The sky was wrong.
Gray clouds churned low over the Dragoon training grounds like coiling serpents, their bellies swollen with pressure but offering no rain—only weight. There was no birdsong. No wind. Even the mountain breath had vanished, like the land itself was waiting.
The recruits knew.
Something different was coming.
A deep, guttural grumble shook the stone beneath their boots. Dust sifted from between ancient cracks as the far wall of the training grounds began to tremble. Then—BOOM.
A wall split open.
And from the darkness beyond, it emerged.
The Hell Obstacle Course.
The recruits stared.
They were no longer facing wooden dummies or floating glyph targets.
They were staring at a jagged gauntlet carved into the earth like the maw of some buried titan. Black stone pillars jutted in tangled clusters. Runes pulsed like veins through obsidian walls, bleeding arcs of red, gold, and silver. Geysers of flame hissed from vents. Floating platforms twisted above a pit of shifting gravity, each one flickering like a bad memory. And in the very center…
Rows of humanoid dummies stood. Bound in dark iron. Ringed with reactive glyphs. Their eyes glowed faint crimson.
Not targets.
Tests.
Each forged by Alter himself—using fragments of corrupted war relics and preserved echoes of demonic resonance. They were not just resistant to damage.
They were forged to endure the twenty internal foundation techniques of the Demon God Killing Martial Arts.
And they would reflect your own failure back into your body.
Alter stood atop a platform overlooking the course.
The wind finally returned.
Only now, it didn't comfort.
It watched.
His voice descended like the tolling of an iron bell.
"Today," he said, "you enter the crucible of the soul."
He wore his Sovereignborn Draconic Plate again—helmet off, eyes brighter than lightning beneath heavy clouds.
"You will not train a stance. You will not swing a sword. You will confront your own blood. Your own breath. You will forge your internal force."
He raised a clawed hand.
And in the sky above him—twenty glyphs ignited.
Each blazed in a ring of luminous fire, spinning slowly, each bearing the sigil of an internal technique.
The 20 Foundational Internal Force Skills(Demon God Killing Martial Arts – Level Zero Conditioning)
Pulse Focus – Turn heartbeat into rhythm-based power spikes.
Vein Surge – Push energy into limbs for split-second explosive strikes.
Core Spiral Compression – Rotate chi into the body's center for strike launch.
Lung Gate Reversal – Reverse breath flow to disrupt mana interference.
Iron Thread Weave – Strengthen muscle fibers with static chi layers.
Chi Knot Severing – Break internal blocks preventing smooth circulation.
Marrow Ignition – Heat internal bone lines to amplify energy.
Breath Suspension – Eliminate external breathing to enhance inner balance.
Tendon Line Drive – Convert tendon pull into directional acceleration.
Gravity Coil Enhancement – Temporarily increase ground-force traction.
Temporal Nerve Override – Time-alter sensory and motor precision.
Soul Anchor Manifestation – Stabilize identity in chaos or illusion.
Flashpoint Strike Control – Condense energy into a single burst angle.
Heart-Flow Inversion – Trigger reverse-channel chi paths mid-motion.
Aetheric Fluctuation Buffer – Prevent energy recoil from overloading.
Muscle Lattice Sync – Perfect limb synchronicity for multi-angle attacks.
Wyrm Vein Expansion – Open latent meridian extensions under pressure.
Chi Snap Rhythm – Time inner pulses to lock enemy motion.
Feedback Channeling Loop – Absorb failed attacks as kinetic recoil.
Final Gate Lockdown – Sever external spiritual influence through will.
Each recruit now had a matching glyph projected before them—aligned not by affinity, but by Alter's own read of their bodies.
He paced slowly.
"You will train only one of these today. It will bind to your aura. You will internalize its structure through contact."
He gestured toward the waiting dummies.
"These targets will respond. If your internal flow is flawed, they will reflect the backlash. You will be burned. Bruised. Broken. That is not failure."
He turned, voice hardening.
"Quitting is failure."
Then the field shifted.
The ground trembled.
And the order dropped:
"Begin."
🔥 Trial One – First Contact with Internal Skill Usage
Drevon, a fire-aligned brute from the southern coast, gritted his teeth. His glyph: Marrow Ignition.
He focused.
Slow breath. Chi drawn deep into his bone marrow.
Veins began to glow with a faint orange.
He stepped forward—and slammed an elbow into the dummy.
CRACK.
A ring of fire exploded outward—then reversed, slamming back into his arm.
He screamed, falling to one knee.
Alter's voice called out calmly, "Backlash looped. Try again."
Drevon grunted and rose.
Behind him, Kaelira—a quicksilver swordswoman—focused on Pulse Focus. Her heartbeat began to pulse in rhythmic tempo, each one syncing with her sword strikes.
The dummy blocked the first.
The second.
The third connected—light flared on her blade.
She smiled.
Too soon.
She missed the next pulse.
WHAM. A shockwave exploded outward from the dummy, sending her sprawling.
Elsewhere, Raeven—dual wielder, earth-aspect—was training Tendon Line Drive.
Every motion she took now rippled through her legs like vibrating steel cables. She planted her foot, pivoted—
Then kicked with all her weight.
The dummy slid backward—its internal glyph sparking.
Raeven gasped.
Her leg trembled.
But the dummy did not strike back.
She'd landed it.
One strike. One connection.
Alter, far above, nodded once.
🧱 Phase Two – Hell Gauntlet Run (Internal Only)
A horn sounded.
The internal practice phase was over.
Now—the obstacle course awaited.
And the rule was simple:
You may only use your assigned internal technique. Nothing else.
No weapons. No runes. No external casting.
Just chi.
Just will.
Recruits entered the Hell Gauntlet.
Massive pendulums swung from lava-crusted arms—requiring Core Spiral Compression to pivot through in time.Fire geysers hissed up from timed pressure vents—requiring Breath Suspension to remain composed.Platforms flickered in and out—requiring Tendon Line Drive or Vein Surge to leap through shifting gravity zones.Some overstepped. Some mistimed. Some screamed.
A recruit using Temporal Nerve Override slipped into a slow zone. He staggered—his body moving in molasses—while the world sped up.
"Override too shallow," Alter called. "Collapse imminent."
The recruit managed to reset chi flow.
Barely.
Others weren't as lucky.
One poor boy with Soul Anchor Manifestation failed to stabilize in an illusion field. He vanished—then reappeared moments later, face-down in a pool of false water, coughing and muttering prayers.
But some…
Some began to sync.
Their breath locked into motion. Their hearts stopped racing. Their fear became focus.
And the course began to yield.
From his overlook, Alter remained still.
His gaze followed every misstep.
Every success.
But praise?
Sparse.
"You struck too early.""You're overriding the core spiral.""Good use of tendon delay. Remember the recoil window.""Your fear is louder than your rhythm. Fix that.""Perfect strike angle. Remember it."
He didn't punish failure.
He punished ignorance.
And by the second gauntlet wave, that ignorance was vanishing.
🌒 Late Afternoon – Recovery and Reflection
By the time the sun had begun to descend behind the cliffs, the Dragoon recruits lay sprawled across the field—chests heaving, nerves trembling, muscles raw.
Some bled.
Most couldn't stand.
But not one complained.
Alter descended from the platform, boots quiet against the stone. His armor didn't clank. It announced.
He paced between them.
Then—
He stopped.
Drove Starsever into the ground with a soft thunk.
And sat.
Cross-legged.
Silent.
He didn't speak for a long time.
The wind returned.
Cool now. Softer.
"Pain teaches," he said finally. "It carves channels into your body where understanding can flow."
His eyes swept over them.
"But pain alone is useless. It must be reflected."
He reached out.
Golden energy flowed from his palm into the earth, expanding in a wide ring. Not to heal. Not to purge.
But to center.
"Breathe," he said. "Close your eyes. Listen to your own blood."
And slowly… three hundred warriors fell still.
Eyes shut.
Swords down.
The chi moved.
And the first true foundations of the Demon God Killing Martial Arts began to take root.
Not as theory.
But as truth.
The skies above the highlands were scorched in hue, cast not by sunset but by the lingering breath of something older. Ash drifted on the wind in long, lazy spirals—fine as snowfall, hot as breath. The clouds did not move. They circled like vultures.
Ignivar soared beneath them, wings spread wide, casting a shadow that stretched for leagues. Beneath his molten bulk, the land fractured in lines of black glass and fire-veined stone. Burnt plateaus and volcanic ridges carved through the landscape like the ribs of some long-dead giant. It was a place abandoned even by wind.
Alter stood upright on the dragon's back, arms folded behind him, body unmoving despite the turbulence. His draconic armor shimmered faintly in the sulfurous light. He narrowed his eyes as a familiar pressure pulsed through the air—distant, buried, but unmistakably alive.
"There," he murmured, his voice nearly stolen by the air. "It's calling."
Ignivar's flight shifted. He dipped his wing and descended in a spiraling glide. The heat increased. The horizon curled. Below them, at the heart of a sunken basin surrounded by shattered cliffs, stood the remains of a shrine.
But this one was not quiet.
This one seethed.
From the warped foundation rose a half-melted stone dragon, its wings torn away by some ancient calamity. One eye socket remained, staring skyward through a crack in the clouds. Its body was scarred—not from age, but from war. Entire segments had been sheared off, then melted, then fused back by flame and fury. The shrine beneath it pulsed—not with light, but with embers.
Ignivar landed atop a blackened ridge, his claws sinking slightly into the molten glass. Heat rippled outward. Alter dismounted in a single leap, landing in a crouch. When his foot touched the stone, the ground vibrated—as if exhaling.
A deep thrum echoed beneath the earth.
The shrine was not dead.
It was sleeping through pain.
Alter walked forward, eyes fixed on the shattered doors. The entrance had once been a grand archway, but now it sagged inward, half-melted into warped slag. Flame leaked from the seams like breath from a furnace.
Then he raised his hand.
A surge of draconic sovereign aura pulsed from his core.
The entrance didn't resist.
It parted like mist.
Inside, the chamber was alive with flickering light. Embers drifted through the air like fireflies. The walls were scorched obsidian, and etched along every surface were faint, pulsing glyphs—ancient draconic text. Fragmented memories burned into stone.
Floating flames gathered near the ceiling, briefly shaping visions in the smoke. War. Destruction. Wings in shadow. A dragon's scream across a blood-red sky.
At the center stood a cracked altar—charred and blackened, with a deep, blade-shaped depression carved through it.
Alter approached.
The moment his foot crossed the inner sanctum's ring, the fire condensed. Swirling embers coiled into a shape. At first formless, then serpentine. A draconic visage made of fire and mourning rose from the altar, its eyes hollow, its mane a crown of flame.
A voice followed. It was not shouted. It was remembered.
"Who dares tread upon the scars of flame and memory?"
Alter stood tall. His voice did not challenge, but it did not yield.
"I am the one who carries their legacy. The one who commands storm, shadow, light, and flame. I am the Draconian Prime."
The flame twitched, reared, coiled further into itself like it might lash forward—but didn't.
"You speak as if the fire still knows your name. But fire forgets what does not burn with purpose."
Alter drew Starsever.
He didn't raise it to attack.
He placed it at his side, turned the blade horizontally, and then—in one motion—stabbed the tip downward into the altar's blade-scarred groove.
A burst of red-gold light erupted from the impact point, followed by a pressure wave that knocked every ember into the air like stardust.
The flames didn't scatter.
They swirled faster.
The walls responded. Ancient glyphs flared awake, one after another. The embers took on motion, no longer drifting—they spiraled into fractal arcs, forming echoes of memory in motion.
The dragon-shaped flame pulsed, then spoke again.
"I see… I remember. You are the one foretold in the echoes. The Sovereign returned."
Alter stood motionless.
The flame entity hovered above the altar, then slowly descended—its mane flickering softer now, more solemn. The fire didn't burn around Alter. It curled toward him, like warmth drawn to something long lost.
"By fire forged. By scars endured. We offer this shrine to the Flameborn Prime."
The ground rumbled.
Somewhere deep beneath the altar, a hidden seal cracked with the sound of distant thunder. The back wall of the shrine opened—stone sliding inward, forming a molten corridor descending into the earth.
Ignivar's voice, heavy and cautious, echoed into Alter's mind.
"This one is old. Older than the others. I sense grief in the flame. And fury buried too deep."
Alter nodded.
"Then I'll face it."
He turned once, looking up at the broken dragon statue above the altar. Its ruined wings stretched upward, as if it had died mid-prayer.
"Your fire never faded. It waited."
He stepped into the corridor.
The flames did not harm him.
They opened like a memory being recalled.
And the shrine did not resist.
It welcomed him home.
The passage beyond the altar was narrow at first—low and oppressive, carved not with care but with force. It felt less like a crafted stairwell and more like the ribs of the earth had been burned hollow by something that refused to die.
Alter descended slowly, each step echoing with quiet heat.
The further he walked, the more the shrine shifted. Smooth stone gave way to fused obsidian, the walls veined with glowing cracks that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The heat here wasn't suffocating—it was personal. Familiar. It curled around him like breath that remembered his name.
Runes lined the walls now—draconic glyphs, some warped, others intact. They began faint and jagged, hard to read. But as he moved deeper, they grew more elegant. Legible. Alive.
Whispers stirred in the back of his mind.
Names.
Azerion. Thalarkai. Vurnesh the Crimson Talon.
Then, one glyph stood alone, glowing faintly silver against a crimson wall.
Velkraeth. Last Wing of the Ashborn Flame.
Alter paused.
"The Ashborn…" he murmured. "A tribe lost to time."
Ignivar's voice answered silently through their bond, distant and weighty. "They weren't lost. They were buried. Their name was sealed when their wings turned to embers."
Alter continued downward. The air was thick now, not just with heat—but with memory. Not flickers. Not fragments.
Scars.
At the base of the descent, the corridor opened into a vast oval chamber—a basin of black glass and scorched architecture, shaped like a sanctum shattered and reforged. Obsidian pillars twisted upward from molten pools, forming skeletal supports that leaned into shadow. At the chamber's center was a pool of liquid flame, burning without smoke, glowing with color that bled between gold and blood-red.
Surrounding the pool were eight platforms—elevated like fangs driven into the heart of the earth. At the far end, opposite the entryway, stood a solitary figure.
It didn't move.
It didn't breathe.
But it watched.
A cloaked form shrouded in flickering flame and fragmented shadow, its limbs slow-burning, its features undefined. It wasn't alive. Not entirely. It wasn't a soul. Not fully.
It was a memory given rage.
A sentinel of grief.
Alter stepped forward. The heat didn't rise. It narrowed, folding inward, waiting to judge his presence.
He stopped ten paces from the figure.
"You're the guardian of this shrine's core," Alter said quietly. "Not flesh. Not ghost. Just what remains."
The figure did not respond. Its cloak lifted slightly in the heat, revealing a weapon on its back—a glaive forged from fused dragonbone and scorched iron, still dripping faint trails of embers that hissed as they hit the ground.
Then the figure raised its head.
Eyes of searing white flame locked with his.
"You wear the sigil," it growled. The voice was ancient. Splintered. Each word cracked like fire chewing through old wood. "You walk in sovereign flame. But you have not burned as we have."
Alter didn't flinch.
"I've seen the war. I've bled in the Vein. I've stood against what fell from the sky."
The figure's body rippled. Flame flared around its limbs, coiling like serpents in battle posture.
"Words mean nothing where memory burns. If you wish to reclaim the fire of the Ashborn…"
It unsheathed the glaive.
"…then you must suffer."
The chamber ignited.
The memory attacked.
Flames erupted around the guardian's form as it surged forward. The glaive spun in a wide arc, trailing fire like a comet's tail. Alter stepped sideways, barely missing the strike, then twisted and countered with a low slash from Starsever.
Sparks collided. Wind and fire clashed.
The heat warped the air. The chamber's light bent around the two of them, painting every impact in slashes of red and gold. The guardian didn't pause. Its strikes were feral—raw and unending, as if the battle was not for victory, but for release.
Alter parried high, ducked beneath a sweep, then vaulted off one of the molten platforms. He reversed his momentum midair and struck downward with a condensed thrust.
"Sky Piercer – Zero Distance."
The blade struck center mass. A burst of golden fire exploded from the guardian's back. It staggered—but did not fall.
The flames surrounding the chamber reacted violently. Pillars screamed. The floor cracked. Glyphs flared like old wounds reopening.
Alter backstepped, breathing heavier now. His armor flickered with heat. Starsever pulsed in his grip.
"This place doesn't follow normal rules," he muttered. "It's rebuilding as we fight."
Ignivar's voice echoed faintly in response. "It's not a battlefield. It's a memory prison. A scar loop. You can't defeat it with force."
"Then how?"
"Make it remember."
The guardian came again—faster, heavier. Its glaive swung like a falling tower. Alter met it head-on—grabbing the weapon's shaft with both hands, stopping the blade inches from his face. Flame curled around his wrists. His boots cracked the obsidian beneath him.
"You're not just fire," Alter said, voice low. "You're a dragon's grief."
The guardian hesitated.
Only a fraction of a second.
But it was enough.
"You're not guarding this place because you were ordered to," Alter whispered. "You stayed because you never got to leave."
The fire wavered.
The figure's hands trembled. Its glaive lowered slightly. Sparks wept from the metal.
"We were betrayed," it hissed. "Forgotten. Our kin burned themselves into nothing to stop the Riftspawn. And the world moved on."
"I didn't."
The light in the chamber dimmed.
Alter released the blade. Let it fall.
"I saw the skies of the Forbidden Vein," he said softly. "I saw dragons scream into the void. I heard their last breath become embers in the wind."
The guardian stared at him.
Silent.
Then—
Its body shook. The flames changed. Not gone—but calmed. Softer. Like coals buried beneath snow.
"Tell me," it said. "Tell me it wasn't for nothing."
Alter stepped forward.
"It wasn't."
He raised his hand.
"And I will carry your fire forward."
The guardian fell to one knee.
Then—its body burst into light.
Not heat.
Not destruction.
But memory.
Pure, sovereign flame curled upward, forming a radiant ring above Alter's head. In its center glowed a sigil—eight-pronged, ancient, and crowned with ash. It hovered for a moment, then descended slowly—settling into his forehead, embedding into the tribal sigil already there.
His body shuddered once.
Not in pain.
In resonance.
The chamber changed.
The molten pool at the center cooled into mirrored crystal. The platforms receded. The obsidian floor shifted into a patterned mosaic—a final tribute to what had been lost.
Floating in the center of the room was a single memory crystal—glowing softly. Within it swirled visions.
A volcanic kingdom in the clouds.Ash-winged dragons in elegant flight.A queen with a burning halo.A war against serpents from the void—ending in fire.And a people who chose self-immolation to seal a rift that would have ended the sky.
Alter reached out.
His fingers touched the crystal.
And the memories poured in.
Not to break him.
To remind him.
When it ended, he stood still—eyes closed, breath steady.
"The Ashborn still burn," he said quietly.
Ignivar's voice answered, softer than usual.
"And now… they burn through you."
The shrine door behind him opened without sound.
Alter stepped forward. The crystal floated beside him, orbiting his shoulder like a silent companion.
When he emerged into the morning light, ash lifted on the wind.
Ignivar was waiting.
"It's done?" the dragon asked.
Alter nodded once.
"It is."
He looked back—once, just once—toward the shrine that no longer pulsed with rage… only with memory.
"Three flames rekindled," he murmured.
Then he climbed onto Ignivar's back.
As they ascended into the skies of Drakareth, the light behind them turned red-gold—marking not destruction, but remembrance.
And beneath the earth, the Ashborn no longer wept.
They remembered.
The wind was sharp today.
It howled across the open plains like a restless spirit, tugging at the golden grasses of the Windswept Steppes and sending ripples across the hills like waves upon an ocean of earth. Towering stone monoliths jutted from the land in scattered formations—weathered, ancient, and etched with dormant wind glyphs, barely visible until the light hit them just right.
Above, the sky churned with turbulence. It wasn't the chaos of storm, but of purpose—gale patterns woven like invisible threads pulled tight across the upper heavens. And slicing through that wind, wings ablaze with solar flare, soared Ignivar.
Each beat of the fire-dragon's wings shimmered with heat trails, casting flickers of red-orange light across the drifting mist. He cut through the current like a blade through silk, and atop his back stood Alter—unmoving, balanced not by grip but by command. His eyes were closed. His arms at his sides. Hair and cloak whipped behind him, but his center remained still, like the eye of a gale that refused to kneel to the sky.
The air was thin at this height. Mortal lungs would've faltered. But Alter didn't need breath anymore. Not here. Not with the power of four elemental shrines already coursing through his veins.
A faint pulse rippled across his senses.
Alter's eyes opened slowly—molten gold laced with flickers of silver lightning.
"It's close," he said, voice almost lost in the wind. "The sky speaks, but not in words."
Ignivar dipped in response, wings folding inward as he descended into a spiraling dive. The clouds parted below them, revealing a stretch of air where the land gave way entirely. No cliffs. No mountaintops. Only sky—and floating islands tethered together by coils of mist.
A low rumble cracked the air, deep and ancient.
Not thunder.
A barrier awakening.
Suspended between three colossal sky-pillars floated a vast aerial shrine—an ancient dais of woven air, light, and forgotten breath. The pillars were anchored not into the earth, but to stormclouds themselves, wrapped in coils of silver lightning like chains that bound the heavens.
Ignivar slowed as they approached, flame wings furling slightly. "The Skyborn Shrine," he rumbled. "Once home to the Zephyric Order. Wind-aspect dragons who vowed never to touch ground again. Their pact was with the sky alone."
Alter stepped off his back mid-air.
He didn't fall.
Wind caught him—not like resistance, but like an invitation. Like hands remembering their god.
He drifted downward, suspended by unseen currents, descending toward the shrine's heart. Below him, the floating platform shimmered like spun glass and cloudstuff—woven sky tiles that were translucent, yet solid beneath his boots.
The moment he landed, the wind stopped.
Not lessened.
Stopped.
Utter stillness.
Then—soundless and soft—a whisper curled around him.
"You carry the breath of storm-kings…"
Alter looked up.
Something coiled in the air above him.
Descending without motion, like a sigh from heaven, came a draconic figure of vapor and pressure. Serpentine in form, vast and translucent, it drifted down like a feather from the wing of a god. It had no eyes. No scales. Only form and resonance. Its presence vibrated through the air like a tuning fork pressed against the soul.
"You have awakened fire, ice, and earth," the being intoned. "But to claim the Skyborn memory, you must become wind itself—shapeless, untouchable, unbound."
Alter lowered himself into stance, one foot shifting slightly over the transparent sky beneath him.
"Then test me."
The dragon spirit exploded into vapor.
No warning.
WHOOSH!
A dozen blades of wind burst forth in an instant—sharp, silent, precise. They spiraled inward like homing falcons, seeking every angle of approach.
Alter vanished.
Not fled.
Moved.
Gale Rend Step.
He reappeared on the far edge of the dais, boots gliding as wind trailed behind him in crescents of gold. Another barrage came—this time not blades, but spiraling mini-cyclones, each one jagged and layered with slicing gales.
He drew Starsever mid-spin, twisting once, twice—then slashed in circular arcs. Each cyclone shattered into mist.
The dragon's voice curled around him.
"Fighting air with steel? Wind has no heart to pierce."
Alter smirked.
"No. But wind… can dance."
He stepped forward, not attacking, but weaving.
Into the storm he went—flowing between currents, turning every gust into motion. Each movement bore rhythm. Not resistance. Harmony. Slash, pivot, glide, breathe.
The shrine responded.
The floating rings began to rotate. Slowly at first. Then faster.
"Aerial Dominion," Alter whispered.
Wind surged beneath his feet.
It lifted him—not just carried, but elevated in reverence. His cloak billowed behind him like a banner, and his aura bent with the spiraling momentum. He rose through the air, not flying—but drifting in a sovereign spiral.
The spirit dragon circled him again. This time slower. Its tendrils of vapor brushed his form without harm. Watching.
"Yes… like them… like the Skyborn…"
Alter didn't draw Starsever again.
He closed his eyes and moved with it.
Together, they spiraled—man and spirit, sovereign and remnant—twisting upward in synchronized elevation. A column of wind formed around them, reaching into the clouds. Lightning forked within. Thunder cracked once, loud enough to shake the shrine's floating rings.
Then silence.
The spirit halted.
Its form flickered, fractured by the very wind it had once commanded.
"You remember how to fly."
Alter opened his arms. The air held him like memory.
"I remember everything they gave their wings for."
The spirit began to dissolve—its body scattering into motes of skyborne light. As it did, a ring of wind formed behind Alter's back, and from it, a glyph emerged.
A single sky-blue mark, shaped like an open wing wrapped in a spiral of cloud. It floated down like a falling feather and burned itself onto his left shoulder.
Opposite the flame glyph from the Ashborn memory.
A whisper rode the final gust:
"Let the sky remember its sovereign."
And then—the wind returned.
But now, it did not push against him.
It moved around him.
In awe.
In submission.
Ignivar hovered nearby, wings still, watching. His flame curled in reverent silence.
Alter stepped from the platform.
The wind caught him. Not a gust. A current. Intentional. Alive.
He drifted toward Ignivar like a god walking across the breath of heaven. As he landed on the dragon's back, flame curled once more—responding to the newest mark etched into his soul.
Ignivar spoke, voice rumbling low. "Four awakenings. How does it feel?"
Alter gazed toward the horizon, where the clouds now shimmered with prismatic hues.
"…Lighter," he said quietly.
Then his gaze narrowed.
"But I sense… weight ahead. South of Veyr'Zhalar. Something… old. Something waiting."
Ignivar unfurled his wings—solar flare rising between scales.
"Shall we?"
Alter nodded once. "Let's see what remembers me next."
With a beat of heat and sovereignty, they vanished into the clouds.
And behind them, the sky no longer whispered.
It sang.
The sky above the Southern Forges of Veyr'Zhalar was thick with soot and slow-churning ash. It moved like smoke writhing in pain, swirled by the breath of a land that remembered fire not as warmth—but as judgment. Sulfur coiled through the wind, staining the horizon in hues of blood-orange and ember-gold, while molten sunlight bled across the black obsidian flats below.
From the higher skies, Ignivar descended through a torn seam in the clouds, his wings parting the soot as flame trailed from his scales like comets unraveling mid-flight. Heat shimmer danced across the volcanic ridges stretching below—cracked stone fangs from some ancient leviathan's spine, blackened and buried by time and magma. The air here hissed with warnings. No birds. No beasts. Only breathless silence.
Atop the fire dragon's back, Alter stood—not seated, not swaying, but perfectly poised. His armor refracted the low sunlight like scorched mythril, a silhouette of stillness wreathed in the wind's chaos. The tribal dragon sigil on his brow glowed faintly with a warm amber pulse. His golden eyes were narrowed, gaze fixed on a vein of deep red glowing within the fractured stone below.
"There," he said, his voice low, like a hammer striking flint. "It's breathing."
Ignivar's maw curled with knowing. "That's no shrine's gate. That is the Flame Corridor. A death passage. It collapses inward on the unworthy."
Alter's expression didn't shift. "Then it remembers how to test."
He stepped forward without another word. Ignivar banked sharply, wings folding to draw heat inward as his Sovereign dropped through the smoke alone.
Alter landed without impact, touching down on a narrow obsidian shelf above the chasm's throat. The stone beneath his feet burned red at the edges, softening under his weight like a hearth awaiting a ritual. The gorge beneath him roared with firelight, tongues of flame licking upward in fitful gasps as if drawn toward his presence. Every breath tasted of ash and metal.
And then, the mountain rumbled.
"Enter," came a voice—deep, disembodied, and older than the stars.
Without pause, Alter stepped into the flame.
The corridor narrowed immediately. Razor vents hissed steam and fire in randomized bursts, forcing him to maneuver along crumbling ledges and through flickering slits in the stone. Each motion was deliberate. Each heartbeat tracked. The very walls seemed to listen, adjusting the traps to his breath, his footsteps, his aura. One wrong angle would end in incineration.
But Alter was sovereign-born.
He exhaled sharply. "Infernal Comet."
Fire erupted beneath his soles, launching him forward in a searing streak of light. His form blurred as he curved through collapsing platforms and cut across a midair corridor engulfed in flame. He tucked into a controlled roll just as he breached a threshold—slamming into a vast, circular chamber shrouded in darkness.
The doors behind him slammed shut with a final, shuddering boom.
And then the heat changed.
"The Trial of the Flamekind begins now," said the voice again, this time closer—coiled within the very walls.
Flames erupted from every direction. Molten glyphs spiraled along the floor, encircling Alter in a radiant halo of pressure. The very stones beneath his feet turned white-hot, glowing like the heart of a forge at full bellows.
Alter moved not at all.
Instead, he let Starsever fall. The divine sword struck the floor with a chime and remained there.
Then he removed his gauntlets.
Then his pauldrons.
His armor unlatched and folded away, plates clicking shut as they collapsed into the void of his spatial seal. Soon, he stood barefoot in only his sleeveless black tunic and ash-dusted trousers—barehanded, vulnerable, grounded.
"I do not need steel," he said, eyes fixed forward. "Let fire test my soul."
In response, the chamber roared.
Flame spirits ignited midair—winged serpents of pure ember-glass, their bodies spiraling in sinuous arcs like the smoke of forgotten offerings. They circled in screeching fury, then descended in packs of living inferno.
Alter breathed once. Then again. Slow. Intentional.
"Ignition Pulse."
A ring of pressure blasted from his chest—no explosion, no flame, only heat given form. The nearest spirits shattered into vapor on contact, shrieking into nothing. But they reformed. They always did.
Again they came.
And again, Alter met them with nothing but open palms and defiant stillness. Blisters formed on his arms. His skin cracked, peeled, reknit. The air within the chamber had become a crucible—pressing against his soul, drawing out weakness.
And still he remained.
"Do you still carry the legacy of the Flamekind?" asked the voice. It no longer sounded like an enemy. It sounded like an elder.
Alter exhaled, falling to one knee—not in surrender, but to place his hands gently against the scorched floor. The glyphs beneath him pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
"No," he said. "I carry something greater."
The flame spirits halted mid-flight.
"Flame," he whispered, "is not destruction."
His aura shifted—once burning, now radiant. Golden embers flared from his skin in threads.
"Flame is rebirth."
The entire floor beneath him ignited—but not into magma.
From the center of the chamber rose a phoenix of living fire, its wings coalescing from runes of molten gold and solar flare. It screamed—a sound of all dawns at once—and dove toward Alter like a comet crashing home.
The spirits didn't flee. They bowed.
And the phoenix entered him.
No scream. No explosion.
Just stillness.
Then, a pulse of light. Alter's body flickered—once, then again—until the heat no longer scarred him but flowed through him like a song. His wounds mended in golden rivulets. His skin shone like sunlight on obsidian. His tunic was repaired not by magic, but by threads of flame willingly restoring what was burned.
Above him, a sigil cracked into existence—formed of fire and solar script. A spiral, marked by twin wings of flared radiance. It settled over his heart.
And it joined the others.
The elemental marks across his body—earth, wind, ice—flared in response, harmonizing with the newest seal of the Flamekind.
"The Pyreborn remember you," said the voice. "You are flame reborn."
Alter rose slowly, flexing his fingers, now gloved in flickering firelight.
"I'll carry your legacy to the skies," he murmured.
The ground exploded beneath him, sending a final column of fire upward—a divine release. He rose with it, arms to his sides, body enveloped in a spiral of ascending heat that parted the stone above like paper.
Ignivar swooped in just as the Sovereign breached the open sky. The fire dragon caught him midair, hovering beneath the vast, glowing sun.
"You shine brighter now," Ignivar rumbled, eyes narrowed. "But your flame doesn't burn—it cleanses."
Alter opened his eyes—still golden, but now layered with a heat-light that shimmered like the edges of dawn.
"Then it's time the world remembered what fire truly is."
They soared higher, wings trailing fire through the crimson sky.
But far below, deep within the molten bedrock of the forge-chamber, a single ember drifted downward… and vanished into the darkness.
Far beneath even the shrine's core…
Something ancient opened its eyes.
A sudden pulse in the air. A shift in heat.
Then—a sonic boom of golden light erupted across the field as Alter descended from the sky, landing with his left fist embedded into the earth, cape flared behind him. He had returned.
Murmurs rippled across the ranks.
"The Commander's back..."
"He smells like ash and gods..."
"Did he literally walk through a volcano again?"
Alter stood slowly, brushing dust from his pauldrons. He didn't speak right away. Instead, he raised his right hand and summoned Starsever, the great twin-edged blade of draconic light and space-rending edge.
It hummed in resonance with him.
"Day Ten," he finally said, his voice calm, echoing unnaturally through the valley. "Today marks the beginning of your specialized training paths."
The recruits tensed in anticipation.
"But not the paths you're used to."
"Forget what you were. You're no longer swordsmen, mages, lancers, assassins, or archers."
"You are Dragoons—disciples of a combat doctrine that does not conform to class or title."
"You fight alone if you must. You command legions if needed. You wield light, flame, shadow, and steel together."
He paced slowly in front of them, Starsever held loosely at his side.
"From this day onward, you'll hone weapons that reflect your choices—not your class. You'll train with blades, spears, scythes, whips, claws, firearms, and spells alike. You will learn not what to use, but how to fuse them."
"You will fight like I do."
That declaration sent a ripple through the crowd. Several recruits inhaled sharply. They had seen what Alter could do. If they were meant to follow that path…
One brave voice rose from the back.
"Sir! Even your clones are stronger than some armies!"
Alter smiled slightly. "Yes," he said, "and you will become clones worthy of creating fear in armies."
The ground trembled beneath the roaring pulse of arcane machinery. Morning haze still clung to the valley's rim, but within the heart of the Dragoon training grounds, steam hissed from obsidian vents and blue-glowing conduits laced the terrain like living veins. Ten separate teams stood arrayed in disciplined formations, breath steady, eyes sharp. Today was not formation drill. Today was trial.
Ahead, rising from the fractured bedrock, stood the Tactical Fusion Chambers—ten massive domes of woven aethersteel and volcanic glass, their interiors alive with shimmering glyphs and rotating configurations. The outer plating shifted like clockwork, cycling chambers into new positions with a sound like rolling thunder.
One by one, the squads were called forward. Each stepped into a different dome, vanishing behind sealed entry gates that slammed shut with a hum of containment magic.
Inside, chaos waited—crafted with precision.
In the Dual-Wield Arena, the temperature dropped instantly. The floor was metallic and slick, pulsing with faint blue light. The moment the first strike was drawn, a glyph above the chamber ignited—[Weapon Cycle: 10 Seconds]—and the countdown began.
Twin swords became twin daggers. Daggers became glaive and shortblade. Spears became chain-hook and shield. Every ten seconds, the recruits were forced to adapt—switching grip, stance, and intent mid-motion. Training dummies charged with elemental resistance danced erratically, reacting to each weapon with changing speeds and affinities.
One Dragoon, breathing hard, snarled as his frost glaive was replaced with twin curved sabers mid-swing. He flipped both in reverse grip and slashed downward in a spinning arc—embedding runic frost glyphs into the floor that froze two targets in place. His partner leapt from behind, heels striking the frozen enemies with an earth-imbued stomp that shattered them like glass.
The Grapple and Strike Zone was built for brutal close quarters.
The walls moved.
No—shifted. Entire slabs of obsidian stone glided sideways or rotated vertically, turning the battlefield into a dynamic puzzle of collapsing geometry. Recruits inside were forced to fight while navigating sudden drops, razor-edged walls, and terrain that twisted underfoot.
Sweat flew from a trainee's brow as she caught an opponent mid-sprint, flipped him into a rising slab, and slammed him with her elbow into a fire-marked glyph she'd placed earlier. The impact detonated upward, launching him skyward.
Midair, another Dragoon intercepted the falling body with a gravity-infused punch to the chest that cratered the floor upon impact. Runic aftershocks rippled outward.
The Sniper's Ascension Gauntlet was silent—eerily so.
Floating platforms orbited slowly in a multi-tiered aerial dome. Wind howled between them, and magical currents drifted in unseen flows. The recruits were airborne within seconds—leaping from ledge to ledge, weapons sheathed in lightning, reacting to sudden blasts from aerial target drones that descended from above like metal birds of prey.
One trainee spun mid-leap, launching a runic bolt from his palm as he backflipped toward a lower platform. The bolt arced into a rune marker he'd placed earlier, creating a triangle of activated glyphs. From it, a burst of wind exploded outward—catapulting an enemy drone into a waiting spear of light hurled from above.
A synchronized takedown. No verbal coordination. Only instinct.
And deep in the Mystic Disruption Zone, the real challenge began.
This chamber was filled with flickering light and unstable magic. Every twenty seconds, a pulse of distortion rippled across the dome, disrupting all magic within. Spells fizzled. Auras collapsed. Weapons lost their enchantment. Recruits had to think mid-strike, adapt in the second—or be overwhelmed.
Unless…
Unless they could place a runic counter-glyph at the precise moment of the pulse.
"Marker—now!" shouted one recruit. His partner dove, slamming a glowing palm into the ground just as the pulse swept the field. The marker flared—defiant—and the area around them stayed charged.
Within that brief window, they struck.
One wielded a flame whip, coiling it around the legs of an armored construct. The other drove an ice-drenched short blade into its core, freezing the conduit system before it could detonate. They moved like wind and thunder—fluid, decisive, unforgiving.
Throughout every chamber, the Elemental Runic Marker System was in full operation.
Runes weren't decorations. They were lifelines.
Etched into every floor tile, every collapsing wall, every shifting surface was the potential to place a glyph—if a palm, foot, or weapon struck with intent and chi infusion. That meant the recruits could not stop moving. Every dodge, strike, parry, or throw had to carry a second layer of thought: Can I place a marker here? What element? What timing?
Blades burned with frost. Spears shimmered with chained lightning. A barehanded warrior knelt, fist slamming the ground to anchor a gravity seal mid-duel—pulling a leaping opponent down into an earthbound kick that cracked stone.
Fighting was no longer about strength.
It was about fusion.
Precision. Motion. Element. Instinct. All had to move as one.
And in every chamber, amid the sweat and screaming muscle, the Dragoons began to learn what it meant to be more than warriors.
They were not swords.
They were storms.
Dain Hollowcrest, the stoic brawler, was seen training with steel gauntlets laced in wind runes. He planted markers mid-dash, flipping backward while channeling a Tempest Anchor Kick that blew a six-foot dummy off its platform.
Iria Vexley, the illusionist-turned-Dragoon, wielded dual daggers enchanted with runes of shadow and time. Her attacks phased unpredictably, but she failed to plant two of her markers mid-motion and was launched into a padded wall. She got up with a laugh and muttered, "...worth it."
Kaelen Drask, a former knight from the Flame Guard, had strapped both a warhammer and a light crossbow to his frame. He grunted through the dual-focus test as he planted a Gravity Marker with his warhammer while firing bolt-arrows marked with lightning. His tactic? Pin enemies with gravity—then pierce with thunder. "This is madness," he whispered. "I love it."
High within the obsidian-towered heights of the Aetherflame Palace, beneath a vaulted dome of molten-glass inlaid with drifting starlight, two royals stood in silence.
Before them, the crystalline scrying platform pulsed with arcane resonance, casting mirrored visions of the Dragoon training grounds in ghostly projection. Light rippled through the air in layered illusions—blurred footage of wind-charged clashes, elemental detonations, and recruits hurling their bodies through flame-marked trials.
Prince Kaelen Vael'Zarion, garbed in his formal robes of navy steel-thread and scarlet mantle, stood with arms folded behind his back. His silver eyes, usually calm and calculating, narrowed slightly as the vision flickered—revealing a Dragoon recruit flipping midair to plant a gravity marker beneath a falling opponent. Then another, striking with a flame-imbued glaive in perfect sync with a wind-assisted thrust.
"They're adapting faster than anticipated," Kaelen murmured. "He's not training soldiers anymore."
He leaned in, voice low but firm.
"He's building monsters. And they're starting to like it."
The crystal screen shifted again—now revealing Iria being flung backward into a wall, laughing mid-fall. Then Dain grounding his tempest kick with stoic control. Then Kaelen Drask's thunder-gravity combo detonating the field.
The prince's brow furrowed. But he said nothing more.
Beside him, Princess Alyxthia stood like a flame yet to spark. Her ceremonial cloak fluttered lightly in the inner chamber wind, eyes half-lidded with golden light flickering beneath her lashes. She wasn't watching the images—not as they were shown.
She was sensing.
Through the scrying pool, through the land itself. Her gift—the dragon-sight—was attuned not to vision but to resonance. She saw threads of spirit awakening… shrine-bonded pulses fluttering like heartbeats beneath the surface of reality. The land was beginning to hum in harmony with the Dragoons' growth. The shrines—ancient, slumbering—were stirring.
The sovereign's will had become a catalyst.
"Brother," she whispered at last, voice like starlight on glass, "this is only the beginning."
Kaelen turned toward her then, truly turned—catching the shift in her tone, in her gaze. For a moment, neither royal spoke. Outside, the winds brushed along the palace terraces, carrying the faint cry of dragons flying in distant circles above the city.
And somewhere beneath their feet, the bones of ancient wyrms trembled faintly… as if hearing the echoes of war that had not yet begun.
Late afternoon descended like a curtain of gold across the valley, draping the Dragoon training grounds in long shadows. The volcanic ridges to the west caught the light and cast it in molten streaks, flickering like dragon breath across the fractured stone. Most chambers remained active—war cries echoing, elemental markers flaring, the rhythm of discipline surging like thunder through the field.
Until one gauntlet stopped.
Without warning, the enchantments within Zone Seven sputtered. Arcane glyphs blinked erratically. Floating platforms froze mid-spin. The elemental rotation wheel halted with a hiss. Time itself seemed to pause in the air.
And then came the pulse.
A wave of sovereign energy—deep, resonant, undeniable—rippled outward from the center of the platform like a silent bell tolling across reality. Even the sky seemed to dim for a moment, light bending inward toward a single figure who now stood barefoot atop the main construct.
Alter.
Clad in loose black tunic pants, his armor dismissed, only the tribal insignia on his brow glowing faintly with internal firelight. His presence didn't explode outward—it silenced the air. Gravity leaned toward him. Eyes across every chamber turned instinctively.
The recruits barely registered how he got there.
"You've had your fun," he said, voice calm but layered with a quiet challenge. "Now… watch."
He raised his right hand.
In a shimmering cyclone of shifting metal and ethereal resonance, weapons materialized around him—eight of them—suspended in the air like planets orbiting a sun.
A sword. A spear. A scythe. A whip. Claws. A gunblade. A greatshield. Twin daggers.
Each glowed with its own pulse of elemental coding. Runes drifted from their surfaces like embers waiting to catch.
Without fanfare, Alter stepped forward.
What followed lasted less than six seconds—but to every recruit watching, it stretched into eternity.
The sword came first—one slash, clean and low, carving through a phantom construct's chest.
Before the recoil even ended, the hilt twisted and extended—morphing into a scythe. He spun, low and wide, sweeping three runic markers across the floor—fire, wind, gravity—as he danced through the motion.
Then the blade unraveled, turning to a long whip, which he coiled mid-air and used to yank himself backward toward a raised platform.
As he flipped, the whip contracted into a gunblade, which barked once—clean, centered. The mock enemy above cracked at the core from the midair shot.
His feet hadn't yet landed when the gunblade dissolved, forming a gleaming spear in his right hand. He landed in a crouch and drove it straight down into the platform with a roar—planting the shadow marker at the fourth node.
Then—fluidly, impossibly—he twisted his body in a reverse spin, the spear retracting into twin daggers. He launched into a blinding flurry, blades crossing in mirrored arcs as he carved invisible lines of pressure into the wind.
Finally, he kicked off a runestone and slammed down with both feet, summoning a greatshield to his left arm mid-fall. The crash landed with a sound like thunder meeting steel. Dust exploded outward.
He stood at the center of the platform, weapons evaporating into light. The four elemental markers—fire, wind, gravity, and shadow—hummed quietly at each corner.
Then—he snapped his fingers.
All four markers ignited in sync.
A pillar of multi-elemental destruction erupted from the center, converging on the final construct: a ten-foot armored target modeled after a demon general. It didn't merely collapse—it disintegrated, swallowed by force, flame, and compressed gravity.
The blast left a crater in the stone. A ring of smoke billowed upward. Silence followed.
Alter exhaled, turning his gaze toward the stunned recruits still frozen across their respective chambers.
He offered only one phrase.
"Now… your turn."
Then he stepped off the platform, barefoot, vanishing into the smoke.
The silence held for five full seconds.
Then the chambers began to reset.
And every Dragoon standing knew—whatever standard they thought they had reached…It was time to climb higher.
The morning haze clung low to the gorge, veiling the ravine like a curtain drawn across an execution stage. Mist threaded between jagged stones, whispering over moss-lined cliffs and shallow rune-etched basins—soft, deceptive, almost tender.
But the veil was a lie.
It didn't protect the Dragoon recruits.
It simply softened the blow of what was coming.
A pulse of wind stirred, unnaturally sharp. Then—Thunder.
Not from the sky.
From the ground.
A shockwave cracked across the valley floor—not from spellwork, not from elemental bombardment, but from motion. Feet striking stone. Bodies vanishing and reappearing in streaks. The air didn't part so much as it yielded, unsure how to cling to warriors who no longer moved like men, but like memories slipping free of form.
This was Day Eleven of training.
The Valley of Wind had been transformed overnight into a proving ground of impossibility. Floating phasewalk pillars shimmered between cliffsides. Shadowlight wells blinked in and out of visibility. The ground itself was rigged with reactive pulse glyphs that punished hesitation and rewarded rhythm.
At the valley's mouth stood Alter.
No armor. No helm. No sword.
Only the wind tugging at his loose training garb, his hands folded behind his back as he gazed across the jagged course carved through rock and sky.
His voice cut through the mist like the breath of a storm.
"Today… is not about strength."
The recruits leaned in.
"It is about the denial of strength."
He stepped forward—then vanished.
No explosion. No flare. Just absence.
Then—motion. Too fast to track. A flicker at one end of the valley. A blur on the opposite cliff. His form danced between light pillars and dissolving stone—so fluid that even the wind missed him.
When he finally reappeared atop a broken spire overlooking the whole gauntlet, his voice came low and sharp:
"This is Ghost Step. Not stealth. Not speed. Not silence."
He paused. The air around him stilled.
"It is the art of disappearing."
And then he was gone again.
The recruits stared at the empty air where he had stood. No flare, no afterimage. Just the certainty of his absence—and the dreadful understanding that now… it was their turn.
They were released in groups of five. The valley responded like a living beast. Phase pillars began to tilt, platforms cracked, glyphs surged with chasing pulses. Each recruit had to move—not just fast, but intentionally without presence.
Talia Fenreith was the first to leap. Wind at her heels, laughter on her breath, she soared across three platforms in under four seconds—before a redirected burst launched her sideways into a moss-coated ridge. She landed rolling, laughing even as she coughed. "I blinked too loud," she joked, and jumped again.
Selin Varrow didn't speak. She didn't exist. By the time others realized she'd moved, she was already halfway through the gorge—barefoot, silent, weaving through stone like shadow ink spilled through air. Her trail was a suggestion. Nothing more.
Rhed Velgroth tried to brute-force the path.
The valley taught him otherwise.
A shifting spire clipped his shoulder mid-sprint, spinning him sideways into a rune-burst that slammed him into a soft crater of dust. "Son of a—!" he growled, but Alter's voice from nowhere whispered, amused: "Try again. With less noise."
Jaris Tenvahl approached it like a strategist. He moved in arcs, tested the delay of pulses with small decoys of chi, planted glyphs to redirect valley wind currents. He didn't vanish—but he redirected attention. And that, too, was a form of disappearance.
Elira Mistshade was born for this.
The valley barely noticed her.
At one point, she stepped into a Shadowlight Well—and simply never reappeared where expected. Observers scouring the scrying platforms lost track of her completely until she emerged two minutes later behind Alter on the spire—exhaling slow, calm, undetected until she chose otherwise.
Alter didn't turn. He only nodded once.
"Very good."
By midday, the wind had shifted again. The course grew more aggressive. Platforms broke apart without warning. The sky darkened slightly—not from cloud, but from intent. The Dragoon recruits, one by one, began to understand.
This was not about being quick. It was about becoming formless.
To move without pressure.
To exist without casting sound, shadow, or echo.
To turn one's presence into an untraceable ripple across the fabric of space.
By dusk, the field was littered with exhausted bodies—some collapsed across grass, others half-buried in shallow dust mounds, others still watching the clouds from flat on their backs, too dazed to move but wide-eyed.
No one spoke for a while.
And when the sun finally dipped behind the ridge and the wind cooled into a gentle lull…
A single thought rippled through them all:
This was not training.
This was transformation.
At the farthest edge of the shattered valley, where the earth jutted upward like the spine of a buried titan, Alter stood upon a jagged outcrop bathed in the final hues of golden dusk. The wind tugged at the folds of his black training garb, but he did not move. Arms folded. Eyes half-lidded. A statue of silence carved from sovereign intent.
Below him, the Dragoon recruits had gathered—hundreds strong, muscles sore, breaths sharp from a day of trials. But even among the most seasoned of them, none dared speak. Because before them stretched a training ground that resembled neither course nor crucible.
It was madness.
A spiraling maze of chaos and deception—shifting stone platforms that rotated mid-stride, illusion walls that fractured vision, sonic reversal zones that echoed movement in the wrong direction, and runic detonators buried just deep enough to maim pride and spirit, but never deep enough to grant safety.
This wasn't training.
It was challenge made manifest.
And the man who had forged it now stepped forward, casting a long shadow across the stone.
His voice did not rise. It did not echo with magic or might.
It was quiet. Measured.
Edged like a sword half-drawn.
"Today," Alter said, "you will learn to disappear."
No theatrics. No grand motion.
Only truth.
"Speed," he continued, eyes scanning the recruits below, "is a lie."
A pause. The wind held its breath.
"It's not how fast you move. It's how well you convince the world... you were never there."
And then—
Mid-step—
He vanished.
No shimmer. No blur. Not even a displacement of air.
He simply ceased.
A heartbeat passed.
Then two.
And just as tension reached its peak—
A soft breeze stirred behind the recruits.
It was not wind.
It was presence.
They turned.
Too slow.
Alter stood behind them. Perfectly still. Arms calmly folded behind his back, posture relaxed—like he had always been there.
The nearest recruits flinched. Some stared in disbelief. Others didn't understand what had even happened.
He met their gazes with neither pride nor amusement.
Only instruction.
"Lesson One," he said, voice low, precise.
"If they can see you—"
His eyes glinted gold.
"—you're already dead."
They approached the arena like pilgrims drawn to a cursed altar—heads low, breaths shallow, as if the valley itself had begun whispering warnings beneath the wind. The ground groaned beneath their boots, not from movement, but from memory—as though it remembered the ones who had come before… and had not made it out whole.
This wasn't just another trial.
It was The Ghost Gauntlet.
And it did not forgive.
Each section unfolded like a layered illusion, designed not to test the body—but to unravel the mind.
First came the Phasewalk Corridor.
A narrow path flanked by pillars, each flickering between material reality and ethereal falsehood. Some flickered like firelight. Others stood solid, but only when unobserved.
The recruits entered with measured steps—only to find perception was a weapon turned against them.
One stepped through what looked like open air—only to collide face-first with an immovable pillar. Another braced for impact—and passed through nothing but mist. A third watched his own reflection on the pillar's surface walk before him, out of sync with his motion.
Trust your eyes? You failed.
Trust your instincts? They lied.
Only those who could let go of certainty passed clean.
Next—The Reverse Echo Trenches.
Deep-cut ravines carved with unnatural geometry, each trench humming with warped sound. Footsteps echoed before they landed. Shouts echoed before the lips had moved.
A recruit ran, heard his own sprint from behind—and turned, only to find himself alone. Another shouted "clear"—and heard the word after he had already spoken it. Then heard it again. Then again. Louder. Overlapping.
One Dragoon froze mid-step, disoriented by his own future breathing.
Time bent here—not in function, but in perception.
Panic brewed not from what they saw… but from what they heard too late.
Then—the Shadowlight Wells.
A narrow maze of terrain where the world alternated every two seconds between absolute blackness and blinding white.
No twilight. No gradients. Just existence, then erasure.
The ground vanished. Then returned. The faces beside you became silhouettes—then vanished entirely. The next second, they were statues of light too bright to stare at.
One recruit ran forward during a light cycle—and vanished during the dark, crashing into a wall he didn't see coming. Another waited too long, paralyzed by the shifting contrast, unable to judge the distance to the next step.
Depth perception died here. So did rhythm.
Only the stillest minds moved forward.
And then—The Leap Zones.
Floating tiles suspended over pit traps etched with fractured spikes, their tips gleaming with illusion-breaking enchantments. The platforms swayed under weight. Some crumbled mid-jump. Others rotated without warning.
There was no magic allowed. No levitation. No wind-step. Just legs. Reflexes. And conviction.
One misstep meant more than bruises—it meant broken ribs, splintered dignity, or worse… the look of pity from those who'd made it.
A recruit leapt too late and landed with a scream. The tile gave way beneath him, and he slammed into the cushioned pit below. Another soared too far, overshooting the edge and having to claw his way back up with bloodied palms and laughter laced in pride and pain.
Mistakes were carved into the body here.
And only one rule ruled all:
There were no do-overs.
Not in the Gauntlet.
Not in war.
And especially not when chasing ghosts.
They trained in groups that morning—clusters of synchronized chaos hurtling through the Ghost Gauntlet, each squad flung into uncertainty with nothing but grit, instinct, and the echo of yesterday's bruises.
Some flourished. Others fell.
All screamed.
The valley was no longer a place of instruction—it had become a theatre of unpredictable collapse. Madness wasn't in the obstacles. It was in the laughter that followed them.
Talia Fenreith was the first to charge into the Triple-Wall Phase Corridor, grinning like a storm goddess off her leash. With her braid whipping behind her and wind sigils crackling along her calves, she didn't hesitate—she launched.
The walls flickered in and out of form. Some were illusions. Some were not. Most wouldn't risk it.
Talia didn't care.
She bounced off one—then another—laughing mid-spin as she pushed off a ghost-wall midair, twisting upside down and landing in a full sprint. Dust exploded behind her, and even the illusionary walls flickered as if reeling from her joy.
"Faster next time!" she shouted to no one in particular, already leaping again.
Chaos adored her. And she loved it back.
In the next section, the Leap Zones groaned under pressure—then shattered beneath Gorik Ulthane.
A mountain of muscle and beard, most thought the Gauntlet would break him.
But Gorik had other plans.
He slammed both feet into the stone and planted Earth markers into the soles of his boots—not just for traction, but as launch points.
With a war cry more roar than word, he hurled himself forward—a low-flying meteor.
Platforms cracked beneath him. Stone exploded outward. The instructors on the ridge ducked as he flew overhead, arms outstretched, beard flaring in the wind like a battle standard.
He landed with a crater and a grin. "No finesse," he huffed. "Only forward."
But the madness turned silent in the Shadowlight Wells—where Selin Varrow moved.
Or rather—disappeared.
Silver-eyed and silent, she darted through the flickering dark-light strobe without sound, blades drawn in a reverse grip. A rune-bolt flared toward her chest—and she flipped backward into the air…
And vanished.
No flicker. No blur.
Just gone.
A heartbeat passed.
Then—metal rang.A suspended pendulum target twenty feet away split clean down the center, sparks hissing through the air. Selin reappeared crouched on a nearby ledge, her blades steaming in the cold light.
She said nothing.
From the command ridge above, her supervising officer—a grizzled Dragoon veteran with two decades of field notes—lowered his pen with trembling fingers.
He stared for a long moment, then muttered, as if praying to the wind:
"…What in the ten skies…?"
And still the valley howled.
It didn't just test the Dragoons.
It invited them to unravel.
And some—like these—smiled as they did.