As fireworks lit the sky, Rin's eyes caught the faint shimmer of a distant root pulsing beneath the aurora — the call of something ancient.
A circle of light opened beneath his boots — colder, older, threaded with root-sigils carrying the scent of living earth beneath all the ice.
Rin didn't ask why.
He stepped into the light out of curiosity.
The plaza fell away like a page turned.
When he opened his eyes, he stood somewhere else entirely.
The sanctum was quiet — the kind of quiet that follows the first snowfall.
Roots arced like pillars through a cavern bright as a cathedral. Sap drifted within them like slow stars. At the center, a pool mirrored a sky no one had ever seen. Two fruits hung from a branch that grew from nowhere and everywhere — one the color of midnight frost, the other the pale of dawn.
The Queen stood at the pool's edge — the World Tree in spirit form — barefoot, leaning against a rib of living wood, watching Rin the way a cat watches a candle.
"You know brute force," the Queen said, voice calm as winter. "But brute force alone will not carry you to the level required to resist the Void — or to survive the Conflux of Crowns."
She turned, eyes glimmering faintly.
"The Conflux will demand you defeat prodigies. You bear two legacies — claim them both."
A pause.
Then, softly, "Aside from the fact that my ice is indestructible… I can see the future — your future. And I know that without this step, you will not survive what comes."
Rin's gaze shifted to the fruits. Old bone knowledge stirred deep in his blood. He reached upward, hesitating only long enough to breathe.
The first fruit was cold and clean — like drinking air from a mountaintop.
The second was colder still — not temperature, but law.
He swallowed both.
The sanctum turned inside out. The world fell away.
For an instant, rings of light spun through the air — circles within circles — before sinking into his eyes. When he blinked, they were gone.
He landed on a plain of silver.
His mental realm wore frost like glass. The sky above it was a patient dome, stars suspended in waiting.
The Codex floated nearby — playing tennis against himself, ignoring Rin until the match ended.
When he turned, he hovered like a closed book that somehow managed to be an eye.
"So," he said — dry, faintly pleased. "You've finally stopped pretending to be ordinary."
Rin exhaled, frost curling from his lips. He didn't answer.
"The first fruit," the Codex continued, "is Adaptation. You know the elf instinct — placing ice where your mind's eye predicts harm. This is more. Where you are struck, you will not only endure — you will adapt. Against brute force, you become calculus. Against novelty, you evolve before the third blow lands."
A pulse ran through Rin's veins — pale blue light, then stillness. His breath deepened. Old aches dissolved. The hairline fractures from years of training — the damage the Gravity Dimension had exposed — all folded seamlessly into a new architecture.
"And the second fruit?" Rin asked quietly.
The Codex smiled — an expression an avatar should not possess.
"Dormant. Not because it is weak, but because the door it uses is not yet built. You will meet the hand that wrote your first ending — or his subordinate. When that happens, you'll need a road the Void cannot touch. Until then, it sleeps."
An image flickered across the frost — a man made of editorial cruelty; a script penned in other people's blood. Rin's jaw tightened.
"You will fight men," the Codex said. "But you were not built for men. You were built for authors."
The sky trembled faintly. Somewhere far above the sanctum, a crownless star turned its face toward Sylvanyr.
"Learn to be cut," the Codex added, voice softer now. "We're going to teach you how."
Rin nodded once. "Then teach me."
"I will," said the Codex. "Quickly."
The frost plain folded back into itself. The sanctum returned. The pool sighed. Roots creaked — as though something too vast for shape had nodded.
Rin opened his eyes.
The Queen studied him. For a heartbeat, softness crossed a face that held nations.
"You look like your mother," she murmured, "the day she stopped asking permission."
The World Tree hopped down from her perch, circling him with a grin.
"He won't die when I throw him at the wrong problem, then."
"You will not throw him," the Queen said flatly.
"I will nudge him," Sylvanyr countered, rolling a petal across her knuckles. "Gently."
Rose stepped from a side arch — as if she'd always been there. Her gaze swept Rin the way a swordswoman checks a blade's edge.
"You're different."
"I ate the fruit," Rin said. "Gained two new abilities. Only one's open — Adaptation."
She nodded. "Good. The Conflux is near."
A bell rang without sound.
Outside, the bridges hummed.
On the main screen above the plaza, the trial rankings froze — names etched into history.
The Queen stepped from the shadows.
"Rest tonight," she said to all three. "No need to register at dawn. The tests are over. The war for the invitation begins."
Rin bowed. The spirit grinned wider. Rose's lips curved with the easy cruelty of kin who've earned the right to worry.
He turned to leave — and the Codex's voice followed like a hand on his shoulder.
"Rin."
He paused.
"You're allowed to enjoy the fight," it said gently. "Just not to live inside it."
He didn't smile. But something in his eyes thawed — then refroze, cleaner.
"As long as we finish the one that matters," he said, and stepped out into Sylvanyr's night —
bridges singing, banners breathing,
and a planet that had just learned the name of its next problem.