Opening
The Trials reach their cruel crescendo as Elias Veturius and Helene Aquilla collide on a battlefield designed to break them, while Laia of Serra confronts lies, lore, and a new captivity. Under the shadow of the Commandant (Keris Veturia), love, loyalty, and survival twist into a devastating test of Duty vs. Conscience.
What Happens
Chapter 36: Elias
Morning brings fog and fury. Elias, raw with guilt and rage after Laia’s attack, shuts Helene out when she reports Laia survived. He tries to check on the slave at the Commandant’s house, only for Cook to bar him and warn of the Commandant’s wrath. He turns away, convinced Helene is just another Mask who would watch an innocent die.
In the fog, Helene confronts him over his faltering focus before the Third Trial. He fires back—cruelly—naming the secret she never speaks aloud: she loves him, and he will never love a Mask. Then Helene breaks the world he’s built around her. She admits she saved Laia, kneeling beside the girl and singing her wounds closed with a hidden healing gift. Shaken, Elias listens as Helene—heart in tatters—calls loving him “torture” and hints at a “deal” she struck for his sake before fleeing. The rift between them yawns open, exposing how the empire’s training and their buried feelings devour what’s left of trust.
Chapter 37: Laia
Laia wakes aching but whole. Izzi whispers the impossible: Aspirant Aquilla sang her back from the brink. The victory collapses when Izzi adds that Marcus Farrar told the Commandant about the tunnel—now sealed. Laia meets the Resistance on shaky ground. Keenan traces her bruises and imagines a future she can’t afford, until Mazen arrives and the moment snaps.
Thinking fast, Laia lies—she’s found an entrance, but needs more time. Pressing for news of Darin of Serra, she wrings out a crucial detail: Darin isn’t in Central Prison at all but in the death cells at Bekkar Prison. Mazen outlines a split assault—hit Blackcliff to pull guards, free Darin at Bekkar. It sounds plausible, but Laia’s instincts prickle. When Sana rushes in with urgent news, Mazen drops everything, grants Laia more time, and leaves. His sudden shift and evasions sour the air. Her belief in the Resistance—and in Freedom vs. Oppression as a simple binary—fractures as she realizes she may be a pawn.
Chapter 38: Elias
An unnatural storm claws over Blackcliff as the Third Trial begins. Cain warns: the amphitheater will run red, and mercy will have consequences. Elias leads his platoon into the fog and sees the trap: their enemies are Helene’s men. He orders his soldiers to maim, not kill. The Augurs’ punishment is immediate and invisible—Faris begins to suffocate when he spares an opponent; Dex kills their friend Tristas to stop it.
As men fall for showing mercy, Dex pleads: Helene has ordered her soldiers to kill. If Elias doesn’t do the same, his platoon will be wiped out. He gives the signal he swore he wouldn’t. The fight becomes slaughter, clawing through years of camaraderie. When the fog thins, only Elias and Helene remain among the dead. She attacks. He pins her, raises a dagger, and the rage that kept him alive demands one more death.
Chapter 39: Laia
Lightning locks Laia, Izzi, and Cook inside the Commandant’s house. With her search stalled, Cook opens a door of another kind: a history, older and darker than the Empire. She tells of the jinn—beings of smokeless fire—betrayed by Scholars who learned fey magic and forged the Star to imprison them. All were taken but their king. Maddened by failure, the Nightbringer allied with the Martials, teaching steel and statecraft to topple the Scholar Empire and feed his vengeance.
Then the story cuts close. The Nightbringer infiltrated the Resistance in human guise, seduced Laia’s mother’s trust, and—through a traitor—engineered her parents’ capture. Cook spirals into a traumatic memory and breaks off, leaving Laia to wonder who Cook truly is—and who her parents really were. The storm outside drives soldiers home from the Trial. An Augur arrives with the Commandant, stares at Laia with blood-red eyes, and says, “She’s the one.” Legionnaires bind her hands and drag her to a cell. Terror closes around her, and Fear and Courage becomes a choice she must make alone.
Chapter 40: Elias
Elias brings the dagger down—and it shatters on Helene’s chest. Cain steps from the storm, explaining she wore the scim-proof shirt she won in the Second Trial, now melded to her skin like a mask. Armor is forbidden. She’s disqualified. Elias wins the Trial of Strength. The fog lifts to reveal what victory costs: friends turned corpses, a soul gone numb.
At the infirmary, the devastation sharpens. Marcus was forced to fight his twin, Zak, and killed him. Elias sees not a monster but a man wrecked by the same machine that’s breaking him. He waits outside Helene’s door and is turned away. His grandfather finds him and names the aftermath: he will be “trailing ghosts,” as all soldiers do. Cain returns to twist the knife: the Augurs knew about Helene’s armor. The Trial wasn’t about rules—it was about intent. Would Elias kill her? Cain hints at a coming war and a “great wrong” that must be righted; Elias is being forged for that fate. As a “prize,” Cain seals him in his quarters to rest. Elias steps inside—and realizes the next trial is already waiting.
Character Development
These chapters remake the protagonists—morally, emotionally, and mythically—by stripping away certainties and forcing choices that can’t be undone.
- Elias: Pushed beyond his ethical limits, he orders friends to kill friends, then nearly kills Helene. His self-image as a rebel heart inside a Mask fractures into guilt, numbness, and self-loathing.
- Helene: Her secret healing gift and confession of love reveal compassion beneath a soldier’s shell. Yet on the field she chooses command over mercy, embodying the empire’s ruthless demands even as it breaks her.
- Laia: More calculating and suspicious, she lies convincingly to the Resistance and starts seeing through Mazen. Cook’s lore widens her fight from political to supernatural—and her capture forces a new kind of bravery.
- Cook: No longer just a harsh kitchen shadow; she becomes a keeper of catastrophic truths tying the Nightbringer to the fall of the old Resistance and Laia’s parents.
- Marcus: Stripped of swagger, he emerges as a tragic figure—forced to kill Zak—revealing grief where cruelty once seemed absolute.
Themes & Symbols
The Trials weaponize Duty vs. Conscience. Elias’s attempt to spare lives is punished, proving that in the Empire, obedience matters more than morality. Helene’s duality—healer in private, killer in command—shows how duty corrodes even the compassionate. Meanwhile, the Resistance thread complicates Freedom vs. Oppression: Mazen’s secrecy and Laia’s manipulation reveal that liberation movements can mirror the power plays they oppose.
Cook’s tale reframes the conflict at mythic scale. The Nightbringer’s vengeance and the Scholars’ betrayal reveal cycles of harm larger than any single empire. Laia’s terror, met with resolve, grounds Fear and Courage in immediate choices—lie, resist, endure—while the Third Trial exposes the brutal calculus of Family and Sacrifice: Marcus kills his twin; Elias sacrifices comrades to save those still standing; Laia risks everything for Darin. The Augurs test not strength but intent, forging the will required for a coming war.
Symbols:
- The Storm and Fog: A shroud over the battlefield and the soul, blinding soldiers and masking the Augurs’ design; moral clarity drowns in gray.
- The Shattered Dagger: Elias’s intent breaks the blade. The friendship—and the self-image it upheld—cracks with it.
Key Quotes
“Loving you is torture.”
- Helene’s confession exposes the tender core beneath her Mask—and the cost of loving someone sworn to reject what she represents. The line reframes her ruthlessness as survival, not emptiness.
“Show mercy, and it will have consequences.”
- Cain’s warning makes the Trial a moral snare. Mercy itself becomes lethal, indicting an empire that criminalizes compassion.
“She’s the one.”
- The Augur’s recognition brands Laia as a piece in a larger, hidden game. Her personal mission intersects with ancient designs beyond the Resistance.
“You’ll be trailing ghosts.”
- Elias’s grandfather names the aftermath of sanctioned violence. The phrase marks the start of Elias’s life as a haunted survivor, not a triumphant champion.
“We needed to know if you would kill her.”
- Cain reveals the Trials probe intention, not victory. Elias’s willingness to strike Helene becomes the true measure—and stain—of his fitness for the Augurs’ prophecy.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters form the story’s darkest pivot. The Third Trial doesn’t crown a hero; it manufactures trauma. Elias wins by losing the part of himself that refused the empire’s logic, and his bond with Helene splinters under the weight of love, duty, and blood.
At the same time, Cook’s history lesson widens the battlefield from imperial politics to ancient vengeance. The Nightbringer’s design pulls Laia’s family tragedy into a mythic war, while her arrest and Elias’s sealing foreshadow an enforced convergence. Both protagonists end caged—Laia in chains, Elias in guilt—set on a collision course with the forces that have been manipulating them all along.