Chapter 15 : A taste
The stones of the training ring shimmered in the late light, the sunless sky behind them caught in a violet hue. The Veiled Sky bent itself around the strongest Crownlight nearby. And Kael's was burning steadier than usual today.
He stood in the ring, glancing toward the entrance as the gate arch creaked.
A small squad was passing through the training yard. Four students in mismatched gear—two of them with the telltale accents of the stuck-up Ashborne. Slow-stance walkers, all poise and control.
Among them was Iris.
She wore a half-cloak over her shoulder, green-and-black hair braided close to her neck. She didn't pause as she passed the ring, but her head tilted. Kael looked up, meeting her gaze. For a second, there was a flicker—recognition, maybe curiosity. Then she nodded. Small. Unbothered. Gone.
Behind Kael, Veyna made a low whistle.
"Well, well. Didn't know you were taking electives in botany, Kael."
Soahc grinned. "Is that your girlfriend?"
Kael didn't even turn. "You're not funny."
"She's got that scornful academic thing going, doesn't she?" Sol added from the pillar where he leaned. "That's your type?"
Kael shook his head, chuckling despite himself. "Can we not do this today?"
"Sure," Veyna said, stepping into the ring across from him, already prepping her training rifle. "Right after I put you down. It's 2–2, and I want the tiebreaker."
Kael nodded, stepping into stance. "You're on."
But before they could move, Sol finally pushed off from the wall. His boots echoed dully as he walked closer, frowning—not at the fight, but at the idea of it.
"Shouldn't we stop sparring with each other?"
Veyna paused mid-lunge. "What?"
"You've all felt it by now," Sol said, arms crossed. "We've got the basics on each other. Reflexes, weak spots and all. No one's hiding anything anymore."
Soahc tilted his head. "Are you saying we hold hands instead?"
"No," Sol said calmly. "I'm saying we simulate something worse; we have the low experience, after all."
Kael glanced at him, curious. "Like what?"
"Graven", Sol replied. "You saw the way they move in the briefings. Unnatural. Disjointed. They don't spar at all. They are erratic and intelligent. If we're going into the death zone in days, we should be preparing for them, not each other."
Veyna rested her gauntlet against her hip. "And you plan to what, summon one?"
Sol's eyes didn't waver. "Something close enough."
Kael narrowed his gaze. "From your dreams?"
Sol nodded. "Yeah."
Soahc leaned back, mock-impressed. "Ooooh, what, you're a nightmare mage now?"
"I'm serious."
Veyna looked at him a bit more closely. "And you think you can make something Graven-like. In the ring. Without it killing us."
Sol shrugged. "I'm confident I can, and what choice do we have? Kael here hasn't even been to previous expeditions."
"I've seen them," Sol said. "In dreams. I can summon echoes of them. Half-real but close enough."
Sol stepped toward the ring and dropped his hand, Crownlight already pooling at his feet. "Before that—give me a second."
His voice had taken on a distant, mechanical tone. Not cold—just distant.
He raised his hands and began to draw around them with his fingertips, bleeding with arc—fine lines of pale silver forming lattice-like patterns over the circle. Symbols. Runes. Sigils Kael didn't recognise.
"Concealment?" Veyna asked, watching the shifting glyphs.
"Yes," Sol muttered. "No one sees in. Silence the field so no one hears us out. And…"
He gestured toward one edge of the ring. A complex ward locked into place, flickering once before settling.
"Safety seal. Emergency ejection. If something goes wrong, it disperses everything."
Kael's brows lifted. "Didn't know you could do all that."
Sol didn't answer—just stepped into the ring as the last of the wards snapped into place.
The air changed. A pulse echoed outward like an inverted breath.
And then… silence.
Kael couldn't even hear his own footsteps unless he focused.
Sol was already beginning.
The ground darkened beneath him, Crownlight extending from his body like ink dropped in water. It spiralled, folded, and breathed. Then came the pressure—the ambient world pulling inward, compacting like something ancient was trying to claw its way into the room.
Kael watched carefully. No one moved. Not yet.
Sol's hand stopped.
The runes around the edge of the arena shimmered once—and then the Crimson Veil fell like a guillotine of blood.
The air shifted.
One moment, they were standing in a corner of Vel'karth under the wide, grey light of Centralis. The next, they were alone in a red world—sealed inside silence, pressure, and something else. Something unnatural.
Kael felt it immediately.
That wrongness.
His throat closed for a second as if his own body didn't want to breathe this air. Light was still present—but bent, refracted like it passed through some warped lens. Every corner of the arena looked slightly stretched.
Then came the whispers.
"Turn back."
"Your skin is not yours."
"He's still watching."
Kael flinched.
Only for a second. But it happened.
His muscles locked up—then relaxed as he forced hisng to be steady. One inhale. One exhale. calming himself down for what was about to happen.
And then, it appeared.
The Graven Sol summoned this time didn't sprout into existence.
It slowly formed itself—its limbs dragging themselves out of the mist like unfinished thoughts, solidifying with cracking bone sounds that echoed wrong. Its frame was massive. At least two heads taller than a human. Its body, gaunt and skeletal, seemed made of icebound branches and cords of stretched black sinew. Its fingers ended in blades. Its legs bent backward like a deer. And antlers, jagged and gnarled, spiralled upward from a vaguely humanoid skull—but the face…
There was no face.
Only a spiral. Rotating inward. A void that pulled the eye and scraped the mind.
A spirit given form through memory, fear, and Crownlight twisted into nightmare.
Kael instinctively moved his feet into stance—half-step forward, arm drawn slightly back. His body knew this rhythm.
"Veyna", he said without looking. "Stay behind. Watch our backs; I and Sol will try to probe for... whatever we can."
She nodded tightly and circled out wide.
Sol was silent, his hands already weaving soft traces of energy as his Crownlight flared, pale and ghostlike.
Kael called out, "Soahc. You're covered."
"Got it," Soahc answered, one arm gleaming as dark energy wrapped around it like a live wire.
The Graven didn't charge. Instead the brood curiously watched them. They all felt its gaze even with its lack of eyes.
Kael's heart pounded once.
He suppressed it.
"Let's test what it knows," he muttered—and then moved.
The whispers began immediately, layered over one another, indecipherable yet sharp as knives. The sound wasn't meant for understanding—it carved directly into the brain, bleeding through every thought. Kael's head snapped slightly from the pressure, but he gritted his teeth and focused. His eyes sharpened.
Sol stepped forward beside Kael, his curls falling free over his brow, preferring them over his braids today, his eyes cold but strangely alive in the red light. The creature hadn't stopped speaking—if you could even call it that. Every time its head tilted, a new pain stabbed into Kael's skull.
It wasn't talking in any known language. It wasn't communicating. It was inflicting.
Soahc, standing behind them, didn't flinch. "Whatever it's saying, it's not meant to be heard," he muttered, eyes darting with faint recognition. "I'll try my best to send whatever he's sending to us back."
Kael spared him a glance. "Can you do that fast?"
Soahc didn't answer. He just raised his Crownlight. A sigil glowed black under his eyes, pulsing with reverse runes.
Kael returned his attention to the creature. His stance shifted—star point tight, feet grounded. The thing snarled, a soundless howl vibrating his ribs. It hadn't moved yet. But it would.
And when it did, they had to be ready.