Alessia woke with Damian’s name on her lips. She’d barely slept, stress from her Brothers’ coming Trial and Vickers’ ultimatum churning through her mind all night. She dressed quickly and stepped into the hallway. Damian’s door stood ajar. Inside, his bed was made with precision, but empty. She moved to Ultrix’s room, then Marcus’s. All the same, vacant, orderly, final. They were gone. The Trial of Change had begun.

  She ran down the hallway toward the main hall. Empty, just the faint crackle of torches along the walls. Her heart pounded, not from running but from the fear that last night was truly the last time she’d see him alive. She headed for the stairs leading deeper into Last Pass. The lower levels. That’s where they’d conduct something this dangerous. She’d never been down there, but it was the only place that made sense for the Trial that could kill or transform them.

  Her pace slowed as she descended further upon hearing voices that she couldn’t make out the words to. She knew this wasn’t something she was supposed to see, but she had to, just to see him one final time. She could feel her pulse in her throat now. The fear of being caught, of not seeing Damian, but also the hope of seeing him. The conflicting emotions twisted in her stomach.

  “Brothers,” Master Tormund’s voice echoed off the walls. “Remove your cloaks… and everything else.”

  “Master?” One of them asked but she couldn’t decipher who.

  “It’s for your own benefit,” he said. “Keeps the suicide rates down.”

  She peeked her head around the corner. Her Brothers were lined on either side of the walls. Master Tormund, Master Vickers and Scribe Willem stood between them. It was quieter now, no one seemed to want to be the first to take the plunge. Then shuffling from further down and the unmistakable sound of heavy cloth pooling against stone. The others, as if triggered by the sound, began removing their cloaks, their clothes and underclothes. Now was the first time the full scale of their scars was revealed. Some covered themselves while others remained stoic. Embarrassment crashed over her. She felt ashamed watching them without their knowledge, but she had to see Damian.

  Master Tormund opened the small worn black box Scribe Willem was holding. He pulled a small red vial from within and began giving them out to each Brother. Then she saw him, on the left side, near the end. Damian. His eyes were closed. He took in deep steady breaths as his fingers pinched the vial next to his chest, while his lips murmured unspoken words. He appeared peaceful, but something inside her knew better.

  “This is it, Brothers,” Master Tormund said. “Drink the vial and drop it to the floor.”

  Damian immediately uncorked the vial and drained it, the emptied glass fell from his fingers and shattered against the floor below. The others followed suit, most of them shattered but there was the occasional one that clinked against stone, surviving. What they were about to face was similar, she realized. Would Damian survive the fall where his glass did not?

  “Enter your cells,” he said. “The Trial of Change has begun. May strength serve you all through the coming long night, Brothers.”

  It was somber, nothing else was said. She watched him disappear through the door, perhaps forever. The sounds of their bare feet meeting stone was all that remained, until the closing of cell doors and the sharp screech of rusty locks engaging.

  “Master Tormund,” someone shouted.

  “Yes, Brother Ultrix?”

  “When I get out of here, I’m going to kick your ass.”

  The hall ignited with laughter. Master Tormund had never gone all out on someone during sparring sessions. Even when they tried to goad him into it.

  “When you get out of there, Brother Ultrix,” he said. “You’re going to be the first to experience what I can do.”

  More laughter, it was just what they needed for what was to come. Her calculations were brutal, nineteen were going in, and according to Master Vickers the attrition rate was upwards of eighty percent. At best… four might survive this.

  “Goodbye, my friend,” Aleessia whispered before turning and making her way up the staircase. Tears streamed down her face but she made no sound. Her pace quickened the further she got before realizing she was sprinting through the main hall, back towards her room. She threw herself onto her bed and screamed into the pillow. The statistics crushed her, nineteen going in, and maybe four coming out. Damian was going to die.

  She rolled from the bed, fingernails digging into her palm before she struck the stone wall. Her knuckles split, blood marking the stone, her shoulder ached from the impact. Again, this time with the other hand, and with the same result. She screamed at the wall as she fell to her knees, not from the physical pain, if anything it helped mask what she’d been feeling. Her auburn hair fell around her face as she slumped over, body shaking with sobs she could no longer hold back.

  “Sister Alessia,” Master Vickers said gently from the doorway. “Calm. Calm. Breathe.”

  The unexpected voice shocked her, Vickers had seen everything, and irrationality prodded at her to lash out. Master Vickers didn’t understand, how could she? Calm. Calm. Breathe. She repeated reluctantly. Her hands trembled against her face as she rocked back and forth. The sobs continued despite her efforts. Breathe. Calm. Calm.

  A minute or so must have passed by now as she began to recover by repeating the process over in her mind. Her exhales became less shaky, her hands steadied, and her rocking eased.

  “There you go,” she reassured her. “Calm. Calm. Breathe.”

  She walked further in the room and sat at the edge of the bed. Her hand gently rested on Alessia’s shoulder. “This is my fifth Trial and it never gets easier for me.”

  “I should… I should be down there with them,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “I know exactly how you feel, Sister,” she said. “I watched my Brothers take the Trial without me too, nearly forty years ago.”

  She stopped rocking. “How did you—how many of them…”

  “Twenty-two went in, total loss.” She paused. “Good Brothers, and some close friends. I had to live for them, Sister. I mourned, many, many nights. I lived for them though. I told myself I was going to be the best at what I did. For them.”

  Total loss. Zero.

  Alessia closed her eyes, tears escaped, running down her cheeks. Her heart pounded in her ears. “I… I don’t know what to say.” She felt Master Vickers’ pain, a scar reopened.

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  “You don’t have to say anything, Sister,” she said. “It’s you that needs me. Master Tormund came to me… broke the news of the Trial, consoled me. Before he left he said to me, ‘Sister Vickers, now is the moment that defines who you really are. This is your Trial.’ I wouldn’t hear it, refused the wisdom and instead I…” She paused. “I wanted to die. Every morning I woke up and remembered they were gone. I thought about leaving The Order, thought about... ending it. But I realized he was right, the Sisters undergo the Trial in their own way. Not through a vial, but the aftermath of it.”

  She shuffled around on her knees to face her. “I’m so afraid. I thought I was stronger than this.”

  “But you are,” she said. “I didn’t see fear when you were paired against Marcus, Damian and Zeke. I didn’t see fear when you were pressed into a corner by Konrad, your guard, perfect. Right up to the moment you kneed him and forced him into the same corner. Didn’t see fear while you were pinned by Damian before you rolled him into an arm bar.”

  Alessia wanted to believe her but this felt different from physical prowess.

  “You know what else I have seen?” She asked. “I’ve seen courage, the type that the hawk we call our own would shudder at. You plunged down to meet a predator greater than yourself. I saw it as you entered that main hall and demanded your cloak from Tormund. Or when you told me that you weren’t a Scribe and that they would be the ones writing about you, that’s not fear, Sister Alessia. Sister Ophelia would have admired you for those.”

  The tears weren’t from pain anymore. “I wish I could have known her.”

  “Me too.” Master Vickers admitted. “Honor her through how you carry yourself. Honor your Brothers in that same way.” She paused. “If the two of you walked these halls together, here and now, I would have loved to see the madness Master Tormund descended into.”

  She laughed at the thought as she wiped her eyes. “You probably wouldn’t think so once it came to your door.”

  “I—”

  “Vickers,” Master Tormund said from the door. “We should meet with Scribe Willem.” He didn’t ask what was going on, he knew.

  Master Vickers patted her shoulder and got up from the bed. “Of course, Tormund. Sister Alessia, get some rest.”

  She nodded. Master Vickers made her way to the door to follow Master Tormund. “Master Vickers, thank you.”

  She nodded in turn. “You’re welcome, Sister Alessia.”

  She gave them a few moments to walk down the hall before climbing into the bed. She’d welcome the physical fatigue of a day of hard lessons over her current mental exhaustion any day. Her nervous system still hadn’t found its normal rhythm, her breath hitched as she laid on her stomach. She was more at ease now as the physical trauma began to take over the emotional. Sleep came quickly regardless.

  Her knuckles and shoulders throbbed from hitting the stone wall. Dried blood stained her sheets. She rolled over onto her side. Hours had passed, the light from her window had turned to darkness. Her body begged her to just lay back down and sleep, but something else pushed that thought away and forced her to stand. Her legs were shaky as they took her weight, but she moved all the same out the door and towards the main hall.

  Master Tormund was next to the staircase that led to the holding cells, head bowed as he recited something to himself. She realized the Hunter had probably heard her before she even made it to the main hall, but he didn’t flinch. She knew he was praying as the sounds of screaming registered with her, reverberating from the depths.

  Part of her wanted to run, to flee back to her room where the walls might muffle the sounds of her Brothers' agony. But her feet remained planted, rooted by a mixture of horror and desperate need to bear witness to what they were enduring.

  She quietly knelt beside him. The howls from below and his desperate prayer tore at her heart.

  The jagged scar that ran from the side of his head down passed his shoulder, and likely beyond, looked far more prominent now.

  “Vivek, Father of All,” he murmured under his breath. “I beseech you, extend your grace to my Brothers. Armor them in your infinite mercy. Noktra, Goddess of the Void, I beseech you. Smother the Presence that threatens to consume my Brothers with the weight of your infinite darkness. Lautrek, Lord of War, I beseech you. Arm my Brothers with your infinite might through the long night.”

  The first hour brought screams of terror—raw, human sounds that echoed up the stone stairwell. Alessia gripped her knees tighter as she recognized the timbre of panic, the kind of cries that came from seeing something that shouldn’t exist. Then the sounds changed. The screaming became something else—not pain, but struggle. As if they were fighting something they couldn’t see.

  The litany repeated despite the wails. She joined him in reverence, copying the words, plea after plea.

  Her mind faltered, forcing her to distinguish voices in the chaos below. Was that Marcus’s voice, high and desperate? The deep, guttural moans could be Ultrix—he’d always been the quietest, even his suffering muted. She pressed her ear closer to the stone, trying to parse meaning from the madness. Some cries sounded almost... triumphant? Others dissolved into whimpers that made her stomach clench.

  The ancient stones seemed to absorb the sounds, distorting them into something inhuman. What should have been screams became warped echoes that bounced off corridors built centuries ago for this very purpose. The air itself felt thick, oppressive, even the torches seemed to flicker in rhythm with the sounds below.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Sister,” he finally said. “It’s… unhealthy.”

  “What I feel isn’t anything compared to what they are going through down there,” she whispered. She used his own words against him, ones spoken decades ago to then Sister Vickers. “This is my Trial.”

  It caught him off guard she noticed, his otherwise quick replies, delayed. Wounded. “Spoken like a true Hunter.”

  Her eyes closed. It meant everything to finally hear, but at the same time… nothing at all.

  “I shouldn’t have done that to you,” he said after a moment. “The dagger.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. I don’t think you know how much this meant to me.” Her voice trembled. “You and Master Vickers had always been transparent about it, but I convinced myself that my efforts would speak otherwise.”

  “I’ve seen them all, the brave, the strong, the false bravado,” he said. “And I’ve watched them piss themselves as the vial is drained.” He turned to her. “I can see it in you, real courage, not the veneer. I grieve with you, Sister, but I won’t allow the Book to claim you. I’m sorry.”

  “We all enter that Book at some point, Master Tormund.”

  “And some paths,” he said as those eerie black eyes watched her. “Lead into that Book much sooner.”

  At least he’s not lying to me about why. He genuinely believes this will kill me. Master Vickers, Master Tormund both proved to be dead ends. Sister Ophelia must have felt this same frustration with Grand Master Kelvin. What am I missing?

  She inhaled a deep breath, steadying herself, and nodded.

  By the fifth hour, Alessia had stopped trying to identify individual voices. The sounds had become a wall of noise that battered against her consciousness until she felt numb, hollowed out. Her fingernails had drawn blood from her palms, but she barely noticed. This was what Master Tormund had warned them about—not just death, but the destruction of everything human.

  They remained there together through most of the long night, praying until their mouths went dry. Their Brothers’ cries fell silent. The horror of what that meant spoke volumes.

  Tormund eventually stood, his knees protesting from the time against the stone. “There’s nothing more we can do until dawn,” he said quietly. “The Trial must run its course.”

  Alessia rose on unsteady legs, but her eyes remained fixed on the staircase leading down to the cells. Reluctantly she walked back to her room; it felt longer than the hours they’d spent in prayer.

  She lay in her bed fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard the echo of screams cutting to silence. Tormund’s words replayed: “Spoken like a true Hunter.” But beneath it all, one thought dominated: Was Damian’s voice among those that went silent? The guilt of singling him out from her other Brothers ate at her. Marcus, Ultrix, all of them faced the same horror. Yet she couldn’t stop herself from wondering if his hands were still warm, like that moment at the shrine, if he’d survived where others hadn’t. Hours passed. Near dawn, she gave up pretending to sleep and returned to the main hall.