The Trial of the valley

The Valley of Skarnsul was ancient—older than recorded time, older even than the Oni race's ascension. Its stones carried echoes of war cries from forgotten epochs, and its soil had drunk the blood of gods, demons, and something far more primal. This place wasn't a battleground. It was a crucible.

And today, it would decide if Draven Sitquill Sullivan, now eighteen years old, was worthy to stand among legends.

He stood alone in the mist-choked hollow, the mountain wind coiling around him like breath from an unseen beast. His silver eyes scanned the darkened scar of land ahead, calm. Ready.

From beneath the shattered earth, something stirred.

The beast that rose wasn't divine. It wasn't elegant. It was war made flesh—twenty feet tall, forged in the first era of blood and shadow. Plates of blackened scale shimmered like molten obsidian. Its four arms ended in blades. Its breath seethed like a forge. Its aura—twisted, pulsing—hissed through the air like venom given voice.

This was no Titan. It was a Warlord-class Forgespawn, once tamed by Zevarin Sullivan himself.

Now it was Draven's to slay.

"Your father didn't kill it because he couldn't," Vaelora had warned. "He tamed it because he didn't need to. But you—you must end it. That is the Oni way."

Draven exhaled slowly. Calm. His hand moved to the hilt of his weapon.

The katana of Zevarin—a relic of celestial steel and aura-bound will—responded with a low hum, the air shimmering blue around the scabbard. As it left its sheath, the temperature dropped. The sword was not just a tool. It was memory. Duty. Legacy.

His aura flared—silver laced with violet arcs, crackling like lightning harnessed within the veins of a god. It danced across his skin, slid down the blade, and whispered against the valley floor.

Then came the roar.

The Forgespawn lunged, a meteor of muscle and steel.

Draven didn't flinch. He vanished.

His first strike was surgical: a blur of silver light across the beast's wrist. One clawed finger dropped with a wet thud, severed mid-swipe.

The creature reeled—but its pain became fuel.

It evolved.

Flesh split with a crack of bone as a second pair of arms burst from its shoulders. A tail of jagged vertebrae unfurled like a whip. Red light pulsed through its veins as its aura thickened, adapting to Draven's attack patterns.

"Adaptive aura structure," Draven muttered.

He bent slightly—one breath, centered—and moved.

"Don't fight harder. Fight deeper," Zevarin had once said as they sparred under a bleeding moon. "Let your enemy teach you how to kill it. Then thank it with silence."

Draven darted low—sliding beneath a sweeping claw—and struck upward, blade tearing across the creature's underbelly. Black steam hissed from the gash. Aura leaked like tar.

The beast roared and backhanded him.

Impact. Draven was flung into stone, the mountainside splitting from the force. Dust exploded around him.

But he rose. Bleeding. Breathing.

Alive.

"Pain means nothing when the soul is ready," Vaelora had whispered during his first near-death trance. "Control your pain, or it controls your power."

The Forgespawn charged again, now burning from within. Its skin glowed with molten heat, its claws sparking flame. It no longer fought like a beast—it calculated, adapting with every strike.

Draven's blade met its fury in a series of blinding clashes. Each impact shook the valley. Thunder roared from every exchange. His sword left trails of glowing violet with each cut, carving into scale, tendon, and aura-core.

Then, the opening came.

The creature reared back for a breath—charging flame in its throat.

Draven jumped.

A burst of aura from his soles launched him higher. He flipped mid-air, twisted once, then dove blade-first—

—into its mouth.

The strike wasn't physical. It was spiritual. A concentrated pulse of aura, driven down the spine, erupting inside the creature like a miniature sun.

The Forgespawn went still.

Then twitched.

Then died.

Its massive body crashed backward, shaking the entire valley as it fell.

Draven stood atop its smoking corpse, sword humming softly in his grip. Blood clung to his face. His chest rose and fell—not with exhaustion, but control.

He stepped down slowly. With reverence.

Victory, earned in silence.

From high above, Vaelora watched with tear-lined eyes.

"He surpassed us," she said softly. "He walks the line between what we taught and what he made himself."

Zevarin, standing beside her, watched quietly. Then nodded once.

"A Sullivan does not become a legend," he said. "He creates the world where legends must kneel."

Later, Draven returned to the Temple of Oniara, dragging behind him the massive eye of the beast, lashed in aura-thread. The gates opened before him. The priests did not speak. They bowed.

He was given new robes—stormwhite, with violet trim. A belt of adulthood, carved in ancient stone. And finally, a seat in the inner sanctum.

But his true test still lay ahead.

That night, beneath the silver moons, he stood before his parents.

Not as a boy. Not even as a son.

But as something new.

"You've felt the change," Vaelora said, her voice a low hum. "You know now—they've seen you."

Zevarin's voice cut through like cold steel:

"The Divine Council speaks your name, Draven. You are no longer hidden."

"You are rising. And so is their fear."

Draven closed his eyes.

The echoes of the trial still trembled in his bones, but the fire in his chest now burned with purpose.

"Let them fear," he whispered.

"I was born for it."

And far away—across the stars and halls of power—the Council watched.

And in their silence, fear bloomed like a storm yet to arrive.