Morning light bled through Orahm's glass towers, casting fractal shadows over the echoing streets. The city had awakened in more ways than one. With the Heartspire pulsing anew, the arcane systems that once guided Orahm's defensive mechanisms had stirred—its ancient network of rites and tests reactivating with every heartbeat of the city's core.
Alexandra stood at the base of a wide avenue flanked by ruined archways, her voice echoing softly through the crystalline air. "We are within the Spiral Veins—the living arteries of the city. These streets test not only passage but purpose. They are guided by the seven echoes of the founders."
Shin stepped forward, eyes scanning the unfamiliar runes etched into the pavement. "And how do we pass?"
Alexandra turned, her silken robes swaying. "We trust one another. The city will respond to your truths."
As if in answer, the first set of archways shifted. Runes flared along the ground, forming seven distinct sigils—each representing an elemental force.
Tessara approached them first. Moonlight shimmered across her Kagetsu no Men. As she lowered her blindfold, the mask glowed. Her voice echoed in perfect resonance with the stones. "It sings in echolocation. I can read the city by sound."
She knelt, tapping her staff gently on the ground. Vibrations hummed outward, striking the sigils. A melodic tone echoed in response, and the moon sigil turned blue-white, accepting her.
"Begin," Shin said.
The party entered a chamber of light and mirrors. Walls shifted, altering paths. A kaleidoscope of reflections made it difficult to distinguish illusion from reality.
"Let me," Maika said, activating the Taiyo no Men. Her body surged with solar energy. Twin daggers shimmered in her hands, her aura flaring.
Time slowed.
Dashing forward, Maika marked mirror edges, reflecting attacks back at phantom guardians. She sliced through false walls, exposing real ones. Tessara created illusory bait to lure enemies.
Laverna leapt overhead, using chakra-enhanced agility, and struck pressure plates to alter mirror angles.
Together, they reached the exit. The sigil above the door glowed gold—Sun accepted.
This corridor was filled with poisonous vines, animated by elemental wind. The air shimmered with toxin.
"Let me clear the path," Zera said. Clarent ignited in her hands, slicing through vines with burning arcs.
Tessara summoned foxfire illusions to redirect the wind currents.
Maika, spinning in a burst of wind-infused flips, knocked spores into safe pockets of air.
Laverna closed her eyes and, without chanting, drew water vapor from the poisoned air. With a graceful kata, she shaped it into whips, slashing vines while dancing between thorns.
At the end, Shin pressed his hand to the sigil. It glowed with wind and water, a dual resonance.
"You're adapting," Alexandra said softly, impressed.
Laverna merely nodded, sweat glistening on her collarbone.
Seven pedestals rose in a circle. Each needed to be filled with a specific elemental frequency.
"I'll direct," Shin said. "But this test is yours."
Tessara read the air with echolocation, pinpointing each pedestal's resonance.
Zera, unwavering, used Clarent to strike three runes with exact weight.
Maika used kunai infused with foxfire, planting them on pressure glyphs.
Laverna infused her jamadhars with elemental wind and lightning, launching herself through the air, striking midair runes.
Alexandra sang in a harmonic pitch that healed their burns and boosted their timing.
Each pedestal is lit. The ceiling opened. Stars above.
"Together," Shin said, his voice low. "This city knows us now."
The streets darkened. The sky turned violet, casting long shadows along the crystalline alleys. As a soft hum rose from beneath the ground, the party found themselves separated, each surrounded by ethereal mist.
From that mist, phantoms emerged.
Each Servant faced a reflection, not just in form, but in essence—mirror manifestations of the doubts and burdens they carried in silence.
Tessara stood at the edge of a shattered cloister. Before her knelt her silenced self—head bowed, hands bloodied, blindfold stained with tears. "You broke the vow," the phantom hissed. "You speak lies in the name of the moon."
Tessara trembled, but tightened her grip on her staff. "My voice is the truth. Even if broken. Even if feared. The moon gave me clarity, and I will not bow again."
She placed a hand upon her mask. The Kagetsu no Men glowed, refracting moonlight. A hymn spilled from her lips—pure, defiant. The phantom writhed and vanished like smoke kissed by starlight.
Zera stood in a burning courtyard. Clarent trembled in her grip. Across from her stepped the knight who had struck down her father—masked, faceless, but unmistakable in bearing. The knight's black armor was etched with the faded crest of their fallen kingdom, and in her hands, she wielded Caliburnus: the sacred sword that had once belonged to Zera's bloodline.
The blade glowed with stolen brilliance, its surface streaked with crimson runes.
"I offered him mercy," the phantom said, her voice layered with guilt and disdain. "He died clinging to weakness. I claimed Caliburnus because he no longer deserved it."
Zera's chest burned. She lifted Clarent, its sapphire edge vibrating with fury. "He died with honor. You? You live with none."
They clashed.
Steel sang. Caliburnus met Clarent in a blaze of ruby and sapphire. Sparks danced through the smoke. Each strike between them called forth echoes of the past—shouts of loyal knights, the collapsing halls of her childhood, her father's final cry. The knight fought with precision, every move textbook perfect—as if she had once been trained by the same masters.
Zera ducked a sweeping arc of Caliburnus and rolled beneath the counterstroke, slashing across the phantom's flank. The knight growled, retaliating with a blinding horizontal cut that split a burning pillar behind Zera cleanly in half.
Flames danced in their wake. The courtyard pulsed with ancestral fury.
Clarent clashed with Caliburnus again and again, the two blades struggling for dominance, legacy against betrayal.
Zera feinted high, then brought Clarent down with all her weight. The phantom raised Caliburnus to block—but too late.
With a roar, Zera swept her blade sideways, sending the knight reeling. She seized the moment, spinning behind and driving Clarent into the knight's back.
The phantom gasped, falling to one knee. Caliburnus slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground.
Zera stood over her, breath ragged. "I carry his legacy," she whispered, eyes bright with flame. "Not his shame."
The knight looked up, and for a moment, the mask cracked, revealing haunted eyes Zera recognized. Eyes that once called her sister.
Then the phantom faded in a flare of red light. Caliburnus vanished with her, as if never meant to be hers.
Zera looked to Clarent. It hummed gently in her hand.
"We'll protect them better," she whispered.
She turned, walking back through the smoke toward the others.
Maika walked through her clan's ruined courtyard, where sakura petals once fell. Now only ash drifted through the broken air. The stone tiles beneath her bare feet were scorched and bloodstained. From the shadow of the shattered gate, her brother Katsuro stepped forward, blade still wet with their father's blood.
"You were too weak to stop me," he sneered. "Too late to matter. Always a step behind, little fox."
"I believed in you," Maika whispered. "And you destroyed that belief with your own hands."
Katsuro smirked. "Belief is for the dead."
Her hand rose to the Taiyo no Men. She pressed it to her face, and the world flared gold. Solar fire surged through her veins. Twin kunai snapped into her palms like bolts of judgment.
The battle ignited.
Katsuro came at her with brutal precision. He wielded their father's lost blade, a heavy curved saber etched with clan runes. It screamed with corrupted energy. Maika met him mid-stride, twin kunai spinning, slicing arcs of radiant heat.
Steel clanged. Sparks burst. Her movements blurred, shadows unable to keep pace. Time slowed, her perception dilating. Every breath felt eternal. She ducked his cleave, pivoted behind, drove a kunai at his spine—he blocked, parried, slammed an elbow into her ribs.
She hit the stone hard. Blood spattered from her lip.
"Still soft," he mocked.
Maika's eyes flared. "Still stronger."
She flipped upright in a pulse of heat, solar flares bursting from her back. She launched upward, ricocheted off a fallen column, and struck down with both kunai.
Katsuro blocked again—but this time, her time dilation slowed his defense. She bent his blade wide and struck his chest.
He staggered.
She landed before him, twin daggers reversed, glowing with foxfire.
"I fight for what Father stood for. You fight for ash."
She slashed across his chest, golden light erupting from the wounds. His phantom form cracked, staggered back, and collapsed to his knees.
Katsuro looked up one last time, the sneer gone, replaced by hollow remorse.
Then he shattered into embers.
Maika knelt beside the lingering echo of her father, who placed a spectral hand on her shoulder. His gaze was proud.
"I will lead as you taught me," she whispered. "Even if I must do it alone."
Laverna stood in a dungeon—damp, fetid, its stone walls lined with shackles that whispered with the breath of forgotten screams. Chains rattled as her phantom stepped forward, an emaciated reflection draped in shadow. The mirror version bore every scar she remembered, every wound still etched in muscle and soul. Her eyes were hollow, her collar gleaming like a crown of cruelty.
"You're just pretending," the phantom said, voice like rusted iron. "He saved you out of pity. You still wear the chains—only now, they're around your heart."
Laverna's breath caught. Her jamadhars trembled.
"You can't be free. You don't deserve to be," the phantom hissed. "You're broken. And they will realize it soon enough."
Laverna stepped forward. "I was broken. But I chose to rise. I choose it every day."
The phantom's hands sparked with cruel lightning and lunged. The two clashed in a flurry of blows—jamadhars against shadow claws, sparks exploding against the stone walls. Laverna ducked low, pivoted, flipped backward, her every movement honed by pain and purpose.
"Why do you fight?" the phantom shrieked.
"To prove I'm more than what they made me."
The phantom screamed and surged again, but Laverna met her head-on. Her jamadhars flared with elemental lightning, but this time tinged with radiant flame.
"You're not me," she whispered. "You're who I was. Not who I choose to be."
With a cry, she drove both blades into the phantom's chest. The shadow cracked, light seeping through the wounds.
"I am not a slave," Laverna said. "I am his blade. And my own."
The phantom shattered into drifting ash. The chains around the dungeon walls broke and fell with a soft chorus of finality.
Laverna stood alone—and unshackled.
Alexandra stood in a ruined throne room. Her former council appeared around her, cloaked in pale blue light, each face carved from judgment and pain.
"You failed us," one said. "You fled when Orahm needed its queen."
"I survived," Alexandra answered, stepping forward. Her voice didn't shake, but her eyes shimmered. "So Orahm could awaken again."
Another elder stepped forward, his image flickering like flame. "Then prove it. Show us the will that once ruled with wisdom."
The chamber shook. Spectral guards emerged from the corners, blades drawn, summoned by the council's collective will.
Alexandra did not flinch.
She summoned her lance in a swirl of radiant light—a silver weapon etched with Orahmian glyphs, its edge tipped with moon-quartz. She spun it once, grounding the shaft with a thunderous crack.
"You want truth? Then face it."
As the phantom guards charged, she moved. Graceful and devastating. Her lance swept through the air like a comet's tail, deflecting blades with the sound of tolling bells. Every thrust was poetry, every spin a stanza of remembered oaths. She fought not with rage, but with grief turned resolve.
As the last phantom guard fell to her sweeping strike, she turned to the council, panting.
"You want to test me with ghosts? Then listen to the truth. I did not run. I endured. I protected the sigils. I held Orahm in my heart when no walls were left to hold it."
The chamber stilled.
Her voice rose in song—not the deep sorrow of before, but a call to hope. Her chant rose through shattered glass and broken halls, echoing with strength. The lance glowed in answer.
One by one, the council bowed.
"Then let Orahm rise anew," said the eldest, eyes misted.
Their spirits lifted skyward, fading like stars at dawn, leaving Alexandra alone—her lance still blazing with sovereign light.
Only Shin did not fight. He waited at the city's heart.
He did not move.
He did not call out.
Because his trial was trust.
Trust that each of them would return.
And they did.
One by one, they stepped through the final archway—faces lit with newfound clarity.
And when the city opened, its streets glowing with restored mana, the answer was clear.
Orahm had accepted them all.