Dion's POV
The cold pressed against my skin like a thousand invisible blades, sharper than any steel. But there was no steel here—only the emptiness where my magic should have been. Stripped away. No glamour to soften the edges, no Fey agility to dodge the invisible strikes. Only raw flesh, vulnerable and exposed.
I stood—or rather, I was forced to stand—in a barren plain that stretched beyond sight, under a sky bruised with swirling gray and black. The air tasted of iron and old wounds. Then the visions began.
First, the flames. They weren't mine, but I felt their searing heat crawl beneath my skin. Therrin. The memories surged in waves—her fear, the loneliness, the sharp sting of betrayal. Every scream she had swallowed, every tear shed in silence, was etched into the burning flesh of my soul.
And then the Thornbrand.
I saw it clear: the cruel mark, jagged and deep, branded into her shoulder. My hands trembled, a surge of rage threatening to rip free. But I clenched my fists, swallowing the fury. No. This was not my pain to fix. This was hers to carry—and mine to bear with her.
A soft light glimmered, and Ari appeared. Not fierce or demanding, but fragile—naked in her vulnerability, her eyes wide and searching. I wanted to shield her, to take her pain away, but I could only stand still, my breath ragged, my heart pounding a desperate rhythm of endurance.
I would not speak. I would not strike back. I would carry this—every wound, every scar—without word or defense.
The world twisted around me—light becoming shadow, heat becoming bone-deep cold. The sky fractured into shards of memory, raining down fragments of Therrin's past like glass, each one slicing through my skin, drawing blood that wasn't mine.
I dropped to my knees.
But I did not scream.
The earth beneath me pulsed, and a scene rose from the ground like smoke: Therrin as a child, small and terrified, bound at the wrists and dragged across stone. Her eyes were hollow. Her mouth was sealed by magic, a cruel silence forced upon her. I felt the magic clamp around my own throat, tightening until my vision blurred. I couldn't breathe—but I didn't fight it.
The pain was suffocating. The instinct to lash out—to burn, to destroy—boiled beneath my ribs. I had killed for less than what I saw done to her in these visions. My body ached with the pull of vengeance, but I clenched my teeth and let it pass.
This wasn't about justice. Not here. Not now.
A second memory bloomed—sharper this time. She was older, her hands covered in blood that wasn't hers. She was kneeling in front of a pyre, her arms outstretched as flames devoured a small figure. A friend? A sister? A child? The guilt carved itself across her back like whip marks—fresh, wet, unhealed. I flinched as the lashes tore into me, one after another, the force buckling my spine.
Still, I made no sound.
The vision shattered.
My skin smoked. Blood dripped from my wrists where invisible restraints had cut deep. My chest heaved with effort, but no magic rose to meet the pain. I was truly human now—no Fey endurance, no strength to escape what was being done to me. Just skin, bone, and grief.
And then she appeared again.
Ari.
But not the Ari I knew—the fire-eyed soul that teased, taunted, demanded. This was her core, her heart. She stood before me barefoot, unclothed, not in body but in spirit. Transparent, shimmering like frost. Her gaze locked to mine, shimmering with a sorrow so old and raw it brought me to tears.
"I'm not like her," she whispered. "Would you love me if I broke her?"
She reached out a hand, and when I tried to take it, her touch went through me like ice and fire. My arms shook as I fought the urge to collapse.
"I am the blade inside her. The one she fears. If I take her body again… would you still call me yours?"
I didn't answer. I wasn't allowed to.
But in my silence, I held her gaze. I let the pain speak for me. I would endure both of them. I would not turn away from either soul, no matter how fractured.
Her form flickered.
And then she stepped into me.
It wasn't violent. It was whole. The fire of her blended with the echo of Therrin's past, layering the suffering on top of each other until I couldn't tell where one pain ended and another began.
I felt the Thornbrand before I saw it again. Felt it burning itself onto my shoulder as if it were my own. My knees hit the stone, and this time, the scream tore free from my throat—not aloud, but inward, coiling deep in my chest. I clamped my jaw shut, blood leaking between my teeth.
Pain. Endless. Consuming.
It was hers. And now it was mine.
I don't know how long it lasted. Minutes? Hours? Years?
Time melted. My body gave out long before my will did.
And then… silence.
The ground beneath me cooled. The sky above went still. A warmth, unfamiliar and terrible, pulsed in the center of my chest.
I looked down.
There, just over my heart—opposite the place the Thornbrand had been carved into Therrin—was a glowing shard of blackened light. Not a mark. A piece of something ancient and living. The third piece of the Relic.
It sizzled as it embedded itself into my flesh.
No permission asked.
No ceremony.
Just pain.
I didn't cry out.
I didn't speak.
I let it burn.
The shard hissed as it fused with my chest, like molten glass poured into the hollow of my soul. I could feel it stretching tendrils through me—roots seeking purchase in sinew, muscle, memory. Not a relic of power, but one of burden. Of inheritance. A piece of her pain, buried deep beside my heart.
The Thornbrand had broken Therrin.
This… would remake me.
I collapsed forward, my hands bracing against the cold stone, now slick with blood. I couldn't tell how much was mine anymore. My breath came ragged, shallow. The silence was deafening. The visions had gone. The pain, too—but only from the outside.
Inside, I carried it still.
I expected something after—words, perhaps. A voice declaring the trial complete. A door opening, a light shining through. But there was nothing. Just the aching stillness, and my trembling body curled in on itself.
Maybe that was the final test: no reward. No reprieve. Just the aftermath. Just the silence of survival.
I closed my eyes and let my weight settle into the stone. I didn't speak. I didn't move. I let the memory of what I'd seen unravel behind my eyelids: the haunted girl with bloodied hands, the hollow-eyed child, the broken half-soul begging to be seen, not saved.
They were not just pain. They were endurance. Fire. Shadows held together by will alone.
How many times had I touched Therrin without understanding? How many times had I tried to fix her when all she needed was for someone to feel it with her?
No more.
I would not speak over their pain again.
A soft wind stirred—unnatural, like breath against the back of my neck. I looked up.
The plain was gone. The broken sky dissolved into color, and I found myself kneeling not on jagged stone, but in a pool of still, dark water. My reflection wavered beneath me—blood-soaked, hollow-eyed, and changed.
The shard still burned beneath my skin, pulsing gently. Not pain now. Not power. Just presence.
And behind me, I felt them. Not as ghosts or visions, but as warmth in my chest. Therrin. Ari. The weight of their stories nestled against the bones of my own. I didn't know where I ended and they began anymore. Maybe that was the point.
The world shifted again—this time gently. I was standing in the glade where the trials began. My knees buckled as my body returned to reality, bruised and torn, my skin cracked and blistered from wounds I hadn't physically received—but bore all the same.
Grimm was waiting.
He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
He looked at me—at the blood still wet on my mouth, the scorch on my chest where the shard had sealed itself—and gave a single nod. His golden eyes held no pity. Only knowing. Perhaps approval.
I didn't nod back.
I had no words left. Not yet.
And for once, silence wasn't emptiness. It was reverence.
Because now I understood.
I had walked through her memories.
Felt her chains.
Met her other half not as a challenge, but as a choice.
And I had chosen them both.
Not with vows. Not with promises. Not with declarations.
But with pain.
With endurance.
With stillness.
The Trial of the Flesh was not about surviving agony.
It was about becoming worthy of it.
And I had.