We spend half the morning climbing the steep path that twists around Clearwater Mountain.

The air thins with every step, and the sea turns silver far below. By the time we reach the summit, the nobles are already waiting, clustered around Lord Clearwater's pavilion.

His banner flies above the crowd, and the nobles' colors ripple in the wind.

At the mountain's peak, a circle of carved stone rises from the rock—three ancient portals stand arranged there.

Lord Clearwater stands at the circle's heart, ringed by his council and every extended branch of his family.

He lifts his right hand, a heavy signet ring catching the sun, and places it against a flat black stone.

Runes flare, and the nearest portal cracks open, spilling blue-white light across the summit. The other portals answer in sequence—each one powered by a different noble, each family adding its mana to the array, every gate linked to a an island in a pocket world.

Lord Clearwater doesn't so much create the portals as command them—he calls on the arrangements set by his extended kin, channels their power with his authority, and the whole mountain answers his will.

I look at Felisia who stands rigid beside me while her jaw clenches tight.

This is it, this is the moment of truth, I think to myself.* Today, she either becomes the next heir or loses to those terrible sisters of hers*.

I look at Veyl, now in a shiny, silvery armor.

He looks heroic.

I put on the cloak that Orvick gave me and some simple leather armor. I don't know how to move in real armor and I am not interested in testing it so far into the training.

Felisia's wearing and armor and her armor glints, with the badge of Clearwater sits heavy on her breastplate.

At the starting arch, other teams wait: Adrienne and Veyl ; Calantha, flanked by Lord Aulus, who barely glances our way. Each of them stands tall and polished, ready to prove us beneath them.

The portal gates stand open, pulsing with color.

Every team will be scattered to a different isle, and the trial begins the second you step through.

Felisia grips her sword so tight her knuckles go white. I look at the portal marked for us—its stone rim carved with skulls, the keystone crowned with a broken sun.

An Adventurer Guild official, voice smooth and bored, lifts a scroll and begins to read.

"By decree of the Clearwater House and the Adventurers' Guild, the Sky Hunt commences. Teams will be assigned portals at random. You may not choose your isle. Once you survive and claim the token, the participants will have to beat a mini-Dungeon and conquer the key there. Those who do will be sent to the last island. The first to sit on the Heart Throne will be named champion and heir of Lord Clearwater. Should you fail to return, your claim is forfeit."

I feel Felisia stiffen as the official calls our names.

"Felisia Clearwater and Jacob Cloud—Gate Three."

I meet her eyes, nod once, and step through first. The portal eats me whole, a mouth of blue and black that rips me out of daylight and spits me onto the barren dirt.

* * *

"This is the Grave-Isle," Felisia says, swearing immediately after. "Dammit! Why have we got the worst of the initial picks?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, confused, looking around the barren landscape.

Before she replies, I already can tell that the Grave-Isle lives up to its name.

A dead place—no grass, no shelter, only jagged rock, bone piles, and half-collapsed pillars choked in dust. The sun barely reaches here; the air stinks of rot and old fear.

Felisia stumbles through a breath behind me. She scans the empty horizon, taking in the ruins, the silence, the buzz of hidden predators in the stone.

"They did this on purpose," she mutters. Felisia kicks a loose rock, and it tumbles into the fog below while she explains the setup. "The islands aren't equal because some have water or plants for food, but this one's a dead rock where nothing grows and thirst hits fast. They rigged the draw so we'd land here, and now we face shadow-raptors

"Wait, who did this?" I frown.

"My aunts, my uncles. Someone did. Not my father. He only opens the portals. Dammit!"

"So, they don't want you to win."

"Associating with a commoner... they think I'll be hard to handle if I do. They probably don't think we can win, but those who are smart and saw you complete the Crucible have started getting doubts."

At the far end of the island, I see movement—shapes skittering, low and fast. Shadow-raptors.

Twice the size of a wolf, all claws and spines, black as night and hungry for anything that bleeds.

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[Shadow Raptor – Level 80]

Felisia swallows, but she doesn't flinch.

"We can take them," she says, her voice steady.

Felisia told me she's level 110, but she also has relatively little combat experience. She's been sheltered for most of her life.

Honestly, other than the Crucible, I can't really boast much combat experience myself.

"So, the trial is basically for us to survive how long?" I ask, scanning the surroundings.

"About twelve hours. If we make it through, it's the mini-boss, then the final island."

"Why is this place so bad?" I ask. I glance at the monsters—the raptors don't look that bad. "These things?" I gesture at the pack, watching them pace the edge of the ruins.

"They regenerate fast," Felisia says. "And there are a lot of them. The other islands have maybe a few strong monsters, but this is a swarm. It's all attrition."

"Okay," I say, "and that's it?"

"You don't get it." Felisia looks at me like I'm missing something obvious. "This is about endurance and survival. If we waste our strength here, we won't have anything left for the final island. The ones who start on Grave-Isle usually burn out before the last trial."

She folds her arms and watches the horizon. "Every island has its own trick. Some have water, some have shelter, but this one's made to grind people down. If you use too much mana here, you're finished."

I try to picture the sequence. "So we fight these, kill the mini-boss, then rush the last island and race for the throne?"

Felisia nods. "You have to conserve energy. The final island is huge, and you can only use movement techniques so much before you run dry. No one our level can cross the whole thing on pure skill."

"Alright," I say, scanning the field, "so we wait for the raptors and hope they don't all come at once."

Felisia shakes her head, lips pressed tight. "I wish it worked that way."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

I don't get an answer—because right then, every Shadowraptor on the horizon turns and fixes on us. Magic, obviously. I see it in the way their shadows stretch, gathering under their claws, almost like someone flipped a switch.

The raptors are lean, bony, and stretched too long. They move on all fours, but the front claws look like butcher's blades. I watch them test the ground, searching for an angle.

The closest one rushes forward, moving so fast it blurs. I call the Grimoire's sight into focus. I see the way its right leg drags for half a second, how it leans left just before it pounces. Shadows cluster around its paws as it builds speed.

I raise my hand and call a Hell's Sword. The blade forms above me, heat shimmering in the air. I track the Shadowraptor's steps, waiting for the flaw the Grimoire showed me. As it closes to ten meters, I drop my hand and the sword lashes out.

The blade catches the raptor mid-leap, spearing it through the ribs. Its body slams to the dirt, dead before it can twitch.

Felisia exhales, relief flickering in her eyes.

"That's one," I say. I look at the others. "But they're not stopping."

They keep coming, claws scraping stone, eyes burning in the shadows. And the real fight starts.

* * *

Lord Clearwater stands at the center of the viewing hall while he watches the three giant mirrors flicker to life, and each one shows a different team's trial unfolding in real time. He sighs deep because Felisia drew the Grave-Isle, which is the worst starting point anyone could get, and he knows his extended family rigged it that way since they favor Adrienne or Calantha.

"Poor Felisia," he mutters to the nobles around him as he shakes his head slowly. "She lands on that cursed rock where nothing lives and the raptors never stop coming. What a shame that my youngest must suffer like this."

The other nobles nod with fake sympathy while their lips curl in hidden snickers, and they murmur agreements that sound sad but drip with glee because they enjoy seeing the underdog falter.

One aunt dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief as if she's truly heartbroken, but her voice cracks with laughter when she says, "It's tragic, truly, that Felisia chose such poor company and now pays the price."

From the back of the crowd, a distant cousin pipes up while he leans against a pillar, and his words cut through the whispers.

"But the kid with her cleared the Crucible alone, so maybe he can pull it off since no one's done that in years."

A cacophony erupts immediately as voices overlap in denial, and nobles shout that it's impossible because the boy is a fraud who probably cheated his way through.

"Never going to happen," one uncle bellows while he waves a hand dismissively.

"That miner's a fake, and he'll drag her down before the hour's out."

But then the mirror showing Felisia's team zooms in on Jacob after he kills the first raptor, and everyone falls silent when he picks up the shadow core that glows dark in his palm. The core erupts in a puff of swirling shadows that twist like smoke, and Jacob inhales it all so the darkness vanishes into his body as if it's nothing. The hall goes dazed while nobles stare with wide eyes, and no one moves because you can't absorb cores like that since they usually poison the user or need refining first.

Lord Clearwater blinks hard as he leans forward, and confusion knots his brow because even he doesn't know what just happened.

"That's... impossible," he whispers while the nobles mutter in shock around him.

* * *

They threw us into this hellhole because they wanted to break us. They assumed this place would drain us dry, that we would waste our strength and fall behind. What they never considered was that a place like this could actually give me something I needed.

I never imagined it myself. When I killed that first raptor and picked up its core, I felt a rush of surprise. The core felt dense and solid, almost begging to be harvested. Back in the Crucible, I had to fight for every core, and most of them broke apart in my hands or melted down before I could pull anything from them. These raptors, on the other hand, left behind small, tightly packed cores. Their energy stayed contained, so it was much easier to grab.

The real shock came when I touched the core. The bracelet from King Baalrek started to vibrate against my wrist. Something deep inside me, near the spot where the shadow lattice sits, started to stir. I could sense the skill waking up, almost as if it recognized the dark mana inside the core, and it pulled the power straight out without me even making a decision.

Shadows shot out from my palm, spreading in twisting lines that wrapped around my arm. The tendrils glowed with a cold light while they guided the mana through my veins, carrying every drop of energy from the core deeper into my body. I felt the chill slam into my chest. This wasn't just about refilling my mana. The infernal manual, the one I'd absorbed after the Crucible, started to shift.

For the first time, I could actually see more of another one of the diagrams—the shapes of the attacks—forming in my mind. Diavolo Draw stayed sharp and clear, but now the second form started to come into focus. It still sat on the edge of my vision, but the fog was less dense. I could make out the borders of the diagram, and I realized the shadow lattice had reacted to the core's energy and started unlocking more of the infernal fighting style.

I had no way to access the next form before this. Now, I see that absorbing these raptor cores actually pushes the process forward. I wonder if this is how I'll break through to the next level.

Maybe this is what will give me the edge when it matters most.

Maybe this is how I kill Veyl.

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