Chapter 25: No Rest
An hour passed like smoke through fingers, silent and vanishing.
Aric Blackthorn dropped from the obsidian podium with quiet resolve, his boots whispering against the cold stone.
"That should be enough time," he muttered inwardly, flexing his fingers around the haft of his scythe.
He had gambled on Kael and Kendal drawing out the worst of the trial's gauntlet. But this wasn't a clean-cut scheme. Trials like this rarely tolerated loopholes. They punished the clever and exalted the cautious.
"Worst-case? I get hit with every challenge they did, just... retroactively."
The path forward demanded alertness, precision, and the willingness to bleed if necessary. Aric shifted his grip: dominant hand low at the base, the other curled near the blade’s neck. The curved steel
