Eryn

Gold-white light folds open beside the Heartgarden’s ancient growths. Elion steps through still gripping the reinforced scroll container, and the fading sigil closes behind him.

Kheros, the broad-shouldered warrior in his long black robe, moves quickly through the luminous garden. Silver-gold light burns faintly in his eyes as he guides Elion toward a quiet stone beneath ancient roots.

Once Elion is seated, Kheros lowers himself opposite him. Leaves stir overhead without wind, and distant mana pulses through the garden’s roots like a slow, troubled heartbeat.

Kheros waits in grave silence, leaving the garden’s ancient growths and the failing seals behind him as an unanswered question.

Elion nods, receiving the answer without hesitation. Kheros rises from the stone and watches him with grave focus, ready to test what the awakening has made possible.

Kheros’s eyes widen at the mention of an Entity, but he remains silent, allowing Elion to finish. His attention sharpens without interrupting the account.

Elion plants his feet in the Heartgarden’s battle ring and steadies his breathing. He braces every muscle, preparing to meet Kheros without retreating from the coming trial.

Before Elion can react, Kheros seizes his head. A crushing force floods through him, so immense that his skull feels ready to split. His attempted bracing collapses under the pressure.

Kheros throws Elion across the garden. He strikes the battle ring and rolls to a stop, dizzy and gasping, with blood slipping from the corner of his mouth.

Kheros’s voice rumbles from the far edge of the ring, shaking the stones with a miniature quake. Elion’s vision swims, but the failed brace has changed the lesson: ordinary resistance cannot withstand Kheros’s pressure.

Elion snaps the Hourglass of the Narrow Escape into motion. The miniature grains flare, recording his exact position as Kheros surges across the battle ring.

Kheros’s fist drives toward Elion with overwhelming force. At the final instant, Elion triggers the hourglass and vanishes from the strike’s path, reappearing at the recorded position behind the attack.

The bronze wristpiece falls still. Elion remains upright and unstruck, his breath sharp but controlled as the hourglass’s ten-second window closes.

Kheros pivots to face him again, silver-gold light burning in his eyes. The lesson continues, but Elion has answered the immediate strike on his own terms.

Kheros crosses the ring in a blur. Elion reaches for the Hourglass, but the punch lands first, hurling him through the air. His attempt to transform collapses into disorientation before he can find the power.

Kheros follows him upward and drives him into the earth. The impact leaves a deep crater and robs Elion of breath; pain overwhelms his senses, and the hourglass hangs uselessly at his wrist.

Before Elion can rise, Kheros’s kick snaps his head aside and leaves him sprawled at the crater’s center. The assault stops short of killing him, but his strength is nearly gone.

The question rumbles through the Heartgarden, shaking roots and stone. Kheros stands over Elion, while the failed transformation and spent escape relic leave him unable to repeat the same defense. The trial has become a test of survival, not evasion.

As consciousness slips, Elion relaxes instead of resisting. He searches inward through the pain until he finds the fiery current, then guides it through every part of his body.

The current answers. New strength spreads through Elion’s limbs, and the crushing weakness recedes enough for him to rise from the crater. Gold ignites within his pupils, followed by a faint golden aura.

Kheros dashes backward across the battle ring and smiles. Elion steadies himself, his breath harsh but controlled, then turns fully toward the warrior who has forced the awakening from him.

Elion launches across the ring. Gold and silver light trail his movement as he closes the distance, Kharul’vok ready, and meets Kheros in a thunderous clash of strength and awakened draconic power.

Elion drives forward through the clash, gold light tightening around his limbs. Kharul’vok cuts across Kheros’s guard and lands against his shoulder with a ringing impact.

The successful strike twists Elion’s body hard. Pain bites through his sword arm, and his footing slips across the stone as the force of the blow strains his shoulder.

Kheros pivots with the impact, boots carving shallow lines into the battle ring. His robe shifts around the struck shoulder, but he remains upright and focused.

Elion’s sword arm trembles from the strain, yet Kharul’vok remains firmly in his grasp. Across the ring, Kheros raises his guard and advances again.

Kheros spins and drives a powerful kick toward Elion. Elion catches it with Kharul’vok, but the impact launches him across the battle ring and into open air.

His sword arm trembles from the force, shoulder straining as he tumbles skyward. Below, Kheros lands lightly and turns beneath him, already gathering a fierce inner blaze.

A massive wave of fire erupts from Kheros and surges upward, filling the space around Elion with roaring heat and blinding orange light.

Elion twists in midair, drawing his knees close and angling Kharul’vok alongside his body. He slips over the fire wave’s crest as it thunders past beneath him.

The flames pass harmlessly below. Elion clears the attack and remains airborne, gold aura flickering around him as he turns toward Kheros and prepares to descend.

As Elion begins to descend, Kheros launches upward after him, reaching for his head with one powerful hand. The air tightens around the sudden pursuit.

Elion’s draconic instinct ignites before conscious thought can intervene. Gold flashes through his eyes, and his body folds sharply aside, turning with the current of his descent.

Kheros’s fingers close on empty air where Elion’s head had been. Elion slips past his grasp cleanly, his aura streaming behind him as he clears the reach.

Elion completes the evasive turn and descends beyond Kheros’s grasp, landing on the battle ring with his feet beneath him and Kharul’vok held ready.

Kheros drops lightly across the ring and turns to face him. The firelight fades from the air, leaving the next exchange open beneath the Heartgarden’s ancient roots.

Elion watches Kheros’s shoulders, hips, and feet instead of following the feints of his hands. The warrior’s weight settles before each advance, revealing the direction a heartbeat early.

Kheros lunges with a direct punch, then pivots sharply to turn the strike into a sweeping backhand. Elion recognizes the change and waits rather than reacting to the first motion.

When the backhand comes, Elion steps inside its arc and catches Kheros’s forearm with Kharul’vok’s flat. His strained sword arm trembles under the impact, but the parry holds.

Elion turns with the force instead of opposing it, redirects Kheros past his center, and brings the blade’s guarded edge to the warrior’s ribs before stopping cleanly.

Kheros lowers his arm and steps back, acknowledging the stopped blade. Elion withdraws Kharul’vok and resets his stance, the lesson now anchored in observation as well as instinct.

Kheros smiles with clear approval. Gold still burns in Elion’s eyes, and his aura remains steady despite the exhaustion weighing heavily on his body.

The answer reaches Elion with startling force. His legs give way, and he falls onto his back across the battle ring, staring upward as the scale of Kheros’s power settles over him.

Kheros does not press the advantage. He lets the trial end, and the Heartgarden’s quiet mana begins restoring Elion’s breathing while his transformation remains stable.

Elion remains on his back beneath the Heartgarden’s ancient roots. Gold still glows in his eyes, but the aura gradually softens as his breathing steadies.

Elion allows his muscles to loosen. The Heartgarden’s mana flows through the stone beneath him, easing his exhaustion and settling the fiery current within his body.

Time passes quietly. Elion’s pulse slows, his vision clears, and the strain in his shoulder fades as the garden gives his body room to recover.

Kheros settles nearby while Elion rests beneath the luminous branches. The battle ring grows still, and the Heartgarden holds him in safe, restorative silence.

It heals the living being or damages the undead being it affected.

The words settle clearly in the Heartgarden. Kheros inclines his head, and the quest takes hold without demanding anything more from Elion.

Elion lets his body rest against the stone. Mana flows gently through the Heartgarden, healing his living body and easing the exhaustion left by the trial.

His breathing deepens, and sleep arrives beneath the luminous roots. Kheros keeps watch nearby as Elion’s health steadily returns.

While Elion sleeps, Kheros examines the strained shoulder and carefully tests its movement. The joint remains stable, but the surrounding muscles are tight from the trial.

Kheros warms a bitter medicinal resin between his palms, then presses it into the strained muscle with precise, controlled pressure. Elion’s breathing remains deep as sleep holds him.

He guides a measured current of Heartgarden mana through the Golden Staff and into the treatment. The ache loosens, the trembling muscle settles, and the sword arm regains safe movement.

The resin is completely consumed, leaving no reserve for another treatment. Kheros lowers the Golden Staff beside Elion and keeps watch as the Heartgarden continues restoring his health.

It heals the living being or damages the undead being it affected.

Elion wakes beneath the luminous roots, restored enough to move. Kheros waits across the battle ring, upright and ready, the Golden Staff resting beyond the stones.

The trial begins. Kheros presses forward with crushing strikes, while Elion pivots, slips past each blow, and answers with controlled cuts from Kharul’vok. Gold flickers in his eyes.

For three relentless minutes, Elion survives the storm. He lands several clean strikes against Kheros’s guard, evades the killing angles, and refuses to surrender consciousness.

A final exchange sends Elion skidding across the stone. His ribs bruise beneath the impact, and his breath catches sharply, but he remains awake and on his feet.

Kheros lowers his guard. Elion’s breathing remains ragged, but the battle ring belongs to his victory: he endured the full trial without being knocked out.

A second horn grows from Kheros’s forehead as his draconic power rises. He vanishes across the battle ring, leaving only displaced air and trembling roots behind.

Gold ignites in Elion’s eyes. He releases his first transformation and tracks the pressure changes, the disturbed dust, and the faint distortions between one heartbeat and the next.

Kheros seems to teleport around him, but Elion’s legendary agility catches one instant: a golden-black silhouette pivoting behind his shoulder before disappearing again.

The drill continues through a blur of impossible approaches. Elion dodges the feints by reading the air, yet each movement remains too fast to follow completely.

At last, Kheros appears directly before him and pretends to drive a fist into his face. The punch stops just short, but its massive gust whips Elion’s dreads and bends the grass behind him.

Kheros lowers his fist. Elion remains upright, breathing hard, with the successful glimpse fixed clearly in his memory as the lesson’s reward.

Kheros touches one of his horns, then the other, his expression calm beneath the Heartgarden’s luminous roots. The explanation carries no mystery beyond discipline and alignment.

Kheros lowers his hand and studies Elion’s golden eyes. The lesson is clear: horns are not granted by blood alone, but shaped through patient command of the mana already awakening within him.

Kheros dashes to the far edge of the Heartgarden and closes his eyes. His limbs lengthen, his frame swells, and his skin darkens until it becomes utterly black beneath the luminous roots.

His body rises higher and higher, reshaping with immense wings, four powerful legs, and a vast draconic form. At seventy meters tall, Kheros towers over the garden, golden eyes opening within the colossal black dragon’s face.

Elion falls back a step, terror surging through him at the scale before him. He catches his breath, steadies his stance, and refuses to let fear master his body.

Elion raises Kharul’vok and advances beneath Kheros’s colossal wings. Terror presses against his resolve, but he keeps moving, gold light gathering in his eyes.

Kheros’s voice rumbles through the Heartgarden. One immense claw sweeps across the ring, and Elion pivots beneath it, closing the distance instead of retreating.

Elion leaps and strikes Kheros’s armored foreleg with Kharul’vok, then lands hard and rolls clear as the dragon’s answering wingbeat scatters dust and leaves.

Elion drives forward beneath Kheros’s colossal wings, pouring all his strength into Kharul’vok. The blade rises toward the dragon’s immense chest, but the scale between them makes the attack hopelessly slow.

Kheros’s paw sweeps across the ring before Elion can reach him. The blow catches him and sends him tumbling through dust and leaves, his ribs jolting as the Heartgarden blurs around him.

The world goes dark. When Elion’s senses return, he lies against the ancient tree where he began, roots glowing around his body and drawing away the worst of the pain. Kharul’vok rests beside him.

Kheros now stands nearby in his normal form, two horns rising from his brow. He watches in silence while the roots steadily restore Elion’s living body, leaving the failed attack impossible to repeat unchanged.

After a long interval, Elion wakes beneath the luminous branches. His breathing is shallow but stable, and the lesson remains clear: against that form, reaching the body is not enough. He must first understand its movement.

For eighteen months, Elion trains beneath the Heartgarden’s luminous roots. He masters his transformed movement, endures Kheros’s trials, and finishes the final exercise standing, breathing hard but unbroken.

During the regimen, Kheros sends a black-feathered raven carrying a warning to Saadia, Lydia, Lioran, Oskar, Veil, and the others: Elion will be absent for nine months by Eryn’s reckoning, and a calamity approaches.

On the final day, Elion completes the last physical trial in a single controlled sequence. He crosses the ring beneath Kheros’s assault, redirects the force, and touches the marked stone without falling.

The final contact awakens a narrow silver path through the Heartgarden, leading to a sealed archway that was invisible before. Kheros studies it, recognizing a route Elion can use later.

Gold-white light gathers around Elion and the reinforced scroll container. After eighteen months beneath Kheros’s guidance, the Heartgarden releases him toward Eryn and the waiting resistance.

Gold-white light opens at the Haven. Elion steps through the scroll’s fading sigil and sees Saadia, Lydia, Oskar, and Lioran waiting with renewed strength beside four unfamiliar, formidable figures: a swift young adult Kalox man, three adult women, including two elves and an imposing vampire.

He runs toward Saadia. The sudden effort compresses his bruised ribs and steals a harsh breath, but he reaches her and pulls her into a fierce embrace without slowing.

Elion cries against Saadia’s shoulder, overwhelmed by relief. She holds him tightly, one hand cradling the back of his head as the Haven’s gathered resistance watches in quiet respect.

Elion releases Saadia only to embrace Lydia, Oskar, and Lioran in turn. Their changed strength cannot conceal the warmth of the reunion, and each holds him close despite his labored breathing.

The resistance has spread far beyond the Haven’s first walls. Refugees fill new shelters and fields, while soldiers, healers, and scouts organize beneath its growing protection. Saadia remains close to Elion as the account continues.

Kael steps forward, a young adult man with a tall, athletic build, warm brown skin, sharp features, and short dark hair, wearing polished silver armor over a deep-blue cloak with a spear-shaped brooch, from the gathered refugees and presses a silver war-seal between his palms. Its light rises into the Haven’s air, forming a clear circle of distant faces and attentive voices.

Elion’s offer carries through Kael’s silver war-seal. Behind him, the Haven’s gathered soldiers, healers, scouts, and refugees stand in disciplined silence, while the distant heroes listen through the circle of light.