Kaien sat in silence.
He had not moved in what felt like a long time. The stone beneath him was cold, but it no longer felt lifeless. The longer he remained still, the more he noticed the details tiny vibrations in the walls, faint shifts in the glyphs, as if the chamber itself had begun to breathe.
Not loudly. Not visibly. But it was there.
He could feel it now. The Selection was not just a series of tests. It was a structure. A machine. And something inside that machine was beginning to hesitate.
He looked down at his hands. They were steady. Dust lined the creases of his knuckles. A small scar traced the edge of his right palm. He remembered how he got it. A broken shard of glass from a job no one remembered.
That scar had always been his.
But now, looking at it, he could not shake the sense that the world was beginning to look at him differently.
Not the other candidates. Not even the envoys.
The world itself.
The weight behind his ribs stirred again. No stronger than before. Just more present. It no longer felt dormant. It felt… aware.
He stood slowly.
No name had been called, but the glyphs beneath his feet lit in a soft wave, moving toward the narrow corridor that led out of the room. The other candidates did not react. They stayed where they were, focused on their breath or their thoughts or their prayers.
Kaien walked.
The corridor ahead curved in gentle angles. The glyphs on the walls changed shape as he passed. No longer the neat lines of divine houses. These were older. More jagged. Half-familiar, like symbols glimpsed in a dream too many times to forget but never fully understood.
The light grew colder.
He reached a door. Not a curtain. Not a barrier of cloth or sigils.
A true door.
Stone. Thick. Carved with a single vertical line across the center, surrounded by a ring of smaller symbols that glowed faintly like breath caught in frost.
Kaien reached out.
His hand touched the stone.
It opened inward.
The chamber beyond was dark.
Not unlit. Dark in a way that absorbed light rather than lacked it. The glyphs along the walls sparked faintly as he entered. They did not form a language he knew. They did not respond to his presence. They simply marked the space as if they had always been there, waiting.
At the center of the room was a circle of stone.
No platform. No altar. Just space.
He stepped inside.
The door closed behind him without a sound.
The silence was absolute.
Then came a voice.
Not from above. Not from around. From within the space itself.
"Submit your blood."
Kaien's eyes narrowed.
A small cut appeared across the palm of his hand. Clean. Precise. He had not moved. The wound had not hurt. But the blood welled up anyway, and fell in a single drop onto the stone.
The circle lit.
Not with color.
With movement.
Symbols flowed outward in rippling rings. Glyphs spun, turned, folded into each other. The stone pulsed once. Twice. Then stopped.
Kaien stood still.
The blood on the floor remained red for only a second.
Then it turned black.
The light in the room went out.
And something behind the walls began to whisper.