The chamber they led me into was a perfect sphere of smooth, white stone, a jarring contrast to the jagged blackness of the rest of the Spire. There was no furniture, no windows, and no visible exit once the heavy stone door slid into place with a final, echoing thud. I was alone in the center of the room, standing on a mosaic that depicted a single, unblinking eye.
"The First Trial is not of the body, but of the self," a voice echoed through the chamber. It was the Baron's voice, though it sounded distorted, as if it were coming from the walls themselves. "The magic you carry is a parasite, Adam Hilt. It feeds on your memories, your desires, and your weaknesses. If you cannot master the hunger, it will hollow you out until there is nothing left but a shell for the Reverie to inhabit."
Suddenly, the white walls began to bleed.
Not literal blood, but images—vivid, hyper-realistic projections of my past life. I saw the mountain pass again. I saw the Duke's face as he signed my death warrant with a casual flick of his wrist. I saw the faces of the soldiers I had sent to die in the Western Provinces, their eyes accusing me from the mud. The air grew thick with the smell of iron and rot.
"You think you are a strategist," the voice whispered, now closer, as if the Baron were standing right behind me. "But a strategist is a man who calculates risk. What is the risk of a soul that has already been discarded? What is the value of a ghost?"
I felt the Crimson Reverie surge. It wasn't the warm hum I had grown used to; it was a frantic, clawing heat that tore at the insides of my skull. The images on the walls began to shift. The soldiers from my past life began to take on the faces of the recruits from Tent Seven. I saw Kael, his head crushed by a wooden club. I saw Silas, hanging from a gallows in Oakhaven.
The magic was trying to use my guilt against me. It wanted me to drown in the "Shattered Echoes" of my failures so it could take total control of my faculties. In my previous life, I would have broken. I would have collapsed under the weight of my regrets.
But I wasn't that man anymore.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the visual assault. I reached out with my mind, not toward the images, but toward the heat in my chest. You are mine, I told the magic. You are a tool. A pen. A sword. You do not define the hand; the hand defines you.
I thought of Eve. I thought of the way her fingers had felt over my heart—a grounding, steady warmth that didn't ask for anything in return. I used that sensation as an anchor, a fixed point in the storm of my own mind. I began to pull the frantic energy of the Reverie inward, compressing it, molding it from a raging fire into a cold, sharp needle.
The screaming on the walls stopped. The smell of rot vanished. When I opened my eyes, the white room was silent. I was still standing on the eye, but the mosaic was now glowing with a soft, crimson light that matched the pulse of my own heart.
"Sufficient," the Baron's voice said, sounding almost disappointed.
The stone door slid open, and I stepped out. I felt different. The "fogginess" that usually followed the use of my magic was gone. In its place was a crystalline, terrifyingly clear perception of reality. I could see the microscopic cracks in the obsidian walls. I could hear the heartbeat of the mage waiting for me in the hall. My power was no longer a blunt hammer; it was becoming a scalpel.
Over the next few weeks, I was not returned to the barracks. I was kept in the Spire, put through a series of "lessons" that would have killed a lesser man. I was taught how to layer my influence—how to weave a suggestion into a person's mind so deeply they believed it was their own original thought. I was taught how to read the emotional "currents" of a room, sensing fear, greed, and loyalty as if they were physical scents.
But the more I learned, the more I saw the Baron's true face. He didn't want a successor; he wanted a perfect extension of his will. He watched my progress with the detached interest of a scientist watching a culture grow in a dish.
During these weeks, my only solace was my occasional meetings with Eve. She was the only one who saw the toll the trials were taking. She saw the way my smiles were becoming more calculated, the way my eyes were losing their youthful spark and becoming hard like the obsidian of the Spire.
"You're winning their game, Adam," she said one evening as we sat in her library. The windows were open, and the cold mountain air was a welcome relief from the stifling atmosphere of the trials. "But you're losing yourself. You're becoming a man of shadows."
"The shadows are where the work gets done, Eve," I replied. I was looking at a map of the neighboring kingdom, my mind already tracing the supply lines and the weak points in their defenses. "The Baron is going to move on the South within the month. He's going to put me in command of a vanguard."
Eve walked over to me, her expression pained. "And what will you do when he tells you to burn a city? What will you do when the 'work' requires you to be the monster the world thinks you are?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. The strategist in me knew that victory required sacrifice. But the man who had felt her touch knew that some sacrifices were too great to survive.
As the volume reaches its crescendo, the path to power is finally clear. I have the Baron's eye. I have the magic of the Reverie under my control. I have an army of men like Kael who would die for me. But as I look at my reflection in the dark glass of the Spire, I no longer see the boy from Oakhaven. I see a man who is standing on a precipice, and the only way forward is to jump into the dark.