From the heights of the observation balcony, the Crucible was a neat, orderly circle of contained violence. A problem-set. And I... I was a master of solving problems.
Professor Varrick's voice, a gravelly and unnecessary sound, echoed from a grille. "Impressive. Most rooks just cry and wet themselves before the end."
I watched the girl, Rostova, stumble out of the Gauntlet's exit tunnel. She was covered in grime, her face pale with sweat, and she was shaking so badly she could barely stand.
She wasn't impressive. She was a disaster.
She had passed.
I felt a cold, sharp spike of irritation. I had watched her enter the compressing-wall trap. I had been certain that would be the end of it. It was a simple culling mechanism. The trap was Aether-based, designed to crush those with no magic and no intellect.
She should have failed.
I had told myself, with perfect logic, that I wanted her gone for her own good. She was a Dreg-rat, a chaotic, untrained animal. This place would eat her alive, as I'd told her. My desire for her to fail was, in its own way, a mercy.
It was a clean, logical, and utterly false argument.
The truth was a shard of ice in my gut. I wanted her gone because her presence was an irritant. Since our collision in the hall, I had been... unsettled. That feeling, that sickening, magnetic lurch of my anxiety, had left a residue. A static under my skin. My Aether felt... agitated. It was a distraction. A flaw in the code. A crack in the perfect, cold marble of my control.
And now, she had not only survived the trap, she had... disarmed it. From here, I couldn't see how, but the un-making in the plaza... the conclusion was simple. She hadn't broken the lock. She had unraveled the spell.
A crude, instinctive, and utterly blasphemous use of Anima.
It was... infuriating.
"Next. Caelen val-Valerius!"
Varrick's roar pulled me from my analysis.
Seraphina, who had been silently fuming beside me ever since Rostova had appeared, put a hand on my arm. "Show them the difference, Caelen," she murmured. "Show them what real power looks like."
I inclined my head, stepping away from her touch. Her need for validation was as tedious as the trial itself.
I did not go down to the sand. I simply stepped off the balcony.
There was a collective gasp from the rooks below. I fell.
And I landed, as softly as a new-fallen snowflake, on a disc of pure, white Aether I had woven in the air. It hummed, a perfect, contained note, and carried me down to the arena floor at a sedate, controlled pace.
I stepped onto the black sand, my boots making no sound. I smoothed the front of my immaculate black uniform.
Varrick was staring, his scarred face impassive. I didn't look at him. I didn't look at her.
I walked into the Gauntlet.
This was not a trial. It was a chore.
The pit trap that had claimed the first charging fool? I sensed it before I saw it. The air pressure was different. The sound of my own footsteps echoed with a hollow absence ten feet ahead.
I didn't stop. I simply willed a bridge into existence.
It was not a clumsy vault. It was a clean, hard-light construct, three feet wide, with a perfect, railed edge. It sprang from the floor under my feet and anchored on the far side with a solid, definitive thrum. I walked across it. As my foot left the last of it, I unwilled it. It did not explode. It simply... dissolved into a million silent motes of light, which were then re-absorbed into my Aether.
No waste. No inefficiency.
The darts. I heard them thwip from the walls. I did not dodge. I did not roll.
A shield, a geometric, six-sided construct of pure Animus, formed in the air to my left. It spun, a beautiful, deadly thing, and deflected the darts with a series of sharp, melodic tink-tink-tink sounds. It moved with me, a partner of light, as I walked, my pace unbroken.
I was not here to survive the Gauntlet. I was here to dissect it. This was my father's arena, and I was his perfect, masterfully-honed weapon. I was here to show the rabble, to show him, that there were levels to power, and that I was on a level no one else could touch.
I turned the corner and entered the final trap. The white marble hall.
As I expected, the iron gate slammed down behind me. The walls began to groan, to move.
I stood in the center, breathing slowly. I let them come.
I watched the Aether-runes on the walls, analyzing the weave. It was a crude, brutalist spell. All force. No elegance. It was designed to crush, not to test.
This was the trap that she had passed.
The thought was an unwelcome intrusion. She. The gutter-rat. With her dirty, chaotic, unraveling. She had broken this. She had put her filth on this spell and pulled it apart like a cheap sweater.
And the irritation I'd felt on the balcony... it returned. It was a hot, sudden flash of anger.
This is her fault. She is still here. She is a distraction. A problem that has not been solved.
I raised my hand, my fingers extended, to weave an Aether-blade. I would not unravel the locking-rune. I would cut it. A clean, surgical removal.
But the anger... it bled into the weave.
The blade of light that formed at my fingertips was not the clean, white scalpel I had intended.
It was a jagged, unstable, furious thing. The light flared from white to a blinding, electric blue, and the blade itself vibrated, emitting a high-pitched, tooth-rattling shriek.
Cracks of pure, uncontrolled force began to spiderweb across its surface.
I knew that sound.
I had a millisecond.
If that blade shattered, if I let my control break, even for a breath, it wouldn't just break the trap. The uncontrolled Aether detonation would bring this entire section of the mountain down. It would incinerate me.
This was the cost. This was the curse of Animus. My "perfection" was not for show. It was a deadly, constant, exhausting necessity.
I closed my eyes.
Control.
I did not think the word; I became it. I forced the emotion down, crushing it, smothering it under a mountain of ice. I was not angry. I was Caelen val-Valerius. I was order.
The shriek of the blade lowered in pitch, stabilizing.
I opened my eyes. The light was white again. The edge was perfect. The vibration was gone. It was a scalpel once more.
The walls were now only inches from my shoulders. I felt... nothing.
With a single, precise, and elegant flick of my wrist, I sent the blade forward. It did not hit the rune. It severed the almost-invisible Aether-feed connecting the rune to the wall.
The spell died, its power-source cut.
The groan of the walls stopped. The iron gate behind me retracted. The marble slab in front of me slid open.
I stepped out onto the black sand of the exit.
My uniform was pristine. My breathing was even.
I was not sweating.
I saw her, Rostova, watching me from the survivor's huddle. Her face was a mask of exhausted, pale shock. And something else. A deep, burning... hatred.
Good.
I returned the look with the cold, impassive contempt she deserved.
I had passed the test. But my problem remained. She was still here.