The moment they parted ways, Claudius moved quickly—no words, no backward glances. But it wasn't urgency that drove him.
It was precision.
Each step echoed down the corridor like the swing of a pendulum, marking time with the subtle weight of inevitability. His breath was calm, but not relaxed. It was the breath of someone sharpening themselves inwardly—stripping away hesitation, emotion, error.
The scroll in his hand bore no instructions. No path. Only a single sigil, nearly smudged—etched into the parchment like a careless afterthought: the twisted crest of the Department of Modern Magecraft Theory.
That was the key.
Claudius recognized it instantly—not for its title, but for its absence in official curriculum. That seal didn't appear in textbooks or student halls. It showed up in internal memos, in redacted files, in unauthorized research conducted behind two layers of silence.
It wasn't a map. It was a whisper.
And Claudius had learned to listen to whispers long ago.
He navigated not by direction, but by omission—avoiding paths that felt too lived-in, too predictable. He noted the ambient mana—or lack thereof. Hallways that felt slightly too cold. Stairwells where sound warped as he passed. Sections of the Tower that the building itself had seemingly forgotten.
Others might have walked in circles.
Claudius walked straight.
The deeper he moved, the thinner the mana stretched—drawn taut like a bowstring ready to snap. Lights dimmed. Stone groaned. Doors became rare.
His fingers brushed a banister—cold to the touch, faintly slick, not with age but with neglect. A corridor that had been locked, not abandoned.
Then he saw it.
At the end of a half-collapsed hallway, wedged between two sealed-off wings: a door with no number, no handle. Just a brass disc above it, engraved with that same sigil—only now, it pulsed faintly with internal light, like breath caught beneath skin.
Claudius stepped forward.
The door opened with a shuddering sigh, as if the room beyond had been holding its breath for years.
The air inside was cold.
Not the chill of neglect—but the hush of consequence. It sank into his joints, into the bones of the walls, into the lightless ether of the room itself. When the door sealed behind him, it did so without drama—just a soft click. Final. Uncompromising.
The chamber was circular. No windows. No chairs. The stone was obsidian-black and etched with layered circuitry—archaic lines that glowed faintly with a warning long since burned into them.
And in the center stood the golem.
It wasn't a machine. It wasn't alive.
It was something in between.
Lacquered black limbs. Joints that moved like broken clock hands. A chest cavity that burned with blue fire—a cold imitation of life. Its head twitched slightly at Claudius's presence. Not recognition. Calibration.
Around it, four glyphs glowed in unstable sequence—laid out in a perfect diamond across the floor. They weren't functional. They were wrong. Warped. Almost maliciously so. Like someone had tried to teach a foreigner Clock Tower script using lies and half-rules.
Claudius exhaled slowly.
"Immobilization. Not destruction," he thought. "If I misunderstand that, I become the subject of the experiment."
Then the hum began.
Magic didn't fill the air—it pressed it inward. A spatial compression field. It didn't crush; it folded. Bent the geometry of the chamber around an invisible heart.
Thirty seconds per cycle. Ten seconds per glyph. Real-time correction under pressure.
Claudius moved.
First Glyph. Ten seconds.
A dispersal trap masked as a containment seal. Classic misdirection. He traced the convergence point, redirected its output inward, and overlaid a basic mana stitch to complete the loop.
The glyph glowed deep blue.
The golem twitched—its fingers shifting once.
Second Glyph. Ten seconds.
This one was a siphon. Designed to steal momentum, collapse an internal spell mid-cast. Claudius counter-cycled the drain runes and inverted the anchor sigils with practiced care.
Another flare of blue. Stable.
Two down.
Third Glyph.
He paused.
Something felt off.
Claudius analyzed it in a heartbeat—too fast. He scraped away the outer layer, believing it to be a reflection trap, and etched a grounding rune in its place.
The glyph pulsed—
Then screeched.
It was a mimic. An illusion sigil layered atop a curse matrix. Deceptive by design.
The mana backfired violently. A surge of raw, directionless energy burst from the floor. It lashed across Claudius's hand like a burning whip. He reeled, cursing under his breath.
The golem moved—not tentatively, but with sudden purpose. Limbs cracked into place. The shoulders rolled.
Claudius dropped to a knee.
His breath sharpened—not from fear, but from recalibration.
He flexed his fingers. Pain. Not paralysis.
No time.
Ten seconds.
He didn't erase the glyph. There wasn't time for that. He overlaid it—sigil for sigil. A cross-weave of anchoring lines, a rushed mana sink loop. Crude. Ugly.
It worked.
The instability collapsed inward like a lung giving out. The glyph quieted. The golem halted.
Fourth Glyph.
His burned hand trembled. He clenched it. Forced stillness.
This final rune didn't pulse like the others. It breathed. It followed a rhythm not drawn from theory, but from memory. It wasn't Western. It wasn't structured.
It was ancient.
Hieratic design. Pre-ritual. Something born from worship rather than logic.
"Not analysis. Pattern recognition. Instinct."
He restructured the outer loop, breaking it just enough to recreate a sealing framework he'd only seen once—tucked in the margins of a forgotten war archive.
The glyph flared—once.
Then dulled.
The golem stopped completely.
No breath. No twitch.
Only stillness.
The compression field lifted like a curtain drawn back after a long, patient show.
Claudius stood slowly. His hand smoked. The glyphs faded. The room no longer judged. It waited.
But he had passed.
Barely.
"If he fails like that," Claudius thought grimly about Shisan's trial, "the price won't be a burn. It'll be obliteration."
The door behind him hissed open.
Claudius didn't turn. He didn't need to.
He heard her.
Rin's boots clicked against the floor with the lazy precision of someone who knew exactly how much power she held in silence.
She walked up behind him, hands in her coat pockets, and stopped at his side.
"Well," she said, almost cheerfully, "you didn't die. I'd call that a win."
Claudius said nothing.
Her gaze swept across the glyphs, stopping at the scorched third sigil where mana still hissed faintly in protest.
"You failed one," she observed. "But I'm guessing you already knew that."
Claudius flexed his injured hand slightly. "Didn't matter. I adapted."
Rin gave a small, approving nod. "Good answer."
She circled the golem once. Briefly. More ritual than curiosity. Then turned to face him fully.
"Do you know why this test exists?"
Claudius raised a brow. "Spell correction under pressure? Reflex calibration?"
Rin smiled faintly. "Zelretch already knows you can do all that. He's not interested in whether you can succeed."
She stepped closer, voice softening.
"This test was about what happens when you fail."
Claudius stilled.
Rin's eyes held his—calm, steady, unreadable.
"Because when Shisan's magic awakens—if it awakens—I won't be able to help him. Not really. I won't know what kind of system he'll follow. Or if he even has circuits like we do. He's a question mark wrapped in instinct and will. And no one can predict how something like that will react under pressure."
She let that sit in the silence.
"And if the two of you are going to survive the seal—and the Greatest Grail War—you'll have to start trusting things you can't quantify. Because he won't follow the rules. And neither will the battlefield."
Then: "Want to see his trial?"
Claudius blinked. "…You can show me?"
Rin grinned. "Of course. I hid a scrying ward in his scroll. Did you really think I was going to let either of you wander into ancient mana pits unsupervised?"
She tapped a black shard of obsidian crystal that hung from a cord at her neck. It shimmered faintly, showing flickers of another place—a different room, a different path.
"Come on. Let's see if your partner burns or if he flies."
Claudius didn't follow.
Not immediately.
His eyes narrowed slightly. Focused on her with the same precise curiosity he gave every puzzle.
"Earlier," he said slowly, "you said if his magic awakens, it won't be something you can help with. Because you won't know what system he falls under."
Rin arched a brow. "And?"
Claudius stepped closer, voice low. "You weren't talking about his potential. You were talking about his origin."
Silence.
Rin didn't flinch. Didn't deny it.
Claudius's voice dropped further. "You know where he's from."
A long pause.
Then Rin smiled, just a little. "I know enough not to say it out loud."
Claudius narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
"Because Zelretch said not to," she replied, tone sharpening like a blade halfway drawn. "Because if the wrong person hears it, they'll start asking questions. And those questions end with dissection tables and astral vivisection rituals."
Her voice softened—barely.
"You're not the only one good at observing, Mornveil. I see things too."
Claudius said nothing.
Then, quieter: "So we're pretending."
"We're surviving," Rin corrected. "And pretending is part of that."
She turned toward the crystal. It pulsed faintly, showing a glimpse of forest, stone, and flame.
"Now come watch your partner dance with death," she said. "We'll save the existential crises for after lunch."