The Starfire Trial

The Grand Magnus Academy was silent in the hour before dawn.

The silence wasn't empty. It pulsed like a breathe held by the ancient stones of the towers, a lull in the ever-humming air of spellwork and power. In that pocket of stillness, beneath a sky bruised with fading stars, Eryk Thorn stood alone in the training yard. His boots were caked with frost, his fingers red and raw from the cold, yet he moved with the deliberateness of ritual.

The spellform was simple. Elementary, really. A weave of three basic runes tied by a fourth: Ignis Ardentis.

A child's spell.

Yet it defied him.

He traced the rune again, slow and careful, as if reverence would awaken its dormant spark. The lines glowed briefly beneath his fingertips, flickering like the last breath of a dying flame. Then, as always, they guttered and vanished.

Eryk didn't curse. He didn't even cry out. He only breathed like a prisoner trying to get out of the cell. In. Out. Again.

A hundred times he had repeated this sequence. More. Maybe thousands. His hands ached from his doing. His spine curved forward with weariness. And still, he stood, bound to the ritual by something greater than pride.

Desperation.

Not the panicked kind. Not the frantic scrambling of a boy on the brink. No, Eryk's was colder. A blade honed over years of rejection, of watching other students bloom around him while he withered. His desperation was old, sharp, and quiet.

They said magic was will. That the fire within had to be summoned, coaxed, and commanded. That if it didn't come to you, then you simply didn't want it enough.

He wanted it. Stars above knew how he was hunger for it.

More than sleep, which had long abandoned him. More than food, which he barely tasted anymore. More than companionship, which he had learned to go without.

Magic was everything.

The one thing that separated those who mattered from those who didn't. The one thing he needed to prove that he could be more than the hushed words and sideways glances and barely concealed sneers of his peers.

But nothing answered him.

Inside his chest was the void. The others described their cores as living creatures. Mael, the fire prodigy, claimed his was a beast of flame, caged and restless. Others spoke of rivers, or wind, or roots curling through the earth. Eryk had nothing. Just a cold, endless silence.

And today...

Today, as the sun's first breath kissed the Academy's towers with gold, he would face the Starfire Examination.

The Trial.

The final judgment.

~○~

The examination hall was everything the Academy wanted its students to become: grand, intimidating, flawless.

Vaulted ceilings arched above in perfect symmetry. The obsidian pillars gleamed like mirrors, etched with the names of past champions. The names glowed faintly with their bearers' lingering signatures—magic so potent it had etched itself into stone. The air inside shimmered with mana, thick and metallic on the tongue, vibrating faintly in the bones.

Dozens of students waited in tense silence, robes immaculate, expressions schooled into masks of calm. But when Eryk entered, their eyes turned to him. A fraction too sharp for him. The "Hollow Thorn", they called him. Not to his face. But always just loud enough.

At the far end of the hall stood the Examiner.

High Magister Elira Vann. The Flame Judge. Her silver hair was bound tightly behind her, and her robes bore the crimson seal of the Fire Council. She did not smile. She had never smiled.

"Eryk Thorn," she intoned.

He stepped forward, boots clicking on polished obsidian.

The silence was suffocating. No whispers. No movement. Just breathless anticipation.

"Begin."

He inhaled. Closed his eyes. Focused.

His fingers began the weave, slow, and deliberate. The rune of spark. The rune of breath. The rune of will. And finally, the anchor.

For a heartbeat, the runes blazed.

Gold. Glorious. Real.

And then, extinguished.

The silence returned, but it was louder now.

The rune faded into the floor, leaving nothing but failure.

"Again," Elira said.

He obeyed.

Again. And again. Again until the gold looked like blood, until the sparks seemed to mock him. His breath came ragged. His vision blurred. Each attempt weaker than the last. Each silence heavier.

They watched, not with surprise but with confirmation.

Elira's voice was flat. "You have no core! You have no magic! You have... failed."

The words were a guillotine.

He had prepared for this. Imagined it a thousand times. But imagination dulled pain. Reality was sharper.

"Please," he whispered. "Just one more."

The silence was too loud, defeaning his ears.

"The Academy has no use for hollow men."

~○~

They gave him until sundown.

Not much of a sendoff. No ceremony. No audience. Just a quiet verdict sealed behind stone walls.

Packing didn't take long. How could it when there was so little to show for three years?

A single satchel. Spare robes, already frayed at the cuffs. A flask with a hairline crack. His mother's pendant—a disc of tarnished silver etched with the old Thorn crest, a tree whose branches curled inward like a fist. A relic of a lineage that no longer claimed him. Useless, now. Or maybe worse than useless. A symbol of what he was supposed to be, what he had failed to become.

He lingered.

Stared at the cot that had held countless sleepless nights, where he once whispered spells under his breath, hoping the words would suddenly click. Where he had dreamed—not of glory, but of worth. Of belonging. Of hearing his name called during the Channeling.

The desk lay buried beneath ink-stained notes and unfinished glyphs, evidence of every attempt that went nowhere. A battlefield of failures.

And the window. It had framed the valley below, where the tower spires gleamed at sunrise and the training grounds buzzed with fire and fury. He used to sit there in the mornings, telling himself he'd catch up. One day. One spark, and everything would change.

But the spark never came.

The door creaked open.

Mael.

He filled the frame like a stormcloud—broad-shouldered, fire-veined, arrogance barely contained in every motion. His presence was pressure. Even at rest, heat shimmered from him like a hearth gone untended.

He leaned lazily on the doorway, arms folded while he was smirking.

"Well," he said, his voice was thick with satisfaction. "The Hollow Thorn finally cracked."

Eryk didn't answer. What was there to say?

Mael took a step inside, boots loud against the stone. "You know, when you first showed up here, all quiet and twitchy, I thought maybe you're hiding something. Maybe you're one of those cursed slow-burners. The kind that explodes when no one's looking."

He scoffed.

"But nah. Turns out you're just empty."

The word struck like a stone to the chest. Eryk didn't flinch. He had no more flinching left.

Mael moved closer, the air around him was thickening. The scent of scorched parchment and singed pine clung to him—memories of fire spells cast and mastered.

"You never belonged here," Mael continued, with his voice so low that it was almost conversational now. "You're not a mage. Not even a Thorn. You're a fluke. A smudge on a bloodline that's already fading."

Eryk's hands curled around the pendant. It bit into his palm.

Mael turned, pausing at the threshold.

"And Thorn?" he said, hi voice light. "Your family will know it. By now, everyone in this academy does."

The door slammed behind him as Mael walked away.

Eryk walked out of the room.

Not out of defiance. Not even grief. Just a forward motion. As if distance could make this something else.

No farewell. No words. He slipped through the side gate like a ghost, passing under the cold stone arch carved with the Academy's creed: Power is Purpose.

He didn't look back.

The road to Chishiro twisted through the forested hills of Eldenreach, cloaked in shadow and gold-touched leaves. Once, it had seemed like the start of something grand. His first steps toward becoming more.

Now, every bend felt like a dismissal.

He didn't sleep. Didn't stop. Let the pain build, the rhythm of steps and stumbles becoming its own numb cadence. Blisters rose, burst, and bled beneath his boots. He drank from icy streams that made his teeth ache. Ate nothing. His stomach was hollow, but it matched the rest of him.

The pendant, warm from his grip, became a cruel weight. It wasn't hope anymore. It was history. A burned bridge dangling from a chain.

At dusk, he reached the cottage.

A squat, weather-worn structure tucked at the edge of a meadow that shimmered with wind-blown seedgrass. The roof slumped slightly on one side. The shutters clattered in the breeze. It wasn't much. But it was familiar.

The scent of smoke and bread reached him before the door opened.

"Eryk?"

Loira. His mother. Dark hair tied back in a braid that always looked too tight. Hands dusted with flour, eyes wide with cautious joy.

For a moment, he tried to smile. His lips moved, but after that, there's nothing followed.

Behind her mother was his father, Kael Thorn. Taller, leaner, his eyes sharp. Protective. His stance tensed as if expecting a threat.

"You're early," he said, voice edged with suspicion.

The lie slid from Eryk's lips before he could think.

"They sent me ahead. A quest. Before the next trial."

Liora's gaze lingered too long. Her eyes read the bruises on his pride. The slouch of his shoulders. The silence. She knew.

But she said nothing.

Kael studied him a beat longer, then gave a slow, guarded nod. "Come inside."

Warmth. Firelight. The scent of thyme and old wood.

Eryk sat down at the table with hegs shaking from exhaustion. The room was small, but it wrapped around him like a memory. Soft and bitter all at once.

Liora placed a bowl of stew in front of him. "Eat."

He tried. Forced a bite. Swallowed. But the second swallowing was stuck. His throat was raw. His stomach churned. He set the spoon down with a trembling hand.

Kael sat across from him, arms folded, watching.

"The Ashen District," he said quietly. "That's where you're going?"

The words hit like a slap. Eryk froze.

A breath to reassemble the lie.

"Yes."

The silence stretched around them.

Liora's fingers slipped. Her spoon clattered against the pot, jarring the quiet.

The Ashen District wasn't a place for training. Or quests. It was where magicless were discarded. Swept aside. Forgotten.

She reached across the table, her hand wrapping around his.

"Come back," she whispered. "Promise me."

He nodded.

Lie number two.

That night, he lay in the bed that had once held his boyhood dreams.

The mattress sagged in the middle. The ceiling bore the same crack he used to trace with his eyes, waiting for sleep. Waiting for a tomorrow worth waking up to.

The pendant rested cold and still against his chest.

Tomorrow, he would leave again.

Tomorrow, he would step into the life they said was all he had left.

He would wear the name they'd carved into him: Nothing.

But tonight—for this one fragile night—he let the weight lift. Let the firelight flicker across the walls like old magic. Let himself pretend.

Pretend that somewhere in the quiet, a spark waited.

And maybe—just maybe—it burned for him.