The night after the vow was long, and Ira barely slept.
Visions clung to him like smoke: a scabbard glimmering in the dark, a chamber carved in impossible angles, whispers of blood and path looping with every shallow breath. When he opened his eyes, he found the map on the desk beside his bed, pulsing faintly as if alive. The ink shifted in restless coils, symbols rearranging themselves in silence, never fully still.
His house north of the pier had always been his anchor: thick stone walls, shutters that moaned against the coastal winds, a hearth that still carried the soot of older fires. It was a place built not for comfort but survival. Yet even here, where storms were something you braced against rather than feared, he felt unmoored.
Every time he closed his eyes, the vow pulsed back in his chest—like something branded into his ribs. It did not fade. It waited.
Down the hill, the pier still held its sleepless shadows.
Zadie would be shuttering her motel against the damp. He pictured her there: ledger open on the counter that no one else cared about, the air heavy with salt and lamp-oil. She had always made her little corner of the world feel measured, as though if she recorded each creak of the boards, each unpaid debt, she could hold back collapse by sheer stubbornness.
Rust would be adrift above the harbor, sprawled across the deck of the Whistler's Grin. The ship floated at a slight list, patched brass ribs groaning against the tide. He imagined tools scattering across planks with each shift of current, Rust muttering curses even in his sleep. That was how he lived—halfway between laughter and disaster.
But Ira did not rest. Not here, not anywhere.
By the time dawn pressed gray against the shutters, the map unfurled on its own. Ink bled outward until a new mark revealed itself: a jagged crescent on an unfamiliar coast. Beside it, a glyph burned faintly. Not letters. Not numbers. A fractured knot of lines that twisted the longer he stared.
When he traced it with his finger, a chill climbed his arm. His pulse stumbled. The word rose unbidden.
The dagger.
By morning, his decision had already formed. He could not stay—not with the vow pressing against him, not with the map restless against his chest. Whatever this was, it was his burden.
He packed in silence. Cloak, pack, canteen, bandages. The map slid beneath his shirt, its warmth strange against his skin. He stepped out into the road before the sun had fully risen, fog curling like smoke from the sea. His house receded behind him, shuttered and still.
But someone waited.
Zadie leaned against the pylons of her motel, arms folded, as if she had been standing there all night. Fog eddied at her boots. The half-light carved her face into planes of iron and shadow.
"You're terrible at leaving quietly," she said.
Ira stilled. "You're terrible at sleeping."
Her mouth twitched—too quick to be a smile. She stepped forward, her own pack already slung across her shoulder. "Don't bother telling me where you're going. I've seen the way you stare at that map. It's like watching someone warm their hands too close to fire. I can guess."
"I didn't ask you to come."
"You didn't have to." She brushed past him onto the road. "I'm still coming."
"Why?"
Her eyes flicked to his cloak, to the faint bulge of the map. "Because last night you looked like you were collapsing under nothing. And because—" she hesitated, jaw tight "—you're not as alone in this as you think."
He swallowed hard. "You'll regret it."
"Maybe. But regrets are easier to face walking than waiting."
She was already ahead of him before he found words. He followed.
The road along the cliffs was quiet, damp grass hissing beneath their boots. For a time, only the gulls marked their passing.
The mist thickened until it no longer felt like weather but a substance, a gauze wrapping the world. Ira pressed forward, boots dragging against loose shale, and there—jutting from the cliffside—rose the plinth. Its glyph pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat under stone.
Then the words carved themselves into Ira's mind—silent, merciless:
"Will you be the one to mend what even time could not?"
"Will you prove that Strength is more than muscle?"
The stone split open in his vision, revealing a hollow chamber filled with shifting runes, fractured diagrams, and symbols that pulsed like living things.
Ira staggered, his breath catching.
"Ira?" Zadie's voice was sharp, uncertain. "What are you doing?"
He didn't answer. His hands reached toward the glowing sigils, and when his fingers brushed them, it was as though molten hooks were driven into his ribs. Pain flared deep inside, not in his skin but in his marrow, gnawing at lungs and heart and gut.
The runes twisted like serpents, mocking him with impossible patterns. Each wrong attempt sent another lance of agony spiraling through his core, until he could barely breathe.
To Zadie, though, he was clawing at blank stone, muttering through bloodied lips.
"Ira, stop—please. You're hurting yourself."
He grit his teeth, dragging himself through the torment. The runes fought him, collapsing into shards of memory: a child's hunger, a father's silence, the taste of failure. He forced crescent, dagger, compass into place with shaking hands.
"You're scaring me," Zadie whispered.
"Not—done—yet," he rasped, every word drawn from the pit of his lungs.
Blood welled from his nose, his breath a ragged rasp. He slammed the final shape into alignment with a hoarse cry. Light detonated behind his eyes—searing, final. The runes shrieked and died.
He collapsed to his knees, trembling, chest heaving like bellows.
Zadie caught his shoulders. "What in the Void was that?"
Ira dragged in a breath, shaky but steady, and wiped the blood from his face. His lips twitched with a humorless smile. "The first trial," he whispered.
Her gaze lingered on him, wide and frightened. "Trial? Ira—there was nothing. You were scratching at stone like a madman."
He blinked, vision swimming. And then he saw.
The plinth bore the marks—deep gouges carved into the rock, raw and jagged, the exact sigils he thought he had aligned in light. His fingers were shredded, his palms streaked red.
The trial had been real. But he had carved it into the world with his own flesh. Yet he could not tarry on the pain as the entire mountain split apart in his vision with a wind that ushered him in.
As he walked ahead, an abandoned forge lay sprawled in front of his eyes. Although its visage was timeworn, it bore an imperial, magnificent presence that demanded attention. The walls groaned under the weight of centuries, and the air shimmered with the memory of fire long dead.
But none of these things were shown to Zadie. To her horror, she watched as Ira approached the mountainside housing the plinth and pressed his still-bleeding hands into the stone.
That alone might have been enough to alarm her, but what came next froze her in place—not fear, but confusion and awe.
Before her eyes, Ira's body began to melt into the mountainside. First his skin, then his muscles, and finally his bones dissolved in a gruesome yet majestic display of mysticism. His form shimmered and reformed like liquid stone under an invisible hammer. The air pulsed with a low hum, vibrating against Zadie's chest, and shards of dust and rock rose around him as if the mountain itself was breathing.
Ira's cries—or were they whispers of the wind?—echoed through the mist. His mind burned with the trial's demand: "Strength is more than flesh. Endure, or be undone." Pain seared through him, not merely physical, but something deeper—his very essence was being tested, torn apart and reassembled, muscle fiber by muscle fiber, sinew by sinew.
Yet he did not falter. Every nerve screamed, every bone threatened to shatter and vanish, but he anchored himself to the world with sheer will. The mountainside pressed against him, resisting, bending, testing the limits of his body and spirit. And with each agonizing pulse, he grew stronger—not just in muscle, but in the raw, unyielding force of his being.
Zadie could only stare, unable to comprehend, her hands trembling. The sight was horrifying, yes, but beneath it lay a strange beauty, a symmetry of pain and power she could neither touch nor interrupt. Ira's figure shimmered like molten metal, distorted and reformed, until finally, with a sound like stone cracking under relentless hammering, his body snapped back into solid form, trembling, bloodied, yet whole.
He collapsed to his knees, chest heaving, muscles taut, eyes wild and unseeing.
Zadie took a tentative step forward, her voice barely a whisper: "I… Ira…" But she could not reach him, could not share in the trial. She only watched, awed and terrified.
As he finally begone to see again he awoke to the abandoned forge but this time it was lit and alive as if in its primes time of usage.
The air in the abandoned forge was thick with dust and the metallic tang of rust. Sunlight pierced through holes in the walls, falling in harsh lines across the cracked stone floor. Each step Ira took sent loose shards of brick and splintered wood skittering underfoot.
Before him, a massive stone golem crouched, silent and still. Its eyes glowed faintly, as if waiting—not for him to strike, but for him to prove himself. The words came then, not aloud, but burning into his mind:"Show me your strength, or be crushed beneath mine."
The ground trembled beneath his boots as the golem rose, slow and deliberate. Its massive arms swung, testing him like a blacksmith testing metal, each strike a thunderclap that rattled his bones.
Ira lunged to meet one arm, but it caught him on the shoulder and sent him sprawling across the floor. Pain erupted in his ribs; a breath tore from his throat as he slammed against stone. He scrambled to his feet, arms trembling, every muscle screaming, knuckles bleeding from his first strikes against the golem's rock-hard surface.
Another swing caught him in the side, throwing him off balance. He rolled, grit in his teeth, and tried to strike its knee—but the creature pivoted, its fist cracking into his back, sending him flat onto the floor. The taste of blood stung his mouth as he coughed through the pain.
He rose again, swaying, legs quivering under the effort. The golem pressed, relentless, each blow a lesson in timing and endurance. Ira's arms were raw, ribs bruised, sweat and blood streaking his face. Every punch and shove cost him, left him staggering, threatening to collapse under the weight of exhaustion and injury.
He ducked under a sweeping arm, rolling to the side, and drove a shoulder into the golem's torso. Pain exploded in his shoulder, but he clung to the movement, forcing leverage. Another swing slammed into his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs, and he fell to his hands and knees, gasping.
Time blurred. The fight was a storm of strikes, blocks, and desperate maneuvers. He was cut, bruised, battered, each impact reverberating through him. But he endured, each moment a battle not just against the golem, but against his own faltering body.
Finally, sensing the creature's slight falter, he pushed with all he had left—shoving, pivoting, twisting, his muscles screaming in protest. With a final heave, he toppled the golem to the cracked stone floor. Its eyes dimmed, and a grinding crack echoed as it collapsed.
Ira fell to his knees, chest heaving, limbs trembling, ribs aching, sweat and blood streaking his skin. He had survived—but it had nearly broken him. Strength was not just muscle or skill—it was pain endured, fear faced, and the will to rise when every part of him screamed to collapse.
Amidst his pain he could feel the map's pulse becoming one with his own if only subtly.
And with it The first trial the trial of Strength was completed.