Aaron’s right knee buckled under his weight with the next step. The day had barely begun, yet the physical and mental exhaustion had already drained him more than at any point since his rebirth. He looked down and frowned. His knee was in worse shape than he had thought. What he had assumed, or hoped, was a strip of clinging flesh turned out to be a deep, bloody gash just above the joint. A tendon that should have stabilised the knee was likely torn. Only now did the full extent of his limited mobility register.

  "You're limping."

  "It happens… even to saints." Aaron turned towards the voice as Cassandra approached. She stepped carefully through the blood and broken bodies, her poise all the more striking against the carnage. One corpse twitched, a knife rising shakily, before a crossbow bolt from the kitsune punched through its skull. Cassandra gave it only a passing glance, her focus already back on Aaron, eyes flicking between his injuries, his mask, and the fading halo that had lit the room.

  "If this is what saints are meant to be, the rest of us have a lot of catching up to do," she returned with equal glibness, her gaze sweeping briefly across the chamber. "Here. Didn’t I say I'd keep you alive long enough to deliver on your promise?" the elf continued as she reached him. Her once again pristine white gloves, likely enchanted to stay clean and sterile, pressed lightly against his blood-soaked shoulder. A familiar flood of cool, soothing energy surged through him.

  Aaron groaned in relief. His eyes rolled back as aches he hadn’t realised he carried melted away. Cracked ribs clicked into place. His knee tightened. His posture steadied as he stood taller, lungs filling with the blood-salted air. “Thank you.” He moaned as he luxuriated in the miracle of instant, magical healing.

  "It was the least I could do," she replied, her cautious astonishment clear as she once again surveyed the aftermath.

  Aaron straightened and stepped carefully around the bodies, his bloodied blades tucked beneath one arm as he offered a hand to the elf beside him.

  At the edge of the antechamber, Debryn and the Saintess of Space stepped gingerly through the blood-soaked scene.

  "Hi," said the brunette, her nervous excitement and fear giving her West Coast American accent an uneven edge.

  "Hi," Aaron replied, releasing Cassandra’s hand. Normally, he would have removed his helmet and offered a bow, but knowing his face was likely crusted with blood and the surroundings unsafe, he simply removed a gauntlet and extended his hand. "Aaron Heuber, Saint of Swords."

  "Hi," she repeated, shaking his hand. "Oh—Alex. My name’s Alex Monroe. Doctor, in philosophy. Astronomy. Er... astrophysicist."

  "Nice to meet you, Alex Monroe, Saintess of Space."

  "Ha. Yeah, I suppose it is Saintess now, isn’t it?"

  "I was a professor of AMO Physics at Columbia in another lifetime," Aaron said with a shrug, his mask hiding a faint smirk as her eyes widened in recognition. "Sainthood takes some getting used to."

  "You... you—you’re from Earth too, right?"

  "Yep."

  "And this isn’t Earth, and she has a tail, and she’s an elf, and there are demons and angels, and I’ve got strange game UI’s flashing in my vision and I just completed a trial—"

  "Whoa there. Breathe, Alex," Aaron said gently.

  Alex forced herself to stop, closing her eyes and drawing in deep, steadying breaths. "Yeah. Whooo. Thanks. It’s just... I still can’t believe this is real. I thought I was going to die. Or worse."

  Aaron was thankful his grimace was hidden by his mask as he relived memories untouched by time and mortality. It had taken two decades in his past lifetime before anyone had even confirmed the existence of a Saint of Space, let alone speculated on how she had died. If he hadn’t pursued that knowledge obsessively back then, there would have been no way to prevent the catastrophe in his second life, no matter how hard he had tried.

  "Well, I’m glad we reached you in time. And thank you for your assistance," Aaron continued.

  "What? Oh, that, yeah. Seemed you were in a bad spot. I guess I got a reward or something for passing the trial." Alex raised her hands, and a strange metallic cube shimmered and twisted into view.

  "That... actually hurts to look at," Debryn said with a grimace.

  "Oh. Sorry—"

  "What is it?" Cassandra asked.

  "Erm, it’s a Hypercube. The floating text said it’s a Source, a type of magical artefact. It’s bound to my soul, apparently, and it has eleven dimensions, but only six can be seen at once. So I guess I’m a wizard now." The cube vanished as she lowered her hand.

  "You said something about a trial?" Aaron asked, his attention piqued. His thoughts drifted back to when he had received a similar prompt in his former life.

  "The floating text called it the Trial of Attunement. The longer I focused on attuning to the artefact, the greater the reward. I think I was safe so long as I stayed focused, but... I don’t know how much longer I could’ve lasted if you hadn’t arrived."

  Aaron fell silent, recalling his own Trial of Endurance. His frown deepened. Since he had received no obvious acknowledgement or reward, he had long believed he had failed. As a result, he considered such tests to be cruel jokes played by the Vox Vitae on hapless saints, and Alex’s ordeal only deepened that impression.

  "I’m glad we found you in time," Cassandra said, easing the silence.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "Yes," Aaron added, forcing a light amiability into his tone despite the growing urgency in his chest. "Glad to be of service. Unfortunately, we’ll have to cut further introductions short, for now."

  You have invited Alex Monroe to your Sanctorum.

  The person in question blinked, her vision distant as she no doubt read and accepted Aaron's invitation.

  “Let us see to the Saintess of Forbidden knowledge’s safety, then of to Isyndrael, shall we?” He turned to the kitsune, “Debryn, please lead the way, use the Sanctorum as a guide to find our missing companion. I’ll take the rear,”

  “What about me? It would be nice to know what’s going on.” Alex said, panicked and somewhat uncertain.

  “For now, protect the healer.” Cassandra frowned when he gestured towards her. Aaron ignored it. “When it’s safe, I’ll fill you all in. Saintesses, if you’d please…”

  The saints moved swiftly through the ancient corridors, speed taking precedence now that subtlety was no longer an option. Aaron followed closely, his body taut with readiness. Each footfall was deliberate, every sound analysed. His mind remained just as active. During his second life, he had trained himself to read people with the same precision he once reserved for equations and experimental data. Micro-expressions, posture, cadence, all measured, weighed, and compared to memories from his previous timeline. He never trusted first impressions, always testing his conclusions against the hard-earned lessons of betrayal and failure. It was a methodical scrutiny that had become instinct. Debryn led the way, navigating the dim passageways with fluid, deliberate movements. Her sharp instincts and vulpine reflexes compensated for the absence of Magda’s perception-based perks and arcane senses. Every time she paused, it was with clear purpose, her fox-like ears twitching, her disproportionately large red tail lifted slightly as if gauging the air itself. The fluffy appendage swayed behind her like a banner, drawing the eye down towards a figure-hugging bodysuit that looked nearly modern despite its otherworldly craftsmanship. It clung tightly to her petite frame, especially around her hips and impossibly tight backside, the pre-industrial clothing leaving little to the imagination.

  Debryn moved with the precision of someone well-trained, perhaps from high-tier private security or something even more specialised. Her path was efficient, corners cleared with purpose, uneven flagstones checked in passing. She was deceptively fast but never reckless.

  Beside her walked Cassandra, a young elven woman with radiant blonde hair and distractingly symmetrical features, her beauty the sort that could halt conversations. She wore a pristine white ball gown beneath a short, black coat, a contrast that somehow made her elegance seem even more otherworldly. She walked with poise, but Aaron noticed the subtle tension in her gait, the slight twitch of her long, tapered ears at each sharp noise, and the repeated glances over her shoulder. The confidence remained, but she was far from relaxed. Still, she stayed close to Debryn with a familiarity that suggested a long-standing trust. Not quite equals, perhaps, but there was a deep professional bond. Cassandra seemed accustomed to giving unspoken directions, and Debryn seemed just as used to meeting those expectations without complaint.

  Alex walked beside the elf, a bundle of nerves wrapped in tight black-and-white motorbike racing leathers that hugged her scrawny frame. Her dark hair was slightly frizzy from stress, and her striking blue eyes flicked rapidly from floor to ceiling, trying to take in everything at once. She was a cross between girl-next-door charm and manic academic intensity, she carried herself like someone teetering on the edge of a breakdown but still functioning. She stared openly at Cassandra’s ears and Debryn’s tail, visibly struggling to internalise the sights around her. Every few steps, she turned back to look at Aaron with a pleading uncertainty. He gave her a small nod once, just enough to steady her. But otherwise, he kept his eyes forward. There was no time for reassurance. Not until they found Magda.

  “Aaron, was it? Look.” Debryn’s uncertain voice drew his attention to the front. The corridor opened into a familiar antechamber, but instead of the usual double doors leading to a ritual room, the load-bearing walls had collapsed into a tangled mass of rubble.

  Aaron’s heart lurched. As they stepped closer, open sky greeted them where a ceiling once stood. The centre of the room had become a shallow crater, its edges scorched. Shadows of creatures caught too close to the blast were seared permanently into the stone.

  For a long, breathless moment, Aaron couldn’t move. His knees locked as if to anchor himself against buckling under the sudden weight of his dread. The thought that Magda had traded her life for theirs came too close to breaking him.

  “I can feel her,” Cassandra said, her voice threading hope through the suffocating silence. “Here.” She moved quickly to the rubble. Without the Sanctum’s connection, there would have been no way to know she was alive, let alone pinpoint her position beneath the fallen stone.

  Aaron bolted towards the mound. “Where?” His voice was raw, nearly a growl. Cassandra glided after him, her effortless grace now an all too contrasting irritant against his rising panic.

  “Here,” she said again, stopping after a few slow steps and pointing to a spot near the edge of the collapsed wall.

  Aaron was already moving. He heaved aside a broken beam, then a block of shattered masonry, throwing them behind him with frantic strength. When he glanced up and saw the others frozen in place, his control snapped.

  “Help me!” he shouted, no longer able to mask his desperation.

  The Saintesses rushed in, jolted into action. Debryn and Cassandra showed surprising strength, working in rhythm to shift larger pieces of debris. Alex hesitated, then moved to clear smaller stones, staying out of the others’ way but helping where she could.

  “We’re getting closer,” Cassandra said, tossing aside a boulder. Blonde strands clung to her sweat-soaked brow. Minutes passed as they worked at a frantic pace, stone by stone, but it still wasn’t fast enough.

  Aaron had ignored the signs. The suspiciously empty corridors. The eerie silence besides the falling rubble. The subtle tremors underfoot. The way both Cassandra and Debryn flinched at the growing thud of approaching footsteps. He had pushed it all aside, refusing to face the possibility that she might die here, buried alive while they dug too slowly.

  That fear gnawed at him. Nigh-on crippled him. His movements had become mechanical, his focus narrowing to the task alone, until the first glimpse of the creature approaching snapped him back to the present.

  A shadow loomed at the end of the corridor. Aaron straightened and drew both swords.

  “Find her. Alex, can you get us out of here?”

  “I… Yeah, I think so,” Alex said, her voice shaking. “We’ll all need to be together, then someone has to touch the Hypercube. The one who knows… I guess, the destination?”

  “Cassandra?” Aaron asked, his eyes locked on the encroaching threat.

  “I should touch it?” she asked, uncertainty in her voice. Aaron didn’t blame her. Alex gave a helpless shrug as Debryn continued to dig. “Then yes, I can show the way to Isyndor.”

  The ancient ritual hall, once adorned with symbols of power and sacrifice, now felt like a cage being crushed underfoot. Cracks spidered across the high ceiling as dust and fragments of stone drifted down in soft puffs.

  Aaron stood tall, straightening his back as he prepared his body and adjusted his mental state. Cassandra’s healing had mended flesh and bone, but none of it had touched his thoughts. And it was his mind, the nexus of his focus, the bridge to his understanding of the sword that he would need to depend on.

  He rolled his shoulders, pushing through the burn of exhaustion as he adjusted his stance. His hands flexed around the hilts of his blades as he summoned every remaining ounce of focus and conviction he could find to survive the next battle.

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