The air shifted as Kael and Naya climbed back up the hidden stairways.
Kael didn't speak.
The shard he'd touched still pulsed faintly in his satchel, even though its light had dimmed. His heart beat out of rhythm. He could still hear that voice — not with his ears, but etched somewhere beneath his skin.
He bears no crest. No birthright. Yet the blood answers…
Naya kept looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as if afraid he'd start glowing again. Or vanish. She didn't ask what he saw — not yet. But she didn't leave his side.
And that meant more to him than he could say.
---
Above, the group had begun to reassemble at the trial gates.
A new challenge was being announced — the final test of the ruins. A simulated war scenario.
"Two factions," a professor said. "Survivors versus defenders. Last side standing wins."
It was standard academy fare.
But something in the ruins had shifted since Kael's descent. The other students felt it. The very ground buzzed with energy.
And Professor Lioren noticed it most.
He stood silently at the edge, his eyes not on the relics or the maps — but on Kael. There was no contempt in his gaze now. Only calculation.
Like a man standing before a locked vault that had just… clicked.
---
Students were randomly assigned teams.
Kael found himself lumped with a group of unremarkables. Two first-year sword-bearers. A healer. And to his surprise… Naya.
Ryn Valcor, of course, landed with the best fighters — handpicked by instructors, all sons of minor lords or merchant kings. Their team even had a wind caster, which meant mobility and advantage.
Kael felt eyes on him already.
They expected him to fail. Or worse — to hide again like last time.
Let them expect.
---
They were given one hour to prepare inside the ruins before battle began.
Kael's team moved quietly, gathering scraps of supplies and drawing crude maps on cracked stone.
But Kael moved with purpose.
He was already feeling the shard's influence inside him — not as power yet, but like a shifting compass. It pulled him not to glory… but to survival.
And something more.
Something waiting beneath the ruins' war zone.
---
"Naya," he said as they walked, "do you believe in destiny?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Is this your way of asking if I believe in you?"
He smiled slightly. "No. I'm asking… if you'd fight with me. Not for glory. Not for points. But for something that might be bigger than both of us."
She didn't hesitate. "Kael… I followed you into the dark once. I'll do it again."
---
The trial began.
Trumpets echoed from the stone. A countdown carved by light pulsed from the walls.
The defenders moved fast — ambushes set. The other group rushed toward objectives, using their spellcasters to disorient and overwhelm.
Kael's team waited.
Then Kael moved.
Not toward the battle… but deeper into the ruins.
"We're not here to win their game," he told his team. "We're here to survive it."
And they followed.
Even as the sky cracked with summoned lightning, and stone simulacra of monsters were unleashed.
Kael led them not to victory… but to a seal hidden beneath the battleground.
One that shouldn't be open.
---
As spells exploded above them, and students clashed steel on steel, Kael and his team discovered the chamber buried beneath the war field.
Inside…
Another altar.
But this one wasn't dead.
It was awake.
As if waiting for him.
And it knew Kael's name.