The spirit world greeted me again with silence. Not the silence of peace—but the heavy, waiting kind. I stood alone in a space that didn't have a sky, a ground, or even a wind to lean against. Just a strange sense of floating in something too big to understand.
Orrin had sent me here before sunrise. "This time," he'd said, "you must walk alone. I cannot follow where you're meant to go."
I had nodded. My legs were still sore from the last trial, but the ache felt right. Real. Like it belonged to someone stronger than the girl who once begged Darius not to let her go.
Now, I searched for something—a pull, a thread, a whisper of what this trial wanted from me. But nothing came. Only stillness.
Until I smelled smoke.
It was faint at first. A sharp, dry scent that pricked the back of my nose. Then it grew stronger, thicker, until I could taste ash in my mouth. Around me, the void rippled. And suddenly, I was no longer floating.
I stood at the edge of a forest.
