15 - The Trial of Untruth

The summons came by fog.

Not parchment. Not whisper.

Just fog that crept under his dormitory door, swirling up from the cracks like memory dragged from a drowned place. It gathered at the foot of his bed and spelled out a single phrase:

"When you lie, come without shoes."

Callum closed the journal. He stood slowly, flexing his toes. The mark on his palm pulsed in time with his breath, almost anxious.

He didn't ask who sent it.

He already knew.

The world outside wasn't his anymore.

It was too quiet.

Not silent—quiet. Like a story that had been paused mid-sentence. Like the Academy was holding its breath.

The halls were empty. Doors hung slightly ajar. Candles burned without flicker.

Only the path ahead remained clear: a trail of ink running down the stone steps, leading into the underlevels of the Library Depths—places where even the catalogs refused to map.

Callum followed barefoot.

He didn't hesitate.

Not because he wasn't afraid.

But because he knew what came next would change him.

The Trial of Untruth wasn't a myth.

It was worse.

A test not of power—but of instability.

Jerren had once described it: "A mirror that remembers lies too well. A place where you face every story you told, and hope none of them want revenge."

Now Callum stood before the gate.

It wasn't impressive.

Just an arch made of splintered belief—half-formed memories and sigils etched too shallowly to hold meaning.

He passed through it.

The world folded inward.

He woke in his own childhood.

Not metaphor.

Not dream.

Reality.

He was eight again.

Standing at the foot of the hill where he used to lie to his brother, telling him dragons lived in the fog because it made the night less cold.

The grass felt real.

The wind carried smells of burnt firewood and cinnamon—his mother's tea.

But this time, no brother stood beside him.

Only an older man.

Callum frowned. "Who are you?"

The man turned.

And it was Callum.

Older. Gaunt. Eyes like paper that had forgotten what it used to say.

"You don't remember this one," the older self said. "But you should."

Each trial came like that.

A memory. A lie.

And a cost.

He faced Elya—except she believed he had betrayed her, and her magic now burned with doubt.He faced his instructor Rask, who accused him of rewriting her lessons into errors.He even faced the Chancellor, who told him, calmly, that his story had already been told and ended, and that his current existence was just an echo.

None of it was real.

But that was the danger.

Because [Lie] worked best when he believed too.

The real test came in the third room.

A library, burning slowly.

Books cried out in ink-smoke. Pages flapped like wings trying to escape fire.

At the center, a boy knelt, shielding a small stack of journals from the flames.

Callum stepped closer.

The boy was him.

Younger than he remembered being. Wild hair, scraped knees, eyes wide with wonder and guilt.

He was whispering.

Over and over.

"It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault."

Callum knew this lie.

It was the one he told when he broke the binding runes on his brother's grimoire and it exploded in their hands.

His brother had gone blind for a week.

Callum had claimed it was an accident.

That it had always been unstable.

That he didn't know better.

But he had.

He had lied.

And the world had believed.

The younger version looked up.

"You're the one who let me get away with it," he said bitterly.

"You had to survive," Callum whispered.

"No," the boy said. "You had to win. There's a difference."

The flames curled closer.

Callum stepped into the fire.

The mark on his palm burned hotter.

[Trial Integrity: 67%][Narrative Collapse Detected]

"I'm not proud of you," the boy said.

"I'm not asking you to be."

"Then what are you asking for?"

Callum knelt.

"To be better," he said. "To build something stronger than the excuses I was born with."

The flames snuffed.

The trial faded.

But the guilt didn't.

He emerged into a void.

No floor. No sky. Just presence.

And words.

"This is the final test."

"You must speak a lie strong enough that even you believe it."

Callum stood alone.

The lie pulsed in his mind. Waiting. Tempting.

He thought of power.

Of safety.

Of saying "I am already the strongest."

But that was a story with too much weight.

Too many others had told it.

Instead, he whispered:

"I am not the main character."

The void paused.

Then laughed.

A hundred voices at once. None cruel. All curious.

"You think that will fool us?"

He nodded.

"Because maybe... it's not a lie anymore."

The void cracked.

A line of silver tore across the nothing, and from it emerged a stair made of mirrors.

Each step reflected a different version of himself.

Some laughing. Some weeping.

One wore a crown.

One wore a noose.

He climbed, barefoot, blood smearing the glass with each step.

At the top waited Jerren.

But not the Jerren he knew.

This one was tall, cloaked, hands bound by golden thread.

Eyes shut. Not from blindness.

From restraint.

"I passed," Callum said.

Jerren's voice was distant.

"You changed the rules."

"That was the test."

"No," said Jerren. "That was the mistake."

The stair shattered.

Callum landed in the garden again.

The one above the stars.

The one the Guild of Gray had used to speak with him.

Only now, it was filled with other people.

Dozens.

Students, old and young. Some from different uniforms. Some from other schools.They all turned when he appeared. Some bowed. One whispered:

"He made it through Untruth."

A woman approached. Tall, one eye glowing with fractured glyphs.

"You rewrote yourself," she said. "Few survive that."

Callum didn't feel triumphant.

He felt hollow.

"I thought this was supposed to help."

"It did," she said. "You've become contagious."

They showed him a map.

Not of geography.

Of stories.

Lines of belief. Threads of emerging ideas. Blossoming principles.

Callum's was bright gold, curling through the Academy like a growing vine.

Other lines—old ones—shivered and darkened.

"The Academy is adapting to your Maybe," said the woman. "But others will resist."

"Others?"

"The Archivists. The Denials. The Iron Scholars."

"And what do you want from me?"

She passed him a blade.

Not metal.

Ink, folded into the shape of a knife.

"Not to fight," she said. "To edit. When they come with certainty, give them a better version."

Callum took the blade.

His mark flared.

He returned to his dorm that night and found Elya waiting.

She didn't ask what happened.

She just handed him a quill.

"What now?" she asked.

Callum looked out the window.

The moon wobbled slightly.

Just a touch.

Just enough to remind him it, too, was reading.

"Now," he said, "we write the next page before someone else does."