Just as those massive fangs were about to sink into my neck, the world dissolved into that familiar, blinding light.
The transition was anything but smooth. It felt as though my entire nervous system was pushed past its breaking point.
The wounds were gone but the feeling of pain was excruciating. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream until my lungs collapsed, but I couldn't even draw breath.
Then, just as the pain had spiked, the agony soon vanished.
I found myself on the same cold stone floor of that hall. I gasped, my chest heaving as I frantically looked down at my hands.
I flexed my fingers. Ten of them. My right hand was back. I ran my palms over my torso, checking if the ribs were back intact. I was relieved.
My bones were perfectly set, my skin was unblemished, and that soul-crushing fatigue had been wiped clean from my muscles.
The the nature of this place is ruthless.
To break you down to your absolute limit, only to stitch you back together for the next round.
The door on the far side of the chamber was open. I slowly got to my feet, staring into the lit corridor. I couldn't help but wonder just how many of these hellish trials were left.
The third chamber was completely opposite of the previous ones. Instead of a blank hallway, I was immediately met with the sight of two dead bodies. Well, skeletons, to be exact.
But that was not the only thing out there. Scattered across the stone floor were small, distinct mounds of fine, white powder. Calcium dust maybe?
Was it due to the degraded skeletons of these two people? I don't know.
I approached the two intact skeletons. Their clothes were rugged. Judging from the quality of fabric, they belonged to some high nobility.
With a quick glance at the width of the pelvic inlets, I concluded that one was male and the other female.
Well, even from the distinct clothes they were wearing one could tell one was male and another was female.
I looked past them, my eyes landing on the familiar stone pillar in the center of the room. But this time, there was something behind it.
It was a sword. A crimson blade that exhibited a heavy, blood-red aura. It didn't look like a standard weapon; it looked like some devourer, a living thing that hungered for blood.
I tried to dig through Ran's memories, searching for any visual match or historical text. Nothing. There was absolutely no indication of this sword in my inherited knowledge.
I stepped closer to the pillar and read the ancient inscription:
Trial 3
Thou must unravel the riddle to claim the boon thou seekest; lo, this be thine third attempt.
"Three attempts to solve a riddle." I muttered, my voice echoing in the massive hall.
"But what is the riddle?"
I looked back at the two skeletons. One male, one female. Both clad in rugged royal clothes, likely from a powerful noble house.
So they are the riddle.
I closed my eyes, forcing my mind to dig deeper into Ran's fractured memories. Anything. Come on. Give me something.
Suddenly, a memory clipped into place. An old tale.
The tale of the Auditore household.
Centuries ago, long before the Bloodrune house ever existed, the Auditores were the undisputed masters of the blade. They were the most powerful swordsmen on the empire.
The legend stated that the founder of the Auditore family had hidden his ultimate sword inside a series of trials just before his death, ensuring that only the most powerful and worthy of his descendants could wield it in the coming generations.
His grandchildren—the most powerful twin swordsmen of their era—went on a journey to find the sword. But they soon vanished without a trace.
Since then, the coming generations of the Auditore house grew weaker and weaker. Eventually, they abandoned the blade altogether, shifting their focus to sorcery and magic.
The leftover faction of the family, the purists who still revered the sword, separated from them. That splinter faction eventually gave birth to the Bloodrune household.
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. Somes Bloodrune, Ran's father and the current patriarch, had spent his entire life, exhausted every resource, to find this exact sword.
He had been completely unsuccessful. And yet, here it was, hidden deep within one of the mountains of the Leior Forest all along.
Looking down at the remains, I realized the truth. These two siblings lying dead on the floor were likely those very grandchildren.
But how did they die? That's the riddle to solve.
I decided to go with my first instinct. I looked at the pillar and spoke loudly.
"They fought together to reach this room, but greed took over. They fought and killed each other for the sword."
It was silent for a while. Then, the heavy, mechanical grinding of stone filled the air.
Boom.
The walls on either side of the massive hall suddenly lurched inward by several meters. I stumbled, my heart rate spiking. My guess was wrong, and I had just lost an attempt.
So the room shrinks each time I answer wrong.
"Seriously, are you guys obsessed with grinding people?"
No matter.
I had to solve this riddle in the next two attempts, or I was going to be crushed to death.
But I couldn't think of anything else. What was I missing? What is the context clue lying around me?
I went back to the bodies, dropping to my knees. Two perfectly intact skeletons. The male had a rusted sword still gripped loosely in his bony fingers.
But the female... there was no sword in her hand. Where was her weapon?
I scanned the room and finally spotted it. It was lying on the far end of the hall, near the entrance.
There was no possible way a master swordswoman just ditched her sword in the middle of a deathmatch. I was one hundred percent sure she didn't just throw it away.
Then how it reach there? It was getting more and more confusing. Did the brother somehow disarm her, force her to ditch the sword, and then kill her?
No, that didn't make sense. He was dead, too. How did she kill him if she was disarmed? Was he trapped by a mechanism?
I leaned in closer, inspecting the skeletons with the eye of a surgeon. I brushed the tattered fabric aside. There.
Right in the center of their ribcages. Both skeletons had massive, gaping hole marks in their sternums.
I became sure that the female swordswoman did fight with her sword. I spent the next few minutes pacing, running through every possible angle, every trajectory of a blade that could cause those identical wounds. Finally, I came to a conclusion.
"They died when they were clashing against each other!" I shouted at the pillar.
No response. But the wall did not come close. It must have signaled 'go on'.
"The brother must have killed his sister in the process of their clash. He was fatally wounded, a gaping hole in his chest, so he couldn't get out of the room or even crawl to the sword. He died right there beside her.
The reason there was skeletal powder everywhere else was because previous challengers had failed the riddle. They were crushed by the walls.
The walls moving back and forth, resetting over centuries, would have swept the sister's dropped sword away from her body. That explains why the sword was there.
Their skeletons didn't get crushed by the walls. The walls hadn't crushed them because they were the subject of the trial itself."
It was the closest theory I could sum up. Surely, I was on the right track. I would pass.
But my face quickly darkened as the stone walls drew closer. The dust fell from the ceiling, coating my hair.
I only had one attempt remaining.