Three
There’s a pocket of stillness as the Choosing marches towards its finale, and I am standing in it with nowhere left to hide.
The paint on my face dries under the sun, tightening until every small movement makes it crack. The red cross marks me clearly enough that I can feel it without touching it.
First Chosen.
A dead thing waiting to be moved.
The Blessed who tested me knew something was wrong.
I saw it in his eyes before he hid it. I expect to be dragged up to the dais at any second.
But no one comes. No one calls for chains.
No one orders the Guardians to take me below, where questions end in screams, and death doesn’t even feed the Mother Shard.
At least, not yet.
The other two Offerings stand on either side of me. I don’t know them. Of course I don’t. My life has been barracks, dorms, and back again, with as little attention drawn as possible.
But I recognise the girl to my left. She is the one who looked too young.
Her face has gone almost colourless beneath the red slash of paint. Copper hair frames glassy eyes that are fixed on nothing. She keeps trying to breathe but fails at it, each inhale catching too high in her chest. Then she bends forward and retches.
An attendant rushes in with a bucket while a Guardian grips her arms to hold her upright. The sound she makes is small at first, then not small at all. It is raw and animal-like. She bites down on it too late.
I look away. Not because I don’t care, but because if I keep watching her fall apart, something inside me might follow.
I’m rooted to the spot, limbs trembling like fragile branches in the wind as all the colours around me blur into a syrupy smear.
The boy to my right doesn’t move. He is broad-shouldered with scarred hands.
A particularly nasty scar snakes up his forearm, pale and raised.
The blue stripe painted across his chest looks ugly against the white tunic.
His jaw is clenched so tightly that it looks painful as he stares out at the crowd, as though he hates every face in it.
I envy him for that.
The Blessed begin to leave the platform, their task complete, robes shifting in the glare as they weave through the onlookers. Most of the Guardians follow. Only three remain behind, one for each of us.
Personal guards and a personal reminder to behave.
I take the cup of water an attendant offers me because refusing would draw attention. The surface trembles before it reaches my mouth. For a moment, my reflection breaks apart inside it: red paint and hollow eyes.
I drink, and it tastes warm.
Sera Vayne’s voice rolls over the plaza again, thick with borrowed power. “Citizens of the Light Dominion,” she calls. “Your Offerings have been selected.”
The crowd quiets at once, and my spine goes rigid. “These three souls will surrender themselves to the Mother Shard, that our Dominion may thrive another year in her embrace.”
Surrender. As if any of us stepped forward willingly.
As if the girl isn’t still shaking hard enough that the Guardian keeps one hand near her elbow.
“Luceris Navin,” Sera says.
My name spreads across the plaza.
“First Chosen.”
The applause comes like a wave.
I thought silence would be worse. I was mistaken.
Thousands of hands strike together. Thousands of mouths cheer. All these people celebrating my death.
I keep my face still.
“Marissa Ivern,” Sera continues. “Second Chosen.”
Marissa makes a sound beside me, almost swallowed by the roar of the crowd.
“And Callen Mirek. Third Chosen.”
Callen doesn’t bow. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t give them anything.
The applause swells until the stone beneath my feet seems to vibrate with it. Sera lifts one hand, and the plaza obeys. Silence falls so quickly it feels unnatural.
The Guardians turn us towards the dais, where we stand like ants beneath the vacant-eyed Crown and his High Blessed. I don’t know if he sees us. I don’t know if there is enough of him left to see anything.
Sera turns towards him.
“Luceris. Marissa. Callen.”
She says our names slowly, wrapping each one in ceremony until they no longer feel like ours.
“You have been called.”
The words settle over my skin.
I know this part. Everyone knows this part. I have watched it from the crowd every year, standing shoulder to shoulder with people pretending not to be relieved that it’s someone else’s name that was spoken, someone else’s child.
It looks different from here. Everything does.
Sera lifts her arms.
A chill races along my arms, goosebumps rising as a phantom wind whips through her robes, the hum of her Mana gathering like a storm until my teeth ache.
“I call to the glory and power of the Crown,” she says, voice deepening, widening, becoming more than voice. “I call to the Mother Shard. Permit me to become the beacon. We invite your Overseers to our home, to take what is yours.”
The Crown stiffens, then jerks. Not much, but enough to remind me he is alive.
Light bursts from him and strikes Sera. She throws her head back, her body catching it, shaping it, turning it upwards until a pillar of gold tears into the sky.
The crowd erupts, but I can’t move. The platform shudders beneath us, gears grinding somewhere below, huge and hidden as the stone begins to rise.
Marissa cries out. Callen shifts half a step, then forces himself still. I lock my knees before they can betray me, as the plaza drops away.
Faces become shapes. Cheers become wind. The outer walls sink below us, and the Alabaster Vein rises beside the platform, impossibly close, pulsing with light as if something inside it is alive and watching.
We climb until the whole Dominion opens beneath us, then the platform stops with a jolt hard enough to rattle my bones.
For a breath, there is only the gold pillar above us, then the others answer.
To the east, green light blooms against the horizon. Earth.
A moment later, red-orange fire cuts upwards from the deserts of the Fire Dominion.
To the south, half-hidden by the impossible shape of the Mother Shard, a black column rises like a wound that refuses to close. Shadow.
My skin prickles. To the west, blue shimmers over the islands of the Water Dominion, rippling as if the sky itself has become a tide. Farther still, silver-grey light spears up from the Floating Rings of the Air Dominion.
Six Dominions.
Six beacons.
Sets of Offerings standing somewhere beneath them, looking back.
The thought moves through me before I can stop it.
Seventeen will fall.
One will remain.
I look towards the Mother Shard, waiting at the heart of it all, alone on her island, towering and too far away to be real until she begins to glow.
Pink light pulses from her centre. Soft, almost tender.
That makes it worse.
The crowd below releases another roar, but up here the sound feels distant, trapped beneath us. The beacons burn across the world, each one a wound in the sky, each one a promise of blood.
The Mother Shard seems to answer the crowd. Power sweeps outwards in an arc of petal-pink light, passing over us like warmth over water.
My breath catches, and an itch under my skin rises to meet it.
The hum inside me answers before I can bury it. It presses upwards, eager and bright, slipping towards the surface like it recognises her.
Like she recognises me.
I grip my own wrist hard enough to hurt.
Stop. Not here.
The Blessed who chose me said I had no signature. No Mana at all. That is what I need to be. Empty and weak. Harmless.
It’s a lie I can use to survive.
I breathe through my nose, slow and careful, coaxing the light back down into whatever dark place I have kept it all these years.
The platform begins to descend.
The beacons remain above us, burning against the sky. I don’t look at them again.
By the time we return to the plaza floor, my skin feels too tight and my wrists ache beneath the bands.
They will be removed soon. Then the bridge. Then whatever waits across the water.
Until then, I must remain unremarkable.
Invisible.
My wrists ache from the bands.
The Blessed assigned to me takes my hands without asking. Their fingers are pale and thin, the nails too clean, the touch too soft. The bands open with a sound I feel more than hear, metal releasing from skin that has known its weight for eighteen years.
They drop onto a velvet-lined tray. The thud is quiet, but it feels enormous.
My wrists look strange without them. Raw and exposed. The welts beneath are purpled and raised, angry where the metal has lived too long.
The Blessed does not let go right away. Instead, their thumb brushes over the marks. A caress disguised as inspection.
I force myself not to pull back.
“You may proceed,” they say at last, releasing me with a flick of their fingers. “Do not indulge in misguided ideas of courage, young man. The light poses no danger.”
Their veil tilts slightly. “And from what I witnessed during the Choosing, neither do you.”
I lower my head and slip by them, clenching my jaw.
The words burn more than the paint.
Callen steps forward next. When his bands fall, his scarred hands flex once, then curl into fists before he forces them open again. I can understand that.
Marissa is last. She holds her arms out like they no longer belong to her, tears shining constantly now, though she makes no sound.
When it’s done, the Guardians herd us from the platform. They aren’t rough—they don’t need to be.
The crowd parts as we descend from Crown Plaza, and the relief of open air is enough to make me dizzy. No more platform. No more faces staring at me. No more Crown sitting above us like something hollowed out and left behind.
But my wrists are bare, and every brush of fabric against them feels dangerous. Every breath could loosen what I am trying to hold down. I keep my hands close to my sides and walk.
Bells begin to toll across the upper ring. One after another, until the whole Dominion seems to vibrate with them.
People spill from doorways as we pass. Some bow their heads. Some whisper prayers. Some stare with wet eyes, as if our sacrifice has already made them better people.
I don’t look at them.
Mist gathers in the street.
At first, I think it’s heat rising from the stones, but the air cools too quickly as breath fogs in front of my mouth. The sun remains overhead, bright and merciless, but the light no longer feels warm.
The sound of humming begins. Three notes, rising and falling. It isn’t music, or the wind. But something older than both.
The crowd recoils as the Overseers arrive.
They drift through the parted street without touching the ground, robed shapes of dark fabric and fractured light, their forms shifting at the edges as if the world cannot decide how to hold them. Children hide behind skirts. Men lower their eyes. Women press hands to hearts.
One Overseer glides towards me. Tall and faceless until it comes close.
I bow before I know I’m doing it.
Its head tilts, and the surface of its face breaks into shifting glass.
I see myself in fractured pieces: one eye, half a mouth, the red X across my skin.
A faint light glows beneath it, but it’s gone before I can be sure.
The Overseer hums, and the sound moves through my bones.
My Mana stirs again, but not like before. Deeper. Familiar in a way that makes no sense.
The Overseer extends a hand. Its fingers are pale and almost translucent, more like marble than flesh. When they graze my wrist, its face ripples.
The glass shifts and distorts, and for one breath, I think it knows.
I feel as if everything in me is about to split open under that sound.
But the Overseer only tilts its head, confused—angry, maybe.
Or perhaps I’m imagining things that aren’t there.
I hold still, heart racing, until it moves on to examine Marissa, then Callen.
The crowd exhales, but I don’t. I can’t.
The Overseer glides back to the front of the circular formation, its presence unsettling. It begins to speak.
“You three. Very well.”
The voice is wrong. It comes from the Overseer and from everywhere else at once, crackling in the air and inside my skull.
“Come to me. Cross the divide. Meet with me.”
My stomach flips.
“The Rites await my Champions.”
The Overseer shudders. Its head jerks sharply to one side.
Another voice slips through and it utters a single word: “Come.”
The Overseer turns, retreating down the path. The circle breaks just enough for us to follow.
The Guardians step back and that frightens me more than anything. They’re afraid of these things.
Callen moves first. One step. Then another.
Marissa follows because there is nowhere else to go.
I make myself walk.
The Overseers drift ahead of us through the mist, and the crowd stays silent as we pass, holding its breath like we are already ghosts.