The Lord Protector did not shout, and yet his voice carried, amplified by the same old magic that had raised the wall.

While the bloodline of Arathor was blessed with the power of heavenly lightning, as they expanded and the royal houses intermarried, not all children of the Arathor royal house wielded the power of lightning.

Yet it did not mean they were weak; no royal house was weak, and the merger of different Ascendant Bloodlines caused an unknown mutation that either brought out great results, mediocre, or failed offspings.

With the ruthless nature of the royal houses, weak offspring were culled from the bloodline with grim efficiency, and over the years, the powers of the royal houses had been steadily growing, and it was truly impossible to know the sort of monsters that had been developed at the center of the continent.

"You stand at the edge of something new," the Lord Protector spoke, and you could hear a pin drop as he paused and looked around him, his eyes lingering on the armored form of Elias for a moment before he moved on.

"There are great opportunities behind this wall, hence the old rules do not apply. There are no lords here, no masters, no laws but the ones you make. There are monsters, and there is ash, and there is the promise of something greater. Inside these walls, there is only one rule: the strong eat the weak."

He gestured to the wall. "Three weeks ago, this city was threatened by an infestation, and the Guilds sent their Enforcers; the Enforcers fell, leaving just one man behind."

The Lord Protector turned his head to the side, and all eyes followed him to a nondescript older man standing beside the Guild Grandmasters. He appeared to be in his late thirties with black hair and a few hints of gray on his beard.

"Three weeks ago, Yuta was a Mist Phantom nearing the end of his life, and he stood and fought with a hundred of his trusted companions, he gave everything inside of him, and out of that ashes, an Amber Exile rose." turning hard eyes to the youth listening to him, he continued, "I consider that a very fair bargain. As an Amber Exile, he would live for centuries, and his presence would help keep this city and everyone around him safe. Now, I expect the same from most of you here; a lot of you will die, and from those ashes, something glorious shall rise."

Elias glanced at Yuta, the man looked fine, brimming with health and vitality, where he was sure that a few weeks ago, he was already planning his retirement and waiting for his death to come for him.

However, there was this deep haunted look in the eyes of the man that fascinated him, and Elias wondered what the man had seen that would have broken the soul of a Siphon.

The Lord Protector turned away from Yuta, and all eyes left the soldier and returned to him,

"Many of you will die inside these walls, and that is your fate. The walls would remain up until this infestation is purged, and if all of you fail... There would be others coming from behind that would take the opportunities you failed to grasp."

He paused, "Do you think me cruel? Then learn well, because this is the world that you will be stepping into. There are great dangers in this world, and only the strong can survive it. I am doing this because I am a soldier before I became a ruler, and soldiers make hard choices. The monsters behind this wall are not the enemy; do not ever see them in that light. They are the crucible, they are the fire. And you..." He looked at the three thousand young Siphons, his eyes sweeping across them. "You are the steel."

He stepped back. "Go... Kill... Grow! Come back with the ash, or do not come back at all. The city will remember the ones who survive for generations to come."

There was no applause or any sort of cheering, only the sound of three thousand young Siphons breathing, and the sound of the wall beginning to open as the Lord Protector sent a surge of his Lumina towards it.

🖵

A section of the wall about fifty feet wide slid upward with a groan of stone moving in a manner that stone was not supposed to move. Beyond it, the lower districts stretched into darkness.

The buildings were still there, the streets, the alleys, but the light was gone; it was daylight, but the light of the sun did not reach the ground, leaving it in a perpetual state of twilight.

Nothing was moving out in the open, and it was as if the entire place had become the land of the dead, and then, without any word or gesture, the candidates began to pass through the gate.

Elias noted that the blue-haired boy, Tarian Arathor, was the first to cross through the gate, followed by the members of the upper districts. He had a particularly large Warg padding at his side, and he moved with purpose.

The members of the Guilds followed next, and with them were a lot of beasts, making Elias wonder whether it was the branch of the Beast Taming Guild that was mostly in charge of this trial.

Then the academy followed, and in a short time, the clearing was nearly empty of candidates, as Elias calculated that there were roughly a thousand people for each party, and he thought that Lord Protector Calyx was a fair ruler, as he expected that he would have given the upper districts more slots for this trial.

’Well, he did say he was a soldier before he became a ruler.’

Elias watched them all enter the gate, and he slowly bent down and picked up his shield before he strapped it to his left hand. He looked back once and could barely spot the top of the Asylum from this place, and in his ears he heard the voice of the Commander.

"You know what to do," she said.

He did not answer, even though he knew she would hear him; he simply nodded and began to walk toward the gate. He knew he was drawing attention from everyone left here, but he did not much care, since he had a target in front of him; nothing mattered anymore. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

The last of the candidates had already entered, and the twilight had swallowed them, their lights flickering and dying as they moved deeper into the lower districts. Elias stepped through the gate alone, his boots silent on the stone, his shield at his side, his eyes already adjusted to the dim light.

A loud groaning sound emerged behind him as the wall began to close.

The stone groaned, and the light from the city and the morning sun was cut off. There was only the growing darkness and the sound of three thousand young Siphons moving ahead of him.

Then, out of the corner of his eyes, Elias spotted two yellow eyes glowing on top of a roof, and when he turned, the eyes were gone.

Elias grinned and began walking.