Origin's Trial

Origin's Trial (オリジンの審判, Orijin No Shinpan^?), often localizated as just "the Trial", is a pact made eons prior to the events of Tales of Xillia 2 between humanity and spirits. Its completion, or lack thereof, is the main motivation behind main characters and antagonists alike. The choices pertaining Origin's wish, a reward conceded upon the Trial's completion, are also what defines two of the Tales of Xillia 2 endings.

Description

Requirements

For Origin's Trial to be completed, a few requirements need to be fulfilled:

• To be a member of the Kresnik clan.
• To collect the Waymarkers used to summon the Land of Canaan, which is usually hidden with Origin's power, as well as the creation of a soul bridge to reach it in the sky.
• To reach the Gates of Judgment located in the innermost part of Canaan. It's enough if only one person does this.

In the case the Trial is completed, humanity wins, demonstrating the worth of their existence. The coexistence of humans with spirits will continue just like it always has, and the same goes for the reincarnation process. A wish will also be granted to one person. Because the Trial is actually a gigantic spirit arte created through a pact, and no matter how heinous the wish may be towards spirits or Origin himself, Origin has no choice but to grant it. Likewise, because Origin is the source of everything in the world, it is understood that any wish could be possible.

These requirements must be fulfilled before the creation of one million fractured dimensions, otherwise this will be understood as humanity failing the Trial. There is a counter keeping track of the number at the Gates of Judgment. In the case that the Trial is failed, the soul purification process will cease and the miasma that has been sealed until then will be released, consuming all human souls and reducing the humans to nothing more than inanimate objects for producing mana. Afterward, Chronos will seal away the miasma again. This new world will be one without humans, only for spirits.

History

Past

Two millennia before the events of Tales of Xillia 2, humanity invented spyrix, a technology that lured spirits into producing spirit artes but without giving the spirits mana like normal channeling does. This forced the spirits to use their own mana, something that eventually killed them. The usage of spyrix broke the reciprocal relationship in where humans borrowed the spirits' powers to live, while spirits lived off the mana produced by the humans' mana lobes. Humanity, unaware of what was happening because they hadn't confirmed the existence of spirits, spread spyrix around. With the death of spirits, nature also withered and died. Concerns were raised among spirits at this crisis, with some of them feeling that humanity, driven by their uncontrolled desires, would eventually annihilate the world with the spyrixes. Thus Origin's Trial was started by the three Primordial Spirits, with the goal of testing whether humanity could control their innermost desires, and determine whether they were worth saving or not.

The family of Milla Kresnik, the first human who summoned Maxwell, was the one chosen to represent all of humanity. The Three Primordial Spirits all had their own personal views on humanity, and therefore contributed different conditions to it, granting the Kresnik clan different powers. Maxwell, the Lord of the Spirits, had high hopes for humanity because of his relationship with Milla Kresnik; The views of Chronos, the Great Spirit of Time, were however far more negative: he found humans inadequate beings, and he would eventually sabotage the Trial's completion through different means. Chronos granted the power of the Chromatus to the clan specifically to stir internal conflict, expecting that the clan destroyed themselves from within. Overusing the Chromatus would eventually make the user degenerate into a divergence catalyst, creating a fractured dimension and contributing to the millionth limit of fractured dimensions. Origin, the Great Spirit of Void, saw the Trial as an opportunity for humanity to evolve and grow, and he wanted to test humanity's decision to see if humans could strive for perfection while bearing the impurity of their souls. Knowing that Chronos would try to make humanity fail, Origin granted the Kresnik clan a power that could neutralize Chronos. These people are known as Keys of Kresnik..

Because Origin would grant one wish to the first human who came before his throne in Canaan to plead their case, people became greedy, and infighting over who would get the honor soon started, much like Chronos had predicted would happen. After a specific accident, Maxwell, who initially believed in humans, gave up on them. Thinking that humans would never part with spyrix and that the Trial would never be completed, Maxwell decided to isolate a small part of the world through a spirit arte known as the schism. Rieze Maxia thus became a guarded paradise and, because Maxwell was in charge of the soul circulation inside it, they would be unaffected by the Trial's failure. The humans who followed Maxwell and were confined in Rieze Maxia refused the Trial, and considered themselves the true successors to Kresnik's Will. Maxwell's actions difficulted the Trial's completion even further, having limited the access to several Waymarkers.

Milla Kresnik decided to stay behind in Elympios much to Maxwell's disappointment, presumably because she did not want to choose who was saved and who did not, and this decision is the reason why there are no legends in Rieze Maxia about the Chromatus or about Origin's Trial. Milla Kresnik was ultimately driven to her death by her own family: the Kresnik clan had become poisoned by a faction seeking to exploit spirits for profit, something that Milla Kresnik, as someone who devoted all of her energy to the benefit of spirits and humanity alike, couldn't allow, and they conspired to kill her. Right before she died, Milla Kresnik turned into a divergence catalyst, creating the first fractured dimension to ever exist with her as its core, an ideal world in where Maxwell never stopped believing in her, and the clan actually worked together towards the Trial's completion. Though in this world the Kresnik clan was able to collect all the Waymarkers, they were unable to pass the Trial by virtue of being in a fractured dimension, where Canaan does not actually exist.