In the hours that followed, the Vale underwent three significant changes.
The first was mass.
Over seventy percent of all life within the Vale moved toward the Plains of Barbel—a monumental undertaking executed, as such things always are in hierarchical institutions, with maximum friction.
The bureaus tasked with logistics strained immediately. Fragile prides collided with entrenched entitlement. Competing authorities issued contradictory directives—each disputing the other's right to do so. Every faction demanded exception. Every House claimed urgency.
The Council, receiving petitions across the daylight hours, resolved the matter as they always did—by ensuring none of them got what they asked for.
Satisfaction, in an institution like this, was most reliably achieved by distributing dissatisfaction evenly.
The exodus moved. Slowly. With complaint. But it moved.
The second shift was Garrek himself.
He had spent the better part of seven hours attempting to secure an audience with the Elders responsible for the Blood Trial. Collectively, they proved… unavailable.
Urgent matters arose. Meetings ran long. Representatives appeared in their place—armed with practiced apologies and no authority to offer anything useful.
By the third deflection, he understood. The audience was never going to happen.
So he stopped pursuing it.
And turned instead to the question the Elders were hoping he would not ask: not what they were doing—but why.
The exodus to the Plains of Barbel was not logistical. It was deliberate. Open ground. Beyond the Vale's direct control. Stripped of the structural advantages that would allow anyone—Garrek included—to manage what happened there.
Whatever the Trial was meant to accomplish, it was meant to happen beyond his reach.
He gave the Elders one hour to reverse course.
They did not.
Two hours before midnight, he issued his first decree.
The Vale sealed. Completely.
Inside or outside—wherever you stood was where you would remain. No exceptions were processed. Because none were received.
Within the hour, the skies filled with wings. Wyverns of House Draco—a living net cast across fifty miles of airspace. Anything that crossed it would burn. Anything beneath it could be watched.
The Arena of Ash and Embers fell under martial law. No weapons. No spellcasting. No invocation of power in any form. Every attendee was assigned a position—named. Ranked. Accounted for.
The Hands stood at every entrance. The Black Attendants lined the outer horizon.
If anything happened tonight, it would happen within parameters he had set.
It wasn't satisfaction. But it was control. And in the absence of answers—that was enough.
The third shift was the arena itself.
For all its name, the Arena of Ash and Embers had spent the better part of nine centuries in abandonment. Neglect had worn even Nyxvalis craftsmanship thin—stones settling, banners rotting from their posts, the great podiums of the high seats gone grey and pitted.
The Council corrected this in hours. Which told Garrek more about their preparation than anything he had learned through direct inquiry.
Primordial stones were transported and set in precise arrays—stabilising, containing excess current. The podiums were restored. Polished. Reclaimed from disrepair. Crested flags rose along the outer walls. Banners caught the night air.
By the time the pale moon climbed above the Vale's ridgeline—pale beside the fading Harbinger Moon—the arena looked like something that mattered.
Below the rising dark, the stage sat ready.
The Vale held its breath.
*************
At the dead center of the arena, he stood alone.
His hair was pale white, a loose cascade of silk that spilled across the obsidian floor. White robes draped his form. A golden scepter rested loose at his side, and his crimson eyes were locked upon the spectacle above.
The Fall of Barbel.
Rendered with the full excess of Nyxvalis artistry, the Great Calamity General was frozen in his final agony—his spine arched backward toward the rune-carved floor, a spear driven through his chest, his mane seized and his head wrenched upward by the Dawn Seeker above him. Moments from sentencing.
Thirteen chains extended from the fallen figure's body—threading through the grand wings that had once shadowed moons and stars, through his feet, his hands, his throat—stretching across the sunken perimeter of the arena floor and into the cold stone hands of thirteen figures, each straining to tear the Colossus apart.
How poetic. Thirteen chains. Twenty-six hands. A god who lost, and an artist who wanted to make certain no one forgot what losing looked like.
His gaze descended from the tableau to the columns beneath each of the Thirteen, where the banners of the Great Houses now hung restored. Each layered row filled with its own—from the highest rank, the Great Elders, to the lowest who walked into the Arena to watch.
At the centermost columns, two banners hung in sovereign isolation: Noctis and Nyxvalis.
On the highest podium sat Garrek Ashford, Acting Patriarch, the Three Heavens flanking him, Black Attendants arranged at precise intervals behind. Below them, the few Noctis present within the Vale sat veiled and silent—two of them standing beside the Grand Elder, whose gaze had not moved from the ranks of the Thirty-Eighth and Thirty-Ninth far below since the moment he arrived.
Perfect. Everything is perfect.
He brought the scepter down against the floor once.
And the Arena came to life.
The ominous glows of silver and blue that radiated from the Nyxvalis gaze became a background hum. The ancient cracks that scarred the stone roared to life—luminous energy flooding from where he stood, racing across every fissure, igniting them into vivid arrays and glyphs. Encircling the floor. Reinforcing the walls. Bathing the Arena in cold, unyielding light.
"Sacred children of the Evernight!"
His voice roared, louder than a thousand thunder storms.
"I am Alison of House Kallistyr, Honoured Herald of the Arena of Ash and Embers, and I hereby welcome one and all… to the 431st Blood Trial of the Evernight!"
He let the silence linger, absorbing every ounce of the moment.
"Following a First Decree murder charge against Sir James of the Iron Veil, the Eighteenth of the Thirty-Ninth—Chion Nyxvalis—was brought under judgment of the High Council."
A pause, deliberate and cold.
"Following careful deliberation and formal judgment against the Eighteenth of the Thirty-Ninth…"
"He rejected judgment."
"He rejected accountability."
"He rejected the simplicity that came with a fair trial."
A ripple of silence moved through the arena.
"He has chosen instead—"
"To seek justice…"
"Through the Path of the Great Dawn Seeker."
"The Blood Trial."
A beat.
"Thus—"
"By decree of the Evernight…"
"And by the Laws governing the Blood Trial…"
"Two shall stand."
"Two shall battle."
"One shall fall."
"And in falling—"
"Be erased."
"From the Evernight."
"A name—unspoken."
"A record—unmade."
"A legacy—undone."
"A disgrace."
"An impostor."
"By decree—"
"All shall forget."
"All shall shun."
"All shall embrace the Victor."