The night pressed close, velvet and soundless.
Only the faint hiss of mist through leaves marked the turning of time.
The boy—still, black-eyed, unreadable—stood where Keros's warning had faded from the link.
Powerless body. Keen instinct.
A paradox wrapped in darkness.
We begin,
the serpent's single mind pulsed through the bond, each of its three heads moving as if to different heartbeats but speaking with one thought.
A ripple of motion flowed across the clearing.
One colossal head slid forward, horned and glinting.
A second rose behind it, scales shedding sparks of black-blue light.
The third remained half-hidden in mist, its hollow gaze like a wound in the air.
Keros lifted a single coil.
Shadow gathered like smoke from an unseen fire and condensed along his length until the moonlight itself seemed to falter.
A spear of pure night detached from him and struck the ground.
The earth quivered.
Rocks hissed, rimed in frost that smelled faintly of iron.
The boy's pupils tracked every movement—angle, velocity, the vibration in the soil before each strike.
He saw everything.
Yet when he shifted to mirror the motion, his muscles betrayed him.
The leap was too short.
The pivot lagged by a breath.
Every instinct was perfect, but the body—thin, hungry, mortal—refused to obey.
He landed hard, knees scraping bark-wet soil.
Keros stilled, all three heads lowering slightly, one mind measuring the boy's failure.
Too fragile, the thought pressed through the bond.
Perception without strength. He will break before the wilderness ends.
The serpent coiled, a slow spiral of living night.
Eyes like emerald storms caught the moonlight and held it captive.
The clearing grew colder.
The boy straightened, chest rising in measured rhythm.
No complaint.
No sign of pain.
Silence thickened until the mist itself seemed to wait.
Then he looked up.
"What."
The word was flat, almost mechanical, slicing the quiet like a blade.
Three sets of eyes burned brighter, green and bottomless.
They did not blink.
Keros's thought brushed against him again, low and deliberate.
If you cannot endure, you will die before you leave these woods. But the bond between us opens a path.
Through it, I may give you a seed—nothing more—of my darkness. A strength enough to live, if you can bear it.
The boy's gaze did not shift.
"And if I cannot?"
Then the seed will devour you, the serpent said, voice like iron dragged across stone.
Another long pause.
Mist swirled.
A distant tree cracked as if under unseen weight.
The boy lowered his eyes, not in fear but in thought.
The forest's cold breath slid across his skin.
Memory remained a void, but instinct whispered: without power, you will not see dawn beyond this wilderness.
He raised his head again.
"Do it."
All three heads lowered in perfect unison, one will guiding every muscle.
The ground trembled.
Then we begin the Rite of the First Veil,
Keros intoned.
From the soil around them, sigils of pure black bled upward like ink through water.
They pulsed once, twice, each beat echoing with an ancient rhythm older than the moon.
Mist tightened into a circle.
The night air thickened until every breath tasted of iron and stone.
Stand at the center, the serpent commanded.
The boy stepped forward, each movement deliberate, until the sigils encircled his bare feet.
Darkness seeped upward in threads no thicker than hair, sliding along his legs, weaving patterns across skin and air alike.
This will hurt, the voice whispered,
He did not answer.
The world narrowed to heartbeat and shadow.
When the first strand of Keros's power touched him, the clearing erupted in silence so deep it swallowed even the memory of sound.
The Rite had begun.