I SAT BENEATH the low-slung rafters of the Initiate's dormitory, legs curled beneath me, trying to still the tremble in my hands. Dawn hadn't quite cracked the sky, but the bell had already tolled once—the first of three. I had maybe an hour before they would call me. My scar ached like it always did in the cold, a low, simmering pressure at the base of my neck.
Across from me, Ferrin chewed on the end of a quill. His hair was a crooked black mess, eyes still bruised from too many sleepless nights. "You'll be fine, Taren," he said, not looking up. "You've got the form, the breath. The lines in your motion. Even Seth said so."
"It's not the motion that worries me," I muttered. My fingers tapped against the carved wood of the cot. "It's what happens after."
Ferrin paused, then looked at me for the first time. "You mean your scar?"
I nodded. He didn't press. He never did.
Instead, he leaned forward and passed me a small stone bead from his satchel. "They gave me this before my trial. Said it's part of an old shard from Vellum's bones. Hold it when you're called. For luck."
I turned it over in my palm. Smooth, faintly humming. Maybe it was a trick of the air, or maybe Vellum still had fragments of himself left in the world.
"Do you think it will help?" I asked, more to fill the silence than anything else.
Ferrin smirked faintly. "Help? Maybe. But you know what they say about the Steps. They don't judge by charm or faith. Just blood and will."
The second bell tolled. We both froze.
"You should go," Ferrin said. "They'll want you early."
"I know." I stood slowly. "Thanks."
"Don't shatter out there."
I gave a weak smile. "No promises."
I paused at the door. "Hey, Ferrin?"
He looked up.
"If I don't come back... tell Seth he was right about the footwork. But wrong about everything else."
He chuckled. "I'll let him know. Go, before you lose your nerve."
The walk to the trial chamber was cold. The deeper I went into the inner corridors of the temple, the less light dared accompany me. The stone here was black-veined and damp, etched with old script that twisted if stared at too long. It whispered nonsense just on the edge of hearing. Once, I thought I heard my name.
Two robed guards flanked the last gate—silent, unmoving. One of them tapped the butt of his spear on the floor twice, and the gate opened with a grinding groan.
I passed under the arch of the Founding Step. I remembered touching it as a child. Back then it seemed holy. Now, I could see the hairline fractures running through its surface, as if it too was trying not to collapse.
Inside, the air changed. It grew thicker, heavier. Not just from the wards carved into the stone but from the pressure of a thousand unseen eyes. This was the domain of judgement. And it did not forgive.
The Step-pit was wider than I remembered. Ringed by statues of long-dead god-forms, it seemed more a tomb than a testing ground. At its center lay the fracture—long, silver, pulsing faintly. The dais above was filled with judges, masked and robed in bone-white. Some held staves etched with runes; others simply watched.
My feet were bare. I could feel the thrum of the fracture beneath them.
"Taren of Hollowvale," one judge intoned. "Approach."
I stepped forward. The air vibrated.
"Begin."
I took in a slow breath and closed my eyes. I thought of motion—not walking, but changing place. I reached inward. My scar blazed. The world twisted.
And I moved.
The rest unfolded in shatterpoints—heat, flash, echo. My body landed across the fracture, but others came with me. Reflections of myself stuttered into being, each a fraction of a choice. One knelt. One wept. One looked up and screamed.
Light flared. Master Veylin collapsed. Voices rose. Shadows buckled.
And my own moved when I did not.
I stood frozen, breaths shallow and thin. The echoes of my selves still clung to the air—ghostly outlines caught between choice and consequence. One of them lingered longer than the rest, a version of me with eyes wide and scar flaring violet, unmoving as it stared at the dais.
Then it blinked. I had not.
A judge shouted, "Contain him!"
Wards flared in the stone floor. I felt them bite into my scar, the heat of their rejection pressing me back into my body like a fist. I staggered, and the phantom figures vanished in a sharp crack of displaced air. The fracture line dimmed but did not still.
Iron hands gripped my arms.
"I didn't mean to," I said, though I wasn't sure to whom.
"You summoned echoes," said the robed woman who held my right shoulder. "Twins of possibility. Forbidden even in theory."
"I didn't summon anything!"
They dragged me from the pit. The crowd remained silent—horrified, stunned, maybe even curious. A single stone dropped somewhere, and the sound echoed like thunder.
As they hauled me into the side passage, I caught Ferrin's eyes in the crowd. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
I had become something else.
Something watched.
And it wore my face.
The Room of Silence did not greet me. It swallowed me. As the heavy iron door sealed behind the guards, the world seemed to hush, like a breath being held across dimensions.
There were no torches, only a dull luminescence that bled from the stone itself—a soft, pulsing glow like moonlight filtered through milk. The chamber was round, windowless, and smooth. Every wall bore etched runes layered over one another like a palimpsest of forgotten prayers. Some pulsed. Some wept. One, near the far end, shimmered like it had never fully decided to be real.
I sat on the stone bench at the center, alone.
The silence pressed into me like pressure from deep underwater. I could not hear the beat of my heart. Even the hum of my scar, usually so constant I barely noticed it anymore, had gone quiet.
I stared at my hands.
What had I done?
No—what had I become?
I remembered the reflections—my other selves—bleeding into this world like cracks in glass. Each one an answer to a question I had not asked. The one that screamed haunted me the most. Not because of its fear, but because I understood it.
In the stillness, doubt bloomed. What if it hadn't been an accident? What if something in me had called them, willed them?
I remembered the moment before I Stepped. There had been something beneath my thoughts. Not a voice, but a weight. An invitation.
I shivered.
The runes on the walls remained silent. But I began to notice the patterns. They spiraled out from the center—not from where I sat, but from a hidden circle in the floor just behind the bench. A drain? A seal?
The scar at the base of my neck itched again.
I stood, walked the room, dragging my fingers along the wall. Each symbol was warm to the touch—some pulsed with what felt like breath, others recoiled.
Was this how they punished transgression? Not with pain, but with solitude and the unbearable weight of your own mind?
I thought of Ferrin. Of his crooked smile and quick wit. Would he be told? Would he care?
I thought of my family, though I hadn't seen them in years. I thought of Hollowvale, and the river we were forbidden to cross. I thought of the gods—dead and dreaming, everyone said. But maybe not all of them had stopped watching.
I sat again, curling forward, hands on my knees.
For a moment, I wished the reflections had stayed. At least then I'd have company.
Then the door creaked open.
And the judges entered.
Three of them, draped in bone-white robes stitched with black thread, moved with unsettling precision. Their faces were hidden behind expressionless masks carved from ironwood—one shaped like an owl, another a hound, the last a blank visage with no features at all. The door sealed behind them with a hush, and silence returned, but it was no longer empty. It had form. Weight. Judgment.
Elder Voren, the owl, stepped forward. His voice was soft, but each syllable pressed against my ears like cold metal. "Taren of Hollowvale. You have done what should not be possible."
I stayed seated, my voice caught in my throat.
"Rise," the hound intoned.
I stood, slowly, the stone beneath me warm from the long wait.
"You fractured the Step," Voren continued. "You brought forth reflections. Not projections. Not echoes. Fractured paths—untethered, unstable. And you let one linger."
"I didn't let it," I said, forcing the words out. "It came through. I didn't call it."
The faceless judge tilted its head. "Yet it answered."
Silence stretched again.
"What did you see?" Voren asked.
"Versions of myself. One was kneeling. Another was screaming. One just… stared."
"And what did you feel?" the hound prompted.
"Like I'd stepped into a place I didn't belong. And that something inside me wanted to stay there."
The faceless judge stepped closer. "Did it feel divine?"
I hesitated. "No. Not divine. But not mortal either."
All three judges shared a glance—a tilt of the head, a brief pause. Ancient codes exchanged without words.
"You are not to return to the dormitories," Voren said. "You will remain under guard until the High Circle convenes."
"Am I being punished?" I asked.
"No," said the faceless one. "Not yet."
They turned and left, the echo of their robes whispering like dry leaves.
I was alone again. But this time, the silence buzzed with the knowledge that the world had tilted, and no one—not even the judges—knew what it would become.