Calder was already standing at the center of the clearing, just as he had been when Elena jolted awake at first light. He hadn't moved. He didn't look like a man who had slept at all. Kara pushed herself up from her bedroll with a quiet groan, rubbing her neck. Selene was already on her feet, bag strapped, eyes fixed on Calder and the direction of the ravine. Rowan sat beside Elena, still close enough that their shoulders almost touched, his hand loosely holding hers as if his body refused to forget the night.
"Today is the test," Calder said simply. "Eat if you can. It will be harder on an empty body."
Kara muttered, "Harder than running from immortals?"
Selene answered absently, "Different stress response."
Elena wasn't hungry, but she took a few bites of the rough bread anyway, more because Rowan pressed it toward her than because she wanted it. Her chest felt tight, but not from the core this time. From what Calder had promised.
When they had finished, Calder stepped away from the camp.
"Bring only what you carry on your body," he said. "No tools. No weapons. No external support."
Kara frowned. "Define 'support.'"
"You will not be helping each other inside," Calder replied. "If you try, you'll make it worse for them."
Rowan's grip on Elena's hand tightened slightly. Elena swallowed. "Inside what?"
Calder turned so he was facing all of them at once. "Fear has shape. Today, you'll walk inside it."
No one joked after that.
They followed him past the broken bridge and deeper into the forest. The trees grew closer together as they descended, the light thinning until it felt like late evening despite the morning hour. The ground sloped into a narrow ravine ringed by jagged stone and draped roots. At its lowest point, half-hidden by moss and dirt, stood six black stone pillars in a rough circle around a worn flat platform.
The air was different down here. Heavy. Thick.
Elena felt the warmth in her chest pull back like an animal sensing a predator. Selene pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"This place remembers panic," she said quietly.
Calder nodded. "It was built for it."
The pillars were cracked and scarred, but faint light flickered under the stone like veins beneath skin. Calder stepped onto the platform first. The moment his boot touched the carved surface, the air shifted with a dull, muffled thump, as if something had closed tightly around them.
"Heavy," Kara muttered under her breath. "Hate it already."
Calder turned to face them. "This trial does not measure power. It measures what you do when power fails you. It will strip away control, certainty, and comfort. It will not show you what you think you're afraid of. It will show you what you live around."
Elena's heart hammered. "What happens if we fail?"
"You'll survive," Calder said. "If you don't run from what answers you."
"That's not a straight answer," Kara said.
"It's the only one I can give without lying," he replied.
The air trembled. The first pillar on Calder's left lit from within, pale blue light crawling up its height until the surface glowed.
Selene exhaled slowly. "Activation complete."
Calder's eyes settled on Rowan. "You first."
Elena's breath caught. "Wait—"
Rowan squeezed her hand once, firmly, then let go. "If I go after you, I'll be thinking about what you saw the whole time. If I go first, at least I know you're still out here."
He didn't look back after that.
He stepped into the circle and walked toward the glowing pillar. The light brightened as he approached, humming softly. When he reached it, he didn't pause. He pressed his hand against the stone.
The light swallowed him.
The temperature dropped fast enough that Elena shivered. The pillar dimmed, but Rowan was gone, like he had never stood there at all.
"Rowan!" she blurted and took an instinctive step forward.
Calder blocked her with one arm, not rough, but unmovable. "Interference destabilizes the construct. If you try to pull him out, it will crush him. You wait."
Elena's nails bit into her palms. Kara muttered a low curse. Selene's gaze stayed on the pillar, watching its faint pulse.
Nothing happened for a long time.
-
Rowan stood in the middle of Moonridge.
The sky was clear. The buildings were intact. No ash. No fire. No screams. The smell of bread drifted from a nearby shop. Children ran past him, laughing.
For a second, his mind refused it. Then he grabbed at the only explanation that didn't break him completely.
"So it was a nightmare," he whispered. "All of it."
"Rowan!" a familiar voice called.
He spun around.
Elena stood by the old stone well in the middle of the square, wearing her school uniform, bag slung over one shoulder, eyes bright and alive. She waved like nothing had ever gone wrong.
His chest nearly ruptured.
He crossed the distance in seconds and grabbed her shoulders. "You're okay. You're okay."
She laughed a little, surprised. "You're acting weird. Did you fail a test or something?"
"The attack," he said. "The soldiers. The fire. Your house."
Her smile faltered. "What are you talking about?"
"You died," he said, the word breaking out of him. "I held you. You weren't breathing. Your blood—"
She winced. "Rowan, stop. You're freaking me out."
Somewhere behind them, a horn blew.
Low. Distant.
Rowan stiffened.
The villagers didn't react.
"No," he whispered.
He turned toward the sound. In the far hills, the same towers he remembered stood empty and still. No soldiers were visible. No fire.
The horn blew again.
Closer.
Elena touched his arm. "There's nothing there."
He turned back to her—and froze.
Her eyes were wrong.
Too empty.
The square darkened. The sky turned the color of smoke. The buildings around them peeled and blackened. In seconds, the village became what it had truly been on that night—ruin, flame, screams, blood.
Elena lay on the ground at his feet.
Just as she had in his memory.
Something moved behind him.
"You were too slow," a voice said.
Rowan turned.
He saw himself.
The other Rowan was older, his face lined with exhaustion, eyes cracked with red veins. His clothes were torn and scorched, hands bloody.
"You tried to stand between her and the world," the other Rowan said. "And the world stepped over you."
Rowan gritted his teeth. "I did everything I could."
"And it wasn't enough."
Shapes emerged from the smoke—soldiers in black, blades drawn, encircling Elena's body. Their steps were heavy but unhurried, as if they already knew how this ended.
Rowan's hand closed around something that wasn't there—but the illusion answered him, and a half-formed blade of light flickered into existence in his grasp.
He stepped over Elena's body. "Try again."
The soldiers charged.
He fought.
He was cut down.
Pain tore through him, suffocating and sharp, so vivid his body refused to believe it wasn't real. Then everything shattered like glass, and he was standing at the well again.
Elena smiled. The village was whole. The horn sounded.
The pattern repeated.
He ran to her. He tried to warn her. No one listened. The world burned. He fought. He died. He stood again. Over and over. Each time he lasted a little longer. Each time he failed anyway. Each time he watched Elena fall, and each time, his body grew heavier with invisible weight.
Eventually, he couldn't rise.
He lay on the burned cobblestones, chest heaving, fingers clawing at the ground.
"Had enough?" the other Rowan asked, standing over him.
"What do you want?" Rowan rasped.
"We already have what we want," the other him said, gesturing around. "You, lying here, certain you deserve this."
"You think you're protecting her," another voice said, layered over the first—Elena's, Kara's, Selene's, all blurred. "But you're just trying to pay a debt that never asked to be paid."
"As long as you believe you should have died instead," the other Rowan continued, "you'll keep trying to throw yourself between her and every blade you see."
Rowan's hand spasmed around nothing. "She matters. I don't."
A different voice answered this time.
Elena's.
He turned his head.
She knelt beside him, alive, eyes wet but steady. "I never once wanted you dead in my place," she said. "Not on that night. Not now. You weren't my shield. You were my choice."
His throat closed.
"You can't rewrite what happened," she said. "You can only decide how long you want to stay in this loop."
The square flickered between whole and ruined, between sun and ash.
Rowan forced air into his lungs. He pushed himself onto his knees, then onto his feet. The soldiers formed around them again, the fire rising.
This time, he didn't step in front of her.
He stepped beside her.
He tightened his grip on the half-formed blade. "We fight together," he said. "I'm done dying alone in scenes that already happened."
The other Rowan smiled faintly, then fractured into smoke.
The soldiers lunged.
Rowan braced—and the entire world cracked down the middle like a broken mirror.
Light slammed into him.
He hit stone hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. When he blinked, he was back in the ravine, on his knees inside the circle of pillars. His hands were empty. His body was whole. Sweat slicked his skin.
"Rowan!" Elena dropped to the ground in front of him, gripping his shoulders. "Rowan, look at me."
He lifted his head.
She was alive. Her eyes were wide, scared, real.
He wrapped his arms around her without thinking and pulled her into a tight embrace. "You're here."
"So are you," she answered into his shoulder.
His chest still ached, but the ache felt different now. Less like punishment. More like something healing under a bruise.
Kara exhaled. "Okay, I hate this place already."
"Good," Calder said. "Hate it and learn anyway."
The second pillar lit.
"Kara," he said.
She rolled her eyes once, more out of habit than humor. "If I come back punching, don't take it personally."
She stepped into the light. It swallowed her and went dark.
She was inside for a long time.
When Kara finally reappeared, she stumbled forward like she'd been running for hours. Her breathing was ragged. Dirt and blood smeared her face and knuckles, but she was alive.
"I died in the same battle like fifty times," she muttered as she sank to the ground. "Apparently, charging at everything isn't a personality. It's a problem."
Selene's pillar glowed next.
She didn't hesitate. "I'll be efficient."
She vanished into the light.
When she returned, she fell to one knee, hands trembling slightly as she adjusted her glasses.
"Mine was… questions," she said. "Endless questions. No correct answers. Every choice is wrong. Iterative mental collapse. Ten out of ten, would not recommend."
Elena tried to breathe normally and failed. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt. The warmth in her chest had gone tight and low, like a knot.
The fourth pillar came alive.
Calder's gaze landed on her. "Elena."
Her legs felt like they were made of water. She forced them to move.
"You've already seen your fear once without structure," he said. "This time it has structure. It will ask for something from you. Do not answer with what you think you owe. Answer with what you actually want."
Her throat was dry. "And if what I want is wrong?"
"Then you'll live knowing it," he replied. "Which is better than living never knowing at all."
That wasn't comforting.
But it was honest.
She stepped into the circle and walked toward the light.
It surged brighter with each step she took. By the time she reached the stone and laid her hand against it, she could barely see anything else.
The forest vanished.
She was in her bedroom.
Her ceiling. Her walls. Her posters. Her desk. Everything exactly where it should be. Her schoolbag leaned against the chair. Her shoes lay where she had kicked them off the previous afternoon.
Light streamed through the curtains.
Outside, she could hear normal village sounds. Voices. Someone calling out to a neighbor. Distant children laughing.
For one long heartbeat, her brain tried to accept it. To erase everything that had happened and file it all under a nightmare.
Then she heard her mother humming in the kitchen.
Elena's entire body shook.
She slid off the bed and ran.
Her mother stood at the stove, apron on, hair tied back, completely unhurt. Her father sat at the table reading, as easy and relaxed as any normal morning.
"Why are you home so early?" her mother asked, smiling. "Did they cancel classes?"
Elena couldn't respond. She crossed the distance and flung herself into her mother's arms, clinging so tightly that it almost hurt.
"You're alive," she choked. "You're alive."
Her mother laughed slightly, confused but hugging her back. "Of course I am. What kind of question is that?"
Her father looked up over his paper. "Rough dream?"
Elena pulled back enough to see their faces. Both warm. Both familiar. Both impossible.
"The soldiers," she said. "The fire. Our house. The cellar. You both—" She couldn't finish.
Her parents exchanged a look.
Her father chuckled. "You've been watching those dramatized war feeds again."
The warmth in her chest surged suddenly, harder, and painful. "No. No, I stood there. I saw you fall. I saw—"
Her mother's smile cracked at the edges. "Elena, you're scaring me."
The word echoed.
Scaring.
The color bled out of the room.
The humming stopped. The sounds from outside cut off like someone had flipped a switch. The sunlight drained from the windows, leaving everything washed in gray.
The walls darkened.
Smoke seeped from the corners.
Blood smeared across the floor under her feet, slow and thick, as if the memory had been waiting for a cue.
Her parents were still standing in front of her—but now they wore the wounds she remembered. The same cut across her father's chest. The same terrible stillness in her mother's eyes.
"You ran," her mother said gently.
"You lived," her father added.
Elena stepped back until her shoulders hit the wall. "I didn't want to. I just—I moved. I couldn't think."
"You lived because we didn't," her mother said. "And you've been punishing yourself ever since."
The floor cracked.
The kitchen dropped away, becoming black stone under her feet.
She hit the ground in the ravine, but twisted and wrong. The pillars stood around her, broken and crooked. Above the cracked platform, three bodies hung suspended in the air, wrapped in chains of black light.
Rowan.
Kara.
Selene.
They were bound at the wrists and ankles, chests heaving, struggling, faces drawn tight with pain.
"ELENA!" Kara shouted, her voice raw.
Rowan turned his head toward her, eyes strained. "Don't come closer! This isn't—"
His voice cut off as the chains around his chest tightened, making him gasp.
Elena stumbled forward anyway. "Let them go!"
"You choose them over us."
Her parents stood at the far edge of the platform now, looking as they had in life. No wounds. No blood. No smoke.
Her mother's gaze was sad. "You chose once already. You chose to live."
"I didn't choose anything," Elena said, voice cracking. "I was terrified. I ran. I kept running."
"And you've been trying to go back ever since," her father said calmly. "In your head. Every time you close your eyes."
The stone between them and her began to crumble, revealing a deep, endless darkness below.
"If you step back to us," her mother said, "this stops. The pain ends. The weight in your chest quiets. Your friends live their lives without you dragging danger to them."
The chains around Rowan, Kara, and Selene tightened again. Rowan groaned in pain, trying to tear free. Kara's teeth were clenched hard. Selene's eyes glowed faintly with contained panic.
Elena's entire body felt like it had been filled with ice and fire at the same time. "If I go to you… I die."
"Yes," her father answered.
"And they live," her mother said.
Rowan's voice came through clenched teeth. "You don't know that. It's an illusion. It lies."
Kara forced the words out. "Don't you dare throw yourself away for us."
Selene stared at Elena, eyes laser sharp even through the fear. "This construct is built on your guilt. It will always offer you death dressed up as mercy. Do not accept its terms."
The warmth inside Elena's chest burned hotter, almost unbearable. Her feet inched forward toward the crack anyway.
"You don't deserve to be here," the guilt whispered. "You lived because they didn't. You brought danger to your friends. You're the reason the general came. You're the reason the hunters are moving. If you disappear, everyone else gets a chance."
Her parents waited, gentle and patient on the far side of the abyss.
"Come home," her mother said softly.
"Pay the debt," her father added. "End the imbalance."
The chains around Rowan jerked again. His head dropped forward.
Something broke in her.
"No," she said.
It came out small.
She swallowed and said it again, louder. "No."
She turned her head and looked at her friends first.
Rowan, who had stood in front of her and beside her without ever asking for repayment.
Kara, who had cracked jokes in the middle of hell just so Elena wouldn't drown in silence.
Selene, who had tried to understand her core like it was a problem worth solving, not a curse.
Then she looked back at her parents.
"I love you," she whispered. "I will always love you. But I am not your punishment. I didn't kill you. They did. I didn't ask to live. I just did."
Her voice shook, but she kept going. "If I step into that, I die. And the world keeps moving and someone else gets cursed with this core. Or they don't. But I'll never know. Either way, I'll have chosen nothing."
The warmth in her chest flared so bright she thought it might split her apart.
"I choose them," she said. "I choose to live with this. I choose to stay. Not because I deserve it more. But because I'm still here and I'm tired of acting like that's a crime."
The abyss roared.
The darkness lunged upward.
The chains around her friends tightened—
And then snapped.
Light exploded from her chest, not in a wild, uncontrolled shockwave this time, but in a focused surge that raced along the chains like fire racing a fuse. The bindings shattered into shards of smoke. Rowan, Kara, and Selene dropped to the stone, coughing and gasping.
Her parents' forms flickered. For a moment, they looked younger, freer.
"Elena," her mother said softly, "living is not betrayal."
Her father smiled, proud and sad. "We died so you wouldn't. Don't give that away."
Then they, too, shattered into light.
The twisted ravine split down the center. The pillars fell outward. The world tore itself apart.
Light rushed in, blinding.
Elena slammed back into her body with a harsh gasp. Her knees hit the stone of the real ravine. Her chest burned, but the pain was different than before—sharp, intense, but not tearing. Calder grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling flat.
"Breathe," he said, voice firm. "In. Out. Don't fight it. Let it settle."
She dragged air into her lungs, shaky and uneven at first, then gradually steadier. The pillars around them were dim now, their internal light almost completely gone.
One by one, the others appeared fully back in the circle if they hadn't been already.
Rowan was beside her almost immediately, knocking Calder's hand away with less force than he probably meant, dropping to her level.
"Elena," he said, voice rough, "can you hear me?"
She blinked hard and focused on his face. His eyes were red-rimmed from his own trial, but clear.
"You're alive," she whispered.
He let out a short, breathless laugh. "I was about to say that to you."
She leaned forward and he wrapped his arms around her, both of them still shaking from power and fear and everything between. She buried her face against his shoulder.
"I chose to stay," she said into his shirt.
"I know," he answered. "I felt it."
Kara wiped dried blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. "I officially hate mystical therapy. Zero stars, do not recommend."
Selene's hands still trembled faintly as she adjusted her glasses. "That structure doesn't simply test what you fear. It uses it as a framework to pressure your core into new configurations."
"English, please," Kara said.
"It adds weight," Selene said. "Then sees if you break."
Calder watched all of them, his expression difficult to read, but his shoulders were less rigid than before. "Fear doesn't disappear," he said. "It just stops driving every step you take. Today, you saw the shape of the hands around your throat. Now you can start prying them off."
Elena wiped her face with the heel of her palm. "It showed me that my parents were alive. Then it tried to make me trade my life for yours."
Calder nodded. "It went straight for your guilt. Expected."
Rowan tightened his hold on her. "She shouldn't have to carry that alone."
"She won't," Calder said quietly. "Not anymore."
The air around them slowly lightened. The pillars faded completely, now just old stone again.
"The test is over," Calder said. "We leave this place. None of you are ready to train again today."
No one argued.
They walked for hours.
No one spoke much. Branches cracked under their feet. Birds stayed away from their path. By the time Calder stopped, the sun had shifted high, then begun to drop again.
Their new shelter was a half-buried stone lodge, swallowed by tangled roots and ivy. It had no doors, no windows, but the interior was dry and empty, with enough space for them to spread their bedrolls and for a small, controlled fire near the center.
They settled in with the heavy, slow movements of people who had survived more inside their own minds than their bodies could easily explain.
Elena sat close to the fire, knees drawn up, hands loosely wrapped together. The warmth inside her chest still pulsed, but now it felt anchored, as if it had finally found something solid to attach itself to instead of thrashing blind.
Rowan sat down beside her, leaving just enough space that she could decide whether to close it.
She did.
She leaned sideways until her shoulder rested against his arm.
"You didn't choose your parents over us," he said quietly.
She stared into the fire. "You saw it?"
"I saw enough," he said. "But I don't care what the illusion tried to make you believe. You came back. You're here. That's what counts."
She covered her face with her hands for a moment. "I thought, for a second, that if I went with them, you'd be safe. That everyone would be safer without me."
"That's the trial talking," he said. "That's fear pretending to be logical."
"It didn't feel like fear," she said. "It felt like… paying something I owed."
Rowan turned slightly so he could see her face. "You don't owe your life to death. You owe it to yourself to actually live it. And if that means we fight harder, then we fight harder. With you. Not without you."
Her throat tightened. "I'm scared of what I'll do with this power."
"I am too," he admitted. "But I would rather be scared beside you than safe without you."
She let out a short, broken laugh. "That's not reassuring."
"I wasn't trying to be," he said. "I was trying to be honest."
She rested her head lightly against his shoulder. He shifted just enough to make it comfortable for her.
Across the fire, Kara sat with a whetstone and a short blade she must have picked up or formed during her trial, dragging the stone along the edge in slow, careful strokes that looked more like therapy than maintenance.
"My trial kept dropping me into the same fight," she said suddenly, not looking up. "Same field. Same enemies. Same outcome. I'd charge in, get cut down, wake up, go again. Over and over. It didn't matter how brave I was. I still died."
Selene sat with her back against the stone wall, notebook open on her lap, pen hovering above it. "What changed?"
"I stopped running at them," Kara said. "Started pulling back. Waiting. Picking a path instead of throwing myself at the first opening. Felt like being a coward. Then suddenly I wasn't dying anymore."
Selene nodded. "So your core is wired around motion. The test forced you to associate restraint with survival."
"That's one way to say 'stop being an idiot,' yeah," Kara muttered.
Selene looked down at her notebook. "Mine locked me in an endless sequence of decisions. Save one person and doom another. Open one door and close ten. No correct options. Just probability and loss. Every time I chose, it showed me what I didn't account for. Over and over until my brain wanted to shut down."
"And what got you out?" Rowan asked.
"I realized I was trying to reach zero risk," she said. "Which is impossible. So the construct had infinite fuel. When I accepted that every choice would hurt someone, and decided to move anyway instead of waiting for a perfect answer, the loop broke."
Kara blinked. "That's messed up."
"Accurate, though," Selene said softly.
They all turned their eyes to Calder.
Elena hesitated, then asked, "What was yours?"
He stared into the flames for a long moment before answering.
"Standing in front of my unit again," he said. "Watching them die while I lived. Different choices every time. Different orders. Same ending. The test kept asking me who I wanted to save."
"And what did you do?" Rowan asked.
"I stopped trying to save everyone," Calder said. "And started committing to saving someone. Not because it was ideal. Because it was real."
Silence followed.
The fire crackled quietly.
Outside, the forest rustled like it was finally breathing again.
Rowan slid his hand along the ground until his fingers brushed Elena's. She didn't pull away. She laced her fingers with his.
He glanced over. "You're not alone inside your fear anymore," he said. "That's the point of all this, I think."
She squeezed his hand. "You're not either."
Their eyes met over the flickering light. The air between them felt heavier than it had before the trial, but not in a suffocating way. In a grounded one.
Far from the lodge, deep inside a fortress of metal and shadow, Dreadveil's watchers delivered their report.
"The fear structure was triggered," one of them said. "The girl endured. Her core did not fracture. Her companions also resisted collapse."
Something shifted in the dark.
"A pity," a low voice answered. "The first gate should have broken at least one of them."
"Calder is with her still," the watcher added. "His influence is accelerating their adaptation."
The shadowed figure was silent for several seconds.
"Let it," the voice finally said. "Fear was only the first gate. When she reaches the second, we will see what truly remains."
Back in the half-buried lodge, Elena's eyes finally closed, her head still resting on Rowan's shoulder, their hands still joined.
For the first time since Moonridge burned, she fell asleep not wishing to go back, but afraid of what was coming—and still choosing to face it.
Tomorrow, the world would start asking the price for that choice.
And this time, she wouldn't be running alone.