Chapter 24 — The First Trial
The forest waited in silence.
Not the peaceful silence of an untouched wilderness, nor the tense quiet that settled before predators hunted. It was something stranger. The towering trees beyond the gates stood motionless beneath the morning sun, their branches barely stirring despite the breeze that still swept across the examination grounds behind them.
It was as though the forest existed in a world separate from the one they had just left.
Three thousand candidates stood before its edge.
No one crossed.
Not yet.
An Imperial officer stepped forward, his polished armor catching the first rays of sunlight. Unlike the elderly examiner who had addressed them earlier, this man wasted neither words nor time. He unrolled a narrow scroll, his voice calm enough that no one needed to strain to hear.
"The First Trial consists of one objective."
He looked toward the forest.
"Reach the First Beacon before sunset."
A faint murmur spread through the candidates.
That was all?
The officer continued before anyone could speak.
"You may choose any route."
"You may travel alone."
"You may cooperate."
"You may betray."
"The Empire places no restrictions upon your decisions."
Another pause.
"But understand this."
"If your plaque is broken..."
"You fail."
"If you abandon the trial..."
"You fail."
"If the sun sets before you reach the First Beacon..."
"You fail."
He rolled the scroll closed.
"No further instructions will be given."
Then he stepped aside.
The gates opened fully.
Nothing happened.
For one heartbeat...
Two...
Three...
Then someone ran.
The hesitation shattered like thin glass.
Hundreds of candidates surged toward the broad road leading directly into the forest, boots pounding against packed earth as though speed alone could carry them to victory. Others shouted for companions to keep pace, quickly forming groups of five, ten, even twenty before disappearing beneath the canopy.
The atmosphere changed instantly.
The examination had begun.
Klaus instinctively took a step forward.
Zero didn't move.
His gaze remained fixed on the entrance.
Candidates continued pouring into the forest, kicking dust into the air until the once-empty road became a river of moving bodies.
"...Zero?"
No answer.
Klaus stopped beside him.
"What is it?"
Zero continued watching.
The road.
The trees.
The shadows.
Something refused to fit.
Around them, more candidates rushed past.
One broad-shouldered youth laughed as he overtook slower competitors.
"Stand there all day if you want!"
"If you're too scared to start, save everyone the trouble and go home!"
Several others laughed with him before vanishing down the road.
Klaus watched them leave before looking back at Zero.
"You think there's a trap?"
"I don't know."
"...Then what?"
Zero crouched.
His fingers brushed against the edge of the road where packed earth met wild grass. The soil was firm, almost unnaturally smooth.
He picked up a small pebble.
Rolled it between his fingers.
Then let it fall.
It bounced once before coming to rest.
Nothing.
Yet...
His eyes narrowed.
"This road..."
He looked farther ahead.
"...is too clean."
Klaus frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Zero stood again, never taking his eyes off the path.
"If thousands of people take the same examination every year..."
He gestured toward the road stretching beneath the trees.
"...why are there no marks?"
Klaus looked.
At first, he saw nothing unusual.
Then...
No wagon ruts.
No exposed roots worn smooth by countless footsteps.
No patches where grass struggled to reclaim disturbed earth.
No broken branches.
No old campfire circles.
Nothing.
It looked as though no one had ever walked there.
"...Maybe they repair it."
"Every year?"
Klaus hesitated.
"...Good point."
The crowd continued shrinking.
Within minutes, nearly two-thirds of the candidates had already disappeared into the forest.
Among them, Zero caught sight of Lucien Ardent.
The noble neither hurried nor hesitated. He walked with measured confidence, paying little attention to the chaos around him. Candidates instinctively parted before him, and without once looking back, he entered the road beneath the trees.
Elsewhere, the towering youth with the massive axe scratched the back of his head.
"Huh..."
He glanced at the road.
Then at the forest.
"I've never liked roads."
With that simple declaration, he shifted the axe onto his shoulder and strode directly into the undergrowth instead, pushing through waist-high ferns with the ease of someone who had spent his life hunting in the wild.
Zero watched him go.
Interesting.
Not because of the decision.
Because he hadn't made it out of suspicion.
He'd made it out of habit.
Different reasoning.
Same result.
Then there was the girl in grey.
She never approached the road at all.
One moment she stood near the edge of the crowd.
The next...
She was gone.
No sound.
No dramatic movement.
She had simply slipped between the trees while everyone else watched the road.
Zero's eyes lingered on the place where she'd disappeared.
Three people.
Three different decisions.
Three different reasons.
Bren arrived moments later, breathing only slightly harder than before.
"I knew I'd find you two still standing here."
Klaus sighed.
"Zero thinks something's wrong."
Bren looked toward the road.
"So do I."
That surprised Klaus.
"You too?"
Bren crouched beside the road, scooping a handful of loose earth into his palm before rubbing it between rough fingers.
"My father always said..."
He let the dirt fall.
"...animals make paths."
"People make roads."
He stood.
"But hunters?"
"We follow whichever one gets us home."
His eyes met Zero's.
"I don't trust roads in unfamiliar forests."
Zero nodded once.
Neither of them had reached the conclusion the same way.
One relied on observation.
The other on experience.
Yet both had arrived at the same answer.
The entrance had grown strangely quiet.
Barely a hundred candidates remained.
The forest seemed to have swallowed everyone else.
No voices echoed back.
No laughter.
No sounds of branches breaking beneath hurried feet.
Only silence.
A silence so complete that Klaus found himself unconsciously lowering his own breathing.
"...That's unsettling."
"It is," Bren admitted.
Zero looked toward the untouched woodland to the left of the road.
The trees there stood older.
Their roots rose naturally from the earth.
The undergrowth remained undisturbed.
The forest looked...
Alive.
His decision came without hesitation.
"We're not taking the road."
Klaus didn't ask why.
Bren merely smiled.
"I was hoping you'd say that."
Together, the three of them turned away from the obvious path and stepped into the untouched forest.
Behind them, the broad road stretched silently beneath the ancient canopy, inviting every late arrival to follow it.
Ahead...
Only shadows waited.
The forest welcomed them with silence.
Not the comfortable silence of Ashvale's woods, where birdsong drifted between ancient trunks and insects filled every quiet moment with life. This silence felt deliberate, as though the forest itself were listening.
The moment they stepped beneath the canopy, the light changed.
Sunlight still filtered through the branches, but it arrived in scattered fragments, painting the ground with shifting patches of gold that never seemed to stay in one place for long. Moss climbed over massive roots, while ferns brushed against their boots as they moved deeper into the undergrowth.
Behind them, the sounds of the examination grounds disappeared.
Ahead...
nothing.
Klaus unconsciously lowered his voice.
"This doesn't feel natural."
Zero didn't answer immediately.
He knelt beside a patch of exposed roots, brushing loose soil away with two fingers. The earth was damp beneath the surface despite several days without rain, and tiny shoots had begun reclaiming an old animal trail almost completely hidden beneath fallen leaves.
Someone unfamiliar with forests would have missed it.
Someone in a hurry definitely would.
"We're following this?" Klaus asked.
"It's older than the road."
"And?"
"The forest made it."
Zero stood, his eyes tracing the faint trail as it curved naturally around ancient trees instead of cutting through them.
"The road forces the forest to change."
"This doesn't."
Klaus smiled faintly.
"I'll pretend I understand."
"You don't need to."
He started walking.
Klaus followed.
Time lost meaning beneath the canopy.
Without the sun overhead, only the slow change in the quality of light hinted that the morning was passing. They crossed shallow streams, climbed over fallen trunks and squeezed between walls of tangled roots that looked older than Ashvale itself.
Zero noticed something else.
There were tracks.
Not human.
Deer.
Small boars.
Something larger.
All of them avoided the road.
Interesting.
Animals had choices.
They never chose the road.
A distant shout echoed through the forest.
Then another.
Klaus stopped immediately.
"...Did you hear that?"
Zero nodded.
The voices came from somewhere to their right.
Far enough away that individual words blurred together.
The second shout ended abruptly.
Silence returned.
Neither of them moved.
After several long moments, Klaus looked toward Zero.
"Should we—"
"No."
The answer came before the question finished.
"We don't know what's happening."
"...Someone might need help."
"Or someone wants us to think they do."
Klaus opened his mouth.
Then closed it again.
He hated admitting it.
But Zero was right.
The examination had begun less than an hour ago.
Trusting every voice in an unfamiliar forest would be reckless.
They continued walking.
The silence behind them remained unbroken.
Nearly another hour passed before Zero stopped without warning.
Klaus almost walked into him.
"What is—"
Zero raised one hand.
Quiet.
Klaus immediately fell silent.
At first, he noticed nothing unusual.
The trees stood exactly as they had for the past hour.
The breeze remained gentle.
Leaves drifted lazily through the air.
One leaf floated between two trees.
Halfway down...
it vanished.
Not burned.
Not cut apart.
Simply...
gone.
Klaus stared.
"...What?"
Another leaf followed.
The same result.
It disappeared at precisely the same point.
Invisible.
Something stretched between the trunks.
Zero slowly crouched, picking up a thin fallen branch.
Without stepping closer, he tossed it toward the gap.
The branch touched empty air.
A sharp hiss sliced through the forest.
The branch separated cleanly into dozens of pieces before they even reached the ground.
Klaus felt cold.
"...Essence Thread."
The quiet voice came from somewhere behind them.
Both boys turned instinctively.
The girl in grey stepped out from behind a broad oak as though she'd always been there. Her expression remained calm, amber eyes lingering briefly on the shredded remains of the branch before shifting toward Zero.
"I was wondering how long it would take someone else to notice."
She spoke as if commenting on the weather.
Not boasting.
Simply observing.
Klaus blinked.
"You've been following us?"
"No."
She shook her head.
"We've been following the same answer."
Zero looked back toward the nearly invisible thread stretched between the trees.
"So you saw it too."
"I saw the leaves."
A small smile appeared on her lips.
"You saw the road."
For a brief moment, neither spoke.
Then, unexpectedly...
Zero smiled.
Not out of amusement.
Not because he'd found an ally.
Because, for the first time since entering the examination...
someone had reached the same conclusion through a different path.
The trial had finally become interesting.
Far above the forest, hidden within one of the watchtowers overlooking the First Trial, the elderly examiner watched the scene unfold without expression.
Beside him, an Imperial officer quietly lowered the viewing artifact.
"Three candidates rejected the road."
A pause.
"One noticed the thread."
The old man nodded once.
"Good."
The officer hesitated.
"...Should we record their names?"
The examiner's eyes never left the forest below.
"No."
"They haven't earned that yet."
The forest remained silent.
The examination had only just begun.