The inside of the Tree Temple was nothing like its outside.
The interior of the temple had flowers of different sizes, shapes and colours, filling the air with a sweet sacred fragrance. The kind that settled at the back of the throat and stayed.
The floral arrangement accentuated the pristine white colour of the wooden walls that made it seem like it was built with stone rather than wood.
The walls were covered entirely in blooms of every shape and colour he had a name for and several he didn't. The beautiful vines climbed their way up from the floor, spreading up to the ceiling and disappeared.
Then there was the light, which came from no source he could identify that fell on everything with the same soft, directionless quality.
He looked closer and realised that the flowers were alive.
They seemed to be growing from the wood itself, blooming in defiance of everything that should have been impossible for a structure this old.
"Are those...?" he started.
"Don't," said Lysa quietly beside him, and something in her tone made him close his mouth.
The other children were reacting too with wide eyes, forced nonchalance and the particular stillness of people trying hard not to look caught off guard. Even the ones who had attended every lesson seemed to find that the interior was not quite what the descriptions had prepared them for.
Grey wasn't the only one who felt small in here.
To the left and right of the hall stood sculptures. Ten in total, carved from dark stone into shapes that were only partly animal. Too large to be natural. Too strange to name. He had heard the term once, from an elder who had caught him napping and used the shock of being singled out to make the words stick for at least a few days.
Titan Beasts.
Ten creatures. The most powerful ever recorded. Said to have appeared two thousand years ago when humanity first arrived in Mythos. That catastrophic, disorienting arrival that no one who lived through it survived long enough to fully explain.
The Titans had been there at the beginning of everything, and then they hadn't been, and no one had seen them since. The sculptures were vague, built to suggest rather than represent.
They did the job. Grey felt watched by all ten simultaneously.
He was still staring when a voice cut through the temple.
"Eyes forward."
The sharp-faced Druid had removed his hood. He had the look of a man who had said 'eyes forward' in many temples to many distracted children and had never once found it amusing.
Grey faced forward.
At the far end of the hall was an altar a slab of pale stone where offerings were offered and a huge tree that signified the World Tree. Beside the tree stood a tall arch made from thick entwined roots.
The kids recognised it from what they were taught as the root node, through which they would get to the heart of Yggdrasil.
Standing to the left and right were two men, dressed in green and brown warrior clothings.
They stood so still that they might as well have been statues and not human. They carried no weapons but their bodies could very well serve as their weapons due to how well built they looked.
Their presence made the kids nervous so they only kept quiet.
The 13 children arranged themselves in as single line from left to right as they waited. Grey stood at the far end on the left with Lysa to his right.
The three cloaked men walked to the front and stood in front of the altar. They quickly bowed and turned to face the children. Removing his hood, the middle cloaked man cleared his throat and began.
"I'd like us to end this as quickly as possible as we have a few more villages to visit so listen attentively as we will not be repeating ourselves"
The warrior on the left hurriedly walked forward with a transparent glass bowl that seemingly appeared from nowhere.
He kept it gently on the altar, made a quick bow and shuffled quickly back to his position. Grey almost chuckled aloud from the extreme veneration these people were displaying.
The other two men removed their hoods and to their surprise of the kids, one of them was female and not male like they initially thought.
She was beautiful and carried herself with elegance, a nonexistent concept in a village of poor fishermen. She walked forward and spoke.
"Some of you might know what we are. Some might not. We are Envoys of Emerald Palace. Druid Priests, or in my case, Priestess." A brief gesture toward the warriors. "We travel to settlements like yours to carry out ceremonies like this one."
"Do you do this often?" one of the kids asked. A girl with braids near the middle of the line.
"Every season. You're our fourth stop on this route."
"How many more after us?"
"Seven."
A quiet ripple moved through the children. The idea of the Druids moving from village to village across the entire region, doing this over and over like some kind of routine rather than spectacle seemed to land differently on everyone.
"If any of you are able to bond with powerful beasts or beneficial ones, you are invited to join us where we offer the best of education as well as resources for any Beast Mage who desire it. You may become warriors, acolytes and more if you're diligent enough"
She picked up the bowl and drew a sharp short blade from within her cloak.
"First, we'll check if you're eligible to bond with a Spirit Beast. Step forward" She gestured to the first kid on the right. The boy walked nervously and stopped in front of the female Druid Priestess.
"Stretch forth your hand" She said.
Swiftly, she made a tiny cut on the index finger of the boy and let it drop into bowl. At that moment, a small lump of white harmless flame erupted from the blood within the bowl and quickly disappeared with the blood.
She turned to the others "As you can see, this bowl measures your spirit flame. This identifies those eligible to bond with a Spirit Beast. Every human is born with a spirit flame but the size varies from one individual to another. Most humans only have Miniscule-spirit flame and as such cannot bond. Only those with Small-sized spirit flame and above can bond"
The kids had been taught about spirit flames before by their village elders so hearing it from an expert helped to solidify the knowledge they already knew. Well, all but Grey who seemed genuinely intrigued as this was his first time hearing about such things.
The Druid Priestess turned to the first boy with a smile on her face. "You have a Small-sized spirit flame so you're eligible"
She gestured for him to stand away from the group and continued to repeat the process with the other children. Most of them only had Miniscule-spirit flame while a few had Small-sized spirit flame.
Grey watched in silence. He knew almost nothing about any of this as he'd missed every lesson that mattered. And standing here now, he was beginning to feel the full weight of that.
He leaned toward Lysa. "What are the sizes? Above Small, I mean."
"Small, Medium, Large," she murmured back, eyes on the line. "And above that, Super-sized. But that's rare. No one in the village has ever seen one."
"What happens if someone has it?"
She didn't answer immediately. Something shifted in her expression, small and brief.
"I don't know exactly," she said. "But apparently the Druids take it very seriously."
Grey looked at her sideways. She was still watching the line, her face composed.
So he stopped asking questions.
The line shrank until only two remained.
It was finally Lysa's turn and the other kids held their breaths. From the rumours, her father the Chief was said to possess a Medium-sized spirit and the first to do so in their village. This made them anticipate her turn as they wondered what kind of flame she possessed.
Lysa walked forward with confidence, her expression giving nothing away. She extended her hand without waiting to be asked.
As the blade touched her finger and one drop of her blood fell into the bowl...
The flame that answered was not a flicker.
It erupted, the white flame flaring suddenly. The flames did not stop as It swallowed the inside of the bowl instantly, then the outside, then curved underneath until the glass was entirely engulfed, blazing silently, harmlessly, in a light that had no business coming from a single drop of blood.
It eventually disappeared and the silence that followed was so loud that it was almost suffocating.
The sharp-faced Druid had gone completely rigid.
The third Druid, the one who had not spoken a word, took a slow step forward unconsciously.
Even the Druid Warriors who had not moved so much as a finger since the children entered were staring, mouths open, their earlier stillness broken entirely.
The Priestess set the bowl down on the altar with extraordinary care.
When she spoke, her voice was measured and controlled. The tone of someone choosing each word before releasing it.
"A Super-sized spirit flame."
The words fell into the silence like a stone into deep water.
Grey looked at Lysa. She was staring straight ahead, her face unreadable, and he genuinely could not tell whether she was surprised.
He looked at the Priestess. At the way she was already watching Lysa like she was recalculating something, working through implications that hadn't yet reached the rest of the room.
And he suddenly realised that this would be the beginning of unknowns to come. He understood the weight of a reaction, the particular quality of stillness that meant something just changed.
Whatever Lysa had just done, the world had noticed.