The cold did more than bite—it waited, a silent predator in a world of ice. In the center of an ancient ring, Albion, Adele, and Alen formed a small phalanx. Around them, stone pillars—half-swallowed by ice—stared like sentinels imbued with forgotten magic. The pillars hummed softly, as if they were both judge and audience to a game devised by time itself.

A low, palpable pressure filled the air—a force that was neither warm nor cold but weighted with centuries of secrets. It slithered into their lungs like an undecided mist, threatening to choke as easily as it might whisper long-lost truths. Albion's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. He shifted his stance, rolling his shoulders in a vain attempt to shrug off the creeping dread. His glance fell on Adele. She stood unnervingly calm, fingers aglow with a subtle icy blue, as if gathering the raw elements to freeze the marrow from within.

"So," Albion muttered against the brittle silence, "do we attack or try to charm this ancient ice into submission?" His tone wavered between humor and unease.

Adele's raised eyebrow spoke volumes—a silent disdain. Before Albion could retort, a voice unfurled through the arena. It was neither loud nor boastful; it seeped into their bones with quiet authority.

"The trial is not merely of muscle. Survive by any means necessary."

For a moment, Albion's eyes widened in disbelief. "Survive by any means? A legally non-binding death clause, perhaps?" he quipped.

Adele's response was sharp as ice. "I'd recommend silence, unless you fancy a dance with the floor's sudden embrace."

Alen's slight smile was the only counterpoint to the tension as a low groan rose beneath Albion's feet. The ground itself cracked in an intricate web of frost—a spider's lace etched in warning. Lifting one boot slowly, Albion said, "Alright, so we're not offending the architecture today."

The voice returned, now colder still: "Three enter the ring. Three must answer. Prove your worth, or perish beneath the ice."

Albion squinted at the ancient walls. "Just your average enchanted stadium with a penchant for riddles, huh?" he muttered. Adele's steady focus, however, was unyielding—a silent command to concentrate.

Then the trial began in earnest. The air itself thickened with expectation as the voice intoned its first riddle:

"I am always hungry. I must always be fed. The finger I touch will soon turn red. What am I?"

Before Albion could fully process the riddle's bite, Alen's voice cut through, calm and certain: "Fire." A silent pulse rippled through the arena, and the reply came—a curt, unadorned "Correct."

Emboldened yet wary, Albion cracked the other riddle, his voice now carrying a mix of humor and apprehension. "The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?" His eyes danced with a flicker of mischief despite the danger. "Footsteps," he declared, and again the silent assent of the arena affirmed the answer.

Adele's arms folded as if wrapping herself in a layer of resolve. "This is like a dangerous children's book," she murmured, and Albion's jibe about impending frost demons was met with a dry, knowing smile.

The final riddle came as softly as a snowfall:

"I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?"

After a long, heavy pause, Albion attempted "Wind," only for Adele to interject with a cool dismissal and the correct word: "Echo." For a moment, the arena itself seemed to hold its breath—then, with a soft sigh, a central pillar split open, revealing a narrow passage carved from light and ancient frost.

As the central pillar cracked open, a tension seeped into the air—wrong, reluctant.

Not the clean release of a trial properly conquered—but something knotted, unfinished.

The pillars around them thrummed once, a discordant ripple of sound, almost like a withheld breath.

Albion hesitated, frowning. Even Adele's usual certainty faltered for half a heartbeat.

It was as if the land itself was… hesistant. Unwilling to pass full judgment.

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Like a verdict had been delivered out of duty—not conviction.

Alen, at their side, said nothing.

But for a flicker of a moment, Albion thought he caught something odd in Alen's face—

not relief.

Guilt.

Then the wind howled again, and the moment passed.

They stepped into the light, leaving the uneasy silence behind.

Albion sheathed his sword with theatrical flourish, remarking dryly on the trial's almost polite conclusion. "Well, that was surprisingly cordial. Almost insultingly so." Adele's eyes glinted as she retorted with the promise of harsher trials ahead. They stepped into the glowing corridor while the ice behind them mended its fractured self, as if eager to erase the evidence of their triumph.

Beyond the arena, the White Desert unfurled—a barren expanse of endless snow and the low, perpetual hum of a wind that knew too much. But the desert wasn't empty. It was aware. Each gust of wind felt deliberate, like the lazy exhale of something ancient that didn't mind waiting centuries to swallow them whole. The snow shifted when they weren't looking, as if plotting, reweaving the path behind their backs. The cold here was no idle backdrop; it moved with a sinister purpose, curling around them, seeping beneath their cloaks, and pressing upon their thoughts.

The silence of the desert was oppressive. Every step Albion took crunched underfoot before the wind swallowed the sound, as if the earth itself wished to erase their journey. He joked about needing a fire pit or a portable sauna—a quip born of desperation and dark humor—while Adele's steady pace and constant vigilance belied the simmering tension. Alen, ever the quiet observer, moved with an undercurrent of alertness that whispered of unseen dangers.

Then came a moment of stark stillness. Alen halted abruptly, raising a gloved hand. Adele and Albion followed suit, instinct honed by countless trials. "We're not alone," Alen announced quietly, his gaze fixed on the distant ridges where the snow shifted like living shadows. There, at the very edge of vision, ghostly figures glided silently—cloaked specters with the faint glow of earthen magic clutched in their hands.

For a fleeting moment, Albion thought again of the strange guilt he had glimpsed in Alen's expression back at the trial. It burrowed under his skin now, unsettling. Protection or not, they were still pawns walking across a board they couldn't see.

A spectral knight—a woman with stern, frost-carved features—stepped forward. "You were not dismissed from the trial," her voice cut through the howling wind, every word a decree of fate. "You still have much to prove."

Adele's hands flexed at her sides, gathering frost she barely bothered to hide. It wasn't fear that stiffened her frame—it was insult. The trial had already been a farce. Now they dared to question her again?

Albion's wry humor fought against the rising dread. His sword, already half-drawn and lit with ancient runes, spoke of both resolve and resignation. Yet before he could fully protest, Adele moved decisively. "I'll do it," she declared, her tone as cold and unyielding as the frozen world around them. Albion's protest was silenced by her steely gaze—a warning that left no room for debate.

In the clearing, a massive figure emerged—a knight whose presence was as immovable as a glacier, his armor humming with old magic, his hammer a monument to sheer, brutal force. Every step he took made the frozen ground tremble, as if even the earth recoiled from the inevitability of his violence.

Albion instinctively shifted closer to Adele, but she stood stock-still, her breath frosting in the air, her gaze narrowing into something glacial and implacable.

The knight raised his hammer, a titan poised to strike.

Albion spoke, low and steady, cutting across the gathering tension.

"You don't have to prove anything, Adele. We're past that."

Adele's mouth curled into a smile—sharp, humorless, cold enough to crack bone.

"I'm not proving anything," she said softly.

"I'm correcting it."

And then she moved.

The duel began in a savage explosion of violence.

The knight swung first—a massive, arching blow that would have sundered a lesser fighter into the earth.

Adele didn't flinch.

She ghosted out of reach, so fast it seemed as if the hammer passed through a mirage.

The hammer struck the ice with a thunderous crack, sending shards splintering through the clearing. Adele answered not with defense, but with dominion—bending the battlefield itself to her will.

She summoned a crown of jagged frost from the ground, skewering the space where the knight stood. He bellowed and smashed them aside, but already Adele was somewhere else—always one breath, one heartbeat ahead.

Every move she made was surgical, pitiless.

Each spell, each flick of her hand, was a verdict pronounced.

She summoned flurries of slicing snow that blinded him.

She collapsed sheets of glassy ice beneath his feet, sending him stumbling.

She siphoned the cold into spears so thin they sang as they struck, piercing the gaps in his armorlike whispers of execution.

The knight charged, roaring.

Adele caught him mid-lunge—not with force, but inevitability.

A chain of living frost erupted from the earth, slithering up his legs and arms, binding him in place. He struggled—struggled mightily—but she was already shaping the end.

With a sharp, dismissive gesture, Adele unleashed a final blast of freezing magic that locked him in place.

The knight froze in mid-roar, trapped in a crystalline tomb—an enormous monument to arrogance turned to regret.

The arena fell into breathless silence.

Even the White Desert's eternal wind stuttered and faltered, as if pausing to watch.

Adele stepped toward the frozen knight.

No pity. No mercy. Only an icy, clinical stillness.

She looked at the monument of shattered pride before her—and spoke, quiet enough that even the wind had to lean in to hear: "You weren't worth the warning."

Then she turned and walked away, leaving the knight—and the silence—to collapse.

Behind her, the frozen knight cracked once—then split apart with a brittle shriek of breaking ice, crumbling to the ground in shattered, useless pieces. Adele didn't glance back. Correction, completed.

"There was a kind of peace in her wrath. A terrible, beautiful thing."

A spectral knight's measured nod acknowledged their victory, yet the air remained thick with portent. "You have proven your worth," she intoned, her words lingering like the last note of a mournful ballad.

Albion, unable to hide his mixture of awe and relief, managed a crooked grin. "So you just turned that guy into a lawn ornament. Alarming—and impressive." Adele's only reply was a subtle, cool smile, and Alen's quiet commentary promised that winter itself was not yet done with them.

Albion grinned, but a weight settled behind it. She made it look easy—because she'd had to. Somewhere deep in him, a voice whispered: she shouldn't have to fight this hard just to be heard.

As the trial faded into memory, the path ahead cleared. The desert, with its endless white and whispering winds, pressed on. The trio advanced into a realm where silence bore teeth, and each gust of wind was an unspoken warning that destiny had only just begun to reveal itself.

The terrain shifted gradually. Snow gave way to sparse rock formations, and the horizon cracked open to reveal Cornwall—a city of stone and memory, its ancient towers glistening with frost beneath a stubborn, bruised sky. Albion's heart clenched with the weight of their long journey as a solitary black feather drifted to the ground—a silent omen that Adele, with measured care, collected before tucking it into her cloak.

The gates towards Cornwall creaked open as if in welcome. Inside, the world transformed once more into a realm where every shadow, every whisper, promised that Avalon was watching—patient, enigmatic, and poised to challenge them further.

They stepped through, leaving behind the chilling echoes of the trial and the ever-watchful silence of the Nameless Cold—a silence that had learned to speak, to judge, and, in its quiet manner, to remind them that in this ancient land, every victory was only a prelude to the next test of will and spirit.

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