It's starting.

Adyr watched the golden sand beneath his boots loosen with a dry hiss, then gather as if drawn by a tide. It spiraled around his ankles, pressed into itself grain by grain, and climbed.

He did not try to run; there was nowhere to run. This was the 4th trial, Break Out the Cage, and the tower would never allow its opening act to be avoided.

Across the arena, the same process was underway. Beneath every Practitioner, the sand lifted in slow rings that thickened and rose.

A few panicked and leaped away before their cages closed, but they instantly regretted it. The ground answered at once: fresh bands of gold surged up beneath them, wrapped their shins, and yanked them back into place. A brittle creaking followed, like stressed wood, except the sound came from bone. Faces tightened, and the struggling stopped at once.

Adyr stayed still and watched the construction continue.

The sand rose around him in even rings. Each ring hardened into a straight bar that locked into a circle. More bars rose at precise intervals, and horizontal crosspieces threaded through to tighten the frame. The joints sealed smoothly, leaving no welds or hinges. In seconds, a golden cage stood around him, its rigid bars gleaming and throwing the sunlight back in thin, cold lines.

"So we just need to escape from this?" Loudbark spoke from the right, voice cautious and searching, as if he expected someone to confirm the rules. His shoulders loosened a little when he saw that nothing in this round threatened his life; he was simply expected to escape.

"Do not relax yet. There has to be something more to it," Maruun answered. He inspected his own cage with deliberate care, mapping the surface for any give, until a bright metallic note cut across and pulled his attention away.

Adyr had drawn his sword and begun to test the gold. He struck flat, then with the edge.

The sound that returned was clean and cold, a bell tone that died without leaving a mark. "I do not think there is a hidden condition," he said, feeling the faint vibration fade from the blade. "It wants us to escape. The problem is not the rule. It is the cage." His brow tightened. "These bars are too strong."

He checked the impact point: no scuff, no scratch, not even a dulling of the shine.

Then he looked to the others to see how they were faring.

Through the faint glow, Thalira Luna moved like a silver flicker. Her rapier was already working in tight, economical lines.

Thrust, twist, withdraw, cut. Each motion stacked on the last, her speed built with every move, and the force of her strikes rose in step. The blade began to hum, and silver light rippled along the bars faster than most eyes could follow. For a heartbeat, the air around her shivered, as if she had found a dangerous resonance. Then it stilled. The gold remained untouched, smooth as still water and just as indifferent.

Brakhtar Gorat stood in the center of his cage and did not move. He kept his eyes on the gold bars, as if trying to read the hidden order within them. The muscles in his jaw tightened and relaxed. Whatever struggle he was fighting was happening behind his eyes, and from the strain on his face, he was losing.

It's a problem. Adyr slid his sword into the sheath across his back, the leather swallowing steel with a soft scrape, and accepted the simple truth: his blades would not help at this stage.

Even his strongest sequence, the twin-sword arc, would fail to bite through. Worse, a full-force attempt might only crack his weapons and leave him empty-handed.

"Let's try the new skill, then." He spoke under his breath as he raised his hand toward the golden bars. A thin white mist breathed out from between his fingers, curling like steam over cold stone, spreading in slow veils.

Seeing his move, all heads snapped toward him as conversations died mid-whisper. Every eye found him with sharp curiosity as recognition dawned. This was the power he earned after subduing the White Shroud: Vibro-Melt.

When a Practitioner subdued a Spark, they received a single skill. His turned out to be the offensive one.

Mist threading around his palm, he pressed his hand to the bar that held him captive and watched.

Under the thin mist, the gold shivered. A taut tremor coursed through the metal, like wire stretched to the edge of snapping. A barely audible note thrummed within it, the whisper of a kettle about to sing.

Under the constant, low-frequency pulsing, the surface began to shed. The skin of the bar lifted in dull flakes, peeling in translucent scales the color of old sunlight. Layer by layer, it sloughed like weathered paint, drifting down as glittering dust that caught the light and spun in the air.

Then the progress stopped.

The wound closed in an instant. Gold flowed back into itself, seams sealing clean, the rod knitting to perfect smoothness as if time reversed inside the metal.

Adyr's eyes narrowed.

Vibro-Melt hit harder, in pure damage, than his twin-sword wave. But the bar's regeneration ran faster than his erosion. Worse was the cost. That single test had already burned 15 energy.

He shifted his approach at once. Instead of channeling the skill through his palm, he summoned the White Shroud itself. A small, cloudlike mass blossomed at his side, bright white and softly textured, with edges feathered like breath in winter air. It bobbed at shoulder height and looked very attentive.

It was an experiment for him, meant to measure the true energy burn and see whether the output changed.

He commanded the cloud to strike the golden bars with Vibro-Melt, and in that instant, he felt his reserves dip, a hard pull that took more than 20 energy in one breath.

The impact looked stronger than when he cast through his own body; the bar shuddered, its surface rippling as hairline curls of gold dust lifted and swirled away.

But it still was not enough. The metal healed at the same relentless pace, swallowing the damage almost as quickly as it appeared, offering no gap, no seam to pry wider.

He also tested whether the cloud could exit the cage using its unique body structure, and it succeeded exactly as he expected. Its body thinned, then poured itself through the bars like fog seeking a crack, slipping free to the other side. It hovered there, a patient white breath above the floor, drifting in slow circles.

Seeing the cloud let loose, the reaction around the arena was immediate. Backs stiffened inside neighboring cages. Faces among the two leading races tightened into careful masks. Even Thalira and Brakhtar held themselves with a new, taut stillness. Everyone here was trapped behind gold. If he chose to weaponize the free cloud against them, there would be nowhere to run.

Adyr let the tension stand for a heartbeat, measuring it. Then he laughed, open and easy, letting the sound carry. "Relax. I'm only testing its abilities. I am not the kind of person who attacks in a situation like this."

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