Part I: The Riot of Life

The air in the Feywoods lacked the scent of pine or earth. It smelled of ozone and crushed violets mixed with the copper tang of blood awaiting a spill.

Mara stumbled. Her boot caught on a root she felt certain had not existed a moment prior. She did not fall. She could not afford to fall. The lurch sent the contents of her pack shifting against her spine. The movement was slight. The reaction was catastrophic.

Heat flared against her lower back and seared through the thin wool of her tunic. It burned like a kiln door thrown open. An instant later came a wave of crushing cold over her left shoulder accompanied by the phantom sensation of saltwater filling her lungs.

She gritted her teeth and bit down on a scream until her jaw ached.

Balance. She centered her thoughts. If she screamed she fed it.

She forced herself to stand upright and adjusted the straps of the pack with shaking hands. She was a petitioner. She was a candidate for the Voidwalkers. She had survived the trek to the Wall of Kraken. She had crawled through the Swamp of Sorrows to find the bloom. She had evaded the patrols of the Obsidian Wastes where the failed initiates roamed as husks. But this place was the worst of them all.

Voidwalkers sought silence. The Feywoods stood as the opposite of silence. They were a riot of existence.

To her left a patch of moss sang a high atonal melody that vibrated in her molars. To her right the trees did not just sway in the wind. They breathed. Their bark expanded and contracted with a wet organic rhythm. The light filtering through the canopy was not sunlight. It was a shifting kaleidoscope of bruised purples and feverish golds that made her stomach turn.

Mara closed her eyes to seek a moment of darkness. The afterimages burned bright behind her lids.

"Three down," she whispered. Her voice sounded thin against the lush noise of the forest. "One to go."

She reached back and touched the canvas pack. She did not need to look inside to know what lay there. She felt them. The Order called it the Trial of Four Corners. A physical journey. A test of containment. Magic could not transport such volatile chaos. Spells would shatter under the dissonance. Only a living vessel could ground the conflicting charges long enough to move them.

At the bottom of the pack wrapped in oilcloth lay the Obsidian Cinder. It was a shard of volcanic glass she had stolen from a fresh lava flow in the domain of Warlord Gorgash. She had lain buried in the cooling ash for three days waiting for the sentries to turn. The grey dust had coated her skin like the flour of her father's bakery but tasted of sulfur and war. The Order demanded a tithe of conquest to prove she could take what the world would not give. It radiated heat and rage alike. It pulsed with the memory of conquest and the pounding of a thousand war drums. It wanted to burn everything it touched.

Balanced above it sat a Sunder Stone. She had plucked it from the base of the Wall of Kraken at low tide while racing the crushing waves. It was heavy. It felt wet even when dry. It carried the psychic screams of every sailor who had ever drowned on the Sunder Coast. It wanted to drag her down and fill her with the crushing pressure of the deep.

Nestled between them acted the Gravebloom as a volatile buffer. A single pale flower taken from a grave in the Swamp of Sorrows. It was silent. It was a hungry silence. It drained the warmth from the air. It whispered of grief so profound it made her want to lie down in the moss and never rise.

Fire. Ocean. Grief.

Three conflicting energies tasked to be carried in a single vessel. The Bible of the Order warned that carrying them together caused the radiant spirit energy to clash. It warned that if her will faltered the energies would form a beacon. If that beacon lit it would not just kill her. It would act as a dinner bell for every horror in the woods and detonate with enough force to turn the distant River District into a crater.

Mara opened her eyes. The path ahead had split. Again.

Where a deer trail had existed a moment ago there were now three distinct paths. One was paved with white stones that looked like teeth. One was overgrown with brambles that curled and uncurled like grasping fingers. The third was a tunnel of darkness. A shadow cast by nothing.

"The Whisperwood Branch," she recited as she focused on the objective. "Cutting from the Heart Tree."

She took a step toward the dark path.

Snap.

The sound was loud like a bone breaking. It did not come from beneath her boot. It came from the pack.

The Obsidian Cinder had shifted. It had touched the Sunder Stone.

The air around Mara shimmered. The nauseating colors of the Feywoods drained away and were replaced by a sudden violent wash of grey. The temperature plummeted then spiked.

No. Panic fluttered in her chest. Not here. Not now.

The clash of energies had triggered the Beacon.

Mist rose from the ground and swirled into a distinct shape. It was not a fey creature. The fey were vibrant and alive. This was something dead. Something drawn by the specific resonance of the artifacts she carried.

A figure coalesced ten paces in front of her. It was a man or the memory of one. He wore the tattered remnants of a sailor coat dripping with spectral water. His skin was charred black and cracked like cooling lava.

A drowned man burned to death. A paradox. A manifestation of the Sunder Stone and the Obsidian Cinder warring against each other.

The entity opened its mouth. No sound came out but Mara felt the scream. It hit her mind like a physical blow. It was a wave of despair and burning agony.

Why? The voice echoed in her skull. Why does it burn in the dark?

Mara staggered back. The psychic weight of the scream buckled her knees. The pack felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. The Obsidian Cinder flared hot against her spine and demanded she fight. It demanded she unleash her rage. The Sunder Stone pulled at her gut and demanded she surrender. It demanded she sink into the oblivion of the water.

She wanted to rip the pack off. She wanted to throw it into the trees and run.

Run. The instinct screamed. You are just a girl. You are Mara of the River District. You are a baker's daughter. You are not a warrior.

"No," she gasped.

She forced her feet to plant in the soft loam.

"I am not Mara," she whispered. The words tasted like ash. "I have no name. I have no past."

She closed her eyes and shut out the sight of the burning drowning ghost. She focused inward. She summoned the specific memory she used to cut herself from the world.

She saw the bakery. She saw the flour suspended in the air like gold dust. She saw the flash of the mage fire that took the roof. She smelled the difference between burning wood and burning sugar. She saw her father reach for her. She saw him turn to ash before his hand could graze her cheek.

She took that memory. She crushed it. She made it nothing.

She visualized a candle flame in the center of her mind. Then she visualized pinching it out.

Silence. She commanded her own soul. Be the empty room.

She imagined her will not as a wall but as a vacuum. She drew the heat of the Obsidian Cinder and the cold of the Sunder Stone into herself. She did not hold them but let them pass through to find the point where they cancelled each other out.

Fire consumes. Water drowns. But in the void there is no air for the fire and no depth for the water.

She breathed out. A long slow exhalation.

The screaming in her head faded to a dull buzz. The heat against her back cooled to a manageable warmth. The crushing weight lifted.

She opened her eyes.

The burning sailor was gone. The beacon had been suppressed.

Mara stood alone in the Feywoods. She shook hard. Sweat soaked her tunic but she was standing.

"Balance," she muttered as she adjusted the straps again. "Balance in chaos."

She looked at the paths again. The tooth path and the bramble path were gone. Only the shadow path remained. The forest had stopped trying to distract her for a moment. It seemed intrigued.

She stepped into the shadow.

The journey to the heart of the Feywoods was not measured in miles. It was measured in layers of reality stripped away.

As she walked the forest changed. The manic vibrant colors of the outer woods faded into something ancient and somber. The trees here were colossal with trunks as wide as houses. Their branches wove together to form a ceiling that blocked out the sky completely.

Bioluminescent fungi clung to the bark and glowed with a soft pulsing rhythm that matched her own heartbeat. It was unnerving. It felt as if the forest read her biological tempo and mimicked it.

She walked for hours. Perhaps days. Time had no meaning here. She ate the meager rations from her pack but the hard tack and dried beef tasted like dust. The only thing that tasted real was the water she sipped from her skin. Even that seemed to leave her thirstier than before.

She kept her mind rigid as a fortress of nothingness. Every time a memory of her life tried to surface she shoved it into the mental void.

That is not me. She recited. That is dead weight.

The trees parted.

She stepped into a clearing that felt like the nave of a cathedral. The air here hung heavy and charged with a power so thick she could taste it on her tongue. It tasted of ozone and honey.

In the center of the clearing stood the Heart Tree.

It was white. Not the grey white of birch or the brown white of ash but a pure blinding alabaster white. Its bark looked like polished bone. Its leaves were silver and chimed softly as they brushed against one another in a wind that Mara could not feel.

It was a monument to absolute freezing purity.

This was the source. The Whisperwood Branch. To take a piece of this tree was to wound the very soul of the Fey.

Mara approached the tree. Her boots made no sound on the moss. She stopped ten feet from the trunk.

"I have come for the tithe," she said. Her voice was steady but her heart hammered against her ribs.

The tree did not move. The shadows beneath it did.

They pooled and twisted and stretched upward like spilled ink flowing in reverse. The darkness coalesced and formed a shape that was vaguely humanoid but too tall and too thin.

It stepped forward. It had the face of a lynx but the eyes of a human woman. Its skin was the texture of bark. It wore a cloak made of living moth wings.

A High Fey. A Guardian.

It circled her. It did not walk. It flowed. Its movement left trails of afterimages in the air.

"A little hollow thing," the creature purred. Its voice sounded like dry leaves skittering on stone. "Walking where you do not belong. Carrying a pocket full of screaming rocks."

Mara did not flinch. She kept her eyes fixed on the creature's face. "I seek the branch. I know the price."

The Guardian laughed. It was not a happy sound. It was the sound of a predator playing with food.

"Do you?" The creature stopped in front of her and leaned down until its feline face was inches from hers. Its breath smelled of sweet rot. "You think the price is a secret? A story? A memory?"

The Guardian shook its head. Its eyes gleamed with malice.

"We have heard all the stories little thing. We do not want your past. We want your nature. You come here thinking yourself a weapon. You ignored the healers in the lower courtyards. You scoffed at the growers in the gardens. You only looked at the blades."

The creature reached out a long wooden finger and tapped Mara on the chest right over her heart.

"You want to cut. But the world is not just a knot to be severed. To hold the Void you must understand more than just the end of things."

Mara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the Gravebloom. The test was not going to be a confession. It was going to be a judgment.

"I am ready," Mara said.

The Guardian’s eyes gleamed. "Then let us see if your mind is as sharp as your ambition."

Part II: The Weight of Judgment

Mara stood before the Heart Tree. The colossal white trunk seemed to glow with an inner pulse. The silver leaves chimed in the windless air. Her attention was fixed on the creature that blocked her path.

The Guardian did not look like a monster of chaos this time. It stood tall and rigid. Its bark skin shifted to resemble the matte black armor of the Order she sought to join. It wore the face of a lynx but its eyes were human. They were cold and analytical and lacked mercy.

"You seek the silence," the Guardian said. Its voice was not a purr but a dry crackle like parchment burning. "But silence is not a gift. It is a discipline. To hold the Void you must first understand the shape of the world you wish to unmake."

The creature circled her. The movement was predatory and tested for weakness.

"You carry the chaos on your back," the Guardian gestured to her shaking pack where the Sunder Stone and Obsidian Cinder fought for dominance. "But chaos is easy to carry. Judgment is heavy. Tell me Initiate. Do you know what you hunt?"

Mara gritted her teeth against the heat radiating from her pack. "I hunt the unnatural. The things that defy the cycle."

"Words," the Guardian spat. "Memorized from a book you stole or a sermon you heard. Let us test the steel of your mind before we test the steel of your will."

The Guardian stopped. It raised a long wooden finger.

"Question one," it demanded. "You stand before a Draugr Lord in the crypts of Bleakcairn. You have severed its head yet the body still fights. You have burned it yet the bones knit back together. The creature is bound to the stone of its tomb. How do you dispatch it?"

Mara’s mind raced. She recalled the whispered legends and the fragments of lore she had gathered in the taverns of Port Sunder where the Voidwalkers were spoken of in hushed tones.

"You do not fight the body," Mara said. Her voice was raspy. "If the head and fire fail the anchor is spiritual. You must find the name it bore in life. You speak the Rite of Unmaking upon its true name severing the memory from the magic."

The Guardian narrowed its eyes. "Correct. The body is meat. The name is the chain. Question two."

The creature stepped closer. The heat of the Feywoods pressed in on Mara like a physical weight.

"You are tasked with warding a nursery against a Shade Hound. You have salt iron and a single candle made of tallow. The Hound hunts by scent and fear. How do you lay the ward?"

"Salt across the threshold to burn the spirit," Mara recited as she visualized the diagram. "Iron filings bind the lock. The candle remains. It is not for the door. It is for the child. You light the candle to center the child's spirit. If the child fears the Hound enters. The ward is useless if the bait screams."

"Acceptable," the Guardian mused. "You understand the mechanics. Now. The philosophy."

The Guardian waved a hand. The scenery of the Feywoods flickered and twisted. Real smoke filled the clearing. The smell of burning thatch and roasting meat assaulted Mara's nose. For a moment the trees were gone and she stood in the center of a burning village.

"A Vampire Lord has taken a village," the Guardian proposed. Its voice came from everywhere at once amidst the crackle of the flames. "He holds one hundred souls in his thrall. He feeds on them and turns them into spawn. You have a clear shot at the Lord but he has tied his life force to the village well. If you strike him down the magical backlash will poison the water and kill every living soul in the hamlet. If you let him go he lives to feed for another century but the villagers survive today."

It was the classic dilemma made real. The heat blistered her skin. The screams of the villagers tore at her concentration.

"What is the Voidwalker choice?" the Guardian demanded.

Mara did not hesitate. She felt the Sunder Stone cold against her ribs. The indifference of the ocean.

"I kill the Vampire," she said.

"And the villagers?"

"They die," Mara said flatly. "If I let him go he creates more vampires. He corrupts more souls. The infection spreads. A hundred lives today is a tragic cost but a Vampire Lord unchecked is a plague that eats generations. You excise the tumor even if you lose the limb."

The Guardian smiled. It was a terrifying expression that revealed rows of translucent needle sharp teeth. The illusion of fire vanished in an instant leaving only the cold silence of the woods.

"The Path of the Scalpel," the Guardian murmured. "Cold. Efficient. You always reach for the knife little hollow thing. You assume the only way to save the body is to cut it."

The Guardian clapped its hands. The sound was like thunder.

The roots of the Heart Tree writhed. The earth at the base of the trunk split open and two figures were dragged up from the soil bound in glowing vines.

They were not illusions. Mara could smell them. The sour stench of sweat and the metallic tang of fear. The roots of the Feywoods did not grow men. These were real travelers snatched from the trade roads days ago and held in stasis beneath the loam for this exact moment.

The first man was young and dressed in the tattered leathers of a poacher. He wept with eyes wide and white with terror.

"Please!" he sobbed as he thrashed against the vines. "I stole nothing! I just got lost! I have a daughter in the Vale! Let me go!"

The second man was older and wore the rusted remnants of chainmail. He was silent. His face was a mask of grim determination. He watched Mara with hard calculating eyes.

"Listen to me," the older man rasped. "This creature lies. I am a merchant guard. My caravan was attacked. I fled into the woods. That boy is not what he seems. I saw him in the clearing. He was eating raw meat. He is not human. He is a skin changer. A beast."

"Liar!" the young man screamed. "He is the monster! Look at his eyes! He tried to kill me!"

The Guardian stepped back and folded its arms.

"Here is your final test Initiate," the Guardian said. "One of these men is a simple traveler lost in the woods. The other is a servant of Malphas. A changeling scout sent to mark the location of this tree for the Shadow Ascendancy. If he escapes he brings fire to this forest."

Mara looked at the two men. Both looked terrified. Both looked human.

"Determine the guilty," the Guardian commanded. "Carry out the sentence."

"Sentence?" Mara asked.

"Silence him," the Guardian said. "Permanently."

Mara’s stomach turned. This was not a riddle about wards or zombies. These were breathing men.

She stepped forward. The pack on her back shifted. The Obsidian Cinder burned hot and urged her to violence. The Gravebloom whispered of sorrow.

She approached the young man. He sobbed.

"Look at me," she ordered.

He looked up. His pupils were dilated. He smelled of pine and urine.

"I am scared," he whispered. "Please."

She turned to the older man. The guard. He did not flinch. He met her gaze.

"Do it," the guard growled. "Cut the boy's throat. He is a monster. You can see it. Use your knife."

Mara did not have a knife. She had only her hands and her will.

She looked closer at the older man. She looked at his armor. It was rusted. But the rust was wrong. It was too uniform. She looked at his boots. They were worn but there was no mud on the uppers. Only dust.

She looked at his neck. There was a pulse. Thump. Thump.

She turned back to the crying boy. He was hyperventilating. His chest heaved.

She closed her eyes and extended her senses. She tried to push past the visual to feel the Echo the Voidwalkers spoke of. She tuned out the noise of the forest and listened to the noise of the souls before her.

The boy felt chaotic. Fear. Panic. Love for a daughter. It was a messy and loud human signal.

The guard felt organized. His fear was there but it was wrapped in something else. Anticipation. Beneath that lay a cold slick darkness. A hollowness that tried to mimic humanity but got the rhythm slightly wrong.

"The guard," Mara said as she opened her eyes.

"Are you certain?" the Guardian asked. "If you are wrong you murder an innocent man and let a monster free."

"I am certain," Mara said. "He is too calm. He is trying to direct me. A panicked man begs for his life. A predator tries to control the weapon."

The Guardian nodded. It reached into the folds of its moth wing cloak and pulled out a weapon.

It was not a sword. It was a single long thorn from the Heart Tree as long as a dagger and black as night. It hummed with a violent potency.

"Then finish it," the Guardian said as it offered the thorn hilt first. "Be the Scalpel."

Mara took the thorn. It was light. It felt weightless.

She stepped up to the older man. The guard’s facade cracked. His eyes shifted and the pupils elongated into vertical slits. A low hiss escaped his lips.

"You stupid girl," the changeling snarled. Its voice changed and became a layered harmonic of three voices at once. "You lack the stomach."

Mara did not speak. She did not offer a witty retort. She did not hesitate.

She drove the thorn into the man's chest.

It did not feel like cutting meat. It felt like popping a blister. The changeling shrieked a sound that was not human and its form dissolved. The skin melted away like wax and revealed a writhing shadowy mass beneath that evaporated under the touch of the fey wood weapon.

In seconds the vines held nothing but an empty suit of rusted armor.

Mara stood panting. The black thorn was still in her hand. She felt sick. She felt exhilaratingly light. She had judged and she had executed.

The young poacher stared at her in horror. "You killed him."

"He was a monster," Mara said. Her voice was flat.

"Go," the Guardian said to the boy. The vines released him. "Run little meat. Before I change my mind."

The boy scrambled up and ran into the trees crying.

Mara dropped the thorn. She looked at her hands. They shook. Not from fear but from adrenaline.

"You chose correctly," the Guardian said. "You did not flinch."

The creature reached up and snapped a branch from the Heart Tree.

Snap.

The forest screamed the same as before. The ground shook. Mara stood firm.

"The Whisperwood Branch," the Guardian said as it handed her the glowing sap leaking wood. "You have paid the price of admission Initiate. You have learned that silence requires blood."

Mara took the branch. She turned back to her pack.

She knelt and unbuckled the straps. She had to place the final piece of the puzzle into the container.

She checked the Sunder Stone. Cold and Water. She checked the Obsidian Cinder. Heat and Fire. She checked the Gravebloom. Sorrow and Death.

She placed the Whisperwood Branch. Life and Chaos. Into the center.

The pack convulsed.

The psychic beacon flared. The four energies slammed into one another. Fire fighting Water. Life fighting Death. The dissonance was a physical roar in her ears.

Mara slammed the flap shut and buckled it tight. She threw the pack onto her shoulders. It weighed a ton. It burned and froze and wept and sang.

"I walk in silence," she gritted out as she forced her knees to lock.

She turned away from the Guardian. She did not say goodbye. There was no need.

She had her burden. Now she had to carry it to the Shrine of Endings.

Part III: The Chalice of Judgment

The journey out of the Feywoods became a haunt rather than a walk.

Mara did not run. Running triggered the predatory instincts of the things that lived in the dark and she had become a beacon for them. The pack on her back was no longer just heavy canvas and straps. It was a screaming wound in the fabric of reality. The clash of the four opposing energies sent out a psychic shockwave that acted like blood in water full of sharks.

Twice she saw Wisps. Balls of blue corpse fire that bobbed in the darkness of the tree line. They whispered promises of safe paths that led only into quicksand. She ignored them and fixed her gaze on the rocky incline of the path ahead.

Once a Wood Wight heaved itself out of the mulch. It was a skeletal figure bound in vines and moss that reached for her with a creaking wooden hand. It did not want to hurt her. It wanted the Gravebloom. It wanted the connection to the sorrow it held. An attempt to feel something other than the rot of the forest floor.

Mara did not draw a weapon. She did not have one. She had left the Guardian’s black thorn behind. She simply turned her head and looked at the creature.

She channeled the feeling she had summoned when she drove the thorn into the Changeling’s chest. The cold absolute clarity of judgment.

"Be still," she croaked.

The Wight froze. It was not a spell. It was the projection of her intent. For a second the creature saw the void growing inside her. An emptiness more profound than its own death. It recoiled and sank back into the earth as if terrified of being erased.

She kept walking.

Hours bled into days. The manic vibrant energy of the Feywoods slowly gave way to the mundane pine and oak of the borderlands. The screaming colors faded to greys and greens. The air grew thinner and colder and sharper.

The tree line broke. The sun was setting and painted the sky in bruises of purple and gold.

Ahead of her lay the rocky ascent to the Shrine of Endings.

It was not a welcoming sight. It was a fortress of black unadorned stone carved directly into the sheer face of the mountain. There were no windows to let in the light. There were no banners to proclaim a king’s allegiance. Just a single massive door of iron bound oak and a long winding stair carved from the living rock.

Mara stopped. She dropped to her knees. The impact sent a jolt of pain through her exhausted legs.

The pack vibrated. The Obsidian Cinder burned through the canvas and scorched the leather of her tunic. It smelled of the fire that took her name. The Sunder Stone leaked spectral saltwater that froze on contact with the ground. The Whisperwood Branch tried to root itself through the bag. Its life magic fought the death magic of the Gravebloom in a silent violent war for dominance.

She could not take it off. If she took it off she would not have the strength to put it back on. The Order taught that the burden was the point.

She looked up at the stairs. There were a thousand steps steep and slick with mountain mist.

"The final mile," she whispered.

She forced herself up. Her legs shook. Her back was raw and blistered. Her mind felt like shattered glass held together only by the memory of the black thorn sliding into meat.

Step. Step. Step.

She climbed. She did not look at the view of the valley spreading out below her. She did not look at the stars beginning to emerge in the darkening sky. She looked only at the stone beneath her feet.

Halfway up the hallucinations began. The Beacon on her back attempted to distort her perception. It pulled images from her recent memory to test her resolve.

She saw the Merchant Guard sitting on the steps blocking her path.

He did not look like the empty suit of armor she had left in the woods. He looked human. He clutched his chest where blood seeped between his fingers. He looked up at her with eyes that were brown and human and pleading.

You were wrong. The hallucination wheezed as blood bubbled at his lips. I was a man. I was a father. Look at me. Look at what you did.

Mara stopped. She looked down at the ghost blocking her path.

The Beacon wanted her to doubt. It wanted her to question her senses. It wanted her to believe that her judgment was flawed. That she was just a frightened girl striking out at shadows.

But Mara felt no doubt. She remembered the slit pupils. She remembered the hiss of his voice. She remembered the way his skin had sloughed off like wet paper to reveal the shadow beneath.

Doubt did not exist. She had not killed a man. She had exterminated a parasite.

"Get up," Mara said. Her voice was flat. Bored even. "You are dead. You are a lie."

The ghost’s eyes widened. It tried to weep to play on her sympathy. Please. I had a daughter.

"You had a mission," Mara corrected as she stepped forward. "And you failed."

She did not walk around him. She walked through him.

As her boot passed through his chest the image flickered. The human mask dissolved and revealed the snarling reptilian visage of the Changeling for a fraction of a second before it shattered into mist.

She did not look back. She did not need to. The truth did not require validation from the dead.

She reached the top.

The heavy black doors of the Shrine were closed. In front of them set into the center of a circular plaza of wind scoured stone stood a stone pedestal holding a massive bowl. The Chalice of Judgment.

It was simple unadorned granite. It looked like a mortar waiting for a pestle or a mouth waiting to be fed.

Mara unbuckled the pack. Her fingers were stiff and bloody as they fumbled with the clasps. She let the bag slide from her shoulders. It hit the ground with a heavy wet thud that sounded like a body falling.

She opened it.

The items were warring. The interior of the bag was a chaotic storm of elemental energy. The Sunder Stone was covered in a thick rime of frost. The Obsidian Cinder glowed white hot and singed the fabric of the bag. The Gravebloom wept black tears that smelled of funerals. The Whisperwood Branch thrashed like a trapped snake. Its silver sap boiled where it touched the cinder.

She had to put them in the Chalice. The vessel would consume the energy. It would grind the opposing forces together until they became a neutral slurry that reinforced the walls of the world.

She picked up the Sunder Stone first. The cold burned her hand and instantly numbed her fingers. She dropped it into the bowl. The sound echoed across the plaza.

She picked up the Gravebloom. It felt fragile like holding a handful of grief. She placed it on the stone. The frost from the stone immediately began to creep over the dead petals.

She picked up the Whisperwood Branch. It tried to wrap around her wrist and pulsed with frantic life. She forced it into the bowl breaking its grip.

Finally the Obsidian Cinder. It seared her palm. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. She did not cry out. She placed the fire atop the water the grief and the life.

The four corners of the world sat in the cup. They should not exist together. Fire and water. Life and death. Order and Chaos.

Mara placed her hands on the rim of the Chalice.

She did not pray. Voidwalkers did not pray to gods for favors. They enforced their will upon reality.

She focused on the silence. She poured her will into the bowl and forced the conflicting energies to submit. She visualized the cellar. She visualized the empty room in her mind. She visualized the black thorn piercing the monster's heart.

Harmonize or end.

The items began to vibrate. A hum rose from the Chalice. It grew louder and louder until it threatened to shatter her teeth. Light began to leak from the bowl. Not green or red or blue but a blinding absolute white.

The clash of energies reached a crescendo. The heat of the cinder fought the cold of the stone. The life of the branch fought the death of the bloom. It was a microcosm of the world's own violent existence.

Then silence.

The light collapsed inward. The items vanished.

There was no explosion. No smoke. Just the profound heavy silence of a decision made. The energies had been balanced and accepted and consumed by the judgment of the Chalice.

The massive black doors of the Shrine of Endings swung open.

Mara looked into the darkness beyond. It was cool. It was quiet. It smelled of nothing. No incense. No sweat. No blood. Just the scent of old stone and stillness.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

He was tall and encased in armor of matte black plate that seemed to absorb the moonlight. A tattered grey cloak hung from his shoulders and was fastened with a simple iron clasp. His face was hidden by a deep hood but she could see the lower half of his face. It was pale and crossed by a thin white scar.

A member of the Ash Choir. One of the silent judges who trained the Umbral Seeds.

He looked at the empty Chalice. He looked at Mara’s burned hands. He looked at her eyes. Eyes that had judged a life and executed a sentence and felt no regret.

"You carried the world and set it down," the figure said. His voice was like grinding stones deep and resonant. "Do you walk in shadow or flame?"

Mara stood up straight. She felt light. For the first time in her life she felt absolutely weightless. The burden of the pack was gone. The burden of doubt was gone.

"I walk in neither," she said. Her voice cracked with exhaustion but held steady in its intent. "I walk in silence."

The figure paused. He studied her for a long moment looking for any crack in her resolve. He saw the coldness in her. He saw the killer she had already become.

He shook his head.

"Silence is the end of the journey Initiate. Not the beginning."

He reached into the folds of his grey cloak and pulled out a bundle of cloth. He tossed it to her.

Mara caught it. It was a roughspun tunic and a hood. The fabric was not black. It was a deep verdant green.

The color of life. The color of the Path of the Lantern. The color of the healers she had ignored in the courtyards.

Mara frowned as her fingers tightened on the cloth. "I am no healer," she rasped. "I am a blade. I proved it in the woods."

"You proved you can cut," the Ash Choir member corrected. His voice was hard. "Any butcher can cut. The Order does not need butchers. We need surgeons. And to cut the dark without becoming it you must first learn to hold the light."

He stepped aside and gestured into the dark hall of the fortress.

"You seek the Scalpel. I see it in you. But until you understand the value of the blood you spill you will walk with the Lantern. You will learn to save before you are permitted to end."

Mara looked at the green cloth. She hated it. It felt like a lie. It felt like the weakness she had tried to leave behind in the cellar. But she looked at the open door and she knew there was no other way.

"Enter," the judge commanded. "Leave your name at the door. It has no place here."

Mara walked forward. She clutched the green hood in her fist. It was a promise of the conflict to come. She crossed the threshold and left the wind and the stars behind.

Behind her the massive doors boomed shut and sealed out the wind the light and the noise of the living world.

The trial was over. The discipline and the rebellion had begun.

The First Silence

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