Three days after the communion, the skies over Arkanis forgot how to sleep.
It began with the birds.
Dawn broke in a perfect, unnatural hush. No fluttering wings. No morning chorus. Only a sky too blue, too clean—an untouched canvas stretched taut with waiting. The sparrows in the eaves did not stir. Their eyes gleamed, but they did not blink.
Then came the frost.
It slithered over windowpanes in silence, etching veins into glass while the sun beat down with a sickly heat. Light burned, but warmth never arrived. The Academy stones steamed and shivered in tandem—blistering on touch, freezing to the breath. Nature was unraveling. Something had replaced it.
But it was the moon that broke the world's breath.
It rose swollen and red—no gentle herald of night, but a hemorrhage against the sky. Crimson and veined, it hovered with purpose, pulsing like a wound that refused to close. No stars flanked it. No clouds dared pass beneath it. The Blood Moon had returned.
And it bore teeth.
____
The Hall of Celestial Accord pulsed with restrained violence.
It was not war—but what precedes war, the breath held before a blade drops. No guards lined the chamber. No attendants whispered. Only the Six—noble heads of houses whose hatred ran older than memory—stood beneath the dome of the First Binding.
Seven figures had once shone in that mosaic. Now only outlines remained. The rest had been scraped away by decree.
Lord Maximus von Lightstein spoke first. His voice was a shard of winter, sterile and sharp.
"He is unstable. Unworthy. That thing inside him will consume more than just him."
He didn't glance at the others. He didn't need to. Dressed in ash-black, threads glinting like metal, he stood like something chiseled from vengeance. The chill of lineage surrounded him.
Lord Vale smiled. He always smiled.
"Unworthy, Maximus? Or inconvenient?" He adjusted his spectacles—glass so thin it vanished under the red light streaming through the stained glass. "Your heir's place in the Ascension Rites might be… jeopardized?"
His voice was calm, curious—like a scholar dissecting insects.
Lady Silva scoffed. Her braid, the color of old flame, glowed dull beneath her mantle.
"Stop circling like vultures. We all feel it. The Trial breathes again. Whether it takes the boy or not, it will take."
She drew her cloak tighter, as if cold had crept into her bones.
Lord Laurent exhaled through his nose, slow and tired.
"We are not gods. Not even the ghosts of them. This Trial has no mercy and no master. It does not ask for permission."
From the far end of the room, the Castellan twins tilted their heads in eerie unison. Robed in immaculate white, they looked like a mirage.
"The signs are waking…"
"The chains are humming…"
"The moon drinks deeper."
Then Lord Eisenberg rose.
Not sudden. Not slow. Just… inevitable.
He moved like something unfolding from a dream. His eyes did not reflect light. His voice was nearly lost to the hum building in the stones.
"The boy is the fuse."
"The Blood Moon is the match."
He tilted his head.
"Have you wondered why the birds stopped singing?"
No one answered.
Because they all had.
——
The dormitory reeked of old dust and frost. The air was still, but heavy—as if the building itself knew what approached and refused to breathe.
They had pushed their cots together out of instinct. Not for warmth. Not for comfort. Just proximity—like pack animals sensing the oncoming storm.
Rin sat with her back to the stone wall, arms around her knees, chin resting on the scars of her forearm. Her brown eyes tracked the ceiling's slow crumble of plaster. She said nothing.
Cassian lay with his arm thrown over his eyes. His laugh, when it came, was hollow.
"Guess age doesn't matter now, huh? One year in, ten years in. Doesn't matter. If the mark picks you, you go."
Silas sat at the window, his breath fogging the cracked pane. The frost re-formed as quickly as he wiped it away. He spoke without turning.
"The instructors are marked too."
Cassian cracked a smile.
"Good. Let them taste what they made us swallow."
Asli was silent. He hadn't spoken all night. The silk blindfold clung to his skin, damp with sweat. Beneath it, his breath came shallow, but steady.
Silas rolled up his sleeve. The mark had spread overnight. No longer a bruise, but something rooted—veins of shadow threading up his arm.
Rin finally spoke, voice hoarse from disuse.
"It's always been like this. When the moon bleeds, it takes. Not just students. Not just nobles. Anyone marked."
"And no one returns the same," Silas said softly.
Rin nodded. "Or at all."
She pulled back her collar, revealing her own mark—deep in her clavicle, shaped like an eye sewn shut.
Cassian spat on the floor. "Trial of resonance. More like culling."
"No," Rin said. Her voice didn't rise, but it sharpened. "It's a test."
Asli stirred. He spoke barely above a whisper.
Rin's gaze swept over them—Silas, bruised but calm. Cassian, cracking jokes to plug the fear. Asli, trembling but unbroken.
"We have to. If you see each other inside… stay close. Trust no one else. No teachers. No nobles. No gods."
Silas turned from the window. "It'll be like a realm, won't it?"
Rin nodded. "A whole world—where the laws don't follow. Where the Trial lives."
Cassian reached over and grabbed a shard of glass. He dragged it across his palm—blood welled up, black in the moonlight.
"Then let this be our contract," he said. "If one of us dies, the others carry them in name."
Silas followed. Then Rin. Then Asli, hands shaking.
Four hands bled onto stone. The Blood Moon pulsed outside like a slow drumbeat.
They pressed their hands together.
No promises. No oaths.
Just blood, breath, and the knowledge that when the Trial called, they would vanish—body, mind, soul.
And only those strong enough to carve themselves back from that otherworld would return.