The darkness that swallowed thirteen-year-old Kai dispersed slowly, peeling away like burnt paper as the teleportation ended. The sea of black flames vanished, replaced by the cold, oppressive stone of the underground maze. The shift was jarring one moment he'd been inside the divine inferno of the Trial, the next he stood under sputtering crystal-lamps in the maze's hollow corridors, where silence clung like dust.
Kai blinked, his breath uneven. His heart still pounded in the same frantic rhythm it had moments earlier, when he'd stared at the truth of his affinity. Tainted.
A word sharp enough to slit a child's certainty open.
He steadied himself, forcing the tremor in his fingers to still. The maze smelled of damp stone and lingering trial-energy iron, smoke, and something faintly sweet, like the breath of old forgotten beasts. Ahead stood a single guard, wrapped in ceremonial armor too heavy for any practical purpose. The man's eyes flicked toward Kai, assessing him the way one judged an unfamiliar weapon curious, cautious, respectful, but never warm.
Other heirs materialized one after another in flickers of fading light. Some staggered out breathing hard, sweat tracing their temples; others emerged with cold, arrogant calmness, pretending the Trial had barely stirred them. All of them carried the look of people who had touched something inside themselves that could never be untouched again.
Kai said nothing. His silence wasn't fear it was calculation, confusion wrapped inside momentary restraint. He followed the guard through the winding corridors until the stone gave way to the shimmering glass of the elevator that rose into Falling Haste City's grand mansion.
The mansion swallowed him with velvet halls and golden lamps that shone too brightly, as if wealth itself were trying to blind the truths shaped in the Trial. Kai was led back to his room a wide chamber with obsidian-paneled walls and a jade meditation platform polished smooth by generations of heirs before him.
When the door closed, silence settled again.
No instructors, no elders, no comforting voice telling him what he had become.
Just Kai and the weight of the unknown.
He sat cross-legged, steadying his breathing, and entered cultivation. He guided the world energy toward his new core refining, filtering, pulling.
At first everything felt normal. The world energy surged toward him in rivers of muted color.
Then something went wrong.
His veins tingled… then burned. The energy thickened, like tar pushing into his bones. His heartbeat stumbled. His stomach clenched. His core, which should have harmonized with the flow, recoiled instead as if choking on something foreign.
Kai's eyes snapped open. Sweat slid down his temples. Something was wrong with the world energy itself.
He tried conjuring fire nothing.
He tried invoking the smallest spark silence.
He activated the first vision of his crimson eyes.
The world peeled open into layers of swirling energy, rivers of unseen light, currents of essence hidden from normal sight.
What he saw made his breath freeze.
The world energy he had been pulling in wasn't clean.
It was blackened.
Distorted.
Corrupted.
A slow, pulsing rot threaded through its currents like veins of ink, and he had been pulling it directly into himself.
He immediately shifted his focus, using the crimson sight to reverse the flow, pushing the corrupted energy out of his body in thin, spiraling streams. The foreign essence bled off him like dark smoke, dispersing into the air back into the world that had birthed it.
His skin prickled. His breath steadied.
But the question remained, heavy and unkind:
If his essence was pure… why was his affinity tainted?
The contradiction gnawed at him.
If the Trial showed truth, then his affinity shouldn't have been corruptible. If his essence was unchanged, then the corruption in the world shouldn't have seeped into him. Unless… something else had happened. Something the Trial had not explained. Something he would have to dig into.
He needed answers fast.
His sister would know more. She always did.
But the questions gnawed at him like teeth in the dark.
Far away, in another corner of the Trial Grounds…
A wounded beast massive, gasping, its hide cracked and bleeding stared down a girl with bright blue glowing eyes. The air itself bent around her, bending to her lineage.
Kate Vantis.
The same girl who had shielded Kai back at the in the park.
Here, however, she was not the gentle girl with a teasing smile.
Here she was a storm in the shape of a child.
She moved lightly over the broken stone, breathing steady despite her age. Her clan's artificial tool a wind-forged arrow hovered at her fingertips, shimmering in pale blue spirals.
The beast lunged.
Kate moved with it, a dance of instinct and something older something written in her blood. Arrows spun from her fingers in bursts of pale brilliance, ripping through the wind as though it were merely fabric she'd memorized how to cut.
Each shot narrowed the world.
The beast roared.
Kate's final arrow sliced through the dim air, carving a line of shimmering blue before burying itself in the creature's eye.
The beast fell. Dust rose.
Before she could breathe, the world shattered around her into a sea of wind.
A place made of nothing but motion and echo sky without sky, horizon without land. At its center stood two statues. One mirrored her blue eyes glowing, expression calm. The other had a gaping mouth, carved in a shape that looked halfway human and halfway something older.
"You have passed the Trial of Awakening," the statue intoned. "Receive your reward."
The air vibrated.
The voice continued:
Name: Kate Vantis
Stage: Awakening
"(Would you like to proceed to evolve into an Awakening?)"
Kate sighed. Her clan had drilled every detail of this process into her skull since she was old enough to walk. She waved her hand lazily.
"Continue."
Elements: Wind.
A smile tugged at her lips.
Blood Lineage: The Lineage of the Water Goddess.
(Would you like me to read you the details?)
She declined again.
Affinity Rank: HeartBound Affinity.
Curse:
Silence.
Then the wind collapsed, and she stood again at the Trial's entrance. Guards approached, guiding her back toward her room. She followed with light steps, her eyes still glowing faintly.
Later, two men entered the room clan members, guardians, perhaps both.
"Kate," one asked softly, "how was the Trial?"
She flicked on her water-goddess lineage for fun, her glowing blue eyes brightening the room for a heartbeat. The two men laughed, relieved and proud, before leaving her to rest.
Days passed.
Heirs emerged, some triumphant, others disappeared by desolving. The Trial ended with ceremonial speeches about unity, cooperation between continents, and the responsibilities of their generation.
Empty words wrapped in gold.
When the final rites concluded, the heirs prepared to depart. Carriages filled the courtyard, banners flapped, and the mansion grew quieter as each noble family left.
Kai stepped into his carriage, turning back once not to the mansion, but to the city rising behind it. Falling Haste City shimmered with its strange beauty, its towers seemingly carved from drifting starlight and storm clouds.
Then he turned away.
The carriage doors closed.
And the path toward Valerian Kingdom began.