Dialos ran.

  Stone doors slammed behind him as he tore through the castle corridors, boots slipping on old blood and ash. The walls screamed with echoes he remembered too well—his people’s voices breaking mid-cry, cut short as if ripped from the world itself.

  “No—no—” he gasped, lungs burning.

  He didn’t know when the tears started. He only knew his vision blurred and his chest hurt worse than any wound he had ever taken in battle.

  The ground shook.

  A door boomed open behind him.

  The sound that followed was not a roar.

  It was worse.

  Chains dragging.

  Claws scraping stone.

  A breath that rattled like a dying furnace.

  Dialos dove behind a crumbling pillar just as the beast entered the hall.

  What remained of his father filled the corridor—too large, too wrong. Batlike wings torn through fur and flesh. Horns twisted into jagged spikes. Slobber fell from a mouth that no longer remembered language.

  And still—

  Somewhere in those eyes, Dialos knew his father was watching.

  A door shimmered into existence at the far end of the hall.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Escape.

  Dialos saw it.

  And could not move.

  His legs locked. His hands shook so violently he had to press them against the stone to stay upright. Every instinct screamed at him to run—to survive—to leave this place behind like he had before.

  But fear froze him in place.

  For the first time since childhood, Dialos prayed.

  Not loudly.

  Not proudly.

  Just a broken whisper pressed into the dark.

  “Please…”

  At first, nothing answered.

  Then—

  Warmth.

  It bloomed in his chest, gentle and unfamiliar. His bones cracked—not in pain, but in release. His body stretched and reshaped, the boy falling away as the man returned.

  Black horns bleached to white.

  Bat wings unfurled—then transformed, feathers spilling outward, dark as midnight, edged in pale light like a fallen angel’s.

  White markings streaked across his skin like war paint carved by fate itself.

  A sword fell before him.

  Massive.

  Radiant.

  Holy.

  Dialos stared at it, stunned.

  Power hummed through him—enough to run, enough to flee through the door and never look back.

  He lifted the blade.

  Then he turned.

  The beast charged.

  Dialos met it head-on.

  Their collision split the hall.

  With one swing, he sent the creature crashing back through pillars and stone. He leapt after it, roaring—not in rage, but in grief—and drove the blade down.

  The holy sword pierced the beast’s chest.

  Light surged.

  The monster shrank, flesh unraveling, wings dissolving—until only a man remained.

  Diablo Morvayne.

  Unconscious.

  Alive.

  Dialos fell to his knees.

  The light drained from him all at once. His wings vanished. The sword dissolved into ash.

  He turned toward the door—

  And the world spun.

  Darkness took him before he could take a single step.

  When the trial marked its judgment, no sigil burned his skin.

  He had not failed.

  But he had not passed through the door either.

  Dialos lay unconscious beside his father’s fallen form.

  And the trial moved on—

  leaving behind a king who chose not to run.