The world convulsed.
Light blazed in a sunless sky, swallowing the ruins whole. Cael didn't have time to shout. One second he was standing with Fen and Iris, waiting for the gods to speak. The next, reality folded in on itself.
Then nothing.
—
Cael gasped awake, coughing against sulfur and dust. His hands sank into rough gravel, and the world spun as he pushed himself upright.
A mountain.
He was on a steep slope of dark stone, jagged cliffs stretching down into shadow on either side. Mist drifted along the edges like smoke from a dying fire. The air was hot, yet thin, like he was too high up for comfort. Thunder rolled above, distant but ceaseless.
And ahead of him no, above him a massive boulder.
Black-veined, glistening with condensation, it sat waiting like some beast at rest. Beyond it rose the mountain's summit, shrouded in clouds, impossibly far.
A voice, ancient and patient, echoed in his bones:
"Push. Climb. Prove your soul's worth."
Cael's breath hitched.
This… this was the Trial.
His Trial.
A test not of wit or speed, but of endurance. Of strength. Of will.
He moved to the stone, placing his hands on its cold flank. It dwarfed him. Not just in size, but in weight. He felt the pressure of it already, as if the mountain itself had coiled around it to keep it from rising.
He clenched his jaw.
"I can do this," he told himself.
But in truth, he wasn't sure.
He began to push.
—
Every muscle in Cael's body screamed in protest. The stone groaned against the slope, dragging across the gravel inch by inch. His boots slipped more than once, catching on loose shale, but he didn't stop. His hands ached with pain, his fingers were getting cut by the jaggeed edges of the boulder, and warm blood was slowly dripping on the ground.
He could taste the saltiness of his sweat ad struggle to keep it out of his eyes.
"This is impossible" he thought to himself.
"Focus on the next breath," he said like a mantra. "The next inch. Don't look at the peak."
His father's voice echoed in memory: "Every kill starts with your stance. The end comes later. The beginning is what matters."
Was that what this was? A kill? A fight?
No. This wasn't a beast to outsmart. This was something deeper. A challenge that mirrored his own fears of failure, of weakness, of not being enough.
Time passed. An hour? A day? He couldn't tell. His fingers were torn and bloody. His shoulders ached like they were coming apart. His knees buckled more than once, but he never let go.
The boulder refused to bend. It mocked him with its stillness, always resisting just enough to nearly break him.
And through it all, Cael's thoughts turned inward.
"What if I'm not meant to succeed? What if they chose me just to watch me fail?"
His father had died before telling him what he truly believed Cael could become.
Korr had left him to find his own path.
He had no name to live up to. No legend behind him.
Just a broken boy pushing a rock up a mountain.
"But I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of watching me quit."
—
Miles away, in a lush glade under a golden sky, Fen faced a different trial.
The earth shook as the beast charged a towering creature with the horns and bulk of a minotaur. Muscles rippled beneath its hide, his eyes were as read as blood and its breath came out in gusts of steam.
Fen held his axe loosely, shifting his stance.
"This is insane," he muttered. "I don't even know how I got here."
He dodged the beast's first strike by a merely half inch, rolling beneath its swing and springing up to slash at its flank. His blade cut it, but the monster didn't slow.
And yet, in his heart, Fen wasn't afraid.
He was fighting for something. For is grandpa, for his late parents and most importantly for himself.
And for every unanswered question about what made someone worthy of walking with ash under their feet.
—
Iris, meanwhile, stood alone in a narrow valley of pale stone. A single massive boulder rested in the center, a silver-hilted sword gleaming from its center. Light shimmered across the blade like liquid fire.
She stared at it, breathing slowly.
There was no foe to fight. No path to follow.
Only the sword.
She placed her hands on the hilt, she felt the leather on the sword, she looked at the edge and thought to herself that it could cut anything. Her fingers trembled.
Her voice, barely above a whisper: "You don't want me."
The sword did not move.
She grit her teeth.
"But I'm still going to try."
—
Back on the mountain, Cael's strength was ebbing. The boulder teetered now, only a few feet from a narrow ledge near the summit.
Every step was agony.
His legs had long since gone numb. His vision blurred. But something inside him a thread of defiance burned brighter than ever.
"I won't stop. I can't stop."
His mind reached back for anything any moment to cling to.
He saw Fen's smirk when they first met. Old Maret's shaking hand pressing that food pouch into his palm. Korr's gruff silence.
His father's hand on his shoulder. The weight of the twin blades. The words whispered under the stars.
"You'll know who you are when it counts."
A sound split the air behind him the rumble of loose stone.
The boulder began to shift backward.
Cael gasped.
His feet skidded. His grip slipped. The entire mountain seemed to lurch beneath him.
"No—no no no—"
He flung his body against the stone, teeth gritted, muscles screaming.
The peak was there. So close. Just a few more inches.
But the rock was sliding. He felt it. The inevitability.
Like fate was trying to erase him.
He pushed harder.
And then he screamed.
A primal sound. A sound not of fear but rage. Rage at being chosen for something so impossible. Rage at the gods. At himself. At every failure that had led him here.
"I won't die forgotten."
The sky roared with thunder.
The boulder bucked.
And
Darkness.
A final slip of his foot.
A final moment of stillness.
And at that moment…