Chapter 332: Shadow Trials[15]

Edmund turned his head instinctively.

?Standing at the far end of the long glass hallway was Kaelen Sorel.

?Kaelen wasn’t alone. Behind him stood two other contestants—a heavy-set Talented wielding a massive kinetic warhammer, and a swift-footed assassin carrying two curved short swords.

?Kaelen’s face was pale, his eyes wide with a volatile mix of paranoia and aggressive ambition. He held his rapier drawn, its tip pointing straight at the ground.

?"Kaelen," Edmund said calmly, stepping away from the archive terminal.

"What are you doing in Sector 7-C? I thought you were hunting Samantha in 7-A."

?"Samantha was a trick," Kaelen said, his voice echoing off the high glass walls of the arcade. "She talked her way out of it. She made us think the spear was too obvious."

?Edmund tilted his head slightly. "It was too obvious. It was a classic cognitive bias trap. If you had attacked her, you would have lost a hundred points."

?"That’s what she wanted us to think!" Kaelen snapped, taking several rapid paces forward. "And that’s what you want us to think now!"

?Edmund stared at him, genuinely bewildered. "What are you talking about, Sorel?"

?Kaelen held up his terminal, pointing at the glowing holographic text floating above his palm.

?[PHANTOM TARGET CLUE 2: "THE LEGACY WAS INHERITED, NOT CREATED."]

?"Inherited, Brewer!" Kaelen shouted, his voice cracking with tension. "Your ice Talent isn’t a modern modification. You didn’t buy augmentations. You didn’t get engineered. Your whole damn house brags about how ’pure’ and ’ancient’ your bloodline is!"

?Edmund froze.

?The words echoed through the silent library arcade, bouncing off the glass display cases and the smooth marble floor.

?Your whole house brags about how pure and ancient your bloodline is."

?"THE TARGET BEARS AN ANCIENT LEGACY UNTOUCHED BY MODERN FORGES."

"THE LEGACY WAS INHERITED, NOT CREATED."

?The two phrases aligned in Edmund’s mind with the sudden, violent clarity.

?The spear wasn’t the target.

The environment wasn’t the target.

There was no hidden relic in Sector Seven.

?The clue wasn’t describing an object someone was holding.

?It was describing him.

?A heavy, suffocating silence settled over Edmund’s chest. His heart rate, which he had worked so hard to stabilize after his encounter with Julian Vance, gave a single, violent thud against his ribs.

?"No..." Edmund thought, his mind racing at terrifying speed as he re-read the clues in his head.

"No, that’s impossible. The trial system wouldn’t make a contestant a target without issuing a direct administrative notice..."

?He frantically tapped his terminal interface, opening his private notification log.

?[SYSTEM NOTIFICATIONS: 0 NEW MESSAGES]

[STATUS: ACTIVE CONTESTANT]

[OBJECTIVE DESIGNATION: NONE]

?There was no notice.

No system alert confirmed he was the Phantom Target.

?"I have no notification, Sorel!" Edmund called out, his voice sharp and cold, though a tiny sliver of uncertainty cut through his usual composure.

"If I were the designated objective, the system would have established a tracking perimeter around my terminal!"

?"Or the system didn’t give you a notification specifically so you could act natural and fool the rest of us!" Kaelen countered, his posture dropping into an offensive thrust stance.

"One hundred and fifty points, Brewer. That puts me in first place!"

?"You’re making a catastrophic error, Sorel!" Edmund warned, taking a step back as his right hand hovered near his waist. "If you strike me and I am not the designated target, you lose one hundred points. You will be sitting at five points total. Your trial will be over!"

?Kaelen hesitated. His foot hovered over the marble floor, his rapier trembling slightly in his grip.

?The hundred-point penalty was a wall of pure terror.

If he was right, he became the undisputed leader of Trial Three. If he was wrong, he was ruined.

?Beside Kaelen, the heavy-set Talented with the warhammer looked deeply uneasy.

"Kaelen... maybe he’s telling the truth. What if the notice comes later? What if we wait for Clue 3?"

?"If we wait for Clue 3, Lucian and Cassius will be here!" Kaelen snarled, his eyes fixed on Edmund’s pale face. "Look at him! He’s sweating! The great Edmund Brewer is actually nervous!"

?"I am not nervous, Sorel," Edmund said, his tone dropping an octave as a subtle frost began to form on the soles of his boots, creeping outward across the marble floor in delicate, razor-sharp geometric lines.

"I am telling you that your reasoning is being driven by panic. Stand down."

?Before Kaelen could answer, the air high above the library arcade shattered with a deafening chime.

?[SPECIAL SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: PHANTOM TARGET CLUE 3]

?Every holographic billboard in the sector flashed a deep, luminous violet.

?[PHANTOM TARGET CLUE 3: "THE TARGET’S POWER WAS PASSED THROUGH TALENTED BLOOD, NOT BUILT BY HAND."]

?[REMAINING TIME UNTIL AUTOMATIC TARGET REVEAL: 10:00]

?The third clue was devastating in its simplicity.

?It completely destroyed any remaining ambiguity.

?Not built by hand.

?Passed through blood.

?Inherited.

?Ancient legacy.

?The secondary assassin in Sector 7-A dropped his short swords in frustration.

?Cassius Wulfric, halfway across Sector 7-C, let out a booming laugh that rattled the windows of the surrounding residential blocks as he broke into a full combat sprint toward the library precinct.

?And inside the glass arcade, Kaelen Sorel’s face turned into a mask of pure, unadulterated triumph.

?"Passed through blood!" Kaelen screamed, his Class A-3 Wind Talent surging around his rapier in a howling, razor-thin vortex. "It’s you! IT’S YOU, BREWER!"

?Edmund stared at the glowing violet text in the air him.

?His mind went completely blank for a fraction of a second.

?Passed through blood.

?He was the Phantom Target.

?The system had designated him—the sole active heir of House Brewer’s primary lineage in the trial grid.

?And every contestant in Sector Seven now knew it.

?"Kaelen, wait!" the warhammer wielder yelled, but it was already too late.

?Driven by the overwhelming prospect of one hundred and fifty points, Kaelen kicked off the marble floor with explosive speed.

His wind Talent roared around him, compressing the air into a shimmering lance of kinetic pressure as he lunged straight for Edmund’s chest.

?"SECURE THE PHANTOM TARGET!" Kaelen roared.

?Edmund didn’t have time to process the absolute insanity of his situation. His combat instincts, honed through thousands of hours of brutal sparring in the frost halls of his family’s estate, took over before his mind could fully catch up.

?GLACIAL PALISADE!

?Edmund slammed his right foot onto the marble floor.

?A jagged, thick wall of solid blue ice burst upward from the floorboards, interposing itself between Edmund and Kaelen’s lunging blade.

?Kaelen’s wind-infused rapier struck the glacial wall with violent force. The sheer kinetic energy of the impact shattered the top half of the ice barrier, spraying frozen shards and blinding white frost across the arcade, but the barrier held long enough to completely deflect the lethal momentum of the strike.

?Kaelen bounced back, landing heavily on the slick marble floor, his boots skidding across the rapidly expanding layer of frost.

?"He’s fighting back!" Kaelen yelled to his allies. "Take him down together! Split the points if we have to!"

?"You fool!" Edmund shouted, stepping through the cloud of lingering frost, his eyes blazing with pale, crystalline light. Cold mist poured from his mouth with every breath.

"You still haven’t verified the systemic protocol! If I am the target, where is the secure boundary?!"

?He raised both hands, his innate ice Talent surging to its absolute maximum output. The temperature inside the glass arcade plunged instantly below freezing, turning the humid afternoon air into a dense, swirling blizzard of razor-sharp ice crystals.

?FROST ANCHOR!

?Heavy, crystalline chains of compressed ice materialized out of the freezing air, anchoring themselves to the structural pillars of the library arcade.

Edmund was preparing to freeze the entire hallway solid to buy himself time to think, to retreat, to analyze how the system had trapped him.

?"BREWER!"

?A massive, roaring voice echoed from the arcade entrance.