The door to the next trial creaked open with the sound of industrial gear grinding to function heavy artillery. Damien stepped into a long, vaulted hall decorated with soft gold. Its air was thick and mellowed with the scent of the finest perfumes and aged wine. Armories lined the walls, silver relics of past saints and martyrs . Large murals above depicted painted history; empires rose in pigment, angels descended in colour, and demons writhed beneath burning varnish.
History weighed heavy here. Not in the dust, but in the reverence.
In the center of the hall, a banquet table stretched long beneath a crystal chandelier, shimmering with an unfathomable glow. Crimson cloth embroidered in celestial runes cascaded down its sides. The table was adorned with plates, goblets, and bowls filled with fruits that shone faintly. Pears were soaked in golden syrup, marbled meats draped in spices. Damien couldn't name half of the things present in the table.
It looked divine. It felt earned.
And yet, no angelic voice announced the trial.
Instead, the ones seated at the table turned towards him. There were nine of them, all clad in pristine academy robes. Each of their faces was half-shrouded in white silk. Smiles as soft as candlelight greeted him and offered comfort.
"Sit"
One of them, a silver-haired woman with lips like folded paper, gestured to the seat across from her.
"Come, Damien. You've walked far, haven't you?"
An older voice followed,
"Eat. You must understand the truth if you are to walk forward."
A young girl spoke aloud.
"To understand, you must consume. Grab a plate, Damien."
Damien didn't question it. He couldn't.
His legs moved before he thought to resist. He pulled the chair in to sit down. The cushion beneath him was velvet and warm. As his hands lifted a fork, already loaded with something warm and glistening, he realized they weren't his hands at all. Not fully. Not anymore.
He took a bite. The flavor was indescribable.
Memory, maybe. Love.
Then another. Then a third.
Warmth flooded his chest like bread with warm honey butter smothered all over it. His shoulders dropped. The cold edge of his thoughts dulled. His mission? It blurred. The trial? Who cared? Lucien? The Veyrant colonies?
A name almost came to mind, but he couldn't catch it.
And then—
A hand, cold and fleshy, rested gently on his shoulder.
He didn't turn. He couldn't.
"Keep eating, child," whispered a voice like wind against rotten stone. "You're almost ready to become whole."
He obeyed.
On the silverware placed before him, he could see reflections of himself, younger, trudging up a gravel path slick with rain, the world quiet but for the soft patter of drops on ironleaf trees. A shack stood ahead, crooked and sinking into the earth, half-swallowed by vines breaking out from within the walls. Inside, dimly lit by a flickering lantern, lay a wounded figure.
Shallow sighs grasped onto the air that entered his lungs. A tired push behind barely kept his back straight. What struck Damien most wasn't his desperation to live or the way his fingers gripped the floor—it was the expression laid bare on his face. It wasn't a look of fear or acceptance, but grief.
Upon noticing Damien, he smiled. Not a bright smile, nor a grateful one—just something soft, fleeting, and exhausted, as if the sight of another soul allowed him to feel relieved for the first time. Then, he spoke out for the first time, "Life sure is worth living, young man!"
Suddenly, Damien's thoughts shifted.
A voice. Sarcastic. Sharp. Familiar.
"Is this really where you fail, idiot?"
He blinked.
The fork trembled in his hand.
His mind surged, swelled and recoiled.
A name. A presence. Someone— Who??
Someone he'd promised something to.
He couldn't picture her face. But the voice lodged like a blade in his ribs.
"Get up."
Damien exhaled sharply, stood — then slammed his fist across his own jaw. His vision flashed white. The world tilted.
And just like that.
The feast dissolved.
The saints at the table were faceless. Their bodies were waxen, skin stretched tight and translucent, their hands locked in an endless cycle of chewing, chewing, chewing. The food was rotten, steaming with bile. A stench like death cloaked the hall now.
He stepped back.
Suddenly, a screech, a wild scream, hit him with a surge of Witherflow he could barely stand within. Against those heaviest of waves crashing onto him, Damien stubbornly managed to press his palms against one another. Every muscle of his trembled. In the dark of the illusion, a single circle began to form between his hands, light emerging from the churning storm.
The glyph that burned through his hands did not arrive by invocation or chants, they were born in a primal fashion. Chantless. From the very imagination of an Exorcist.
"Solence: Third Circle – Lux Vindex."
With a fiery growl, the glyph ignited like a miniature dawn. It set ablaze everything around him, burning every last bit of wither that flowed across this piercing black sea. Lines of golden lattice shot outward, rewriting the fundamental flow of the arcane forces present in this room. The glyph reasserted truth and purifie whatever remained of the infernal energy floating around aimlessly.
The creature screamed—a noise not of rage but starvation—as the flood lost substance. Its cry echoed not from its throat, but from the very fabric of the illusion unraveling around them, a desperate wail of hunger unmet. The walls trembled, then shattered into ribbons of vapor, rising in spirals like souls ascending from forgotten graves. Mist bled into the dust, each grain a fragment of the demon's collapsing dominion, a memory of gluttony turned hollow. And then—silence. Not the peace of stillness, but the terrifying absence of presence, as if the very idea of the place had been erased. Where the sea of memories once drowned him, Damien now stood alone on the untouched stone, soaked in light and breathless, the air tasting of ash and absolution.
Damien collapsed forward onto stone, coughing water that was no longer there.
He had made it through.
———————————————————————
As he pushed open the final gate of the chambers, Damien came into the view of jubilant crowds cheering his arrival. Across the massive field, the Sainted Child stood alone, as still as a statue, their white hair unbothered by the windless air.
Damien faced up at the sky and blinked.
He wasn't the first to finish, nor did he have an impressive showing. Furthermore, his trials were mudded with despair and struggles only he would notice.
He was disappointed.
He walked forward. Each step splashed from his drenched boots.
The cheers of the crowd felt deafening to Damien, reminiscent of the distant waves he felt marching towards him earlier. He stepped out into the light of the circular arena, squinting instinctively. The sun had shifted since he'd entered—now nearly at its peak. Shadows cast by the stone pillars grew shorter, narrower, drawn close to the feet of the monoliths. He blinked. The warmth he now felt on his skin wasn't the sharp morning breeze anymore; it was heavy, almost lazy.
Around him, students milled about in loose clusters, voices bright with laughter and relief. Some still wore the faint shimmer of glyph residue, signs of recently passed trials. Others looked freshly scrubbed, hair no longer damp with sweat. A few had even changed into the white ceremonial garb for the guild assignment ceremony.
Damien walked past them, noting how a group of instructors were already gathering parchment, their discussions hushed but not hurried. One of them glanced up and did a visible double-take at him. A busy scribe nearby was almost done with transcribing the sequence of trial completions on a wall-sized glyph scroll. He saw his name being etched second from the top, long after the first.
He lowered his gaze.
Four hours. That was his guess. Neither impressive nor shameful. Average.
However, he slowly began to realise that something about the eyes that floated across the rooms felt different.
Some of those eyes followed him with curiosity.
Others with calculation.
One, a nobleman in violet-gold armor, didn't even whisper. He merely stared, unmoving. Judging.
After a few other students left their chambers successfully, a voice echoed across the chamber,
"And with that, the 289th Annual Entrance Examination has now ended.The Guild Assignment Ceremony will commence in one hour. All successful candidates are to remain within the sanctum until summoned."
Damien exhaled, letting his head hang. His hands shook slightly.
He made his way to a bench near the wall, ignoring the wet trail he left behind.
And then they approached.
Three figures, draped in robes of pure white lined with sun-gold, faces half-covered, moved soundlessly toward him.
The first, a woman with lips tight as seal-ink, stopped in front of him.
"Candidate Damien."
"You have been summoned by the Archbishop. Please, follow us."
Their words were plain. Their tone was not.
All three pairs of eyes pierced through him—through his robe, his bones, his very core. They didn't ask if he was ready.
They already knew.