At the highest stands, deliberation passed between whispering ravens and lowered mouths.
The failed assessment had become opportunity.
Reclassify the malfunction as instability. Proof of foul play. Justification to execute the boy now, before complications arose.
Nothing concrete settled.
Not while Garrek Ashford remained seated beneath the Patriarch's authority. Not while every House in attendance had witnessed the failure with their own eyes. Too many witnesses. Too many interpretations. Even now, restraint held only because the Black Attendants still stood armed along the perimeter, blades naked beneath the moons.
How irritating.
Below, the specialists of House Kallistyr descended into controlled panic.
Sweat gathered beneath ceremonial robes. Fingers flew across monitors and crystalline consoles. Measurements and calculations were hurled between surface teams and engineers buried beneath the Arena.
The system still refused to classify him.
Again. Again. Again.
The High Specialist watched the readings in silence. Pale. Motionless. Then swallowed once and inclined his head toward Alison in quiet surrender.
There would be no assessment.Not tonight.
Alison suppressed a sigh. His gaze rose toward Elder Meris. She sat rigid beneath a thousand watching eyes. Irritation simmered beneath her composure—not at the failure itself, but at the humiliation of failing publicly.
At length, she gave a small nod. Warm. Controlled. Official.
The Council had elected to proceed regardless.
Alison straightened. The High Specialist visibly relaxed. Above, the whispers began to recede.
The Herald reclaimed the Arena.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg your pardon for tonight's continued delays… and this rather substandard presentation."
His smile widened.
"Time is a cruel mistress."
A gesture toward the ancient walls.
"Even greatness erodes beneath her touch."
Nothing answered him. No laughter. No relief. Only silence.
How unpleasant.
He burned the irritation away.
"No matter."
His sceptre struck the floor. The sound boomed outward like a war drum.
"By Decree of the Thirteen."
A second strike.
"Under the Blessing of Three."
A third.
"Beneath the gaze of the sacred moons… and all children of the Evernight—"
His hands moved. Complex signs unfolded between elegant fingers, each gesture igniting another layer of dormant machinery beneath the Arena floor.
A deep hum resonated through the stone. Crimson erupted beneath Chion. Blue answered beneath Viren.
"Let the Accused and the Accuser be bound by Law."
The Arena trembled.
"Let the moons bear witness."
The light intensified violently.
"Let the righteous rise…"
The currents thickened between both ends of the Arena, pressure flooding the space hard enough for weaker bloodlines to lower their heads.
"…and the impostor fall."
Then—
"Let his blood spill…"
The colours collided. Blue and crimson crashed together across the carved seams of the Arena floor before merging into a violent streak of luminous violet that surged through every ancient glyph surrounding them.
"…and be devoured by the earth."
The final sign closed.
"An impostor among us."
Alison brought the sceptre down one last time.
The Arena answered.
____
Deep beneath the stone foundations, ancient mechanisms roared awake. Across the lower platforms surrounding the Arena Core, Kallistyr specialists exploded into motion. Heavy crystalline canisters slammed into half-restored engines. Primordial stones ignited one by one inside reinforced chambers, flooding the depths with pulsing sheets of silver-blue light.
"Current Dampener installed!"
"Secondary Distribution Halls active!"
"Primary Shields stabilising!"
"Secondary Shields confirmed!"
"Core monitors rising!"
"Temperature holding stable!"
"Life signatures locked and accounted for!"
Commands echoed from every direction. Controlled chaos. Organised desperation.
Above it all—at the highest platform overlooking the Heart of the core itself—stood a lone figure.
Old. White-haired. Golden robes drifting softly around his frame. Wrinkled hands folded behind his back. His crimson eyes never left the colossal mechanism beating beneath the Arena.
Unlike the others, he showed no urgency. Only concentration.
"Activate Spatial Distortion."
His voice carried effortlessly across the lower chambers. Instantly, the specialists moved faster.
"Location designation—"
His eyes narrowed upon the swelling energies below.
"The Withering Fields of Barbel."
________
Above, the true shape of the Arena began bleeding into reality.
Specialists abandoned the outermost perimeter, retreating to the three-meter mark—as close to safety as one could be.
The first ignition triggered. The first rotation began.
The outermost array flared crimson. A deep metallic groan rolled through the Arena. Metal screamed against stone. The outer rings shifted. Ancient mechanisms linked to the activated core roared with violent resistance, grinding hard enough to shake dust from the highest stands, causing the entire Arena to tremble.
Each turn faster than the last, sending waves of heat outward like a furnace. The strongest staggered, the heat overwhelming.
The first layer of Primordial pillars awakened. Massive crystal-blue pillars rotated on their axes, sending waves of light as they absorbed the thermal surge. Rising and sinking, turning it into kinetic energy that drove the pillars up and down, forcing the excess underground. Each pump transformed the crystals into slurry that billowed outward as cool mist.
The rings accelerated. Faster.
The second layer awakened.
Entire sections of the Arena floor shifted, sliding apart. Stone plates separated, rotated, descended. Thousands of hidden channels opened at once, feeding current through ancient pathways.
The grinding intensified. The edges of the outer ring blurred against the midnight gloom.
Then the ash arrived.
It rolled inward from the Arena's boundaries in enormous drifting waves, like a black tide crawling toward shore. Ghostly embers floated within it, spreading across the Arena like drifting sprites—pale against the growing inferno, cold against the unbearable heat.
Still the specialists moved. Still the rings turned. Still the pillars shifted with each rotation.
The Arena swayed.
Not physically. Reality itself felt fluid. An invisible pressure pushed outward and inward simultaneously, compressing space while stretching it apart. Fog thickened across the lower levels. Embers drifted through the stands. Ash swallowed the moonlight overhead until the sky disappeared beneath the distortion.
Then the pillars appeared.
Impossible structures. Colossal silhouettes painting themselves across the heavens. Shuttered. Hovering. Far too massive to exist within the boundaries of the world.
The stands seemed to lurch outward as the Arena expanded inward. Waves of current cut through the madness, pulling the tear inward, failing, pulling harder, adding to the chaos.
Several spectators collapsed. Others choked as the pressure deepened. Attendants rushed through the stands, dragging the unconscious aside before they disgraced themselves further.
Below, the specialists descended deeper into desperation. Commands overlapped into noise. Voices barely carried through the grinding of the mechanisms. Monitoring screens cracked beneath overheating currents. Engineers worked through waves of blistering heat, sweat soaking layered robes as the machinery screamed louder with every passing second.
Two engineers had already collapsed, dragged aside by their collars and replaced before they hit the ground. A third screamed as a misaligned stone discharged into his station, the current searing his palm before he could pull away. He kept working.
Above them all, the old man still stood unmoving before the central core.
Sweat rolled down weathered skin. Dust clung to his robes. The light erupting from the core had long since scorched his eyes red. Yet he never blinked.
An engineer stumbled toward him through the heat haze.
"E-Elder—"
The younger man nearly collapsed mid-sentence.
"The new-generation Primordial stones… integration with the old machinery… our calibrations were off…"
Another violent tremor rippled through the Arena.
"They aren't synchronizing… the current output is overwhelming the regulators… temperatures are still rising… the breach is destabilizing—"
The old man tilted his head. First toward the trembling engineer. Then downward—toward the dozens already collapsing below.
"Fix it," he said softly.
No anger. No panic. Only command.
"Kallistyr cannot endure further disgrace tonight."
The engineer stared at him in disbelief. The old man's expression never changed.
"If you cannot stabilize it," he continued quietly, "then die trying."
Below, a coolant chamber detonated into steam. An engineer screamed. The sound vanished beneath the grinding of the Arena.
The younger engineer swallowed. Nodded once. Descended back into the furnace.
On the Arena floor, the world was ending.
Heat, embers, and drifting ash spiralled between the two figures at its center.
Viren Nyxvalis. Chion Nyxvalis.
Twin points of stillness within a collapsing reality. Neither moved.
The ground beneath them shifted continuously, massive stone plates grinding themselves into black ash that gathered around their feet in slow-moving dunes.
The crowd drifted farther away. Or perhaps the Arena itself was expanding. The walls receded endlessly into darkness. The sky stretched upward into impossible distance. Even the colossal monument of Barbel looming above seemed to grow farther away with each passing second.
A new reality was forming around them.
Just before the transition completed—
Alison smiled.
Then dissolved.
His body burst apart into a storm of shrieking ravens that exploded upward into the darkening sky before vanishing beyond the forming horizon.
Then reality locked into place.
Outside the Arena, the temperatures finally began to fall. The grinding ceased. The rings stopped turning. Silence swept across the stands in broken waves as the crowd slowly lifted their gazes upward.
Toward the dome suspended above the Arena.
A colossal projection rendered in shades of black and white—fine geometric lines of current making the reality whole. Large enough to dominate the entire Arena floor, yet too small to convey the impossible distance separating the two silhouettes that floated within.
Two smaller spheres rotated around the main dome. Observation constructs. Nyxvalis scripture flowed endlessly across their surfaces, translating every fluctuation within the Trial in real time.
Current levels. Spatial distortion. Vital degradation. Combat analysis.
And when one combatant finally died—
the sphere bearing their light would shatter.