Chapter 66: Chapter 66: Ember In The Ashes

After what felt like hours of walking through the dark, the remaining students finally reached the main path split.

The wide space ended abruptly, dividing into several distinct, narrow arteries that bored deeper into the ground.

It was an eerie sight to behold.

Long, twisting thorns extended from the rocky walls and curled inward toward the center of the paths.

It looked much like a hungry mouth where you might walk inside but never leave.

’These weak mortals love to divide their fragile forces and call it a tactical trial.’

The students hesitated near the junction.

They clustered together, looking nervously down the corridors.

"Is it time for us to split now?" Alicia asked, her voice echoing slightly in the large cavern. She gripped her iron shield tight against his chest.

"I thought we were supposed to stay as a large unit until the third stage."

"The map says the paths merge again near the boss room," Lucien replied with an arrogant scoff.

He crossed his arms and looked at the terrified freshmen.

"If we stay together, the narrow walls will just restrict our weapon swings."

"How do other schools even do these exercises?" Shiv asked, rubbing his tired arms and looking at the thorns.

"Do they just throw their freshmen into a meat grinder, too?"

"Other schools do not breed top-tier Awakeners," Lucien stated proudly.

"They train simple city guards. We train conquerors, so try not to cry when we have to separate."

"Enough talking," Instructor Grace called out from the back of the group.

"Sixty students, divide into your assigned tunnels right now. Stick to your designated squads and do not cross boundaries under any circumstances."

Melissa stepped forward and gestured toward the narrowest tunnel on the far left.

"Path One is ours, my lord," she whispered so only Azrael could hear her over the shuffling boots.

"We should take the lead before the others crowd the entrance and slow our pace."

Azrael nodded once and walked past the thorns without any hesitation.

He kept his posture relaxed, treating the dangerous dungeon like a casual stroll through a garden.

What the terrified students did not know was that the faculty members were already preparing to follow them closely.

The teachers had explicitly told the freshmen they would be on their own to test their survival skills, but the academy was never stupid enough to let their expensive investments die easily.

Supervisors were assigned to shadow each specific path from a safe distance.

Sianna stood near the back of the cavern and watched Azrael disappear into the dark of Path One.

She was assigned to supervise Path Three with an entirely different student cluster. She walked twenty meters down her assigned tunnel alongside a noisy group of five students before stopping suddenly.

"Wait right here for a moment," Sianna instructed her group, keeping her voice calm and authoritative.

"Is something wrong, Professor?" a nervous girl asked, lowering her wooden staff.

"No," Sianna lied smoothly, offering a reassuring smile.

"I just need to walk back and check a structural concern in the stone near the junction. Stay in your strict formation and keep your weapons drawn."

"You all remember the instruction, right? Be safe out there."

She turned around and walked back toward the main fork alone.

Her boots were silent on the hard floor. She bypassed the remaining students and found a side alcove hidden away from all the separate groups.

Stepping deep into the shadows, she leaned her back against the rock and let out a shaky breath.

She looked down at her left hand.

The silver ring caught the dim blue light of the cave moss and gleamed softly.

Sianna had been feeling a heavy wrongness intensifying since the very first moment of their descent. Something in this underground space was pulling at her witch bloodline.

It dragged at her deep senses the same way a strong river current pulls at a tired swimmer. It was suffocating her, and she could not ignore the terrible feeling any longer.

’I need to know what is walking down that first path,’ Sianna thought, her heart pounding against her ribs.

’I need to see the truth.’

She reached over with her right hand and grabbed the silver band, then pulled the ring off her finger.

The magical suppression released instantly.

The cave flooded with overwhelming information through her soul-reading trait.

Every single mana signature within a fifty-meter radius became visible to her inner eye simultaneously.

The mundane students appeared like dozens of small, flickering candles scattered across the tunnels. Some burned bright with nervous fear, and others glowed steady with forced courage.

She ignored the weak lights and turned her reading directly toward Narrow Path One, where Azrael’s group was currently moving.

She found the source of the rot immediately.

It was a black sun.

The core was enormous and dense. It radiated a wrongness that made Sianna’s physical stomach churn.

The aura was thick with malice and spilled over the edges of the human vessel it occupied. It was the undeniable signature of an evil walking inside a mortal shell.

’Shane is gone,’ she thought, tears welling up in her eyes.

’The boy is dead.’

She pushed her magical awareness deeper into the sun, expecting to find nothing but an empty void where his human soul used to reside.

Instead, she found the secondary chamber.

It was hidden behind a stitched wall of light. Tucked safely away in the very corner of the chest, a tiny ember was still glowing.

It was small and crushed, but it burned with a stubborn defiance.

Sianna gasped out loud in the alcove. She did not understand what she was seeing.

A human soul could not possibly survive a direct demonic possession because the raw pressure should have erased the boy’s existence in a matter of seconds.

Yet the ember was there, breathing and fighting against the crushing weight of the dark sun.

She reached her own soul reading toward the small ember, extending her magical sense the way you cautiously reach toward a strange sound you cannot place in the dark.

The ember recognized the gentle contact immediately.

Azrael stopped in his tracks.

Melissa, Zephyr, Raven, and Mia stopped behind him.

"What happened?" Melissa asked him.

The trapped soul pushed against the Soul-Stitcher wall once with everything it had left.

It gathered a desperate fraction of energy and forced a single message through the magical barrier, sending it straight into Sianna’s open mind.

One word bled through the darkness.

’Sianna.’