The breath Kaela drew tasted of fire and old ash.
She stepped through the portal, boots crunching over a blackened landscape riddled with ember-filled cracks and shattered obsidian. The heat wrapped around her like a living thing—hungry, ancient. Behind her, the air shimmered, sealing off the exit. There would be no retreat.
The second trial had begun.
Aelira's voice echoed in her mind, threaded with faint sorrow: "This trial will strip away what you think you know of power. To ascend, you must burn… and still choose to rise."
Kaela exhaled slowly, centering herself. She was alone here, as the trial dictated. The terrain stretched into mountainous ridges wreathed in constant flame. Above, the sky was a veil of crimson smoke, pierced only occasionally by flashes of lightning—green, sharp, and unnatural.
"Let's see what the Ember Warden has in store," she muttered.
She advanced toward the central ridge, where the heat shimmered so violently it bent light itself. Her Memory Flame flickered protectively around her shoulders, forming an iridescent shield as molten ash gusted across the plain. The ambient energy here wasn't just destructive—it was alive, reacting to her every movement.
And then the land screamed.
A towering shape erupted from the cracked earth—a golem, thirty feet high, composed entirely of fused volcanic rock and ember flame. Its chest bore the sigil of an old Concord symbol, long defunct. Eyes of molten gold locked on to her. The Ember Warden.
Kaela narrowed her eyes. "Guardian of strength. Fitting."
The golem charged.
Kaela dove to the side, her cloak igniting slightly before her flame shield flared. She spun midair, weaving her hands into a complex spiral—Arcane Spiral: Fracture Echo. Three sigils snapped into being, circling her as threads of force lashed out, striking the golem's legs. It staggered, but didn't fall.
"Of course you're stubborn," she growled.
The Warden's fists slammed down, a shockwave blasting outward. Kaela anchored herself mid-air with 'Spellweave Dominion: Sigil Lock', clinging to a vertical plane of force as the ground split below. Lava surged from the crevasse, racing toward her.
She shifted again—Memory Flame: Echostep Mirage—leaving a fiery illusion behind as she blinked to the ridge's edge.
The golem didn't fall for the bait. Instead, it opened its chest, revealing a core of pure emberlight. With a roar, it unleashed a torrent of incinerating fire.
Kaela snarled and drove her palms together. Her sigils converged, forming a blazing spiral rune in front of her.
"Arcane Spiral: Null Reversal!"
The flame struck the spiral and was momentarily halted—then reversed. A pulse of her own energy shot back toward the Warden's core, striking it dead center. It staggered, and Kaela launched after the impact, riding the pulse of her spell like a wave.
She landed atop the golem's shoulder, driving her hand deep into the cracks of its neck.
"You want strength?" she hissed. "Then take mine."
She flooded her arm with raw spellforce—Spellweave Dominion: Overcast Thread—and unraveled her own spell into the golem's body. It shuddered violently, and Kaela leapt free just as it detonated in a thunderous implosion of emberlight.
Smoke and silence followed.
Kaela landed, breath ragged, scorched but alive. She looked around—no movement. No illusion.
Just the stilled remains of a guardian undone.
And then came the voice—not Aelira's, not the Warden's.
But Lucien's.
"You're not done yet."
Kaela froze.
The ash swirled before her, shaping itself into a figure—tall, regal, burning with Judgment Flame. Lucien's projection stepped forward, but it wasn't him. It was a Trial Echo.
"Stage Four is not earned in one battle," it said. "Show me your will to carry others' burdens. Show me why you lead the Spiral."
She didn't hesitate. "Bring it."
The echo raised a hand, and time fractured.
Kaela's memories unraveled before her—moments of pain, betrayal, failure. Her mother's death. Her early failures at spellcraft. Her exile. Every time she had been told she was too human, too weak.
The flames became her past.
And the only way forward was through them.
Kaela gritted her teeth. Her mind burned, but she refused to look away. She summoned her sigils again, but this time, they flickered with something new. Resolve.
Memory Flame: Thread of Becoming.
She stepped into the fire of her own pain—and didn't falter.
Lucien's echo watched, solemn, as her aura began to rise.
Dominion Tier… shifting…
Her energy pulsed outward like a heartbeat. Spiraling upward.
Stage Four—Apex Root—awakened inside her.
And the trial collapsed.
-----
Kaela woke at the base of the ember ridge, whole but exhausted. Aelira stood nearby, watching her with ancient eyes.
"You have done what few have," the ancient fae said. "You chose not only to fight—but to remember."
Kaela managed a weak grin. "Can't save the world if I can't face myself, right?"
Aelira offered a hand. "Come. The others await. And this was only the second trial."
Kaela accepted it, rising slowly.
And above them, the ember sky began to fade—replaced by stars.