Rall fell for what seemed like days through a dark space neither cold nor hot. He was sure he had been screaming because of the searing pain in his throat, but he heard no sound. There was absolute silence. Rall pointed his consciousness to his powers, that mysterious magical energy that he did not fully comprehend. To his surprise, he could not feel it. He was empty, alone. Alone? He remembered Tui. He had seen the mermaid vanish into dust as he watched, powerless. Always powerless. When would he finally stop being powerless!?

He stopped falling. He was now standing on soft, irregular soil. He moved his feet, and the ground groaned in response. At every step, he would hear cracks and wails. So he stopped and looked down. The sight of his father's bloodied body welcomed his gaze. Beside Theodore were other figures he recognized, all battered and deadly pale.

He saw Dorothy and Thork, then Hopps the butler, lady Sharyah, and Admiral Conrad. Then there was the quartermaster and the curious young sailor, Inquisitor Broly, and Donny the innkeeper. There was Billar the blacksmith, Serena the dancer, and even the Imperial High Guard he had met at the gates of Sturmwater.

Every time Rall would move away from a body, his feet would land on someone else's. All the people he had ever met, from the briefest encounters to those that had changed his life, formed a giant pile of bloodied corpses whence he could not escape.

"I am sorry! I am so sorry!" he would keep whispering as he walked on the bodies, hurriedly trying to reach the end. When he finally saw the edge of the pile, a hand grabbed his ankle. He turned around and saw a zombified Billy tightening his grip and pulling him down. Then another hand joined, followed by several others. "No, please no! Let me go! Nooo!"

Slowly but surely, the hands dragged Rall downward. As he slowly sank in the pile of bodies, struggling to hold onto whatever met his hands, he saw a shadowed figure standing over him with a steel knife dripping red. Ral could not see the figure's face, but he knew it was laughing as he fell deeper and deeper. After a while, his hands stopped searching for a foothold, and despair dimmed his emerald eyes.

A single blade of golden light cut through the shadowed figure. A hand extended to Rall, a hand he knew well. Tui was smiling at him from above as if the gods had made her his lifeline. Now he had to choose. Would he take the hand, or would he let this fleeting hope pass?

"Wake up..."

"Wake up, Rall..."

Tui's voice echoed in the boy's mind as he tried opening his eyes. His eyelids felt heavy, as did the rest of his muscles. He felt a tingle through his whole body. Blood slowly resumed circulating as usual.

"Rall, wake up!"

"T-Tui..." he muttered unsteadily. He found it difficult to move his lips.

"Wake up..."

"I'm- trying to," he whispered. "Where are you, Tui?"

"I am here. I've been waiting..."

As his senses slowly returned, Rall tried opening his eyes again. A peculiar space greeted him. It was a wide, hollow corridor with two rows of smooth cylindrical columns parallel to the straight undecorated walls. From the ceiling to the pavement, everything that constituted the corridor was made of the same white stone, and every surface was spotless to the point that an untrained eye would catch even a speck of dust.

As Rall sat up, he noticed that the only light source nearby was his Fairylight. He turned towards it, but what he saw left him speechless. Instead of the small white orb, there was a floating ten-centimeters-tall ethereal humanoid whose figure radiated a brilliant white light. And as he investigated further, his eyes widened in disbelief. How can something like this be possible?

"Rall? Are you finally awake?" He heard a familiar voice in his mind. It was like she was speaking from an underwater cave, every word followed by lower-toned muffled echoes.

"Tui?" Indeed, the humanoid figure was unmistakably a miniature version of the mermaid light mage he had traveled with for the past few weeks. "What happened to you? Am I still dreaming?" He pinched his cheek, but the vision did not disappear.

"I don't know... I remember the guardian, then the scorching pain. When I woke up, I had already become like this."

"What about my Fairylight? I can sense it in you."

She shook her head weakly. "No, stupid. I am your Fairylight."

He pinched his cheek once more, but again he did not wake up. It was way beyond what he imagined to be possible.

"I can hear your thoughts, as you can mine. I did not think it was possible either. But then I heard a woman's voice. She asked me about my deepest desires. She told me that I would die, that I would never obtain what I wanted. Unless..."

Rall's thoughts jumped back to the ancient and wise voice he had heard while confronting the winged guardian. One word lingered in his mind.

"Bonding..."

"Exactly. That's what was said to me too. They never spare anyone but the Candidates. It was the only way."

Rall looked at miniature Tui, and his eyes morphed into a concerned look. "Does that mean... you are dead?"

"Rall, listen to me," she flew closer to his face and looked straight into his eyes, then she put her hands on her hips and puffed her chest. "My body is no more, but I am not dead. We are one now. If you die, I die too."

He wanted to apologize once again, but a quick exchange of thoughts was enough to make him think otherwise. Instead, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sat cross-legged on the cold floor.

All the recent events were absurd enough that his mind preferred to accept them rather than try to make everything make sense. A time would come when he would finally feel safe. Then, he would think all this through once more.

When Rall's eyes opened up, his doubts had moved to the back of his mind. Tui nodded as she witnessed his thought process like she had followed it herself. "Scary," she muttered.

"Why do you say that?" Rall asked cheekily.

"No eight-year-old should be able to think like that. And definitely, not after nightmares like yours..."

"My birthday is near," he said with a timid smile. "Ok, let's calmly review the situation. Where are we?"

"We are beyond the silver gate. We were already here when I woke up, so I don't know much more."

"I figured as much. You said that 'they' only spare Candidates. Who are 'they'? What is a Candidate?"

"I do not know, but 'they' possess knowledge far beyond what I have seen in Motu Rere, and the Avians are one of the most advanced people on the Continent. As for Candidates, I am just repeating the voice's words. Apparently, you are the seventy-seventh."

He pinched the bridge of his nose as he massaged the inner side of his eyes, meanwhile pondering about this whole affair. In the past weeks, the situations Rall had found himself in had been getting stranger and stranger. Those tranquil days studying with his father in the village of Korn seemed so very far in the past.

"They also talked about a trial," Tui continued talking in his mind. "I don't know what it means, but I have a bad feeling about it."

Rall looked around. Outside of the small part illuminated by Tui, the corridor was pitch black in both directions. "There is nothing to gain by staying still. Which side do you prefer," he asked.

"I don't know, but I remember hearing something from there when I woke up."

Rall nodded and got up. "Ok then, let's see what awaits us at the end of this corridor."

***

"We've been walking for an hour, and it feels like we just stood still," said Tui, clearly annoyed.

"I'm certain I've been moving, but everything is the same. There doesn't seem to be an end," as he said that, Rall halted his stride. "I feel like we are missing something."

"Maybe we are going in circles," she thought aloud.

"Maybe... let's see." He suddenly took off his cotton shirt.

Tui turned around immediately. "Can you please warn me before you do something like that?!"

"Oh, don't worry about it. It's just for..." she heard him groaning, followed by the sound of cloth getting torn apart. "...one moment."

Tui turned around and saw Rall taking a long strip of his shirt and tying it around a nearby column. "Ok, let's keep going forward. If we cross this point again, we will know the answer."

***

"Six hours and we still did not meet that point," Tui yawned in a mix of boredom and concern. "I can hear you, trying to keep your hunger to yourself. Even if I weren't in your mind, everyone in a mile heard that grumbling stomach of yours!"

After hearing her, Rall sighed and stopped walking. "Ok, there's no point. We tried going in both directions, but the corridor did not change. We left various signs in our way, but we are still to meet them again. So it's either a circle of an enormous radius or simply an unimaginably long straight line. If that were the case, then we should keep walking, hoping to find the end. But my instincts say otherwise. Let's stop and think for a second. What do we know about our situation?"

"Let's see," Tui started putting a hand to her immaterial chin. "We are on the other side of a gate built by something or someone too advanced for us to comprehend. From the winged guardian to the Bonding, we know they are capable of magical feats beyond what our knowledge can explain," she paused, trying to gather the rest of the information. "They seem interested in light mages with white Fairylights. They call them 'candidates' and put them through some sort of trials for who-knows-what reasons."

"Right... is there anything in there that could hint at a solution?"

They remained in silence for a while, trying to think about anything that could be of help. Rall kept thinking about Tui's summary. Suddenly, two words jumped at him. "They are searching for light mages, isn't that right?"

"Yes. From what we know, that seems to be the case."

"Then that means that all Candidates are light mages. For the sake of this argument let's assume that we are already in the trials. How would you test a light mage..." he paused again.

They stood in there for a couple of minutes, but neither proposed a solution. "Aaah, this is so frustrating. There are so many ways to test a mage, from the power of their spells to their focus or versatility, it could take forever! And what even is the point of a dark corridor if you are going to test light mages?! Might as well illuminate it all!"

Rall's expression brightened immediately after hearing those words. "Wait! That's it! You are a genius, Tui!"

"Hmm, what did I say?" Asked the ethereal mermaid, confused by the boy's sudden excitement.

"Why even bother to keep the corridor dark if you are going to test light mages? The words that my father left me, a note about light mages fearing darkness. He repeated one phrase a lot. 'Darkness is the safest place for a light mage.' What if the point of this trial was to test a light mage's fear of darkness? I just have to hide my Fairylight and-... you are not letting me. Tui?"

After hearing those words, Tui floated in silence. Rall did not need a deep connection to know that uncertainty clouded her mind. "What is it?"

"I'm scared. Now that I am one with your Fairylight, I fear I will disappear forever if you turn it off..."

"Oh, I did not think about that," said Rall in a more serious tone. "Trust me, Tui. I've been hiding my Fairylight for years now. Even hidden, I can always feel it. Please, allow me to do it. I promise it will be alright."

She pondered for some time, and Rall waited patiently while thinking of alternative solutions to their conundrum.

"Ok. Do it."

"You sure?"

"Fuck it! I predict we are going to face tougher challenges in the future. You seem like an unlucky guy to be honest," she said jokingly.

"Eh," he half-laughed while scratching his head. "You are not much luckier than me..."

"Do it. I am ready."

Rall could not see it through the white radiance, but he felt that Tui had closed both her eyes and her fists tightly. She was still scared, and there was only one thing he could do about it.

"Alright, here I go." He focused on his Fairylight, pulling it in like he had learned to do. The pale light dimmed, and Tui's weightless figure shrank before entering his forehead.

When the corridor became dark, there was a moment of silence. Not even five seconds later, torches of purple fire appeared one after the other with soft puff sounds. They lit a new way, one perpendicular to the corridor of white stone and previously unreachable. At the end of the new corridor, a dark metallic door stood open, inviting them into the well-lit room beyond.

"We did it!" Exclaimed Rall. "Tui, we did it!"

There was no response. Immediately, the boy entered a state of panic. "Tui? TUI!" He cried.

"Calm down, calm down. I'm here. Please stop screaming!" He heard Tui's voice in his mind. "It was just a joke."

"Don't do that ever again..."

"You are right, I promise. I am here, and I always will be," her voice sounded softer. Again she was reminded that Rall was still a kid. "Let's go then. There's only one way..."

"... forward, always."