PTER 28C — The Amber Trial: Veil Three (The Heart That Breaks)
The steps leading upward weren't real steps.
They felt like steps—solid under Myra's boots, angled at a rise just steep enough to make her calves burn—but the roots shaping them pulsed with a soft amber glow that made every footfall feel like pressure on someone else's heartbeat.
Her hand drifted to her chest without thinking.
Her pulse wasn't racing anymore.
The climb didn't steal her breath, didn't set panic clawing at her ribs. There was a strange steadiness inside her—as if the Hollow had peeled back everything frantic in her, all the excuses and noise, and found something small but solid beneath it.
Maybe she hated how much it hurt.
Maybe she loved how much it helped.
A soft wind met her at the top.
Warm. Sweet. Carrying faint flecks of amber dust that drifted like pollen.
The dome-shaped chamber revealed itself slowly, like the world inhaling light and letting it spill out again. It wasn't huge—twenty strides across. But the sheer quiet of it made the space feel like a cathedral inside the forest.
The ceiling wasn't stone.
It wasn't roots.
It was sky—a perfect amber sky, swirling with currents like slow-moving rivers of honeyed light.
They twisted.
Merged.
Separated.
And every motion sent soft ripples across the chamber floor.
Myra swallowed.
"Okay," she whispered. "Final round. Let's see what kind of emotional beating I get this time."
At the chamber's center stood a single amber pedestal.
Not tall.
Not elaborate.
Just a column of fused resin with a hollow depression in its top—like it was waiting for something to be placed in it.
Myra stepped closer.
Her heart slowed again.
Something was wrong with the silence.
It wasn't blank.
It wasn't empty.
It was waiting.
Then the pedestal shifted—not physically, not visibly—but Myra felt something warm press against her palm.
She looked down.
Her hand was suddenly holding…
A memory.
Amber shaped itself into an object. Not a weapon, not a key, nothing symbolic.
Just—
A small carved wolf.
A child's trinket. Rough. Imperfect. Smoothed by thumb and time.
Her breath caught.
She remembered this.
She was seven. Running through a half-collapsed scavenger market with her father. She saw the carved wolf on a cracked vendor table, and she'd loved it instantly. She'd saved her coin for three months to buy it.
It was the first thing she'd ever chosen for herself.
The memory flickered.
And then shifted.
Myra was back in the present—holding the amber replica.
The Hollow wasn't just showing memories now.
It was asking for something.
"Why this?" Myra whispered. "Why not… anything else?"
The amber wolf pulsed in her hand.
The pedestal pulsed in answer.
The Hollow spoke—not in words, but in shape:
Place what you fear losing most.
Myra's lungs locked.
"No," she whispered immediately.
She knew what this game was.
She'd seen enough tests in enough stories to recognize the setup.
You don't put your heart in a box unless you're okay watching it break.
"No," she said again, louder. "No. I'm not doing this."
The chamber darkened slightly, as if the sky above dimmed its currents.
Not threatening.
Just patient.
Inviting her to try again.
Myra shook her head violently. "I already told you all my fears. I did your whole therapy session. This—this is too much."
The pedestal didn't move.
The amber wolf warmed gently, like someone holding her hand.
It wasn't a command.
It was a question.
Myra clenched her teeth. Her throat tightened until it hurt.
"What do you want from me?" she demanded. "To admit that everything I love is something that can be taken? That everything I care about can be shattered? That I'm always one bad day away from losing the few people I—"
Her voice cracked.
She looked down at the wolf.
Her hands shook.
She knew what it symbolized.
Not the wolf. Not the memory. Not the past.
Choice.
The choice to love something even when you knew it could be lost.
The choice to care when the world punished caring.
The choice to keep a heart soft in a life that demanded stone.
Tears blurred her vision.
"Why do you do this?" she whispered. "Why do you make me choose the thing that hurts?"
Amber currents shifted overhead like a sigh.
The Hollow answered quietly:
Because only the brave can fear loss and love anyway.
Myra's shoulders trembled.
She pressed the wolf to her forehead and closed her eyes.
For a moment, the chamber melted away, and all she saw were the people she'd grown to love more than she dared admit:
Aiden—quiet, stubborn, staring down trial monsters like he was apologizing to them. Nellie—tiny, terrified, fierce enough to bite a stranger to protect her friends. Runa—standing like a wall no storm could knock over. The pup—lightning in a tiny body, choosing them without hesitation.
She almost laughed at the ache in her chest.
Once, not long ago, she'd believed people were weight.
Now they felt like wings.
She opened her eyes.
Her hands steadied.
She walked to the pedestal.
She placed the carved wolf gently into the hollow.
The pedestal lit up.
Amber flooded upward in a burst of warm, liquid light that rose around her fingers like rising water. Myra gasped as the warmth surged through her palms, her wrists, her arms, her chest—
—straight into her heartbeat.
It didn't hurt.
It felt like being seen.
Like the Hollow took the fear she'd spent years burying in noise and motion, held it gently, turned it over in the light, and said:
You can let yourself be loved without losing yourself.
The chamber pulsed.
The amber sky rippled.
A notification shimmered in the air:
[ FINAL VEIL COMPLETE ]
[ HEART TRIAL — PASS ]
[ AMBER VERDICT: ACCEPTED ]
[ NEW TRAIT: HEARTBOUND — You do not run alone. ]
[ PERSONAL ATTRIBUTE: COURAGE +1 ]
[ SKILL SHARD: VEIL-SIGHT (MINOR) — Sense emotional resonance in beast and human alike. ]
Myra wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"Stupid forest," she muttered. "You're lucky I needed this."
The pedestal dissolved into light.
The amber wolf melted into gold dust that swirled around her, painting faint lines down her arms like temporary tattoos.
The chamber brightened—
Then split open behind her.
A seam cracked downward, mist pouring through in gentle waves.
A doorway.
Her exit.
She took a deep breath.
And walked through.
Amber dissolved behind her like a dream ending.
Light shifted.
Sound returned.
Myra stumbled out into—
—daylight.
The Courtyard.
Hundreds of students.
All staring at her.
And the first thing she saw was—
Aiden.
Bleeding. Wrapped in vine-mark scars. Stormlight pulsing faint beneath his skin. Holding the trembling pup. Myra's breath broke.
He turned.
Their eyes met across the courtyard.
Everything in her chest surged.
She took one step forward—
And the world rushed toward her.
"AIDEN—"
"NELLIE—"
"RUNA—"
Voices blurred. Someone crashed into her. Someone else grabbed her arm. The pup launched past Aiden to headbutt her knee. She staggered, laughing and crying at the same time.
She felt Aiden's hand on her shoulder—steady, warm, here.
"You're okay," he said softly.
She sniffed, wiping her eyes. "I wasn't worried. You were definitely more worried."
He raised an eyebrow. "Really."
"Yes," she said instantly.
He smirked.
Nellie hugged her waist so tight Myra wheezed.
Runa grunted something that might've been approval.
But as Myra leaned into them, her heartbeat steady for the first time in days—
The Thorn Gate behind them pulsed once.
Amber and green.
Stormlight and shadow.
As if something on the other side was listening.
Waiting.
Watching.
For all three of them.
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