CHAPTER 515: TRIALS (4)

The collapse did not begin with noise.

It began with silence, heavy, absolute, suffocating. The kind of silence that comes just before a world decides to fall apart. Lindarion felt it shudder through his bones, a deep vibration that rippled up his spine and into the base of his skull where the fragment had sunk.

Nysha felt it too. She grabbed his arm, hard enough to bruise. "We need to move. Now."

Ashwing’s wings snapped open at the same instant the first crack erupted across the cavern ceiling. Pebbles rained down, then chunks of stone. Dust spiraled like a storm. The void-heart shell, now empty, was crumbling inward.

Lindarion didn’t panic. He simply turned toward the far end of the collapsing chamber, focusing on a tremor he could feel beneath the noise. "There’s a path."

Nysha didn’t question him. She trusted his instincts too much, even when they scared her.

But before they could run, the chamber lurched, and one of the massive ribbed pillars supporting the vault snapped in half. It crashed down exactly where Lindarion had been standing seconds ago. Nysha dragged him aside with a curse.

"Your ’path’ better be real," she snapped.

"It is," Lindarion said, voice steady, unshaken despite the world breaking around them. "Follow me."

The three sprinted across the fractured platform. A shockwave tore through the floor, splitting it open. Lindarion jumped the widening gap with ease, Nysha close behind, Ashwing darting ahead in frantic zigzags.

But the collapse was accelerating. Stone screamed as it peeled away from the walls. The cavern floor buckled and twisted. Nysha’s foot slipped on a shifting slab. She fell—but Lindarion caught her wrist before she plummeted into the chasm forming beneath them.

He pulled her up with one smooth motion. She stared at him, stunned by the strength behind the effortless gesture. "You’re stronger."

He didn’t answer because he didn’t know how to explain the truth: the fragment inside him was adjusting his mana flow, regulating his muscles, augmenting his reflexes with an almost clinical precision.

More changes. More shifts. More unknowns.

Not the time.

"There." He pointed toward a slanted wall of stone, an archway half-swallowed by debris. "The exit."

Ashwing darted toward it, and immediately recoiled. "Wait! Wait wait WAIT—there’s a barrier!"

Lindarion skidded to a stop beside him. Nysha pressed a hand to the shimmering air. It vibrated with a resonant hum.

"A ward," she said. "Ancient. This wasn’t meant to be escaped once the trial ended."

Ashwing smacked the barrier with his tiny claws. "Then UN-end the trial! Reverse it! Unsync it!"

"That’s not how magic works!" Nysha snapped.

Lindarion closed his eyes for a heartbeat. The barrier pulsed. Not against him, but with him. The same rhythm as the fragment settling inside his mind. A shared heartbeat.

"The trial didn’t end," he said quietly. "It passed its last piece to me. The ward is waiting for me to... choose."

Nysha froze. "Choose what?"

He lifted his hand.

The chamber shuddered violently, no more time.

Just as the ceiling caved in, Lindarion made contact with the barrier.

Light exploded outward. Runic script surged across the surface, rotating around him like orbiting stars. The fragment inside him stirred, pressing a question against his mind. Three symbols appeared on the barrier—three choices, just like the being had said:

A circle of radiant gold — The Guardian’s Path.

A line of shadowed white — The Cleanser’s Path.

An empty space between them — The Unwritten Path.

Nysha saw it too. Her eyes widened. "Lindarion—don’t choose randomly."

Ashwing clung to his shoulder. "Choose the one that gets us OUT before we’re FLATTENED!"

The chamber groaned. The floor began falling away in giant slabs.

Lindarion didn’t hesitate—not because he knew the right choice, but because something in him already understood the wrong one.

He didn’t touch the Guardian’s circle. He didn’t touch the Cleanser’s line.

He pressed his palm to the empty space.

The barrier shattered like glass struck by light. A tunnel of pure luminescence opened beyond the archway, roaring outward with the force of a breaking storm.

Nysha grabbed him. Ashwing wrapped himself around his neck.

The world collapsed and the three of them were flung forward, swallowed by white light as the ruin came crashing down behind them.

They didn’t stop tumbling until the luminous tunnel spit them out onto solid ground, cold sand under their palms and the harsh desert wind hitting their faces.

They gasped for breath under a blazing twilight sky.

Ashwing coughed. "We’re... alive?"

Nysha turned toward Lindarion, chest still rising with adrenaline. "What did you choose?"

Lindarion stared at his hand, still faintly glowing where he touched the empty symbol.

"...The path that wasn’t written."

Nysha’s eyes widened with something between awe and dread.

"Lindarion," she whispered, "do you even understand what you just did?"

His expression remained calm—too calm.

The desert was quiet in the way only deserts could be—an oppressive, ancient silence born from emptiness rather than peace. It wrapped around them like a heavy cloak. Wind dragged long curls of sand across the dunes, whispering dry secrets across the pale horizon.

Lindarion stood first.

Not because he recovered the quickest, but because something inside him refused to stay down. His hand—still faintly glowing from touching the unwritten symbol—throbbed with a pulse not entirely his own.

Nysha pushed herself upright next, wincing as she dusted sand from her face. "Where... are we?"

Ashwing spat sand from his mouth. "Somewhere awful. Somewhere dry. Somewhere where my wings are going to get clogged with sand every two seconds."

Lindarion didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on the horizon.

Something was wrong.

The sky was dimmer than usual, the twilight sun caught behind a haze that shimmered—not with heat, but with unstable mana. The dunes were strangely patterned, carved into spirals and smooth ridges as though shaped by the hands of something that did not care for symmetry but adored purpose.

Nysha followed his stare. "Something here is alive."

"Everything here is alive," Ashwing muttered. "It’s just rude about it."

Lindarion’s brows lowered slightly. "No. Not alive. Not like that. A presence."

Nysha tensed. "Veyrath?"

Lindarion shook his head. "Something older."

Ashwing swore under his breath. "Why is everything older than everything else in this world? Why can’t we meet something younger than us, for once—like a nice baby elemental? Something that drools?"

Without warning, a pulse rolled across the sand. A wave of pressure—subtle, but deep—like the shifting breath of something sleeping beneath the dunes. Nysha grabbed Lindarion’s arm.

"What did the trial send us into?" she muttered.

Lindarion didn’t answer immediately. He listened. Not with ears—but with his core.

And something listened back.

A second pulse rose, then fell, like a heartbeat measuring him.

Ashwing’s wings fluffed. "I don’t like this. I don’t like this at ALL."

"We need to keep moving," Lindarion said quietly. "There’s shelter ahead."

"How do you know that?" Nysha asked.

But then she realized.

He wasn’t looking at anything.

He was feeling it.

The fragment inside him—whatever it had done—was mapping the terrain through mana density alone. Every ripple, every breath of the sand, every shift of the wind became information feeding into his senses.