The Twelve Trials were a stair carved into the sky, a blade pressed against the limits of man.

That legacy flowed from the ancestors of House Heller like a river under ice, old and cold. By their records, only the first patriarch ever finished all Twelve Trials, a figure from the myth-tide, a name flickering like a star no one can touch.

Later, as Hercules dug through the house’s dust-choked lore, a pattern rose like smoke. Most who took the Twelve Trials shattered at the Third. The reasons were lost as if buried under snow, because the ones who reached it mostly died, and the rest went mad like trees struck by lightning. After he lived it, he knew in his bones: if every Third Trial was as deadly as his, then unless everyone was Aphelia, that peak was a cliff of glass no mortal could climb.

Banshees of death—those were the wraiths waiting in his Third Trial, a flock of knives in black fog. Even now, when Hercules stood among the hunters’ top ranks like a spear-point in the vanguard, he dared not claim he could escape their ring without Angel’s Dust, not when their circle closed like winter.

They struck the soul like frost and wore the bodies of mighty dark beasts like armor. Unless you could answer both blades at once, and do it with iron strength, your courage would melt like wax before their keening.

He had tricks then, a little fox-cunning. The First and Second Trials had honed his speed and his strength like whetstones. Yet before those death banshees, those secrets were dry leaves in a storm. Worse, it felt as if they were forged to counter the Trial-takers, arrows aimed at his heart. The instant he burst into speed, a banshee in a vampire count’s body lunged like a hawk, and swatted him from the air like dust.

He could have cursed the banshees and left it there, but their very shape was wrong, like shadows sewn inside out. The Twelve Trials began to look like a trap baited with glory, a snare under fallen leaves. Yet the ones who set him on that path, step by careful step, were his parents, their hands gentle as silk.

The first taste was not rage but chill. Betrayal spread in him like ink in water. If he had not been able to walk freely inside this memory, he would never have learned it. Their quiet talk had circled the Twelve Trials like moths around a lamp. He had been young then, a sapling in wind, not hearing the roots crack. Only at the edge of death, when Angel’s Dust flared in him like a last sunrise, did the fog lift.

Back then the elders even pinned blame on Aphelia, driving her into exile like a swallow forced from the eaves. It turned out the strands were woven by their own hands, a web spun in the dark.

Hercules let out a long breath, heavy as rain. He had known nothing of this undercurrent in the family, drifting blind like a boat in night fog. When Aphelia appeared before him, she smiled like a candle in a cave, stepped between him and the banshees, and then, stake by heartbeat, cut down several at the edge of life, carrying him out of that hell like a warrior bearing a banner through fire.

Only those who walk the ice can speak of the cold. He remembered that cave, black as a drowned well. He was about to die under a banshee’s claws when a black figure fell like a meteor, and with one stroke drove back the banshee riding a werewolf’s hide.

Then came the Sealing Lamp’s familiar dusky-yellow glow, a poor sun in the underworld. As the figure dropped, she flicked a strange-shaped Sealing Lamp to his side. Its light rose like a warding circle, covering Hercules like a bell of dawn and pushing the banshees back like waves meeting rock.

Truth be told, he’d never seen a Sealing Lamp bite so deep. Usually it made lesser darklings wary, a scarecrow in a field. Yet these death banshees were storms in flesh; how could such beasts recoil like wolves before a torch?

A Sealing Lamp looked like an oil lamp, humble as a pilgrim’s bowl. Its “fuel” came from mines the great houses kept like dragon hoards, a strange ore called Lait. Through tiny arrays etched like frost, Lait released a light that stung dark creatures, so every hunter carried one like a charm tied to the belt.

But Lait’s glow wasn’t a sun without night. It scattered lesser shades like crows, yet stronger things could walk through it like fire through paper and tear a hunter to rags. So why did this one burn like noon?

Later he learned Aphelia hadn’t used Lait at all. She fed the lamp a crystal pressed from her own blood, red as a rose under snow. Even she didn’t know why, but something in her blood made dark creatures flinch like horses before a cliff.

Back then, Hercules could only stare. The figure—Aphelia—fell like a storm god gone mad, her long blade painting arcs of cold light as she hacked at the werewolf-ridden banshee, ignoring the others like a dancer ignoring hecklers. Such fighting spat on common sense, and the boy’s world cracked like ice.

Could someone really fight dark creatures like the heroes in stories, ink turned to flesh?

The banshee in the werewolf body froze too, a hunter startled by her own prey. No human she’d met had swung so wild and so precise, steel drumming around her like rain on a drum. She raised her claws to answer, but Aphelia dipped low like a cat, spun, and slashed the banshee’s chest. At the same breath, her left hand jammed a lever-action shotgun up under that beast’s jaw like a nail.

“Be unmade.”

It sounded like a whisper of snow and like a command of thunder. To Hercules and the banshees, the Old Tongue struck differently, a bell rung in the bones. Even those about to lay hands on her howled, clutching their ears and dropping to their knees like wheat in wind.

The next heartbeat, the gun spoke, a crack that filled the cave like a lightning clap.

Muzzle-flare washed Aphelia’s pale profile, carving her features in ice and fire. The werewolf-banshee’s head burst under the blast like an overripe gourd, crimson and shadow spraying the stone. Aphelia didn’t flicker. She rolled the shotgun at her hip, a clean spin, the hot shell jingling out like a copper leaf, the next round seated with a click like teeth.

Her eyes stayed winter-cold. She punched through a gap in their ring like a cannonball, slammed the nearest banshee off Hercules’s flank, a wraith wearing a spider demon’s body like armor. Her blade slid into its mandibles with a butcher’s certainty, then she flipped upward, both hands on the shotgun, aiming at the human-shaped upper torso like a hawk sighting a hare.

She went for the head again, because clean work saves lives. If you must do it, do it sharp; hesitation is a noose. She drew a deep breath mid-leap, eyes turning to frost, watching the banshee shriek from the split mandibles with no mercy in her.

“Burn.”

The shotgun roared, and the load spat out like a spray of iron hail. Pellets and shot sheeted over the spider demon, a red storm peppering flesh. Filthy blood splashed like ink, and as it rallied for a banshee’s wail, the rounds buried in its flesh lit up like coals.

“Screeee—eeeee—eeek!”

The spider-ridden banshee slammed into its own, a torch falling into dry grass, trying to snuff the flames. The fire clung like a curse, refused to die like a winter sun, and rose into a wall that held its sisters back.

“Hercules, throw me the lamp!”

Aphelia shouted as she hit the ground, her voice a whip-crack in the din. She had no hand free to do it herself, and racked the lever again with a snap like a lock. Hercules had been drowning in despair a breath before, a leaf in a flood, but seeing her fight jolted him awake. He hurled the Sealing Lamp upward like a stone toward daylight.

“Tch.”

She clicked her tongue, a small spark in a storm, and swung the muzzle. Hercules had thrown with all he had, but to dark creatures he was still a heartbeat slow, a half-step in snow. The banshee wearing a vampire count surged up like a shadowed eagle, bursting into a cloud of bats as it dove.

Hold breath. Squeeze. Flow like cloud, strike like rain. The hot shot burst out, shredding the bat swarm and knocking it from the air like soot. At the same time, her gaze sharpened like a drawn wire. Her thumb slammed the ring on her index finger, and a blood-arrow snapped from her hand like a scarlet swallow, spearing the lamp in midair.

The Sealing Lamp shattered overhead, a clay moon breaking. Its dull yellow flared into a white like noon-sun at arm’s length, a blaze that burned the pupils. Hercules froze, a moth before lightning, and then a hand hooked his arm like a rope. He was yanked to his feet, and they sprinted for the mouth of the cave like deer breaking into daylight.