The mist pressed in, heavy and damp, as though the air itself were thickening to stone. Shlok's lungs burned. Every breath felt like drawing smoke and grave dust into his chest. Beside him, Ananya shivered, pulling her thin jacket tighter.
"Why is it getting worse?" she asked, her voice a ragged whisper. "It feels like the temperature just dropped twenty degrees."
Veyra's lantern swayed, its pale flame shrinking as if suffocated by the encroaching dark. Her jaw was a hard line. "Because the Shroud has noticed him," she said, nodding at Shlok. "It's tasted his power, and now it wants to test its quality."
Shlok's blood ran cold. "Test me—?"
The ground trembled, a deep, resonant groan that vibrated up through the soles of their feet. The mist in front of them didn't part; it tore open like old paper, ripped by an unseen hand. Beyond the tear yawned a cavern of black, weeping stone, jagged and seemingly endless. The walls bled pure shadow, which poured down in silent, viscous rivers.
Veyra cursed under her breath. "Damn it. It's too soon." She seized Shlok by the collar, her grip like iron, yanking him toward the threshold. "Listen to me. The Shroud doesn't let new Awakened walk away untouched. It demands a price. A trial. Survive it, and you forge an Anchor to your power. Fail—"
A violent tremor shook the cavern, and a wall of force, invisible but absolute, slammed into Veyra and Ananya, throwing them back into the fog. The lantern flickered violently. Her voice was cut off.
The tear in the mist sealed shut.
"Veyra! Ananya!" Shlok shouted, his voice swallowed by the immense dark. He spun, but they were gone. The lantern light, his only point of reference, had vanished. He was utterly, terrifyingly alone.
And then the whispers began.
They didn't just enter his ears; they crawled into his mind like worms. Voices he recognized—his mother's disappointment after a failed exam, his ex-girlfriend's tearful accusation, his own nagging self-doubt—all of them twisted, whispering his deepest fears back to him. You'll die here, alone. You're nothing but a fraud. You always let everyone down.
Shlok staggered back, clutching his head as if to physically block them out. His heart hammered a frantic, desperate rhythm. Shadows poured from his skin, thick and chaotic, a physical manifestation of his spiraling fear.
The cavern shifted in response. Shapes formed in the dark—twisted silhouettes, human yet broken. Limbs too long, spines bent like bows. As they drew closer, their faces resolved, becoming perfect, flawless mirrors. His own face, smeared and distorted in their shifting forms, stared back at him. Dozens of them. All smiling with his smile.
The Trial of Dread had begun.
His chest tightened until he could barely breathe. The shadow blade clawed its way from his palm, jagged, unstable, and flickering like a bad fluorescent light. The creatures—his Echoes—advanced, each step echoing with his own frantic heartbeat.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
The first one lunged, its movements a grotesque parody of his own. He slashed wildly, panic guiding his hand. The blade tore it apart, and it exploded into smoke. But two more instantly took its place. Then three. He was fighting a hydra made of his own insecurity.
He fought, each swing frantic and sloppy. The blade pulsed with his terror, growing sharper when his panic peaked, then dulling and nearly dissipating when doubt set in. Every strike burned through his stamina. Every scream of exertion only made the whispers in his head louder.
He stumbled over a loose stone. One of the things tackled him, its mirrored face inches from his, its grin a nightmarish copy of his own. Its teeth, made of sharpened dread, sank into his shoulder. Pain flared, white-hot and blinding. He cried out, stabbing blindly, the shard blade punching through its skull. Smoke billowed, choking him, smelling of ozone and his own sweat.
He scrambled back, falling to his knees, shaking, bleeding, and surrounded. The Echoes circled him, their steps slow and deliberate now. They had him beaten.
You see? You can't win, the voices hissed in perfect unison. You are fear. Nothing more.
His shadow weapon flickered, long cracks running through the black glass. It was about to shatter. Shlok clenched his teeth, blood and sweat stinging his eyes. His body screamed at him to give up, to let the darkness take him.
But then he remembered Veyra's words, spoken with the cold certainty of truth.
Fear is power. You shape it—or it eats you alive.
His hand tightened around the hilt of his weapon, the Fragment within pulsing weakly. He couldn't stop being afraid. The terror was absolute. But he could choose what to do with it. He forced himself to his feet. He thought of Ananya's terrified face, of Veyra's grim determination. He thought of refusing to die here, a forgotten footnote in a nightmare.
Anger, cold and defiant, sparked in his chest. "No," he growled, the word tearing from his raw throat.
He didn't suppress his fear. He focused it. He poured all the panic, all the dread, all the terror of his impending death, into the blade. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, like trying to bend steel with his mind.
The shadows answered.
His blade didn't just grow; it reformed. The chaotic, jagged edges smoothed into a single, brutally sharp line. The frantic flickering ceased, replaced by a steady, lethal hum. It was no longer a weapon of panic. It was a weapon of purpose.
The Echoes shrieked, recoiling from the blade's transformation. For the first time, the faces staring back at him were not smiling. They were afraid. They feared him.
Shlok roared and struck. This was no wild swing. It was a deliberate, focused arc of black glass that carved through the nearest three Echoes. Smoke and ash rained down, the whispers dissolving into static. He moved through them, a whirlwind of controlled terror, his blade a manifestation of his will to survive.
One by one, his mirrored faces shattered.
And then… silence.
The cavern fractured like broken glass, the sound echoing into nothing. The mist, now pale and thin, swirled back in. Shlok collapsed onto the familiar cracked stone, his chest heaving. His hand, still clutching the hilt, trembled as the blade dissolved back into smoke, leaving only the original Fragment from the Whisper pulsing in his palm.
But it was different now. The desperate, hungry thrumming was gone. It felt solid. Grounded. Bound to him.
The Trial had ended.
"Shlok!" Ananya's voice cut through the haze. She was running toward him, her face etched with relief. The mist parted, and Veyra stood a few feet away, her lantern steady, her expression unreadable. She had been watching.
Ananya knelt beside him. "Gods, you're bleeding. We thought… I thought…"
Veyra walked over, her gaze not on his wound, but on the transformed shard in his hand.
"Good," she said, her voice devoid of praise, stating it as a simple fact. "You survived. You forged your Anchor."