The sky stayed clear, the light sharp, and the golden sand burned underfoot. From the tiers of the coliseum, the crowd erupted, a single roaring body that made the stone tremble.

Around the arena, the gilded cages that had held the Practitioners cracked and sagged, collapsing grain by grain until they were nothing but dunes again, as if the tower had breathed in and reset the stage for a final judgment.

While everyone waited to learn how their worth would be measured, the sand at the exact center began to stir. At first, it swelled like a slow breath. Then it kept rising, higher and higher, building into a 50-meter hill that shed rivulets of gold.

Maruun lifted an arm. "Move to the sides. Stay close." His order carried across the Aqualeth team and the mixed-race group, and they shifted as one.

The mound burst and poured away. A shape stood beneath it. A head emerged as the sand sloughed off, then a torso, then legs and feet, until the figure stood free in the glare.

"This..." Adyr’s eyes thinned. Something about it was familiar, and yet it wasn’t.

It wasn’t alive. It was a statue, carved from ancient stone and weathered into austere severity. A helm covered the head, the face hidden behind a T-shaped opening that left only eyes and mouth exposed.

The body was bare, each muscle cut with patient care, as if a sculptor had recorded a warrior’s tensions in stone.

Around the waist hung a gladiator’s leather skirt of pteruges to the knees. On the feet, sandals laced from leather and cloth, spare and practical.

One arm was lifted high, wielding a double-edged short sword as if challenging the sky itself. The other hung slightly away from the body, palm steady, a balance scale resting in its grip.

"What does this mean? What does it want us to do?" The Practitioners’ voices dropped as their gazes climbed the figure’s clean lines and measured proportions. Even as stone, it felt alive. A cold authority pressed on the chest and dried the mouth. In the hard light, the statue looked old and unyielding, a relic that judged rather than spoke, and the quiet spreading through the arena felt like a verdict waiting.

Adyr’s gaze went to the scale in the statue’s hand. One pan stood high and empty; the other hung low under a massive stone sphere.

He looked closer and traced the carvings on the sphere’s skin: coastlines, dark oceans, chains of islands, river threads, raised mountain ridges, even pitted craters. The meaning clicked. It was a planet, carved in stone and weighed against nothing.

As the idea of the trial’s purpose settled in his mind, a movement on the Gorathim side drew every eye.

Brakhtar Gorat, calm and sure, rose into the air and drifted toward the empty pan of the statue’s scale. Adyr, Thalira, and the others watched in silence, curious what he intended.

He didn’t touch the stone or try to lift anything; he simply hovered over the pan, set his feet in its center, and stood still.

"Hey, hey... is he trying to weigh himself?" Loudbark muttered.

It did look exactly like that. No one knew the exact mass of the stone planet on the other pan, only that it wasn’t light. From the way the pan hung, it seemed heavier than Brakhtar by a clear margin.

Then something odd happened. The scale moved, slowly, as if registering the weight of the 4-meter ogre. With a dry scrape of stone, the beam slid a few centimeters and went still.

"Hm?" Adyr’s pupils whitened, faint currents moving in them the way high clouds drift across a calm sky.

It was as he guessed: the trial weighed their worth against the carved world. Not body mass, but an unseen measure Adyr couldn’t yet name.

When the motion stopped, Brakhtar studied the slight shift and raised his voice. "Seems like I’m not worthy enough."

Despite the words, nothing in him sounded defeated.

"What about now?" His tone stayed steady. Above his head, the dark sigil brightened, its lines fixed in the air while a faint bluish glow spread. The scale stirred, and the pan beneath his feet began to sink again.

"Oh, he’s using that power again." The moment the dark sigil came alive above his head, the Practitioners recognized it as the same force he had used moments ago to pry the golden bars apart, as if invisible hands had turned each into a loose iron rod.

But this time, Brakhtar wasn’t forcing anything. He simply brought his power to the surface and let the scale sense it, so it could measure and record it—his worth—again.

Unfortunately, the scale only inched. The pan under him dipped a little, yet it still wasn’t enough. The stone planet on the opposite side remained heavier by a clear margin.

Thalira watched the sluggish tilt and let her voice carry. "If you can’t do it, leave and let us try instead."

Behind her, the Lunari Practitioners straightened as one, pride in their stance and confidence in their eyes. To them, their Lady was the brightest rising star of their race, and there was no one more worthy than her.

Yet they were about to face a reality that would prove how wrong they were.

"I see," Brakhtar murmured, the words slipping out like a tired breath, close to surrender. But his next move was nothing like surrender.

The air above him began to ripple, and beside the smooth dome of his bald crown, something began to take shape.

At first, it was only a dark smear, a bruise of motion hanging beside his bald crown. It rounded slowly, gathered depth, and found its edges, pushing forward with the steady pressure of a face trying to come through glass.

Then the features settled into place—brow, nose, mouth, the full relief of a living visage—until the rounded blur became unmistakable. A second head, near identical to his own, now occupied that space. The sensation it gave off was not of something newly made, but of something long-present finally revealed, as if it had always been there, only hidden from sight until this moment.

With it came a pressure that had no source. It rolled outward in slow waves. Arm hair lifted. Chests tightened. Even the sand seemed to be quiet under the weight of it.

"What skill is that?" The question traveled in low ripples through the tiers, a mix of unease and curiosity.

Practitioners leaned forward without meaning to, trying to match the sensation to anything they knew.

The scale answered before anyone else could. The beam that had barely moved began to settle and shift with purpose. The pan under Brakhtar’s feet sank by clean degrees, steadier and faster than before, a gritty stone scrape sounding from its metal throat as it found a new line.

All eyes fixed on the scale: Brakhtar on one pan, the stone-carved planet on the other. It settled into perfect balance, and shock swept across every face.

Only Thalira Luna’s face showed more than simple shock. Her jaw set. A thin crease cut between her brows, and a touch of anger tightened her mouth. She spoke under her breath, yet the words carried. "He isn’t using a Spark skill."

"Lady Thalira, what do you mean?" The Lunari behind her turned at once, previous confidence thinning into confusion.

She did not leave them wondering. Her gaze stayed on Brakhtar, on the new, rounded presence coalescing beside his skull, and she gave them the name that made all hearts stagger.

"Have you ever seen a Gemnarch?"