The academy grounds breathed with tension.
News of the approaching Battle Trial had spread like wildfire. Every courtyard hummed with whispered predictions, every hall buzzed with the restless energy of students testing their spells and sharpening blades. The Trial was more than a test—it was a chance to be seen, to rise, to matter.
But for Arin Valemore, the Trial wasn't about prestige.
It was survival.
He walked the old southern path toward the outer sparring fields, his boots crunching against frost-laced gravel. Here, away from the usual training rings, the academy kept ancient wards—old stone circles buried in wild grass and moss, long since abandoned.
He found Elias and Talia already there.
Elias waved, breath clouding in the cold. "Thought you might ghost us."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Talia added without looking up, checking her bowstring.
Arin offered no excuse, only stepped into the circle.
This field was different. The runes carved into the stone pulsed faintly, responding not just to magic, but to intention. Their energy was older, rawer. And unlike the others, this circle didn't restrain spell output. It amplified it.
Talia glanced around. "This place isn't exactly sanctioned."
Elias grinned. "Which makes it perfect."
Talia struck first. A quick draw—one arrow, then three—her bowstring sang, releasing spells wrapped in steel. The arrows curved midair, seeking Arin's silhouette.
Arin stepped aside once, then twisted his hand in a sharp arc. A pale blue sigil flared in the air. The arrows slammed into an invisible barrier, the impact dispersing in violet sparks.
He countered with a flick of his wrist, sending out a shimmering tether that snaked toward Talia like a vine. She rolled under it, loosing another arrow as she moved, this one crackling with lightning.
Elias joined the fray.
With both hands raised, he conjured jagged earth from the ground, hurling it like shrapnel. Arin ducked and skated across the mossy stone, his boots gliding unnaturally fast from a frictionless rune cast beneath him.
He leapt toward Elias.
Midair, Arin released a shockwave—silent but forceful—that scattered the earth projectiles in every direction. Elias barely conjured a heat ward in time, absorbing the blast with a hiss.
Talia circled wide. Arin turned just as she fired a scattershot of glowing red needles. He cast a mirrored glyph, and the air in front of him shimmered. The needles bounced and ricocheted off the field's boundary.
He landed.
This time, he didn't retreat.
He advanced.
Elias lunged with a conjured blade of crackling obsidian. Arin raised his forearm and deflected it—not with strength, but with precise manipulation of kinetic flow. The blade slid harmlessly aside, and Arin slammed his palm into Elias's chest. Not to injure—but to mark.
A rune flared on Elias's tunic.
He froze.
His entire body locked in place for two seconds.
Two seconds was an eternity.
Arin turned and launched a cascade of hex bolts at Talia, each humming with unstable arcana. She dove behind a conjured wall of thorned vines, rolling to avoid a final bolt that detonated a section of the mossy field.
Smoke curled.
Elias broke free with a roar, sending a surge of flame through the runes beneath them. Arin spun, avoiding the burst. Talia emerged, slashing through the air with twin daggers now coated in glowing sigils.
The dance quickened.
Strike. Counter. Feint. Trap.
Arin wasn't faster than them. Wasn't stronger. But his magic adapted. Each time he was hit, his body adjusted, absorbing the patterns, the tempo, the intention.
It was like fighting mist. He moved with a precision that wasn't just trained—it was calculated.
He cast no more than necessary.
Every sigil, every glyph, every flick of his wrist was measured.
After what felt like an hour, the three collapsed at the edge of the circle, breathless and drenched in sweat.
"You're not like the others," Elias said, tossing Arin a flask of water. "You don't cast. You construct."
"My magic... doesn't work the same," Arin replied. "Not anymore."
Talia's brow furrowed. "You were trained before you came here. That's obvious. But the way you move—those command sigils—someone taught you that. Who?"
Arin's gaze lowered. "A mistake."
Neither pushed further.
Instead, Elias leaned back against the stone and looked toward the dark clouds gathering above the northern peaks.
"They say the Trial this year won't just be duels," he said. "Some of the higher faculty are bringing in projection gates. Simulated terrains. Wild magic zones. The whole works."
Talia nodded. "It's going to be chaos."
Arin stared at the ground. In the cracks between the stones, a faint violet shimmer still pulsed—a remnant of whatever ancient purpose this place once served.
A whisper drifted through his thoughts.
Not from the wind.
Not from memory.
From within.
"One more falls. The seventh will rise."
Arin stiffened. The voice was not one he recognized—but it echoed with that same pressure behind his thoughts, like a heartbeat not his own.
"Arin?" Talia asked.
He shook his head. "Nothing. Just wind."
But it wasn't.
Later that evening, the trio met again—not in the training grounds, but inside the underground records chamber. Talia had secured them access through a senior mentor, and the small space was filled with crumbling manuscripts and half-erased inscriptions.
"What are we looking for?" Elias asked, brushing dust from a scroll.
"Patterns," Talia replied. "Mentions of these old circles. Their origin. Their effects."
Arin remained silent, fingers trailing along a map of the academy's understructure. Beneath the southern fields was a sealed chamber, untouched for centuries. Marked only by a single glyph: a broken eye.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them pulsed.
Just once.
A ripple of pressure, subtle but unnatural.
Elias dropped the scroll. Talia instinctively reached for her sidearm.
But Arin didn't flinch.
He felt it.
A resonance.
Something below was stirring—and it knew him.
They didn't speak of the pulse.
Not at first.
In the silence of the underground chamber, the three stood still—Elias pale, Talia tense, Arin... listening. Something stirred in the silence, not a sound, but a presence. Like breath through stone.
Then Arin turned from the map, his voice quiet.
"There's something down there."
Talia's brow furrowed. "You mean a relic? Some kind of magical residue?"
"No," Arin said. "Something alive."
The words hung heavy.
Elias scoffed, but it was forced. "Alive and sealed for centuries? That's a nightmare script, not a theory."
Arin didn't answer.
They left not long after, locking the chamber behind them. Talia said she'd try to get another look at the records later. Elias muttered about cross-referencing leyline disruptions near the southern wards.
But Arin?
He walked the corridors alone.
The dormitory was cold, the academy lanterns dimming to their nighttime glow. Arin lay awake in his cot, eyes open to the dark.
The pulse still echoed in him—faint, but rhythmic. Like a heartbeat, steady and deep, somewhere far below.
He closed his eyes.
One more falls. The seventh will rise.
The voice again.
Not a memory. Not a dream.
A warning.
Or a promise.
And somewhere, deep below the academy, something shifted.
A crack in the stone.
A flicker in the void.
A pulse, waiting.