The sun was just beginning to dip behind the treetops when the carriages came to a stop. The forest loomed ahead—taller and darker than any of them had imagined. Its trees stretched like black spears into the sky, draped in creeping mist and whispers that had no mouths. The earth pulsed beneath their boots, soft and warm, like it breathed.
Dante stepped down cautiously. The air smelled thick—like moss, copper, and something ancient. His fingers curled tightly around the strap of his bag. The others murmured among themselves. Some looked pale. Others pretended to be brave.
Wilford stretched, cracking his neck. "Doesn't look so bad," he muttered. "Just trees."
Dante said nothing. He was too busy listening.
A pressure hung in the atmosphere—something quiet, deep. The kind of silence that preceded storm spells in the books he loved.
A tall figure stepped forward from the front of the caravan, robes flowing with each step. His spectacles glinted with ethereal light. Hair pulled tight into a single braid. A tome floated beside him, its pages turning slowly of their own accord.
Corbin.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"You are now entering the Trial Grounds of the Verdugo Family," he said, flipping the book closed with a thought. "Your only goal: survive for thirty days."
A murmur rippled through the group.
"You will not be assisted. You will not be retrieved. Any who perish will be logged, and your soul's resonance returned to the Archive."
Dante's heart pounded. He recognized the phrasing—resonance, Archive, retrieval—these were terms from spell contracts, usually applied to magical experimentation. Did they think some of them wouldn't come back?
Sona, standing quietly beside Corbin, offered a single nod to no one in particular.
Corbin extended both hands. "Brace yourselves."
That was when Dante saw it.
The ground beneath them shimmered—no, glowed. A network of sigils spread outward from each of their feet, lines of pale gold webbing into the grass like cracks in glass. A low hum vibrated through the soles of his boots. Some of the kids screamed. Others tried to run.
But Dante?
He stared, wide-eyed, breath caught in his throat.
"He's casting a transfer weave," he whispered to himself. "Spiral pattern, twelve-point resonance… It's real…"
The air turned white-hot. Symbols rotated under his feet.
The spell was being cast on him.
Real magic. Actual magic.
And then the incantation fell from Corbin's lips like a verdict.
"Kanturis volan—fractum anima et corpus. Let your fate be scattered. Survive or perish. Emerge reborn."
The forest—and the world—shattered around him into light.
He didn't know where he landed.
The boy—Nolan, age twelve, born in a back-alley hospice and raised on scraps—stumbled forward on all fours. His breath hitched with every ragged exhale. Cold mud clung to his hands, knees, and bare feet. The teleportation spell had spat him out in a gully beneath the roots of some ancient, rotting tree. Every time he tried to climb, the earth crumbled beneath him, slick with moss and worms.
His heart raced like it wanted out of his chest.
The forest was wrong.
Everything moved. Slowly. Constantly.
The branches above swayed, but there was no wind. Shadows shifted just out of sight, but there was no sun. Shapes moved through the mist—not beasts, not quite men. Their footsteps made no sound.
Nolan pressed himself into a muddy alcove between two root knots and whispered a prayer to no one.
"I can't—I can't—I can't—"
His teeth chattered. His fingers curled tight, nails scratching bark, searching for something to hold onto. Somewhere nearby, a crunch sounded. Leaves breaking. Breathing. Something big.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
A pulse shook the air. Like a heartbeat.
He opened his eyes—and there they were.
Eyes. Yellow. Dozens. Watching.
From behind a crooked tree trunk, from within the folds of hanging moss, from the dark.
He screamed.
The scream reached Dante like an arrow.
It echoed faintly—muffled by trees, distance, and layers of mist—but it was there. Sharp. Human. Final.
Dante stood beneath a high ridge, trying to catch his bearings. His fingers brushed against a moss-covered boulder. His pack was intact. His journal was tucked under his shirt. The pendant from the Sister clinked softly against his chest.
That scream… someone already—
He exhaled slowly. Closed his eyes. Thought.
The trees here weren't random. They were organized—three rows deep before spacing shifted, common in resonance-dense zones. The shape of the land bent southeast—a subtle slope of only a few degrees, but enough to indicate the edge of the Hollow Basin.
He opened his journal, flipping to the sketch he drew months ago by candlelight.
"Hollow Basin, base of the Trial Forest. Records note three main spirit wells. One at the basin's heart."
He knew where he was.
He wasn't supposed to. But he'd studied every map, every trial ledger, every rumored spirit appearance that had leaked out of Verdugo trials for the last 40 years. Hidden between the lines of books most children would never understand, the answers were there.
And one answer mattered more than the rest:
"To survive the Verdugo Trial, you must find the Tree of Death."
It wasn't a metaphor.
It was a real thing.
A gnarled, blackened tree said to be cursed by the death of hundreds of failed aspirants—burned by spirit fire, fed by blood, and now a beacon to spirits who recognized the edge of human potential.
"Only those who bond beneath its shadow survive."
That's what he read. That's what he believed.
And unlike the others, he knew the Verdugo trial wasn't a test of brawn. Only five percent of it was physical. The rest?
"Mental resilience. Spiritual attunement. Inner weight."
Dante took a step forward, staring into the mist.
"I'm not the strongest," he whispered to himself. "But I've read everything."
And that had to be enough.
The silence was wrong.
Dante knelt in a shallow depression near the base of a warped tree, roots like claws splayed across moss-covered stone. The leaves above were still—too still. Not a breeze stirred, not a bird chirped, not even insects made sound. Just that low, constant pressure… like the forest itself was holding its breath.
He was being hunted.
He'd felt it an hour ago—first as a tingle at the base of his neck, then as the soft crunch of leaves far too deliberate to be wind.
The lesser void beast had yet to reveal itself. But it was there. Waiting. Watching.
Dante's breathing was shallow, slow. He pressed his palm into the damp earth and began drawing.
"Please work…"
He whispered the opening lines of the Spirit Beckoning Rite—a ritual he'd memorized from a crumbling tome back in the orphanage. His finger moved quickly, etching a sigil into the soil—three circles, seven slashes, and the mark of humility at its center.
"By the resonance of this living place… by the echo of my will… I call thee to my side…"
The air shifted slightly. For a moment, Dante felt something… lean in. A flicker of warmth. A heartbeat not his own.
And then—
Nothing.
The sigil dulled. The pressure vanished. Even the whisper of spirit presence blinked out.
They didn't come…
He stared at the lines in the dirt. His shoulders slumped.
"Of course not," he muttered, his voice hollow. "I'm still just a 0.1."
A branch snapped in the distance. Closer now.
The void beast was coming.
Dante's body tensed. His vision blurred at the edges. His heartbeat was so loud it drowned out thought. Cold sweat slipped down his neck. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere left to go.
Is this it? Is this where I die?
Then—a voice.
Soft. Female. Not spoken aloud, but in his mind, clear and urgent.
"You have to come to me. Now. Or I'll be lost forever."
Dante froze.
The air changed again—this time with weight. Not pressure like before. Life. Dense, vibrant life-force, pressing against his senses like a tide rising through the trees.
Something ancient. Something dying. Something divine.
"Who… who are you?" he whispered.
"Follow the little bird," she said. "Hurry. I can't hold him off much longer."
A faint rustle overhead.
Dante looked up—and there, perched on a branch just above him, was a small spirit bird. Its feathers shimmered with shades of green and silver, like living leaves and moonlight. Its eyes glowed gold. It watched him… then took off.
"Wait—!"
The void beast roared behind him.
Dante didn't wait.
He ran.
The forest tore at him as he ran.
Branches clawed at his arms. Vines curled around his ankles like desperate fingers. The trees—he could swear—moved. Shifted subtly in the mist, warping the path ahead, closing off every direction but one.
The bird danced through the canopy, never looking back. It flew low, ducking through broken stone arches, diving into overgrown hollows, leading him deeper—always deeper.
Dante stumbled through a ring of fungus-covered roots. The temperature dropped. Frost kissed the tips of his fingers. He could feel it now—the Death King's presence, brushing the edge of the forest like a black sun rising behind his back.
Something was following him.
"Why isn't the beast chasing me?"
Then he realized—it wasn't fear keeping the void beast at bay.
It was her.
The spirit who had called to him.
Each time he thought the path would end, another door opened.
Sigils on tree bark—twisting like writhing runes—overlapped, short-circuited, rewrote each other in a rapid spiral of light and energy. The branches recoiled. Thorns melted into moss. A tunnel of life and resonance opened through the chaos, tailored just for him.
She was bending the forest.
He'd read about spirit domains—areas where powerful spirits imposed their will on the land itself—but to do so while injured, alone, and hiding from the Death King?
It was unthinkable.
She's a master… no, more than that. She's fighting him already.
The air suddenly grew heavier—not with fear, but with vitality.
The moment he crossed the final barrier, everything changed.
A ring of trees stood in perfect formation, their trunks etched with spiraling sigils that pulsed faintly, woven into a defensive circuit. Vines glowed blue along the ground, forming a lattice that shimmered like a net. At the center of the glade, half-hidden by shadow and cracked bark, knelt a woman clad in ruined armor.
She bled light.
Spirit light.
Her form flickered—half-corporeal, half-ether, like a fire struggling to remain lit in a storm. Long silver hair matted to her cheek. Her eyes—wild green laced with amber—watched him with fatigue, but also clarity.
The bird landed on her shoulder.
"Three days," she said, her voice like wind through leaves. "That's all I can keep him out."
Dante stared, breathless.
"A humanoid spirit…" he whispered. "That means you're… high-rank."
She gave a crooked smile. "And you're quick."
He took a step forward. "You want a contract?"
"I want to live. That Death-bastard has been trying to sniff me out for weeks. If I was at full strength, I'd skin him," she said casually. "But I'm not. And I'd rather sign with a child than die here unclaimed."
"Deal," Dante blurted.
She tilted her head. "No hesitation?"
"None."
"Then your first trial begins now."
She raised one hand, touched his forehead.
The forest vanished.
There was no warning. No shift, no shimmer—just change.
The glade vanished, swallowed in a heartbeat. Dante didn't fall or move or blink. One moment, he was standing before a dying spirit. The next, he was someone else.
Smaller.
Shorter.
Breathing too fast.
He could feel it—raw terror coiled in the chest of this body. Not his body. Not his breath. But it felt real.
He was in her memory.
The jungle around him steamed with heat and pulse. Tall grasses rustled with unseen movement. Trees towered high above, casting shadows that swam and flickered with each passing gust. The air was thick, damp, and alive with tension.
A shortbow was in his hands.
Dante looked down—calloused fingers gripped the wood, not his own. A deep green leather strap cinched around his wrist. His arms were slim, barely trained. There were small scars on the back of the left hand. A spirit mark pulsed faintly at the base of the palm.
This was Agrias, the Huntress. Younger. Vulnerable.
A low rumble thrummed through the jungle floor.
Then it emerged.
The void beast.
It was feline only in the way a nightmare might remember a tiger. Its spine was too long, its ribs visible but moving—expanding and contracting like the bellows of a forge. Translucent skin shimmered over muscle woven from shadow and light. Its legs bent wrong at the joints, more like a stag's but with talons instead of hooves. Black fur grew in patches, twitching like it was alive on its own.
Its face was a grin—a split-open mask of bone and flesh that peeled upward into a crown of antlers made from splintered horn and raw spirit bone. Its mouth didn't open—it unfolded, four jaws peeling outward like a blooming flower of fangs, the inside lined with smaller, secondary teeth that clicked and spasmed in anticipation.
Its eyes—if they could be called that—were floating pearls of obsidian, hovering near where a head should be, each blinking independently.
The creature took a step.
The jungle warped.
Roots recoiled. Insects froze mid-flight and fell dead. A tree beside it withered into splinters, its leaves curling inward as the void beast's presence stripped the mana from the air.
Dante struck. An arrow. It sank shallow.
The beast screamed. Charged.
He dodged. Scrambled. Grabbed a shard of bone.
If I'm going to die… then die hunting.
He leapt. Drove it in.
It fell. Dissolving in sparks.
But it wasn't over.
The blood-steam from the beast didn't dissipate—it condensed. And from it, twomore emerged.
"You thought that was it?" Agrias's younger self said.
"Back then, the gods were still at war with the titans. You think we had time to 'pass tests'? We were trying to not get obliterated."
She wasn't angry—just honest.
"If you want my blessing… carry my weight."
Another lunged. Dante stabbed it with a snapped fang.
One left.
Unarmed. Bleeding.
Agrias watched him, arms folded.
"They didn't give me a title. I took it. Now kill the last one—with nothing but your will."
Dante stood. No blade. Just fire in his gut.
He faced the beast.
Didn't move. Didn't shout.
He simply aligned.
And as the beast lunged—he endured.
Her sigil ignited across his chest.
The creature crumbled into ash.
He awoke in the glade.
No wounds. No blood. Just soaked in sweat and breathless, like he'd run for days. His body trembled—not in fear, but from spiritual overuse.
Agrias knelt beside him, restored.
She looked younger somehow, her form more stable, more real.
"You did well," she said simply, offering her hand.
Dante reached up. Their palms met.
The contract sealed.
A pulse of life surged between them—spirit to soul.
The forest sighed. Its aggression faded.
The glade became quiet.
Agrias stood, brushing off her armor. "Rest. We train tomorrow."
Dante closed his eyes beneath the sky, finally knowing what it meant to be chosen.