Day 3 of searching the Traitor's Passage...

It's a known bug, cruel is a temporary difficuly while they finish Act 4-5-6 so it has some bugs, you are not stuck, you can still complete the main story and progress through the act. Also there's already threads about it, please use the search function.

As it is currently, you only get a quest Barya for your first Sekhema Trial.

To get the next ascendancy points from a Sekhema Trial you need to find a random loot 3-floor Barya or trade for it from another player. They don't drop until roughly lv60+ areas.

The quest is misleading cause of how the acts are implemented currently. Just ignore the quest and keep an eye out for higher level Barya drops. The tooltip on the trial item tells you when it lets you get more ascendancy points.

just get a lift from someone in chat, teleport to them get the waypoint.

I found the way act 2 (esay mod not cruel)

Once you find the lore thing that is called something like Monument of Imprisonment, there will be one corridor heading off away from it that has yellow notes stuck to the walls. Follow it and you find her every time.

I'm guessing you are wanting your 3rd ascention. You aren't losing your mind. The devs just did a terrible job on that part. You can not get the item you need to do the 3rd ascention till it drops for you in maps. After act 2 and 3 the acts no longer play a role in ascention right now even though it shows that boss drops it.