The silence that followed was suffocating.
Ten gates for ten awakeners. One S-rank beast per person.
A trial that guaranteed casualties, possibly total team wipe out, if Moon's reading was accurate.
Kael spoke for the first time in a while, "There might be another interpretation we're missing. The phrasing is deliberately vague. 'One has chosen ten' could mean one entity selected ten challenges, not necessarily that ten individuals must face them separately."
"'To free one is to free none,'" Reid added thoughtfully. "That could mean the gates are linked, that completing them in the wrong method fails the entire trial. Not necessarily that we split up."
Moon listened to the alternative theories but his instincts kept returning to the most straightforward reading.
It fit too perfectly with the numbers, the warnings, the entire structure of this trial.
But he also recognized the devastating consequences if he was wrong and they committed to his interpretation.
