LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL

Lady Seraphine was able to get access to Lord Veyris's aide for one simple reason, and that was because she was not just the wife of the Lord Commander of this city and the mother of Tarian, her roots went deeper than that, and although she had the position of the youngest wife, and she was usually low key, her influence could not be denied, and when she had requested for this aide, it was Veyris himself that escorted him to her side.

Seraphine did not turn when the aide spoke. "Who is holding the line?"

"An Elara Vane. Guild-trained. Light talent. She is... remarkable."

Seraphine watched as a small figure in grey armor danced through the press of bodies, her blades flashing, her movements too fast to track. Where she passed, spawns fell, turned to ash, and for a moment, the eastern flank held.

"Remarkable," Seraphine repeated. "But not enough."

She moved to the next orb, which showed a different angle, a different section of the wall. Here, a squad of beast-tamers fought alongside their mounts, a wolf the size of a horse tearing through the spawns while its master, a broad-shouldered young man with dark hair, directed the chaos with gestures too subtle to follow.

"Theron Vex," the aide supplied. "Beastmaster General's son. His talent is... unusual."

"Unusual how?"

The aide hesitated. "His connection to his beasts is extraordinarily potent… it is suspected that it even exceeds that of his father."

Seraphine filed that information away and moved to the third orb. This one showed the western approach, where a single figure in plain armor stood before a pile of ash that had once been dozens of spawns.

Her sword was dark, almost black, and it moved like water. She did not seem to be fighting so much as conducting, each stroke of her blade drawing a line of ash that hung in the air before settling.

"Sera Valdris," the aide said. "The Academy's champion. Steel talent. Eighty pools. Undefeated."

"Eighty pools," Seraphine murmured. "In this city, that is almost unheard of."

"She was sent from the central continent. Her family has... connections."

Of course they did. Everyone had connections. The game was old, and the pieces were always the same.

Seraphine turned from the orb as a cheer rose from the viewing gallery behind her. The nobles of the upper districts had gathered in their finery, sipping wine and placing bets on which candidate would claim the Commander's prize. They watched death like a sport, and she hated them for it.

But she hated herself more for staying.

Her eyes slowly shifted from all the candidates and her son, towards one position where the entire mood of the trial had changed, and it was no longer a battle for survival and growth, but just slaughter.

Elias, she had learned of his name… the Ascendant Candidate.

In her heart, something stirred the more she looked at this figure that tore through a flood of flesh like an unstoppable juggernaut.

Her son would have to take risks if he was going to be the one who would win this trial, and that meant she had to be prepared for the storm that was coming.

In this local shithole, the so-called nobles here did not know what an Ascendant Candidate truly represented.

She knew that her son aimed to become an Emperor, and that meant he would be challenging Angels along the way. This path was dangerous, but as a mother, she was always going to be supportive of her child's ambition.

Ⓣ

The Lower Districts – The Wall

Yuta had not moved from his post in three days.

His body had healed, as much as it could, given what he had lost, but something inside him had not. Something had broken in the alley, in the darkness, in the moment when his squad had died around him, and he had been too slow, too weak, too old to save them.

They all said his survival was a miracle, but he saw it as a mistake. He should have perished down there with his people, and now he was watching the candidates fight, and he hated them… all of them.

He hated their youth, their strength, their certainty. He hated the way they killed the spawns without hesitation, without fear, without understanding what they were destroying. He hated the cheers that rose from the city behind him, the crowds that watched this slaughter like entertainment, the nobles who placed bets on which child would live and which would die.

But most of all, he hated himself for surviving.

"They are going into the pit," said the guard beside him. A young man, barely out of training, his eyes wide with a fear he tried to hide. "Just six of them. Is that not insane?"

Yuta did not answer. He had seen the pit. He had watched the spawns pour out of it like blood from a wound. He had felt the hunger that lived at its bottom, the ancient, gnawing thing that had been waiting for someone to open the door.

'They are walking into its mouth,' he thought. 'And they do not even know.'

The projection showed the six descending. The light-touched girl went first, her blades trailing light that cut through the darkness. The beast speaker followed, his wolf left behind, and his other companions circling overhead. The steel champion went next, her dark sword held low, her eyes scanning for threats that had not yet appeared.

The earth shaker moved slowly, as if the stone beneath his feet was speaking to him, and he was listening.

The Lord Protector's son did not walk so much as flow, his blue hair bright against the gloom.

And the sixth… this being of stone and blood.

'He is the one,' Yuta thought, and he did not recognize where this thought came from, but he knew that it was important.

Like other places in the city, there were projections all around the walls that showed intimate details of the battle, but when the six descended into the pit, the projection could not follow them into the darkness.

The crystal's eye lost them when they passed beyond the pit's rim, and the image dissolved into static.

In the upper districts, the nobles leaned forward, squinting at their orbs, cursing the limitations of ancient magic.

In the middle districts, the crowd murmured, their cheers fading to anxious whispers.

But Yuta did not need to see. He could feel it, a change in the air, a pressure behind his eyes, a vibration in the stone beneath his feet.

The battle had shifted.