Three days had passed since Kai's journey toward the Pillars of Creation began. Three long, drawn-out, uneventful days.
Even flying through the sky through clouds shaped like drifting islands, through shimmering waves of world energy, above forests older than recorded history could not save Kai from the crushing weight of boredom. At first, the view had fascinated him. He leaned out of the carriage window to feel the wind, to see the endless expanse stretching beneath him. But by the end of the first day he had seen enough. By the second day he was restless. By the third day, he felt like he would rather jump off the carriage than sit still any longer.
"What did they expect?" he muttered under his breath. "I'm thirteen. I can't sit in one spot for a week."
His voice was swallowed instantly by the hum of the wind and the faint wingbeats of the flying beasts pulling the carriage.
Kai shifted in his seat. The guard across from him shot him a side glance, but said nothing. This had been the rhythm of the past seventy-two hours: silence, sky, boredom.
But something heavier sat on Kai's mind. Something sharper than boredom, something heavier than restlessness.
The trial.
Not the journey.
Not the pillars.
Not the awakening.
The trial itself.
That word alone weighed on him more than all the hours trapped in the carriage.
Awakening was the first stage of a conjurer. Everyone in Valeria started there. You faced the Pillar of Creation, passed its test, gained your element, and stepped into a new life.
Simple.
Except it wasn't.
Because with the awakening came a curse.
Kai looked at his hands, feeling a cold pit settle in his stomach. The curse was given to everyone who passed the trial. People said it was the cost for stealing energy from the world, for forcing the universe to feed you power that did not belong to you. Some described it as a flaw, something that twisted your path. Others called it a brand, a reminder that humans were not meant to touch the forces they wielded.
But the truth was more unsettling.
The curse was what prevented your soul from dissolving into the world.
It stopped you from becoming raw energy fuel for the universe.
Because that's what happened when you failed the trial.
Your body didn't die.
It didn't fall.
It didn't rot.
It dissolved.
Into the world.
Into the very essence of creation.
A sacrifice to maintain the balance.
Kai didn't know which terrified him more failing, or what would happen if he succeeded.
"What if my curse is… bad?" he whispered.
Even saying it aloud felt dangerous.
The guard glanced at him again but looked away. Perhaps he thought Kai was simply thinking about the trial like every young noble before him. If only it were that simple.
Kai pressed a hand against his chest. The bloodline of Valeria pulsed faintly inside him an ancient force that felt like it was always waiting, always watching. People called it a blessing, but blessings from gods had a way of feeling like chains.
His trial would be harder.
Everyone knew it.
Even if no one said it.
The Pillars of Creation did not treat bloodlines like his the same way they treated others. They probed deeper, struck harder, and demanded answers that normal children never had to face. The stories said the bloodline made you closer to the divine, but the trials seemed to view divinity as something worth testing to its breaking point.
Kai sighed heavily.
"What even is the trial?" he muttered. "What do I do? What do I face? Just… water? Shadows? Fire? A god?"
The guard did not answer.
Because no one could.
The trials were alive in a sense changing, shifting, reshaping themselves depending on who entered. No two trials were the same. Some people faced illusions. Some faced storms. Some faced their greatest fears. Some met visions of themselves. Some faced nothing at all and those were always the most terrifying stories.
Kai closed his eyes, trying to calm the storm of thoughts swirling through his mind.
***
Meanwhile Present, Inside the Trial
Kai opened his eyes.
And instantly knew something was wrong.
He was still standing on the floating wooden shaft. The ocean or sea, honestly what was the difference? hadn't changed. The water was still a clear, impossible blue, perfect in its calmness. And the sky above was still… wrong.
A mirror.
Not reflective like normal water.
Not shining like polished steel.
But a perfect mirror—
reflecting the ocean beneath it
with no sun
no clouds
no horizon.
Just an endless reflection of a world that wasn't behaving like one.
Kai stared upward, waiting for something to shift, for something to ripple across the mirrored sky. But minutes passed. Nothing happened.
That should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
Because the longer he stared, the more something inside him began to slip, like sand falling through fingers he didn't realize were open.
Something was… fading.
He blinked.
Then blinked again.
What was he supposed to be doing here?
Why was he standing on this wooden shaft?
Why… was he even here?
His throat tightened.
His vision blurred at the edges.
He couldn't remember.
What brought him here?
What was he looking for?
Why did the ocean feel familiar?
Why did the sky feel wrong?
Who was waiting for him outside?
His mind went blank.
Completely.
Kai's heart thudded once hard.
Then instinct roared through him.
His bloodline activated.
The air trembled.
The water vibrated.
The mirrored sky rippled outward like someone had thrown a stone into it.
A pressure unfurled from Kai's body, ancient and oppressive. Something metallic snapped around his left wrist a band, a cold, blood-colored metal, tightening with a low, humming pulse. A chain dangled from it, faintly gleaming despite the absence of light.
But that wasn't the part that changed him.
His eyes.
His pupils, usually dark, shifted violently, the color burning away until only pure crimson remained deep, consuming, the exact shade of blood.
The world reacted instantly.
The mirrored sky stopped reflecting him.
Stopped reflecting the ocean.
Stopped reflecting anything.
Instead, something moved behind it something vast, shapeless, and wrong.
Kai inhaled sharply.
His crimson eyes pierced the mirrored sky—
—
—
—
And what he saw shattered something inside him.
His breath caught.
His pulse faltered.
His thoughts froze.
Whatever existed beyond the mirror whatever he glimpsed it wasn't a creature, or a god, or an illusion. It wasn't something meant to be seen by mortal eyes.
Or by divine bloodlines either.
The world shook.
The ocean churned beneath him.
The wooden shaft creaked dangerously.
The sky cracked like breaking glass.
And then—
His curse stirred.
Quietly.
Softly.
Almost like a whisper pressing into the back of his skull.
Kai staggered, clutching his head as a searing pulse tore through him, as if something inside him was both being awakened and torn apart at the same time.
The air distorted.
The sky flickered.
The water rose unnaturally.
And Kai felt it—
The trial had started.
Truly.
Finally.
Terrifyingly.
And he was already losing pieces of himself.