiet winds lazily pushing his black cloak.
His face could not be seen due to the hood that covered it with deep shadows. This was done purposefully. If the humans were to see his face, they’d more than likely go into shock and die.
His bare hands and feet, however, seemed nearly humanlike and were of an average size, absent of any hair.
He held no scythe or sword or axe or any other weapon, contrary to what they believed he would carry. No, he did not wish to threaten or even slightly frighten them.
Everose wanted them to realize from the start that what lay ahead of them would not kill them nor would it harm them.
The trials were not meant to extinguish life, they were meant to enlighten lives.
Everose saw humans before, scrambling around and destroying each other, themselves, or both.
And he looked on this with sadness and pity.
He wished so dearly to help in any way that he could, aid in destroying that greatest flaw, that greatest danger of human existence.
Desire.
He wished to destroy it, if only in one human at a time, by teaching them of its dangers. He wanted to expose how worrisome desire could be and the capacity it possessed to break a human down.
But as much as he wished for this, it was rare for any to visit this gate, to go beyond and attempt to conquer the challenges awaiting them and attain their ultimate desire.
He would likely go years (32 years was the longest) before he had another visitor.
At this moment, he had been waiting 17 years for a new student. But he knew one was coming. He could already hear her footsteps.
She came up the steps onto the circular piece of stone before the gate and looked to Everose.
Her hair was a fiery red that extended to the middle of her neck. She was skinny to the point of unhealthiness. Her eyes were sunken in, layers of bags underneath them.
I can see how desire has damaged you.
Her face was dirty, her arms covered to the fingertips in mud, Has it been raining on the surface?
Her name was Jessica, Everose already knew. And he already knew her desire and the passion she showed for it.
She will be a difficult student, but she must be taught like all the rest.
“You have come for one you loved, have you not?” Everose asked her.
She nodded.
“And you wish to face my trials to find him,” Everose said.
“No, I wish to pass them,” her voice betrayed a strong determination, absolutely unmovable.
Even her tired physique showed a woman ready to kill herself to replace the one she loved or at the very least join him in death.
Such naïve boastfulness, desire will destroy her if she is not taught.
“Very well,” the gate slowly opened with a creak of rusty metal despite its perfect condition. “Follow me. I will escort you.”
She nodded and followed.
Inside, it was shrouded in darkness, neither of them able to see even a few feet in front of them.
The only light source was a singular metal lantern hanging on the wall.
Everose grasped it and continued walking down what now appeared to be a long hallway.
“These trials shall not test your skill, your determination, or your love for this man,” Everose stated to the woman behind him. “They will test your desire.”
“How will they do that?” Jessica asked.
“You shall see…very soon.”
Finally, the hallway ended and they entered a room too large for the lantern to expose fully.
But ultimately, that didn’t matter. She only had to see one at a time.
He turned the lantern to the wall he knew was there, and on it was a picture of Jessica climbing a mountain, smiling.
“When you were a child, you heard of Mt. Everest. And your characteristic curiosity led you to find more and become the passionate mountain climber you hoped to be in adulthood.
“But ever since you lost him, you haven’t even slightly cared,” he moved on to the next picture showing Jessica at a soup kitchen, working to aid those in need, and smiling.
“You helped many, had a passion for giving and working for those that needed it more than you. But ever since you lost him, the shelters have been absent of your beautiful voice.”
The next picture saw Jessica in a church, singing and smiling.
“You were a regular attendant to church, a child of God, pure and true. But ever since you lost him, your regular pew has remained empty.”
Finally, he turned to the center of the room and to the pedestal that sat there. On top of it stood a small statuette made of marble that showed a woman dancing with a man.
“All of these things you’ve abandoned. You have lost everything that you used to be. You have lost any sense of meaningful purpose, because you focus so greatly on only your one desire. You have even lost your capacity to find new love,” he motioned to the statuette. “What kind of purpose in this world is as shallow and hollow as only finding an impossible desire?”
“None of this matters without him,” Jessica told him, hard and unyielding. “We were supposed to climb Everest together. It was his idea to help in the shelter. That pew seated two. I have no purpose if I don’t have him!”
She was confident in her words, stable in the sense that she could not be persuaded as easily as some others.
But barely any stopped at the first trial. They were all determined yet none had ever gone the distance. Jessica would surely be the same.
“Follow me.”
Everose strolled to the exit of the room and they were again in an extended hallway.
And as they walked through the hall, he took note of Jessica’s capacity to obey him and do what she was told to do.
There was no resistance, no argument.
She would do whatever he said to get him back.
I wonder how far she’ll go. I wonder when she’ll stop, if she'll stop.
It wasn’t long before they finally came to the next trial: an empty, dimly lit room.
Everose extinguished the flame occupying the lantern and hung it on the wall next to him.
He stood still and so did Jessica until she finally understood what he wanted her to do and entered the room alone.
The trial commenced almost instantly.
A young woman with blonde hair suddenly emerged from absolute nothingness saying, “Jessica, come out of there, please.” Pause. “Please, we can’t pretend like this will fix anything.” Pause. “I know he’s gone, but you still have us.” Pause… “Alright, just… just talk to me when you’re ready, okay. Okay.”
The woman disappeared and on Jessica’s other side was a little boy, “Mommy, where did Daddy go?” Pause. “Mommy, why’re you crying?” Pause. Tears began to well up in his eyes. “Mommy?” Pause. “Mommy!?”
He was gone as if just a distant memory.
And then finally came another boy, this time older, but not yet an adult.
“Look Sis, we can help you. You gotta stop shutting everyone out.” Pause. “We all miss him, but that doesn’t mean we don’t exist.” Pause. “Come on, Jessica.” Pause. “Jessica?” Pause. “Whatever, if you won’t care, I won’t either. You can just get by without any of us.”
He was gone and Jessica was still, her fists clenched and her body quivering as she tried to suppress her tears.
“You abandoned them, or you forced them to abandon you,” Everose said, entering the room with her.
As he got closer to her, he saw how she was failing in her attempts to stop her weeping.
He could see tears rolling down her cheek and falling to the floor. Truthfully, he felt bad for making her feel that way, for making her cry.
But it was needed, and it was very obviously effective.
To learn of their flaws, humans had to be forced to face them.
  “Everyone else you loved turned away from you or you turned away from them. Your desire destroyed that which you held dear, it-”
“Let’s keep going,” she interrupted him through her melancholy.
Everose was taken aback by this, unable to speak for a moment, frozen by the dissonance of her actions and her words.
She still cried, she still hurt. Everose could see this; it was what had occurred so many times before. That inability to stop the feelings that overcame them, that ineptitude to stop the regret and the sadness and the realization of everything that they had ever done for the now pointless desire they so wished wasn’t their own.
He had seen it too many times to count.
And if they were to make it past, it was a quiet determination. It was silence and an attempt at emotional absenteeism lost by that emotion found in their eyes they couldn’t hide.
He had seen it too many times to count.
Yet he had never seen the two mix.
“Very well,” he said after a pause, shaking the thoughts away, leaving behind only a slight curiosity of what would happen next.
The final room was bright, no detail unavailable to the naked eye, nothing hidden in any of the cracks or crevices.
It was eerily empty except for one item, a human male curled up in a ball, afraid out of his mind.
Of course, he was not real, merely an artificial creation of Everose’s. For what would happen next, it would be unnaturally cruel and hypocritical for him to be real.
They both walked up to the man, Jessica still trying to dry her tears.
“To gain anything, something must be lost,” Everose started. “You have lost your purpose and your loved ones. But will you lose,” a knife, newly sharpened, protruded from his sleeve, “your morality?”
The indication was clear: would you kill a man to save another?
Jessica grabbed the knife by the handle, tears still sliding slowly down her cheek. Her grip was loose, as if the item were foreign to her, as if she expected it to burn her.
The man looked up at her as she strolled forward, saying nothing, not even mouthing words. He only cried and feared, pleaded with his eyes for her to stop.
Jessica looked back into those terrified eyes and wiped her tears away. Then, she tightened her grip, uncaring of whether or not it would destroy her.
Everose couldn’t believe his eyes when the knife was thrust into his body.
It had never happened before; he’d never thought it would. But there she was, new tears forming in her eyes and falling even harder than before as blood poured out onto her hands.
And he knew what he had to tell her, something he had never wished to do.
As the man died, Everose could hear the slight sound of an apology.
When it was over, the only sound permeating the empty hush was the sound of a distressed woman’s cries.
“Please,” she finally said quietly. “Can you- can you do it?” There was a resigned hopefulness to her tone, a disbelieving faith in her eyes.
Everose had every word caught in his throat. He didn’t think he could witness her reaction.
But it had to be said. He couldn’t leave her this way, “I have no power to fulfill your desire.”
They were his only words.
She did not have any others to give him, nor did she have any more tears. It was similar to that silent determination, only it was not determination.
It was a quiet despair.
Finally, after several minutes of this mutual feeling, Jessica said, “It would’ve been worth it. If it was the way I saw it in my head, it would’ve been worth it, all of it.”
Everose asked her, “So, if you had to kill another and it would get him back, would you do it?”
Immediately, “I would. I would kill ten if it got him back.”
Everose didn’t understand fully what he felt at that moment.
On the one hand, he despised the desire that destroyed her as it did. He pitied her, so far gone in the wish for an unattainable goal.
But then, he almost admired her passion for it. He saw her dedication and almost envied that desire in a sense. Her purpose was unattainable, yes, but it was so strongly wanted that it made it feel real.
Everose stood there, stuck in the middle of this incongruity and told Jessica to go, an order she followed blindly.
And soon, he took his place once more next to the closed gate, once again waiting for footsteps, unsure of what it was he’d be teaching to those who came with them.