The trees no longer screamed, but the silence they left behind was not peace. It was emptiness—a stillness that sat thick in the air like the moment after a funeral hymn ends. The clearing was blanketed in a soft ashfall of black petals, remnants of the corruption that had nearly devoured them. The group sat among the cooling stones and smoldering bark, their bodies bruised and bloodied, their minds even more so.
They didn't speak at first. There was only the sound of strained breathing, the occasional wince as someone shifted, and the quiet crackle of golden embers curling at the edge of Rei's sword—remnants of the divine fire that had saved them.
It was Sir Calden who finally broke the silence, his voice low and tired, as though the words were heavier than they ought to be.
"…Can we just leave him?"
The others turned slowly to follow his gaze.
Erasmus lay crumpled nearby, unconscious or pretending to be, limbs awkwardly sprawled like a discarded marionette. His hair was tangled, his clothes stained with black sap and dried blood. He looked peaceful in a way that felt wrong—a quiet that felt too calculated.
Rei blinked. "What?"
"You heard me," Calden said, his jaw tight. "He's been nothing but a burden since the start. Screaming, stumbling, throwing off our rhythm. Nearly got someone killed twice. We don't owe him anything."
Rei hesitated. For a moment, he seemed genuinely unsure how to respond. Then he exhaled, rubbing at his temple with a shaking hand.
"Well… he's clearly not right in the head," he admitted, glancing at Erasmus with something close to pity. "But he's just a kid. We can't leave someone alone in a place like this."
Mira, who had been sitting with her back to a tree, snorted and shook her head.
"Who're you calling a kid?" she said with a wry smile. "Aren't you barely eighteen yourself?"
Rei smiled faintly, his expression softening—but then his gaze drifted to his hands, still scarred with the divine glow, and his brow furrowed.
"Yeah," he murmured. "I guess I am."
His voice dropped a little, more to himself than anyone else. "I've just… been training for the Trial so long, I think I forgot I was still that young."
And then his expression changed.
A flicker of something darker passed behind his eyes—uncertainty, realization, fear.
He looked up.
"…Wait."
The others turned toward him.
"What if we are in the Trial?" he asked. "Right now."
The silence that followed wasn't stunned—it was cold. Like the forest itself had frozen mid-breath.
"I mean it," Rei said, standing now, pacing slightly, the weight of the thought dragging through his limbs. "What if we never left? What if this—this whole thing—is still part of it? We're in the Trial… and we've just forgotten?"
Mira sat up straighter, her smile gone. Brin looked away, eyes wide. Even Calden's jaw clenched, as though he was bracing for a blow that hadn't landed yet.
"I've considered it," Rei continued, voice tight, speeding up. "The thought crossed my mind, but I kept telling myself—no way. There's no way the Instructors would let us go through something like this. No way they'd wipe our memories or toss us into some nightmare hell-forest and call it a lesson."
He paused, swallowing hard.
"But… what if they did? What if we broke so hard, we don't even remember starting?"
"Short-term memory loss," Mira murmured. "From stress. Or trauma."
"They said the Trial would test our 'souls,' right?" Brin added shakily.
Rei swallowed. "Maybe we forgot the beginning. Maybe we started this Trial, and it was just too much. So we broke a little. But we're still in it."
Brin looked pale. "You think… they're watching us? Still?"
"Or maybe we broke it," Mira whispered. "Maybe the Trial went wrong. Maybe we've been stuck here for weeks. Months. We don't even know."
Rei stared at the ground, eyes wide. "What if we failed already… and just forgot?"
It was like someone had uncorked a bottle of panic. The tension rippled through them like fire catching dry leaves. Breathing sped up. Fingers fidgeted. Eyes darted to the woods, to the sky, to each other.
"What if there's no way back?" Brin asked.
"What if this is it?" Mira said. "What if we're already dead and we just don't know it?"
Riven had been silent until now.
He stood.
His voice cut through the spiral like a cold wind across glass.
"No."
Everyone turned toward him.
Riven didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. There was something in the certainty of it—something that planted its feet even as the world twisted around it.
"Forget what we've forgotten," he said. "Doesn't mean we've failed."
They stared.
"We're still breathing," Riven continued. "Still together. Still fighting. That means we're not done. That means the Trial—if this is the Trial—isn't over. Not yet."
He scanned their faces, one by one, until their eyes steadied again. Mira nodded. Brin exhaled. Even Calden, reluctant as he was, shifted his weight like a man willing to keep walking forward.
Riven's gaze drifted.
To the one body in the clearing that hadn't moved once.
Erasmus.
Sprawled in the dirt like a discarded prophet, his face half-lit by the bleeding sky.
"He's our best bet," Riven said flatly.
The others looked at him.
"What?"
"I'm serious," he said. "Out of all of us, he's the most aware of what's going on. Maybe it's nonsense. Maybe it's fragments. But he remembers things we don't. He knows how the corruption behaves. He saw it coming before any of us did."
"You trust him?" Calden asked.
"No," Riven said. "I trust that he knows more than we do."
The group looked at Erasmus, still unmoving.
Still quiet.
Rei stepped closer, watching his chest rise and fall with slow, measured breaths.
"…He's not just a lost kid, is he?"
No one answered.
The only sound was the faint rustle of leaves high above.
Erasmus shifted in his sleep, a faint twitch pulling at the corner of his lips.
Was it a smile?
Or something else?