The sky had long faded into a curtain of stars. The outer sect's temporary lodging hall buzzed with low voices, creaking floorboards, and the occasional clatter of wooden bowls.
Dozens of trial participants gathered around fire lamps, exchanging theories, flexing ego, and measuring one another with casual glances.
Though everyone had passed the Heavenly Pulse test, not all results were equal—and the difference was beginning to show.
"Six pulses and violet light… must be the young master of some hidden clan," someone muttered, eyes flicking across the hall toward a lone figure sitting by the window.
Dawn.
He didn't seem to hear them. Or care. His gaze remained fixed outside, where moonlight bathed the distant mountains like quiet waves of silver.
Beside him, Mei Lin sipped soup from a clay bowl. "You've stirred the hornet's nest without even saying a word," she said lightly.
Dawn didn't answer.
She smiled faintly. "You're not much for talking, are you?"
Still nothing.
She didn't press. Instead, she turned to glance at the opposite corner, where a group of confident-looking youths gathered under a green silk banner stitched with a coiling serpent.
"That's the Iron Serpent Hall from Twin River Town. Their leader, Wei Feng, got five pulses and red light. Thinks he's going to place first in the trial tomorrow."
Across the hall, Wei Feng leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, one brow arched. His eyes had been locked on Dawn for minutes.
"It's always the quiet ones you watch," he said to his companions. "Six pulses is fine. But strength isn't numbers on a stone."
His friends laughed in agreement.
"We'll see what he does when a spirit beast charges at him."
Someone added, "Or when he's ambushed for his beast core."
Wei Feng smirked. "Exactly. The trial allows alliances. And spirit beasts aren't the only thing worth fearing."
—
That night, whispers spread.
Some candidates made pacts—"We hunt together, we share the cores."
Others plotted betrayals.
But Dawn said nothing to anyone.
He sat in stillness, hand loosely resting on the edge of the window.
At some point past midnight, a faint mist began to drift in from the mountain path. The air chilled. And for the first time since arriving at the sect, Dawn closed his eyes.
He didn't dream of spirit beasts.
He didn't dream of trials.
He saw fire. Feathers. Scales. A cold mountain cave.
And the back of a woman walking away as a child cried silently behind her.
He didn't call out. Not in the dream.
He had learned, even then, that no one came when he did.
---
End of Chapter Six