The Guardian Golem's roar wasn't a sound. It was a physical wave of pressure that hit Kael in the chest, making his ears pop. The amber pits in its featureless stone head were locked onto him.
"Okay," Kael muttered, his voice cracking a little. "So it didn't like the light show."
"Understatement," Dominic grunted beside him, raising his splintered staff. It looked like a toothpick against the thing's cart sized fist already coming down in a shadow that swallowed them whole.
Kael's brain froze. He should do something. Something sovereign, or primordial, or… something. But all he could think was, 'I'm about to be a stain.'
A silver blur shot past his shoulder.
"Valore Style: Rising Break!"
Justin Evan Valore wasn't elegant. He was a missile. He planted his foot, didn't bother with fancy footwork, and threw his entire body into an upward slash with his practice sword. Raw Silver mana flared around the blade, not as a sharp edge, but as a solid, hammer like wedge of force.
"CLANG"
The blow connected with the Golem's descending wrist. It didn't cut. It deflected. The massive stone fist screeched against Justin's concentrated power, veering just enough to slam into the ground beside them with an impact that sent Kael and Dominic stumbling.
Justin skidded back, his boots tearing grooves in the stone. His arm trembled visibly, and a line of sweat cut through the dust on his temple. He flashed them a tight, shaky grin. "He's heavy."
"No kidding," Dominic said, staring at the crater now inches from his foot. He tossed the useless halves of his staff aside. "New plan. We don't let it hit us."
"Genius," Kael breathed, his heart trying to beat its way out of his throat.
The Golem, annoyed, swung its other arm in a wide, backhand sweep aimed to clear the entire plaza. This was it. No finesse, just overwhelming, Tier III power.
From across the plaza, a voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding.
"Enough gawking! Lightning Lance: Tri-Focus!"
Three precise, vicious bolts of violet lightning each no thicker than a spear sizzled through the air. They didn't aim for the Golem's body. They struck the same point on the sweeping arm's elbow joint in rapid succession.
"CRACK"
"BOOM"
Stone shattered. The arm's trajectory faltered, chunks of netherite armor and pulverized rock spraying out. The Golem staggered, a grinding groan echoing from within.
Sophia Vlad Skynyrd stood at the plaza's edge, one hand extended, fingers still crackling with residual energy. Her purple lined robes were immaculate. She looked at the Golem, then her cool gaze flicked to Kael's group, lingering for a millisecond on Dominic. Her nose wrinkled slightly, as if smelling something unpleasant.
"A commoner's stubbornness and Valore's brute force," she said, her voice carrying the clear, ringing tone of someone used to being heard. "A crude strategy. But it served as a sufficient distraction."
Dominic, brushing stone dust off his shirt, didn't look at her. "We call it 'not dying.' You should try it sometime. Less talking, more shooting."
A faint, dangerous arc of electricity jumped between Sophia's fingers. "Mind your place, dirt-scraper. You are alive because I chose to intervene."
"Could've fooled me," Dominic muttered, already turning to assess the Golem's next move. "Sounded like you were showing off."
Kael watched the exchange, a weird, hysterical laugh bubbling in his chest. They were about to be pasted by a magical rock monster, and they were arguing about etiquette.
The Golem decided the argument for them. With a furious grinding sound, the cracked stone around its injured elbow began to glow with the sullen purple light of its Violent Purple Quartz core. Magma like energy pulsed through the cracks, fusing the damage shut. It straightened, the amber light in its eyes burning brighter, angrier. It learned. It wouldn't swing wildly again.
It raised both fists, now glowing with heated energy, and brought them down in a double handed smash aimed at the center of the plaza a quake attack that would knock everyone off their feet.
"Scatter!" Justin yelled.
But from the other side of the plaza, near the hidden archway, a new sound emerged. Not a roar, or a crackle, but a gentle, chiming melody. Three glowing forms a fox of soft flame, a humanoid made of woven vines, and a turtle of crystalline moss darted and weaved around the Golem's feet. They didn't attack. They distracted. The flame fox shot tiny, painless embers at its ankle joints. The vine spirit wrapped harmless, tickling tendrils around a massive toe. The moss turtle just blinked slowly in front of it.
The Golem hesitated, its simple consciousness confused by the non threatening nuisances.
Ellora Campbell stood with her hands outstretched, her face pinched in concentration. "It's not listening to peaceful feelings! It's really mad!"
"You think?!" Kael called back, scrambling behind a chunk of fallen pillar.
The distraction was enough. The Golem's quake smash faltered. It lowered one hand to swat at the spirits, which scattered with playful chimes.
It was then that Corvin's voice, oily and triumphant, rang out from a higher ledge. "Now! While the freak's pets are confusing it! Aim for the commoner girl! Take her out and the creature loses its focus!"
Three of Corvin's lackeys, nobles with Bronze and Red veins broke from their hiding spot. "They weren't aiming for the Golem. They were flanking, their hands wreathed in malicious magic or gripping simple, magi-tech batons that glowed with offensive runes. They were headed straight for Ellora who was exposed, her back turned to them as she focused on controlling her spirits.
Ellora saw them coming. The blood drained from her face. Her parents' warnings screamed in her ears. 'They'll target you. They'll take what you have or break it.'
She tried to pull a spirit back to defend her, but it was too slow. One of the boys, a sneering kid with watery magic already coalescing into sharp icicles at his fingertips, grinned. "Nice pets, commoner. Let's see you summon without fingers."
Ellora froze, the world narrowing to the pointed ice.
A blur of silver and blue cut between her and the attackers.
The air didn't freeze. It cracked.
Justin landed in a crouch, his practice sword held in a defensive guard. He wasn't smiling. His usual friendly face was set in a hard line Kael had never seen. He looked older. He looked furious.
"take one more step," Justin said, and his voice was low, quiet, but it carried over the Golem's growls. It wasn't a request. It was a promise.
The lackey with the icicles faltered. "V-Valore? This doesn't concern you. We're just… clearing the field."
"You are assaulting a fellow candidate to gain an unfair advantage," Justin stated, rising to his full height. The Silver light around him wasn't just a glow now; it was a mantle. "You dishonor the trial, your houses, and yourselves. Stand down. Now."
"Or what?" another lackey spat, fire wreathing his hands. "You'll report us? We'll be done by then."
Justin's eyes narrowed. "No." He adjusted his grip on his sword. The mana around it solidified until it looked less like energy and more like polished, liquid mercury. "I'll make sure you fail right now."
The certainty in his voice gave even the thugs pause. They'd expected the kind, naive Valore heir. This was someone else.
Ellora stared at Justin's back, her heart hammering. Her mind was a war. 'He's a noble. This is a trick. It has to be. But… he's standing in front of me. He's really…'
The standoff lasted two seconds. Behind them, the Golem, annoyed by the spirits, took a ground shaking step towards the archway, its attention returning to Kael and Dominic.
Corvin, from his perch, screamed in frustration. "Forget her! You idiots! The Golem! Kill the Golem! Get the clue!"
The lackeys jerked, confused, their focus broken. Justin didn't move an inch, keeping himself between them and Ellora.
It was the opening something else had been waiting for.
From a pool of shadow directly beneath the Golem's good leg, a shape flowed upwards like black ink against the light. It resolved into Daniel Frost Bane, his white hair a stark flash, his red eyes coldly focused. He didn't leap or shout. He simply placed the tips of his fingers against a specific, faintly glowing rune on the Golem's ankle, a rune that regulated the flow of energy from its Quartz core to its legs.
His own Shadow mana pulsed, not as an attack, but as a nullification.
The rune's light died with a sickly fizzle.
The Golem's leg locked up mid stride. With a titanic groan of straining stone, it began to topple forward, off balance, its massive torso crashing towards the ground right where Kael and Dominic stood.
"Move!" Dominic yelled, shoving Kael sideways.
Kael stumbled, watching the mountain of enchanted stone fall in slow motion. His brain finally unstuck. He couldn't fight it. He couldn't command it. But he could… feel it. He could feel the raging, chaotic energy of the Violent Purple Quartz core, a star of unstable magic in its chest. He could feel the rigid, angry structure of the earth and netherite that bound it.
And he could feel, through the bond, Vaelthryx's silent, ancient understanding of stone and fire and stubborn, dumb constructs.
"It's not a beast," the dragon's thought flowed into him, calm and clear. "It is a knot. Unravel one thread, and the whole bundle comes apart."
Kael didn't have a spell. He had an instinct. As the Golem fell, he didn't raise his hands to push or shield. He pointed a single finger at the thickest cluster of runes on its falling chest the primary binding matrix that turned a pile of rock into a moving guardian.
He didn't channel mana. He asked a question.
'What if you weren't tied together like that?'
A thread of his own impossible power a shimmer of gold entwined with a strand of absolute black licked out from his fingertip. It didn't strike the runes. It touched the conceptual space between them.
The result was silent and horrifying.
A patch of the Golem's chest, about the size of a barrel, simply… disintegrated. Not into dust, but into fine, inert sand that lost all magical cohesion. The runes around the void sputtered and died. The Quartz core's light flickered wildly.
The Golem hit the ground with a catastrophic BOOM, but the impact was wrong. It didn't shudder and rise. It lay there, twitching, one leg dead, its central bindings unraveling from the hole Kael had made. The amber light in its eyes dimmed to a dull, confused orange.
Silence, save for the ringing in everyone's ears and the soft chime of Ellora's spirits as they faded, confused.
Kael stared at his hand, then at the dying construct. His stomach churned. He hadn't destroyed it. He had… unmade a part of its reality.
"Well," Dominic said into the quiet, brushing a torrent of dust from his hair. He looked at the gaping, sandy hole in the Golem's chest. "That's one way to do it. Messy, though."
From across the plaza, Sophia lowered her hand, the last sparks of thunder fading. She looked from the defeated Golem to Kael, her expression unreadable. Then her eyes shifted to Dominic, who was calmly checking his boots for damage. Her lip curled, just slightly.
Justin finally turned from the cowed lackeys, who were now slinking away. The hard anger bled from his face, replaced by concern as he looked at Ellora. "Are you alright? Did they hurt you?"
Ellora could only shake her head, her mouth slightly open. She was looking at him like he'd just descended from the moon. "You… you really…"
Justin gave her that warm, slightly awkward smile again, rubbing the back of his neck. "Ah, it was nothing. Just… couldn't let them be jerks."
Daniel melted back into the shadows near the archway without a word, his job done.
Corvin, from his ledge, looked down at the ruined Golem, his face a mask of pure, impotent rage. He'd been upstaged, outmaneuvered, and humiliated. His fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
Kael took a shaky breath, the adrenaline crashing down. They'd survived. Against a Tier III monster. Together.
Justin walked over, clapping a hand on Kael's shoulder, making him jump. "That was… I don't even know what that was," Justin said, his eyes wide with awe. "But it worked. You saved us."
"We all did," Kael mumbled, feeling his face get hot. He wasn't used to this. To people. To… not being alone.
He looked at the group: Justin, earnest and solid; Dominic, pragmatic and unimpressed; Ellora, kind and shell-shocked; even Sophia, watching from her island of icy pride; and Daniel, a ghost in the periphery.
The Waystone in the center of the plaza pulsed. Then, because the trial recognized a coordinated, multi-faceted victory against overwhelming odds, it didn't just glow. It erupted.
A brilliant, complex holographic map of the entire next sector filled the air above it, detailing safe paths, hazard zones, and the clear, glowing location of the Midway Sanctuary.
They had not just passed. They had aced it.
And everyone, friend and foe, now knew exactly who had done it.