Iron Sigil disappeared beyond the ridge, their silhouettes melting into the broken land like they had never existed at all.
Only the damage they left behind proved they had been real.
The frost along the battlefield began to crack and fade. Steam rose where ice met scorched stone. The air, once thick with mana and killing intent, thinned into a strange, exhausted quiet.
My legs finally gave out.
I dropped backward onto the cold ground, every muscle trembling as if my body had been holding itself together on nothing but panic alone.
Rex collapsed beside me in a heap.
"I'm filing a formal complaint," he panted. "Against this entire world."
Aether stood a short distance away, sword lowered but not fully sheathed. Blood soaked through one sleeve where the arrow had torn him earlier. He didn't seem to notice.
Seraphina remained still at the center of the frozen ground, her golden eyes fixed on the horizon where Iron Sigil had retreated. Only when their mana signatures fully vanished did the temperature finally rise by a degree.
She turned.
"Tonight," she said quietly, "they will bring others."
A chill slid down my spine. "Because of the fragment?"
"Because of the Node," she corrected.
I frowned weakly. "Node?"
She tapped her boot against the cracked black stone beneath us.
"We are standing directly above one."
The words hit harder than the battle.
Aether's eyes narrowed. He shifted his stance and pressed his palm to the ground, releasing a thin ripple of aura into the stone. The earth answered with a faint, distorted pulse.
"…She's right," he said. "This is a Fate Node. Dormant, but intact."
Rex's expression turned pale. "So… we just fought a top-tier team… on top of an objective point… while injured… in hostile territory?"
"Yes," Aether replied.
Rex stared at the sky. "I miss my bed."
Suddenly everything made sense.
The Wraith cluster.
The violent fate distortions.
Iron Sigil's arrival so quickly.
None of it was coincidence.
Fate Nodes were convergence points—places where the rules of the trial warped, where relics appeared more frequently, where monsters gathered like flies to blood.
And we had unknowingly walked straight onto one.
Seraphina turned her gaze toward me.
"And you," she said, "are carrying a Core Relic fragment that resonates with it."
I swallowed.
"So we're basically ringing a dinner bell."
"Yes."
"Great."
Aether finally sheathed his sword. "Then we either stabilize the Node… or abandon it."
Rex blinked. "Can't we choose the option where we run very far away very quickly?"
Aether shook his head.
"If we retreat now, Iron Sigil will return with allies and claim both the Node and the region. That strengthens them far more than it weakens us."
Seraphina's voice was cold. "And they will not forget our faces."
All eyes turned to me.
My chest tightened.
"This is another one of those 'your fault' things, isn't it?"
Aether didn't deny it.
I let out a weak breath.
"…So what does stabilizing a Fate Node actually mean?"
Seraphina answered quietly. "It means forcing the unstable fate currents beneath it into a fixed state. Once stabilized, it becomes a territory that passively generates Trial authority for the controlling team."
Rex stared at her. "In normal language?"
"It means," Aether said, "that if we secure it, the trial itself will acknowledge us as legitimate holders of this region. Other teams will need to formally challenge us to take it."
"And until then," Seraphina added, "random monster swarms and Wraith outbreaks in this area will cease."
That last part made my heart skip.
"No more Wraiths…?"
"Not permanently," she said. "But far less frequently."
The risk.
The reward.
The weight of the decision pressed down on all of us at once.
I looked at my shaking hands.
Just hours ago, I couldn't even stand properly in a fight.
Now the fate of an entire zone was being placed in my lap by pure accident.
"I don't think I'm strong enough for this," I admitted quietly.
Rex snorted weakly. "Buddy, I don't think I'm alive enough for this."
Aether studied the ground beneath us again.
"The Node is unstable but not fully awakened. That explains the irregular Wraith spawns and fragment drops."
Seraphina's gaze flicked to my pouch. "It also explains why the fragment reacted to you so violently."
My stomach turned. "So what happens if we don't stabilize it?"
"Another team will," Aether replied. "And they will inherit everything tied to it. Including…"
He trailed off.
I finished it for him. "…Whatever's wrong with me."
Seraphina didn't correct me.
That silence was confirmation enough.
---
We moved before night fully fell.
Not far.
Just enough to take cover among a series of broken stone ridges overlooking the Node's center.
From above, I could finally see it clearly.
At the heart of the fractured black plain, a massive sigil lay carved into the ground—ancient, half-erased, glowing faintly with slow, irregular pulses of pale light. Cracks radiated outward from it like veins in obsidian.
The Fate Node.
It looked less like a treasure… and more like a wound in the world.
"The stabilizing sequence requires time," Seraphina said softly. "And uninterrupted casting."
Aether exhaled. "Which means tonight will not be quiet."
Rex groaned. "Why is nothing ever quiet?"
We set up a crude perimeter among the jagged stone. Aether took the highest point for overwatch. Rex stayed near me, too injured to wander far. Seraphina positioned herself closest to the sigil.
And me?
I sat with my back against a broken pillar, staring at the slowly pulsing light below.
The fragment at my side thrummed in response.
I could feel it now.
Not as a sound.
As a pressure.
Like two magnets pulling toward each other through my bones.
Seraphina noticed my reaction.
"You feel it," she said.
I nodded slowly. "It feels like the Node is… calling it."
"That is not a coincidence," she replied. "Core fragments are born from broken Nodes. They are incomplete keys."
"And what happens if I bring it closer?" I asked.
Her eyes glinted faintly.
"Then the Node will try to complete it."
Rex stiffened. "That sounds… bad."
"It is," she agreed. "For anything that is not meant to exist naturally."
That included me.
I didn't need her to say it.
---
Night in the trial world was not truly dark.
The sky dimmed, but the fractured stars and slow-moving mana currents never allowed complete shadow to fall. The land was bathed in a sickly twilight that never fully rested.
We didn't speak much.
Not because there was nothing to say.
But because everything that could be said was heavy.
Rex eventually broke the silence.
"So… if this Node thing gives passive points," he said quietly, "does that mean we'd be closer to finishing the exam if we hold it?"
"Yes," Aether replied. "Significantly."
"And if we fail?"
"We fall behind permanently."
Rex let out a long breath. "No pressure or anything."
I stared at the sigil.
"I'm scared," I admitted.
No one mocked me for it.
Seraphina merely nodded once.
"That means you are still human," she said. "For now."
That was not comforting.
Minutes dragged by.
The sigil's light pulsed.
The fragment at my side pulsed harder.
Then—
Something shifted in the air.
Aether stiffened.
"Movement," he murmured. "Multiple."
Seraphina's eyes opened fully.
"Three directions," she said. "They've already surrounded the Node."
Rex's face went pale. "How many?"
Aether's voice was calm.
"Too many for coincidence."
My heartbeat spiked.
Iron Sigil hadn't come back.
They didn't need to.
They had done something far more dangerous.
They had informed others.
From the distant ridges, shadows moved.
Teams.
Not one.
Not two.
At least three.
Each approaching from a different side of the Node.
All drawn by the same signal.
The same objective.
The same promise.
Core Relic.
Fate Node.
Survival.
My chest tightened.
"They're not here for us," I whispered.
Seraphina answered softly.
"They are here for what we are standing on."
Aether slowly drew his sword again.
"This is what a real contested Node looks like," he said.
Rex laughed nervously. "We accidentally walked into endgame content, didn't we?"
I didn't laugh.
I couldn't.
Because the fragment had begun to burn.
Not hot.
Not cold.
Just awake.
Something deep inside it stirred.
And for the first time since entering the trial, I felt something else watching from beneath the stone.
Not monsters.
Not humans.
The Node itself.
Seraphina felt it too.
Her head snapped toward me.
"Kyle," she said sharply. "The fragment is interacting with the Node faster than expected."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means the stabilization process has already begun," she replied.
Aether turned sharply. "You're saying the trial is about to register a claim?"
"Yes."
Rex's eyes widened. "Without us even starting the ritual?!"
Seraphina stared directly at me.
"No," she said quietly.
"Because of him."
The sigil below brightened.
Cracks spread further across the ground.
Mana surged violently upward from beneath the stone like a building pressure valve.
The approaching teams hesitated.
Then rushed.
Everyone had felt it.
The Node was awakening.
And whoever touched it first would become its temporary owner.
Aether swore under his breath.
"Positions!" he barked.
Seraphina stepped forward toward the glowing sigil.
Rex forced himself upright despite his injuries, flames trembling weakly back into existence.
And all eyes turned toward me.
The fragment at my side now pulsed like a living heart.
Fast.
Demanding.
Dangerous.
I took a shaky step forward.
Not because I was brave.
Not because I was ready.
But because, terrifyingly—
The Node was already responding to me.
And if I didn't move…
Someone else would.