Stini jolted awake. She reached for her gun—and closed on empty air, like grabbing fog that slipped through her fingers.

She sat up, skin bare to the chill, like stone under moonlight.

Her dad Augustus had written An Adventurer’s Manual Even Idiots Can Understand. First, check the basics: any strange smell; any milky residue below; any scars on the skin. From the wounds, judge who captured you, and whether you should find something to end it cleanly.

She found none. No sour stink, no clouded stain, no mark like a blade kiss.

Her skin looked milk-pale and soft; even tiny old nicks had vanished like dew at dawn. For all her wild streak and love of a good brawl, she was still a girl and cared about her face. A thin scratch once traced her cheek like a crescent—gone now, like a star at daybreak.

Someone must have saved her.

Relief fluttered like a sparrow in her chest. “Not needing to die is a good thing,” she muttered, voice just a thread only she could hear.

She pushed herself off the floor, palms to cold stone like lilies lifting from water.

Wait.

Two hands.

She hadn’t adjusted to using just one. So when her right hand—supposed to be dead and useless—moved clean and free like a stream, her mind stalled.

It was full flesh and blood, not a mechanical prosthesis forged by Arcane Engineers; which meant—

Magic alone can’t restore a body. That’s the domain of Divine Art—or something from the dark, a spell of the Demon King.

She pulled her gaze from herself to the world. A long corridor stretched ahead, like a river of shadow. On both sides crawled indescribable magical script, like vines weaving a night garden. Behind her loomed a stone door formed by three nested rings, like three moons stacked and sleeping.

Her memories swam back through the fog. Just before she blacked out, she’d been in the Trial of the Gods.

After losing the recognition and blessing of the Divine Beings, she had sensed a call tugging at her soul, a summons the gods set like a wind in autumn.

So Stini said goodbye to Andor and her parents, shouldered the Holy Lance Qianchi Augustus had gifted her, and set off.

With only a small cloth pouch full of Holy Sword shards, she followed the oracle west to a frontier garden and delivered the pieces to a reclusive dwarf master.

He listened to the meaning she said the Divine Beings had shown her, took the shards, and refused to reforge them.

“Missing materials?” she asked, brows knit like stitched silk.

“No.” His voice was granite. “Only if you come back alive will I reforge the Holy Sword. I don’t take commissions from the dead. That’s my line in the sand.”

“Aw, but I’m used to a sword,” she grumbled, pride thin as paper. “And a lance should be in my right hand. See? I’ve only got my left. How do I fight like this?”

The dwarf jabbed her forehead with a sausage-thick finger, a poke like a mallet. Stini blinked, dumbfounded, eyes wide as ponds.

“Idiot. Folks of the Hero’s bloodline are all idiots,” he snorted. “I’ve watched many of your forebears take this trial. Some came in demon-slaying plate and died. Some wore simple cloth and lived. What will carry you through isn’t gear—it’s resolve carried to the end.”

“What’s that?” The girl clutched her brow, confused, eyes clouded like rain pools.

“Keep doing what you mean to do. Prove it to the Divine Beings with action and will. That’s everything.”

She still didn’t get it. No matter how she pressed, the dwarf said no more, his lips shut like a sealed vault.

Then set out. Heroes don’t think first and act later; they leap like sparks, then light the way.

In a roadside tavern she bought a bottle of wine and a dozen meat buns. She patted her full belly like a drum, hefted her lance, and walked with no burden on her back, like wind over grass.

On the road stood monsters and Demonfolk. Step by step, she fought and cut, a march of dust and steel.

Hold to your will. She remembered the master’s words. It meant: don’t overthink; let your sense of justice run like a horse.

In the last fight, Stini faced a wraith who commanded a thousand beasts, the butcher of an entire frontier district. It sought to open an old ruin’s door by blood sacrifice, like a red tide pounding stone.

It was a higher retainer of the Demon King of “Loyalty,” a foe even at her peak she couldn’t claim she’d beat for sure.

Stini knew this was her trial. Challenge the limit, break the limit, then overturn the idea of a limit. Ambush, assassination, fewer against many, a frontal smash—each strike added a few more souls whispering along her lance; each strike carved a new wound into her body like cuts in bark.

The Hero line’s secret art made sword and lance as one, blade-work and spear-work like twin rivers.

Secret Lance: One Cold Star.

At the end, the Holy Lance Qianchi flew from her hand like a falling comet and pinned the wraith’s brow to the world.

Heroes are jack-of-all-trades and masters of all; she could use healing Divine Art. But with little grace in her body, she’d always had few casts.

Now, unable to use Divine Art at all, her sustain was gutted, a stallion with half its wind gone.

Her left leg was broken, a branch snapped green. Her only left hand had worked too long; muscle necrosed, skin cracked like parched earth, bone gleamed white in places like winter stone.

A long fissure split her left cheek, a canyon of red; if she hadn’t dodged just then, her head would’ve flown like a cut gourd.

When she had to choose a hole—left eye, right eye, or between the brows—she sacrificed the right eye, a star snuffed to keep the moon.

Stini killed the wraith, and slaughtered thousands of monsters, but her life ran to the end, like an hourglass surrendering its last grain. Her small body burned with roaring flame.

Fire leapt from heart to shoulder, then to limbs, then to her pretty brows and emerald hair, and then licked the soul, a wildfire through dry pines.

It was the orcish war-chant magic, Rageflame. Burn yourself to buy a final stride when death is a breath away.

Once lit, it never stops. You wait until the flame consumes you to ash—or you end it yourself, unable to bear the burning.

At the last, Stini dragged her broken left leg toward the door the wraith had sought to open with blood, step after step like a beetle pushing a mountain.

She knew death was near, a shadow at her heel; still, she wanted to finish the trial as far as she could. Maybe completion would mean rescue, like rain after drought?

Did she touch the door in the end? She couldn’t remember. Only the shape stayed: a stone gate of three rings nested like linked moons.

“So that means I’m inside already. Guess the trial’s done. Hooray!” she laughed, joy like a bell in blue air.

Being alive is always a sweet thing, like plum wine on the tongue.

She shed the fear of “one step from death” fast, like a snake shedding skin, and started doing acrobatics down the corridor, a string of bright moves.

A backflip, a forward roll, then an impromptu Fenge Harvest Rite dance, hands fluttering like sparrows.

Big heart—that’s a Hero’s habit. Whether flaw or virtue depends on the day, like rain being blessing or flood.

Excitement ebbed; hunger tugged her mind back, a wolf gnawing softly.

“Okay, looks like the problem is how to get out,” she said, stomach hollow like a drum.

She tried to conjure bread with Divine Art, and failed. No Divine Art. A sigh slipped out, thin as smoke.

“So the trial isn’t finished after all.”

The door behind had sealed, rings locked like winter ice. Stini didn’t hesitate; there was only one road. Why hesitate when the path is a single blade?

No sword, no lance, no armor—only this body and these fists, two stones in a river.

“Would the Divine Beings set a trial that’s certain death? Ha. Who knows?”

The girl walked on, proud as a banner in wind. Life or death, she always moves like this, a flame that refuses the rain.