The Grove of Binding didn't greet them with fanfare or flame.
It simply was — ancient, watching, waiting.
Silver-leaved trees stretched into the heavens, their bark veined with pulsing starlight. The very air shimmered like spun glass, thick with the weight of old magic. The forest floor was silent, too silent — like even sound had to ask permission to exist here.
Riven spoke first.
"This place doesn't like lies."
Ashar snorted. "Then Theron's doomed."
Theron cracked a grin. "Says the man who spent two hundred years pretending he wasn't in love."
Kaelen didn't laugh. His hand rested on his sword, eyes scanning the perimeter. "We tread carefully. The Grove tests hearts, not blades."
Aelira stepped forward, her breath misting in the unnatural cold. She felt the bonds thrumming beneath her skin — all four of them now, alive and brimming with heat, ice, shadow, flame.
And at the Grove's edge, the trees parted.
Without a word, they entered.
—
They were separated instantly.
No warning. No light.
Just… isolation.
The Grove pulled them each into themselves — and forced their truths to the surface.
Theron stood in fire.
Not magic fire. Memory fire.
He was fifteen again, clutching his little sister's hand, surrounded by the screams of a village he couldn't save. He had burned the fields to keep the raiders out — and in doing so, became both protector and destroyer.
The Grove whispered: "Do you regret what it made you?"
"I regret what it cost," he said quietly. "But not what I became."
The flames died down. The path opened.
—
Kaelen was in a throne room.
Cold. Empty. The banner of his family lay blood-soaked on the floor.
Before him, his brother — the boy who died taking Kaelen's place during a failed rebellion. The boy who smiled even as he was dragged away.
The Grove asked: "Why did you let him go?"
Kaelen's voice cracked. "Because I was a coward. Because I thought I could save him later. And I didn't."
His brother smiled in the memory — and faded.
Kaelen walked forward alone.
—
Ashar faced only silence.
An endless desert of ash. Nothing but wind and whispers. And in the center — a gravestone. On it: Aelira's name. And his own.
A memory surfaced.
Her death. His rage. His fire tearing apart the temple they once called home.
The Grove murmured: "Do you forgive her?"
"I hate her," he said, voice shaking. "But I never stopped loving her."
And the sand shifted beneath his feet, revealing a path.
—
Riven stood in a frozen cavern.
Aelira stood before him, pale and dying.
"Why didn't you stop me?" she asked.
"I couldn't," he said. "You wouldn't let me."
"You let me fall."
"I loved you too much to chain you," he whispered.
The ice cracked. Light bled in. And Aelira smiled — just once — before vanishing.
Riven stepped through the cold, breath steady.
—
Aelira's trial was different.
She stood on a battlefield of stars.
Each of her bondmates stood on the edge — just out of reach. Kaelen bleeding. Theron screaming. Ashar burning. Riven fading like a ghost.
She ran toward them — but the stars pulled her back.
The Grove asked: "Would you let them go to save the world?"
She was silent for a long moment.
Then: "I would save them first. Then the world."
The stars pulsed. And the darkness broke.
—
They returned one by one to the clearing.
Changed. Quiet. The Grove had seen them — fully — and let them live.
But it was Riven who broke the silence.
He crossed the space between them in three long strides and kissed her.
Not soft. Not slow.
It was everything he hadn't said since the day she died.
Aelira didn't stop him.
When they pulled apart, the bond flared — white-hot and undeniable.
Kaelen looked away.
Ashar said nothing, but a thin flame licked across his fingers.
Theron just muttered, "Well. That's going to make things awkward."
The Grove pulsed with soft light.
And from the center, a silver tree split open — revealing a path leading deeper into the earth.
Toward the Temple of Names.
Where truth would wear a crown