Chapter 264: Trial Method

Three days passed and the team settled into the cliffside mansion, and the sector slowly began processing everything that had happened.

Abigail and Dickson had stayed for the move, helping where they could, filling the space with enough noise and activity to make the transition feel less abrupt. But their sector was waiting. They had already been away longer than planned, and the Kelvin elders would want a full debrief on everything that had unfolded in Tristan.

Adam drove them out to the train station on the morning of the third day.

Abigail stopped at the door and turned to face him. "Thank you," she said. "For all of it. I'll make sure my family elders hear exactly what you did for us." She meant it, not as a formality, but as a commitment.

Adam shook his head. "Don't worry about it. We're friends. If you need anything, don't hesitate to reach out."

Abigail went quiet for a moment. Then she nodded, something settling in her expression that hadn't been there when she arrived.

Adam turned to Dickson. "Take care of yourself out there, sm—"

Dickson cut him off with a firm handshake, gripping it before Adam could finish the word. "I got you," he said simply.

Adam laughed. He knew exactly why Dickson had interrupted, and he respected the commitment. He let it go without pushing it.

The two of them headed through the station entrance, pausing once at the doors to look back and give a final wave. Then they were gone. Adam watched the doors close behind them, stood there for a half second longer than necessary, then turned and walked back to the car.

The drive back up the cliffside was quiet.

He pulled through the iron gates, parked, and stepped through the main entrance into the mansion's sitting room.

The entire team was waiting.

All of them. Remedy, Ivy, Felecia, Scott — seated and facing the entrance like they had coordinated it, which they probably had. Nobody was pretending to be doing something else. The intention was clear from the moment he walked in.

Remedy spoke before he could say a word.

"It's time, Adam. Tell us what's going on."

****

Adam dropped into the empty seat across from them and looked at the four faces watching him.

"This is going to take a while."

"We have time," Ivy said. Nobody was moving until he talked.

Adam nodded once and started from the beginning.

He told them about Dead Man's Valley. Not the version everyone had seen on the streams, the real one. He had gone there specifically to push his enlightenment, to advance his supreme spirit and unlock the full output of his power at the Supreme Master level. That part had worked. What came after it hadn't been in the plan.

Three monsters had found him inside the rift. Not standard extinction-class threats, something beyond that category entirely, the kind of things that had no business existing inside a Level 5 rift by any conventional measure. He had dealt with them using the egg Saint Julius Nova had given him. That bought him time, but the rift wasn't done with him yet.

Then the lich appeared.

He walked them through the encounter, the power gap, the fight, the realisation that the lich's strength wasn't natural. It was being amplified by an artefact. Something embedded in the creature that functioned as a source of power rather than a tool. He had managed to win. And after the fight, he had started understanding what he was actually dealing with.

The artefact the lich had carried was the same class of object as the totem that had formed the angel three days ago.

He reached into his coat and set the white angel totem on the table between them. A layer of death affinity wrapped around it, dense enough to keep its output contained, without it, the power leaking from the fragment would have been felt across the floor. Even suppressed, it sat on the table like something that didn't belong in the same room as ordinary furniture.

"These totems," Adam said, "are fragments of keys. Each key belongs to one of five realms — seals, essentially. What they're sealing is an entity powerful enough that it nearly wiped out existence before it was locked away." He let that settle for a second. "I have a fragment of one of those keys fused into me. That's what the Angel of Death is. That's what the angel was trying to take when it targeted my chest."

He looked at each of them in turn.

"And I believe The Family is hunting these keys."

The sitting room stayed quiet for a long moment after Adam finished.

Every face in the room wore the same expression; the look of people genuinely questioning whether the person sitting across from them was real. It wasn't the first time the team had looked at Adam that way, but this particular version of the expression had more weight behind it than usual.

Remedy wasn't wearing it. Her eyes were thoughtful, moving slightly as she turned something over in her head. She was the first to speak.

"Why did the angel call you the heir of death?"

Adam answered without hesitation. "Because of what the key fragment does as a secondary effect. The five keys are seals, that's their primary function. But the fragments seem to also designate whoever carries them as an heir of their corresponding primary affinity to become a ruler over that Affinity."

Remedy's expression shifted into something that looked like recognition. She already knew what that meant. The other three didn't.

Felecia leaned forward slightly. "Like a domain?"

"No," Adam said. "It goes further than that. With a domain, two people at equal strength can compete, their domains push against each other and the stronger one wins. A ruler is different. There can only be one ruler of any given primary affinity. No one else can match their level of control over it. Ever."

The distinction landed clearly. Felecia, Scott, and Ivy each processed it at their own pace, but understanding settled across all three faces within a few seconds.

Then Remedy spoke again.

"So there's another way to become an heir?"

Adam's train of thought paused. He looked at her. That was the kind of question the old Remedy asked, the one who already knew things she shouldn't, the one whose cycles had given her context nobody else in the room had access to. He had noticed her asking genuine questions more frequently since Dead Man's Valley. This one felt different.

He studied her expression for a half second, then asked directly.

"There's another way to become an heir?"

Remedy had known the word the moment the angel said it.

Heir. She had heard it before, understood what it meant and the weight behind it. But Adam's explanation had shifted something. She had only ever known one way for someone to become an heir, and what Adam had just described wasn't it. That meant there were two paths. The key fragment method was simply one she hadn't accounted for.

Every eye in the room moved to her as she gathered her thoughts.

"There is another method," she said. "One that doesn't involve the keys at all." She paused, making sure she had the full room's attention. "To pass the trial of a past ruler."

Adam's expression shifted immediately into recognition. The pieces were already connecting before she continued.

"When a ruler dies," Remedy said, "their resting place becomes a trial ground. Anyone who can pass it gets the chance to inherit their throne and becomes an heir to that affinity." She let that sit for a moment, then added, "What the key fragment does is skip most of that process entirely. It doesn't put you through a trial, it simply designates you as an heir outright."

Adam nodded slowly. He had suspected something like that from the moment the Remedy said a trial was involved. The key had never felt like something he had earned through mastery. It had felt like something imposed on him, a title attached to the fragment whether he was ready for it or not.

Scott leaned forward. "So where do you find these tombs? The ones with the trials?"

Remedy answered without hesitation. "Two places. The northern continent, or the southern hemisphere."

The sitting room went quiet again.

Remedy exhaled slowly, her eyes still carrying that distant, processing look.

"But now I think the southern hemisphere may not have tombs at all," she said. "It might just have a key."

Adam frowned. "What makes you think that?"

Remedy organised her thoughts before answering. "Before today, I only knew of one way to become an heir, the trial method. So when The Family started producing heirs after they began their expeditions in the southern hemisphere, I assumed they had found tombs down there." She paused as the team was taken aback by that revelation as she continued. "But now that we know the key fragments create heirs as a secondary effect, the picture changes."

The room stayed quiet. Everyone was following.

"What I think is actually happening," she continued, "is that The Family found multiple key fragments in the southern hemisphere and they're actively searching for more. The heirs they've been producing aren't the goal. They're a byproduct. The real objective is the key itself." She let that land before finishing the thought. "They want to release the entity. The heirs, the expeditions, the resources they've poured into that region, it all points back to that now."