The blue corridor received me without sound.

  I took a step… and my knees nearly gave way.

  I hadn’t realized the stone spell had completely vanished before the fight ended. Now my muscles suddenly trembled as they became aware they were no longer being fueled by adrenaline in my blood.

  The echo of the hammer returned to my body and made itself known along its entire path. A deep throb in my forearms, a phantom crack in my spine, also the metallic taste that came back to my tongue uninvited.

  I leaned against the luminous wall and took a breath, trying to shake off the pain. The air was clean, but my lungs did not seem to trust it yet.

  “It’s over,” I thought but the ground beneath my feet tilted slightly.

  Not enough to make me fall, but enough to warn me that the environment was not entirely friendly.

  I frowned. I tried to steady my breathing, to impose a rhythm on it as Eldreich had taught me. The air grew denser, thicker, heavier with each exhale.

  I tried to let it be, to allow it to become whatever it needed to be. Only then did the corridor level out.

  I moved forward slowly, careful not to become prey to some invisible attack again.

  With each step, the texture shifted: smooth stone, then soft earth, then something in between that yielded faintly beneath my weight. It was not an inert passage, it responded to my posture, to my steps… the way I moved—and above all, to the substance of my thoughts.

  When my mind rushed ahead, imagining the exit, the blue light dimmed. When I forced myself to “do it right,” the air thickened in my throat.

  There was a brief moment when, without meaning to, I thought: “I don’t want any more trials.”

  The corridor narrowed and the light darkened to a deeper blue, almost navy. I felt the urge to strike the wall, to demand that it end once and for all.

  In that instant, the memory of the hammer crossed my mind. I stopped, waited, stilled my spirit before doing anything else.

  The tension in my shoulders eased, millimeter by millimeter. When my breathing stopped demanding an outcome, the corridor widened again.

  Even so, that small victory gave me the certainty that there was still ground to cover before the trial would end. I continued descending in a spiral.

  The blue grew deeper, more internal. The murmur began before I saw the chamber: a low vibration coming from the direction I was heading. When the tunnel opened, I found a bare circular space.

  No mirrors.

  No clocks.

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  Just stone upon stone. No theater.

  At the center, a monolith rose from the ground. Dark, massive, covered in roots that moved slowly, as if time flowed differently here.

  They were not ordinary roots. They shimmered with intertwined emerald and copper tones, like veins of light beneath the rock.

  I approached. My legs still trembled from the fatigue of the previous battle, and the rest of my body protested in its own way.

  I extended my hand and when my fingers touched the surface, the cold pierced through to my shoulder. The light went out, and the roots tightened.

  A deep vibration ran through the chamber, and the monolith somehow became harder, colder—a clear, unmistakable resistance.

  I did not feel it as a violent rejection, but whatever that entity was kept its distance, wary of me. I remained silent for a few seconds, revisited those sensations—and understood.

  It was a certainty that settled in my chest.

  You are still fleeing.

  “No…” I murmured, unsure whether I was answering or pleading.

  I had faced my anger, I had endured the blow and I had chosen not to shatter the mirror.

  What, then, was I fleeing from?

  The answer came before I could fully form the question. I was not fleeing from my rage or my flaws, I think I was fleeing from what I might—or might not—become.

  From the possibility that my strength would not be enough, that in the end I was only Maki, an ordinary person with desires for magic. Or… that thin line separating virtue from corruption.

  The monolith vibrated again, the stone turned translucent, and light began to grow within its core… A vortex of images unfolded inside it.

  I saw fire, an inferno, Nebenbei burning.

  The structures I knew reduced to black silhouettes consumed by vivid red. Smoke flooded the entire bazaar, and amid the flames a figure stood unmoving.

  Me. I was not trying to extinguish anything. The fire did not consume me or harm me; it was like an eruption of rage and hatred born from my own heart. Could I truly do that to Nebenbei?

  The vision shifted… Master Toshihiro was on his knees, wounded—struck with a gravity I had never seen in him before. His hands were stained with blood, perhaps his own, perhaps not, and his eyes…

  The light changed again, now there was only heat. My skin covered in flames, and fire climbing my legs and arms as if it were intrinsic to me.

  The monolith ceased its display of disasters, and the question unfolded within me with unbearable clarity:

  Will you accept what you are, even if it hurts?

  I wanted to look away to deny the possibility. I wanted to say that none of this was real… Or was it?

  But I did not answer, instead, I replayed the images in my mind, allowing the vision to exist without fleeing from it.

  The light of the monolith shifted into calmer tones and the roots slowly descended along the stone, no longer tense, but flexible.

  A warm current traveled through my feet as they wrapped around me in something like a greeting. The initial cold transformed into steady warmth.

  The monolith cracked in silence. Where solid stone had once stood, moist earth now emerged and at its center, a sprout, small and luminous.

  I knelt and observed it closely. It was identical to the sprouts in Eldreich’s garden… yet at its core, almost imperceptible, a reddish line ran along the stem like a nascent vein.

  I extended my fingers and touched the sprout. This time, there was no rejection, I felt something within me respond in the same tone—deep… without asking for control or escape.

  The sprout emitted a firmer pulse. The reddish vein glowed faintly, like an ember protected beneath the earth. I felt that vibration descend through my chest and anchor itself deep within me, like a full truth I could no longer ignore.

  The root does not distinguish between light and shadow, but it nourishes whatever chooses to grow. The red line pulsed and traveled along the stem once more, brighter this time, as if responding to my thoughts.

  I did not withdraw my hand; I remained in the warmth of that sprout, seeking comfort.

  If danger were ever to become part of me, I would learn to control it. I had my new friends and the teachings of my masters; they would not allow me to be consumed like a fire without control.

  And yet, as I withdrew my hand from the sprout, I knew that some flames do not seek to destroy… but to reveal who you truly are when everything begins to burn.