Chapter Sixteen: Shadows Beneath the Flame

The parchment still trembled in Kaede’s fingers long after she read it.

Ren paced their chamber like a storm barely held at bay.

“They will use the Trials to hollow you out.”

He stopped. “That’s not just a metaphor. They’re preparing us.”

Kaede set the note down and locked the door behind them. “The next Trial is called the Forge. A place for shaping. Or breaking.”

She turned to him, her voice low.

“And someone thinks it’s a trap.”

Ren frowned. “Sora.”

Kaede nodded. “Only she would warn us like this. But if she’s inside the cult, how do we trust it?”

Ren stared at the parchment, his hand brushing the edges of its ink.

“We don’t have to trust it. We just have to follow it.”

Later that night, under moonlight

The twins slipped out of the ceremonial barracks in silence, cloaked in gray and armed with more caution than blades. They moved like mist, weaving through the outer gardens of the Arboretum toward the Seer’s Reliquary a forbidden archive where records of the Trials’ original design were kept.

Kaede picked the lock. Ren silenced the door’s ancient groan.

Inside, they were swallowed by cold and dust.

Scrolls lined the walls in glass tubes. Murals of dragons and stars crawled across the ceiling. Statues of past champions stood in poses of eternal agony or triumph.

But in the center of the room stood a strange pedestal with only one scroll resting upon it.

Kaede approached, drawing a breath.

Trial IV: The Forge of Becoming

She unrolled it carefully, and both of their faces tensed as they read:

 The Forge shall test the core of the aspirant. Their flame shall be drawn forth and measured. The worthy shall be molded. The unworthy melted.

“What does that mean?” Kaede whispered. “It’s not a metaphor. This sounds like… a ritual.”

Ren pointed to a seal stamped near the bottom of the scroll.

Not the mark of the Empire.

Not the symbol of the Seers.

But a crescent moon etched with three eyes.

 The symbol of the Eclipse Cult.

Kaede’s breath caught. “They’ve infiltrated the Trials.”

Ren’s jaw clenched. “They’re not testing us. They’re filtering us. Picking a body. One of us is meant to be sacrificed.”

Kaede stepped back, heart thudding. “They want one twin to die. And one to… ascend?”

Ren nodded. “But into what?”

Behind them, a voice spoke.

“A god. Or something worse.”

They turned, blades drawn but it was Sora.

Hooded, worn, bleeding slightly from her shoulder. Her eyes glimmered in the dark like twin lanterns.

“I couldn’t protect the others,” she said. “But I can protect you.”

Kaede moved toward her. “You left us.”

“I embedded myself,” Sora said. “And I found the truth.”

She knelt before them, opening her palm.

A flicker of false ember-light burned there unstable, silver and hollow.

“This is what they want to build their god with. But the vessel they created requires a soul that’s been purified by trial… and consumed by grief.”

Ren’s breath caught. “They’re trying to force a godhood ritual.”

Sora nodded.

“And they’ve chosen you two… because you're bonded by blood. If one dies, the other will burn with divine rage.”

Kaede closed her eyes. “They want to ignite that grief into power.”

Sora whispered:

 “We’re going to burn their ritual down before it ever begins.”