"Are you sure you are all right, young master?"
Ressa spoke beside me as the carriage doors closed behind us and we made our way into the manor.
My thoughts had been tearing through one another since I left the grave. For the past two days, some part of me had treated everything as an elaborate nightmare I might eventually wake from, but seeing that name carved into stone had finally ended whatever denial remained.
This was my reality now, and I was quite literally fucked.
More accurately, the entire world was fucked. The one man meant to save it had been dead for four years, and I was the only person alive who knew he had ever mattered.
"I am fine," I muttered, though my voice did very little to support the claim.
Ressa probably assumed I was frightened of the Trial, which would have been the sensible thing to worry about. Harren expected me to take it that night, leaving only a few hours to digest everything that had happened before facing whatever unpleasant nightmare I had designed for myself.
That fucking bastard had killed me and then ghosted the entire world.
Well, that sounded strange even inside my own head.
Ressa clearly did not believe me, but as always, she chose not to press. She bowed and took her leave, leaving me alone in the hall with several hours and far too many thoughts.
It was still evening, with several hours remaining before the Trial, and I knew I should use some of them to meet Aela. That was what Yun would have done.
I did not want to. She reminded me too much of my own sister, and facing her meant dragging up everything I had spent years trying to bury.
Avoiding her was hardly an option, though. If I intended to survive inside this body without everyone recognising that something had replaced the person they knew, then I had to at least make an effort to play his part.
Yun’s memories carried me to her room before I had fully made the decision. She was in her second year at Reliqua, already an Evolved Touched and beloved by everyone in this house in a way her younger brother had never been.
My knuckles hovered before the door. Then I took a breath and knocked.
"Come in."
I opened the door and found Aela slouched over the desk across the room, a book spread open before her. Pale silver hair covered part of her face, briefly revealing the small flower of her Mark beneath one ear before swallowing it from view again.
Her violet eyes lifted towards me, the apprehension inside them far more obvious than she seemed to realise. Her hand had stopped above the page, leaving the quill suspended over the parchment.
"Sister..."
The word felt wrong on my tongue, although she did not seem to notice. Her lower lip trembled faintly as she looked at me, and suddenly the reason I had come here became harder to face.
I crossed the room as the door clicked shut behind me.
"I take it you received the news already."
Aela nodded and lowered her eyes. Harren had placed a burden on her that no sibling should have been asked to carry, but cruelty had never stopped me from writing something when I thought it would make the story more interesting.
I sat on the edge of her bed and managed a small smile.
"Well, if it helps, I am glad it is you."
The warmth in my voice surprised me. She met my eyes, and the edge of her mouth lifted in response.
Disgust twisted faintly inside me at how easily the lie emerged.
Aela watched me for a second.
"Promise?"
The question caught somewhere in my chest, but I kept the smile in place.
"Promise."
Some of the gloom lifted from her expression, allowing the familiar warmth in her to return.
She turned to face me completely, one arm looping over the back of her chair.
"I heard you went to visit the Temple."
"You could have told me, you know. I could have come along."
She added it with a subtle frown.
I chuckled.
"I did not want to disturb you, sister. I knew you were preparing for Reliqua."
She was due to return to Reliqua within the week, yet she continued looking at me with the same small pout, clearly unconvinced by the excuse.
"I was surprised you wanted to visit at all, though. After all this time."
"I thought better now than never."
I gave her a sheepish grin, at which she simply scoffed and turned back towards her desk.
"You are a terrible liar, you know that."
"I have been told."
"By whom?"
"Ressa. Just this morning. Twice."
Aela laughed at that, and somewhere inside me a strange warmth bloomed, one I had not felt in a very long time.
She really did remind me of her.
"Aela."
"Hmm?"
"What is it like?"
Her body tensed slightly, and I realised I had not decided to ask until the words were already out.
"The Trial," I added when she did not answer.
I knew how Trials worked in theory. I had designed countless versions to force characters through their worst fears and deepest failures because a straightforward test of strength had never seemed interesting enough. You are reading on novelping . com, the official source.
But knowing what I had intended was not the same as hearing how an actual person described surviving one. I wanted her experience, not the system I had written, although I knew better than to ask what her own Trial had shown her.
Aela set her quill down.
"I cannot tell you that."
"You have taken two of them."
"And I still cannot." She turned in the chair to face me properly. "Mine would be no use to you anyway. Whatever is waiting in there for you is yours."
"That is not comforting."
"It was not supposed to be."
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes drifting somewhere past my shoulder.
"I could not tell you how long I was inside," she said eventually. "It felt like days, but Father said it was four hours."
"And after?"
"After, I sat on the floor of that room for a while. Father asked what happened, and I could not explain a single part of it to him."
She said it plainly, failing to meet my eyes as she did.
"So what do I do?"
A small smile found her face.
"Everyone asks that."
"And?"
"And the only thing worth telling you is this." She leaned forward slightly. "Whatever it shows you, in the end, it is about you."
I looked at her.
That sat in my chest more heavily than I expected.
Aela looked at me for another second, pausing a little too long, before she shrugged and picked her quill back up.
"That is all I have. Anyone who offers you more than that is either lying or has never taken one."
Well. Wonderful.
"I will come for you an hour after midnight," she said, already writing again.
I stood and looked down at the faint grey lines running across my forearms.
I had built the whole system myself, and I still had no idea what was waiting for me inside it.