Chapter 12: The Tyrant’s Gate
The gates stood taller than any tower in the realm.
Black stone, etched with deep red runes that pulsed with dormant energy. A thin mist rolled from beneath them, curling over the boots of the gathered candidates like reaching fingers.
Thalen stood among them, thirty students chosen from across the Bastion.
No one spoke.
They all felt it the weight in the air, like thunder before a storm. The quiet tension of something ancient, waiting to wake.
The Ceremony
Head Instructor Varn approached the gates, clad in a ceremonial black robe trimmed with silver.
He held a long staff carved from obsidian, tipped with a shard of glowing flame.
He raised it high.
"The Tyrant Spirit does not belong to the gifted," he intoned. "It does not answer to bloodlines, crowns, or fate. It listens only to will. To conviction. To truth."
He turned, his voice a thunderclap in the morning air.