The Skybridge quivered underfoot, each gust of wind carrying sparks of stormlight across its broken stones. Far below, the abyss churned with lightning rivers that forked and twisted in endless hunger.

Upon the central platform stood Veyrahan, vast and immovable, his shoulders wrapped in tattered cloth that fluttered like storm-banners. His gaze swept over Rael, Lakvenor, and Sira with a weight that seemed older than the bridge itself.

“This is the place of proving,” he said, voice carrying like rolling thunder. “If you would claim my aid, you must first show the sky that you are not shackled to the earth. Three trials—for three paths.”

Lightning crawled along the chains that bound the platforms together. The runes carved into the stone flared alive, searing the air with symbols of storm, flame, and root.

Lakvenor’s Trial: The Stormblade

The youngest brother was chosen first.

The runes pulsed, and a figure emerged from the lightning: a storm warrior wrought from cloud and current, its limbs jagged with arcs of raw thunder.

Lakvenor grinned, spinning his twin-bladed staff. The stormlight kissed the metal, wrapping the blades in crackling energy. “At last,” he muttered. “A challenge worthy of blood.”

He lunged, reckless and brilliant. Each sweep of his weapon split the air like a hurricane’s edge, every thrust lashing with lightning. He fought not as a soldier but as a tempest given form—untamed, feral, yet precise in his fury.

The storm-being struck back with bolts that could have sundered stone, but Lakvenor met them headlong, laughing as he twisted, leapt, and struck. His movements wove a pattern both chaotic and beautiful, like thunder given rhythm.

Veyrahan’s eyes gleamed with approval. “He fights as the storm itself: wild, unchained. Yet even storms must know when to break or yield.”

Rael’s Trial: The Sun and the Serpent

The runes shifted, glowing gold. From the abyss below, a colossal serpent rose, its body a coil of burning clouds, its eyes twin suns.

Rael drew his sunsteel blade, its edge glowing faintly with the memory of the Phoenix’s flame. Unlike his brother, he advanced with deliberate calm.

The serpent struck. Rael stepped into the strike, blade angled perfectly, parrying the force of fire and sky with clean, unshaken strength. Where Lakvenor’s battle was chaos, Rael’s was balance: every motion measured, every cut deliberate, every defense unshaken.

Golden fire wrapped around him as though answering his will. He did not wield the storm; he mastered it, forcing it to meet him on his terms.

Lakvenor watched between strikes, his grin fading into something like respect. Even Veyrahan tilted his head, murmuring, “The sun does not rage—it endures. That is its strength. That… is its danger.”

Sira’s Flashback: The Child of Root and Light

As Rael and Lakvenor fought, Sira’s gaze drifted to the runes underfoot. They pulsed with both storm-light and something else: a faint green glow that set her heart trembling.

She was no longer on the Skybridge.

She was a child again, in the groves of Mithila. Her mother, Queen Janara, knelt beside her, guiding her tiny hands to the soil. Vines sprouted at her touch, blooming with unnatural speed.

“Do you see, Sira?” Janara whispered, pride warming her tone. “The blood in you is not only mine. It carries an older memory. When Ayara was first woven, a spark of the Gaian Core was bound into flesh. That spark lives in you.”

Sira frowned. “But why me?”

Her mother’s smile faltered. “Because the Keepers of Dharma feared what would happen if that spark were ever claimed by shadow. So they hid it… inside a child who would be loved enough to resist it.”

The flash of lightning brought her back to the present, heart pounding. Loved enough to resist it. And yet—she remembered nights of fear, when storms split the sky and she had cowered, clutching her mother’s robes. She remembered her mother’s reassurance: Never fear the storm, my child. For in you lies a power older than fear itself.

Sira’s Trial Begins

The runes flared violently beneath her feet. A figure rose from the storm—not beast nor serpent, but a reflection of herself.

It was Sira woven from ash and leaf, eyes glowing with the green fire of the Core. It moved like her shadow, graceful yet wrong, as though each gesture pulled at the world around it.

“Face yourself,” Veyrahan intoned. “Not the woman you are, but the woman you might become.”

The doppelgänger raised its hand, and vines of lightning writhed outward, coiling toward her throat.

Sira froze. Her childhood fears screamed in her veins. What if my mother was wrong? What if love isn’t enough? 

What if the Core inside me isn’t life… but ruin?

Her gaze darted to Rael—still battling the serpent, golden light wrapping him like a crown. For a heartbeat, something steadied inside her. The fear did not vanish, but it no longer owned her.

She lifted her hands, calling the Core. Roots of light burst from the stone, clashing against the false-Sira’s storm-vines. For an instant, the two forces warred in balance—life against shadow, growth against decay.

And then the reflection leaned close, whispering with her own voice:

“You are not Gaia’s heir. You are its undoing.”

The words cut deeper than any blade.

The runes flared blood-red. The doppelgänger’s form swelled, monstrous, its scream echoing like a thousand storms. The stone beneath her feet cracked.

Rael turned, shouting her name. Lakvenor struck down his storm-being, but too late.

Sira stood locked between terror and defiance as Veyrahan’s voice boomed like judgment:

And the platform gave way.