Four upper-tier Crest Spire students. Noble-born. Each bonded to Shades strong enough to tear apart most fresh recruits.

But I wasn’t most recruits.

And I didn’t have a Shade.

I had Aethros.

The corridor blurred into a smear of cold torchlight and moving limbs. Time slowed—not because I willed it to, but because he did.

“Let them see,” Aethros whispered in my mind, voice like velvet across a blade. “Let them taste what you became after the fire.”

My foot pivoted.

The first punch didn’t land—mine did.

The noble boy crumpled against the wall before his Shade could phase in. The second lashed out with a flickering whip of darklight, a Stalker’s tail weapon, serrated and meant to sting.

I turned into it. Let it strike skin. Let them think I’d faltered.

Then I moved. Clean. Ruthless. Every motion a memory of my dead world—Jay’s voice yelling commands in wind-whipped fields, the weight of bruised limbs, the echo of screams under steel sky.

Elbow. Knee. Palm.

A lifetime of martial conditioning they never expected from someone without a crest.

One of them activated a glyph—summoning a Warden-class Shade made of chained stone and bone.

“Enough!” he barked.

But he said it too late.

Aethros surged.

My shadow lengthened across the stone. A second pair of eyes blinked open in it. Then a third.

The corridor groaned. The torches flared blue.

The Warden Shade stopped mid-step. It didn’t obey. It turned—and knelt toward my shadow.

All four students froze.

“What… what is that?”

I stepped forward, my boots echoing like judgments on cathedral floors.

“A question you weren’t meant to survive long enough to ask.”

They ran.

Their footfalls faded into the upper floors. The silence returned.

I turned, breath shallow, shoulders tense.

Aethros whispered, quiet now.

“You still think they’ll let you stay, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

✦ Morning — The Descent Test

Hundreds of students lined the marble deck. Looming above us, the stone lift groaned. It led down—deep down—into the Underroot, the colossal cave system beneath the Spire. Legend said parts of it touched the ancient Hollow Realm itself.

The headmaster’s projection returned. This time his face was less stern—more eager, like a child preparing to watch chaos.

“The rules are simple. Survive.”

“If you kill, you’re not disqualified. If you die, we don’t stop the clock. Last ten standing in seventy-two hours are promoted. The rest are considered... lacking.”

No mention of rescue. No healers. No reset.

Only a countdown.

The lift screeched.

I stepped on it.

Next to me, I recognized a few faces: the girl with the eyepatch from the Hollow Wing. A half-lizard hybrid with violet tattoos. Even a noble wearing an E-Class Phantom Mark—rare. Dangerous.

They stared at me like I was vermin.

Good.

Let them underestimate me.

Let them not know.

That I’ve already survived my end once before.

The lift shook violently as it began its descent into the abyss. Stone gave way to fog, fog to blacklight, and then, finally…

The Underroot opened its jaws.

A spiraling chasm of ancient stone and haunted flora, riddled with veins of glowing glyphs. In the distance: roars. Movement. Not all of it animal.

A voice crackled through hidden speakers:

“Initiation… begins now.”

The platform clicked.

And we dropped.

✦ The Descent Begins

As soon as we landed, half the students ran into the mist. Some tried to form groups. Others lit their hands with arc-flame or summoned low-tier Shades for protection.

I didn’t move.

I watched.

And listened.

Aethros coiled around the back of my spine like cold silk.

“One is watching us,” he whispered.

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

Then the forest groaned.

And something enormous exhaled in the dark.