Yvonne’s blade flashed, and Malik’s broken shield clashed with it with a crack that made the embers in the firepit leap, and for a moment, it seemed like they might actually go through with it.

  Both were clearly very keyed up, and they seemed in agreement that this would be the perfect outlet, regardless of the consequences.

  Steel rang again as they lunged at each other’s throats. Yvonne tried to slip past the shield rim and aim for the ribs, while Malik pushed forward with raw strength, forcing her back. His bandages were already bleeding through, but he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were too bright, too fixed.

  Nick’s body was still heavy from the crash, his coils raw, but as soon as he reopened his senses, he knew the battlelust that had taken the two adventurers wasn’t natural.

  It was just too constant, too sharply focused, lacking the natural peaks and valleys someone in their position should have. It was completely blinding, yet there was no clear source for it.

  “Stop,” Raphael barked, warping space to keep them apart.

  An invisible barrier folded between Malik and Yvonne, causing their weapons to strike empty air and slide away, stealing and redirecting their momentum. Both fighters staggered as their bodies struggled to adapt to the unnatural conditions, but a moment later, they were back at it.

  Not that it mattered, as the same thing happened again, regardless of their snarls to stay out of it. Raphael didn’t look particularly strained despite not having had enough time to fully recover, just deeply irritated by a problem that really shouldn’t have existed.

  And still, the two launched probing strikes, testing the limits of the warped space and clearly intending to keep fighting.

  The Shard floated into Nick’s hand at his signal, and he tapped its base against the packed earth.

  Thick, translucent bands of wind wrapped around Malik’s limbs and torso, holding his shield and spear against his body. Another set coiled around Yvonne, tying her arms behind her back and locking her knees in place.

  They froze mid-lunge, like insects trapped in amber, and for a second, there was only harsh panting. Then both of them started shouting at once.

  “LET ME GO!”

  “You! You bastard!”

  Nick didn’t even blink, just noting that the fury in their voices didn’t sound like them. That seemed like another sign of an induced state of mind, thought at a first glance, he couldn’t find anything as obvious as the dwarven collars.

  He reinforced the cords and looked at Raphael. “How long have they been at it?”

  Raphael’s expression was grim. “Since you passed out, but they only started swinging recently.”

  That meant it wasn’t anything they did inside the camp and probably had been affected when they were outside. Still, to be thorough, he should check to make sure no one else was about to turn violent.

  He turned slowly, scanning the camp with [Empyrean Intuition], relishing in the feeling of his mind expanding beyond his body after hours without it.

  Willow was pale and kneeling beside Malik’s discarded pack as if she’d been trying to stop him from moving. Lina hovered behind her, her fingers still stained with clay from fortification work. Mikel stood nearby with his hands partly raised, prepared to intervene but unsure how. Joran observed with narrowed eyes, while Monte and Terence appeared tense, weapons drawn but aimed low.

  None of them felt unstable. Tired, certainly; frayed by the long retreat, without a doubt. But none of their emotions felt unnatural.

  The wrongness was concentrated in the two adventurers.

  Nick’s gaze shifted back to the two restrained fighters. Malik struggled against the wind cords, muscles tense, breath hissing. Yvonne did the same, eyes darting, teeth clenched as if she wanted to bite.

  “I know you can speak,” Nick said, voice flat. “So explain to me what happened?”

  Neither answered, which didn’t bode well.

  Willow swallowed and spoke up once it was clear no answer was coming. “They started arguing when you went under,” she said softly. “Malik… Malik wants to go back for the two adventurers.”

  Nick’s wind cords tightened slightly as Malik surged once more.

  “And you,” Nick said, looking at Yvonne.

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  Yvonne’s eyes snapped toward him. “They’re dead,” she spat. “If they aren’t here by now, they’re dead. Splitting up is suicide, and we’re not allowed to abandon the objective. We signed a contract with an Archmage!”

  “Don’t invoke him now,” Malik snarled, voice trembling with restrained rage. “We’re already stretching our contract by coming here.”

  Nick’s brows rose. “What do you mean?”

  Malik’s jaw clenched. “We were only ever meant to be auxiliary staff for your stupid field trip, to study the outskirts of the dungeon. They are dead because of your greed!”

  Yvonne let out a humorless laugh. “Oh, spare me. You think I want this?! You need to be realistic, they are probably already dead, and splitting up now would only feed more corpses to this cursed dungeon.”

  Nick mulled over their words.

  Both arguments had some logic, and he could see how they emerged from actual nuance, hesitation, and grief.

  But there was something else driving them to fight. Their minds were just coming up with justifications for their actions.

  He let [Empyrean Intuition] brush against their emotional signatures again. The same feelings that greeted him before returned, but this time, he looked more closely, expecting to find some kind of psychic residue, whether in the form of an artifact or a spell.

  Once more, there was nothing; no foreign mana and no obvious construct.

  Nick pulled back, frustrated.

  “What did you see?” Raphael asked softly, moving closer. “This definitely isn't normal. I need to know if they are still themselves.”

  Nick exhaled through his nose, ignoring the implications of what they would have to do if he decided the two adventurers were no longer in control.

  “I don’t see a spell,” he said. “But they’re going to attack the moment I let go. There’s no barrier between their emotions and their actions.”

  Raphael worked his jaw. “Was it the Guardian?”

  Nick’s jaw clenched, but he nodded. “That’s the most likely option. I can’t find any residual mana, but it’s possible that its howl induced a physical state of madness.”

  Yvonne hissed, struggling harder. “This has nothing—”

  “Shut up,” Nick snapped without heat.

  Raphael’s gaze hardened. “Can you deal with it?”

  It was a simple question, but the consequences would be very serious if he answered in the negative.

  Because if Nick couldn’t, then they had one option left.

  Nick felt something cold settle in his gut, but before he could say he doubted he could restore their sanity without risking their minds, another feeling slipped in beneath it.

  It took him a moment to realize that the sapling in his soul was reaching upward, eager to grow but unable to do so without the proper process.

  I can use this as the Second Step. Yesod, or the Foundation, requires one to break illusions and discover the truth in a world of lies.

  Nick kept his face expressionless, but he couldn’t shake the fleeting thought that this was too much of a coincidence. A Greater Ritual couldn’t be fully contained once it started, so it was possible its influence was making Yvonne and Malik’s conditions worse to ensure his test was meaningful, but he couldn’t really explain that.

  “I might have something,” he said instead, and lifted Malik and Yvonne off the ground.

  They shouted as their feet left the dirt, but Nick twisted his wrist, and air thickened around their mouths, muffling the sound into angry, useless noise.

  “We need privacy,” he told Raphael, already pulling them away from the firepit. “And no interruptions.”

  Raphael’s eyes flicked to the canyon mouth, then back to Nick. “Alright, I’ll keep watch.”

  Nick led the two captives toward the camp’s northern edge, where Lina’s jagged stone wall touched one of the stacked barricades. It was far enough from the others but still within the ward lines.

  Gently setting them down, though still holding them pinned, he eyed them for a moment. Yvonne glared at him like she wanted to tear his throat out, and Malik’s breath came in harsh pulls, while his eyes were glassy.

  Nick crouched, planting the Shard, and ensured the wind cords had enough mana to self-sustain for a while. He didn’t want to waste attention on maintaining them.

  Sitting down in a lotus position, he signaled for the other two to join him. When they didn’t, he tightened the wind cords and forced their posture down, folding their legs for them. It wasn’t gentle, but it didn’t hurt.

  Nick placed his hands on his knees and closed his eyes, considering how to take the Second Step.

  Yesod wasn’t about domination or crushing wills. It was about penetrating illusions to reveal the subconscious, the stories people told themselves, and the hooks attached to those stories.

  If the Guardian’s howl had planted something, it would be buried there.

  Nick opened his eyes again, and [Empyrean Intuition] narrowed until it was no longer a broad radar, but a precise scalpel.

  He studied Malik’s face, then Yvonne’s.

  “Breathe,” he said, voice low. “This isn’t going to be particularly pleasant, but it will be worse if you resist.”

  Yet just as he was about to dive into their minds, something brushed against his senses from beyond the camp.

  Multiple presences were approaching. Nick’s head shot up, focusing on them.

  The dungeon’s static was thick enough to hinder long-distance sensing, but he could still sense the general shape of the crude souls approaching and recognized them as goblins. A few heavier presences among them were hobgoblins, some of which felt oily and dense, likely shamans, but at least there were no lumbering Grumblers this time.

  He sent a wind-message back to the camp to warn the others. “Contact,” he murmured into it. “From the eastern corridor. Hobgoblins shamans, with about fifty goblins.”

  A moment later, Raphael’s voice returned through the same channel. “I see them. We’ve got it.”

  Nick could already hear the distant clatter of moving bodies approaching, the first shouts as the camp sprang into action. If he went now, he could turn the corridor into a slaughterhouse and end it before it even began.

  “No,” Raphael’s voice said again, sharper this time, as if he’d read Nick’s intention. “You have a job to do; we can handle a few goblins.”

  Nick looked toward the sound of approaching battle, then back at Malik and Yvonne.

  Yvonne’s lips were pulled back in a furious grin, while Malik’s arms twitched as his eyes fixed on him, and he knew they didn’t have much time before fully succumbing to whatever process was happening inside their minds.

  “Alright,” he sighed under his breath, more to himself than anyone else. “I guess it wouldn’t be a proper trial if it were easy.”

  He inhaled slowly and deeply, then let his awareness drift sideways into the ether, where the two presences of the adventurers were laid bare.

  His voice softened further. “Yesod,” he whispered.

  Yvonne jerked as if she’d been struck, and Malik’s eyes widened as he reached for the foundation beneath their anger and tugged.

  For a moment, all he felt was vertigo. Then, Nick opened his eyes and realized he was no longer in the canyon, but in a long hall lined with mirrors.

  Dozens, Hundreds of them.

  His reflection twisted strangely, each mirror casting light on a different part of him, but he paid them no attention. The time would come for his own introspection, of that he was certain, but it wasn’t yet now.

  Instead, he kept moving forward, even as the nearest mirrors shattered and reformed behind him, their reflections flickering as if trying to catch his eye.

  He kept walking, guided by instinct, since his spiritual senses were only faint here, until he felt a tremor beneath his feet and knew he was nearing the real challenge.

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