A faint tension hummed through the air like a distant melody, unsettling the normally electric pulse of the Academy's sprawling campus. Students shuffled uneasily through the morning fog, whispering about what happened in the Evaluation Hall the day before. Whispers of a boy with no rank standing up to royalty. Of crimson flames born from nowhere. Of a power that wasn't supposed to exist.
Kairo Vale had become a ghost of interest, watched from corners and shadows. As he walked across the stone courtyard toward the Trial Halls, even the wind seemed to move out of his way.
"Trial One: Initiation" read the glowing sigil in the sky.
He barely had time to read it before two silver-cloaked enforcers flanked him. Neither spoke. They only gestured toward the large iron gates that loomed ahead.
"You sure you're ready for this?" came a voice behind him.
Lyra approached, dressed in her elemental combat gear leather-bound armor etched with flowing sigils that danced like water when she moved. She had a smirk on her lips, but her eyes held worry.
"I'm not sure about anything anymore," Kairo admitted.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. "Then fake it like the rest of us."
The Trial Halls were ancient. Older than the Academy itself. The walls hummed with dormant power, as if they remembered every scream and spell cast within their chambers.
A council of instructors, dressed in ceremonial robes, stood on a high platform overlooking the chamber. In the center of the vast marble room stood a sigil circle large enough to swallow ten men.
Trialmaster Roen, a gray-bearded man with one mechanical arm and an eye that shimmered like fire, stepped forward. His voice boomed across the chamber:
"By decree of the Sigil Council, candidate Kairo Vale, rankless, shall undergo the Sevenfold Trial of Awakening. The first of these Trial of Flame."
The circle ignited.
Kairo was flung into a chamber of molten rock, a pocket dimension forged in fire. Lava bubbled below the obsidian platforms. Across from him stood a beast ten feet tall, molten bones visible beneath its semi-transparent skin.
"A magma wraith," whispered a voice in his mind. He wasn't sure whose.
The creature charged.
Kairo dodged just in time, the searing heat trailing behind like a whip. He countered with a burst of flame from his palm, but it sputtered. In this realm, the creature was fire. He needed something more.
Think. Control. Anchor.
He reached deep—not just for magic, but memory. The memory of standing defiant before Arkan. The humiliation. The rage.
The Breaker Flame answered.
His body surged with power, and the glyph on his hand shimmered. He leapt over the beast, fire coiling around him—not to attack, but to trap.
"Break and bind," he whispered.
The glyph flared, and a ring of crimson fire locked the creature in midair. The lava wraith screeched as its form was compressed inward by an unseen force, collapsing into a sphere of molten core. Kairo drove his palm into it.
BOOM!
The fire realm shattered.
He was back in the Trial Hall, gasping.
"Trial of Flame—passed," Roen announced, tone unreadable.
But Kairo wasn't done. The next glyph flared.
"Trial of Memory."
This time, there was no room.
He stood inside a dreamscape—his old home. His mother's voice echoed from the kitchen. The scent of cinnamon tea wafted through the air. He heard his younger self laughing in the background.
Then came the knock on the door.
The moment everything changed.
Kairo screamed.
He didn't want to relive this.
But the Trial demanded it.
The door opened. The white-robed man stood there, eyes like dead stars. He whispered something. His mother screamed. Flames consumed the house.
"KAIRO!" she cried.
"No!" he cried out, lunging forward.
But it happened again.
And again.
And again.
Each time, the Trial broke him a little more. Until the final time he didn't try to stop it. He accepted it.
He stood in the fire, eyes closed, and whispered: "I will carry this. All of it."
The dream shattered.
"Trial of Memory passed."
Blood trickled from his nose. He stood shaking, breath ragged, as the next sigil glowed.
"Trial of Judgment."
This one took him to a courtroom.
He stood chained in the center. Around him sat faceless judges, and behind them every person he'd failed. His mother. His father. The street vendor he didn't save during a riot. Lyra, covered in blood. Arkan, laughing.
One by one, they hurled words at him:
"Coward."
"Thief."
"Mistake."
"Monster."
Kairo said nothing.
The Trial demanded he break.
Instead, he whispered: "I am all of those. And more."
The chains shattered.
"Trial of Judgment passed."
He fell to his knees, trembling.
Lyra rushed forward but was stopped by an instructor. "He must face the next alone."
The sigil flared.
"Trial of Connection."
Suddenly, Kairo stood inside Lyra's dream.
She didn't see him but he saw everything. Her memories. Her childhood. Her pain. Her longing to be enough. Her envy. Her guilt for being born with power. Her love.
Her love for him.
He almost broke the trial right then.
But then he heard her whisper to her reflection: "He'll never love me. Not the way I do."
And it hurt more than any flame.
He stepped back into his body with tears in his eyes.
"Trial of Connection passed."
One more.
"Trial of Awakening."
This one didn't come with a dream.
It came with silence.
Kairo stood in a void. Alone. No light. No body. Just awareness.
And then, a voice not his own echoed in the dark.
"You were not meant to exist."
Another voice: "You are the echo of a broken oath."
Another: "You are fire without form."
A final voice: "Then become form."
The fire in his soul surged. It wasn't the Breaker Flame. It was deeper. Older. The source of it all. He didn't command it he became it.
He screamed as the flame consumed him, not to kill but to reshape.
When he awoke, he was glowing.
Divine glyphs ran from his heart to his arms, like veins of starlight.
"Trial of Awakening passed."
The Trialmasters stood stunned.
No rankless had ever passed five trials in one sitting.
Roen stepped forward. "You've drawn the eyes of the divine. What you are becoming… should not be."
Kairo looked up, fire flickering in his irises.
"I didn't choose to be this. But I'll choose what I become."
The room fell silent.
And in the shadows of the upper balcony, Arkan clenched his jaw. His eyes glowed with something ancient something jealous.
"You won't reach the top," he whispered.
Kairo walked out of the Trial Hall as the sigils burned one final message above the sky:
Candidate Kairo Vale: Unranked Accepted. Path to Ascension Initiated.
But somewhere beyond the stars, an old god stirred.
"You've passed the first gate, child," it said. "But Heaven does not break so easily."