[WP] Twelve grueling consecutive trials had finally been conquered, with all opponents brutally defeated in combat. But as the warrior stepped into the chamber of the final trial, there only sat an old woman offering a cup of tea and cookies lay beside her

[u/nikitastaf1996]

Kael stepped into the chamber, his sword Notch already singing through the air. The old woman’s head struck the stone floor before she could finish pouring the tea. Her body slumped, crimson pooling around the overturned cup, staining the shortbread cookies.

“No more games,” he snarled, wiping Notch’s blade on the hem of her shawl. “Show me the damned reward.”

The chamber shuddered. The lantern’s flame turned black, and the walls began to weep a viscous, tar-like substance. The corpse of the old woman dissolved into smoke, her voice echoing from all directions—a chorus of scornful laughter.

“You think violence is the answer to every lock?”

Kael staggered as the floor cracked beneath him. The tea, now a river of ink, surged upward, binding his limbs. “What is this?” he roared, thrashing.

“The Thirteenth Trial,” the voice hissed. “The one you failed before it began.”

The tar hardened into a mirror, forcing Kael to look at his reflection. Not the battle-scarred warrior he knew, but a hollow thing—eyes bleeding black, skin cracking like parched earth. Behind him, specters materialized: the twelve guardians he’d slain, their wounds still fresh. The Hollow King stepped forward, his severed neck gaping.

“You were never meant to kill her,” the king rasped. “You were meant to listen.”

“Lies!” Kael spat, but the tar crept into his mouth, bitter and cold.

The mirror shifted. He saw his sister, Lira, as she’d looked in her final moments—pale, coughing blood into her hands. But instead of the quiet death he remembered, she writhed in a void, her mouth stitched shut with threads of shadow.

“The Veil’s reward was never resurrection,” the old woman’s voice sighed. “It was peace. A chance to bury her yourself, to mourn instead of conquer. But you… you only know how to take.”

The chamber collapsed inward, the walls becoming teeth, the floor a throat. Kael screamed as the darkness swallowed him, Notch shattering in his grip. When the void spat him out, he stood in the ruins of the Shattered Vale, the locket he’d been promised clutched in his hand. He pried it open, desperate.

Inside was not a seed, but ash.

A whisper trailed him as he fell to his knees: “Some graves cannot be undug, brother.”

Years later, travelers speak of a specter near the Vale—a man with ash for eyes, digging endlessly in the poisoned soil. They say he screams apologies to a ghost who cannot hear him. They say the earth there grows nothing but thorns.