Four
The bridge towards the Mother Shard is made of nothing human hands could grasp.
It looks like rose-coloured light made solid, stretched across the sea in a glowing ribbon that hurts to look at for too long. The surface pulses faintly beneath our feet, as though something alive is buried deep within it.
The Overseers drift ahead of us through the mist as we step onto the bridge barefoot, the three of us falling naturally into line behind them. The moment my skin touches the surface, heat shoots through me hard enough that I nearly stumble.
The light beneath my feet is warm for half a breath, then painfully hot, before the sensation abruptly turns numb and begins climbing through my legs in slow waves that settle deep in my bones.
Marissa gasps beside me.
“It’s moving,” she whispers.
The bridge pulses again beneath us, rose and gold light rippling outwards from every step we take.
“It isn’t,” I say automatically, though it certainly feels like it is.
Far below us, the sea curls endlessly. I keep expecting the bridge to vanish beneath our feet, for the light to fracture and send us plunging into the lightless water below, but it never wavers. Every step lands solid and sure despite the impossible glow beneath us.
Behind us, the Light Dominion grows smaller with every passing minute. The white walls blur first, then the towers, until even the Alabaster Vein looks thin and distant against the sky.
I look back only once.
I have no family there. No one waiting for me. No one who will mourn when I don’t return.
So, I force myself to turn away.
Marissa walks to my left, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.
Her lips move constantly as we walk, repeating something under her breath that I can’t quite hear.
A prayer, maybe. Or just panic given rhythm.
Every few steps she glances back towards the Dominion as if part of her still expects someone to come after us.
Callen never looks back at all.
He walks slightly ahead of us with his head lowered, scarred hands flexing every few steps like he’s still adjusting to the absence of the bands.
I understand the feeling more than I want to.
My own wrists still ache where the metal sat, and every pulse of heat beneath the bridge makes the skin there throb harder.
The further we walk, the more aware I become of the humming beneath us. At first, I think it’s coming from the Overseers, but slowly I realise it isn’t.
It’s the Mother Shard.
The sound vibrates through the air in long, low pulses that settle somewhere beneath my skin. Heat gathers in my chest, beneath my ribs, crawling down my arms until I have to curl my hands into fists to stop them from shaking—to bury the feeling.
Marissa stumbles slightly beside me and catches herself with a sharp breath.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Are you alright?”
The question feels ridiculous the moment it leaves my mouth. She lets out a thin, shaky laugh. “Do I look alright?”
“No,” I admit.
For a moment, that almost makes her smile.
“I’m afraid of heights,” she says after a few seconds, her voice barely audible over the hum beneath us.
We are surrounded by endless sky and open sea. I honestly don’t know what to say to that.
“I’m afraid of everything right now,” she adds more quietly.
There’s something painfully honest about the way she says it, without pride or embarrassment left to soften the words. “You’re still walking,” I tell her.
Marissa glances down at the glowing bridge beneath our feet. “Barely.”
“But you are.”
She laughs, a thin gasp of a sound. “You make it sound easy,” she says. “Every step feels like it’s going to be the last one.”
I let out a soft, hollow laugh. “After a while,” I say quietly, “you start thinking every day is borrowed anyway.”
She gives me a curious glance just as Callen snorts softly ahead of us, though he doesn’t turn around.
“Fear’s the only sane part of this,” he mutters.
His voice is rougher than I expected, worn down at the edges.
Marissa studies him carefully. “You don’t seem scared,” she says.
That finally makes him glance back at us.
“I said seem,” she says, raising her hands in surrender.
He looks forward again, jaw tightening.
“What happened to your family?” she asks, her voice cracking slightly. “Sorry,” she adds, “that’s none of my business.”
“Don’t worry," I reply. “I don’t know the answer anyway. I grew up in an orphanage in the lower rings—just appeared on the stoop one night, apparently.”
I catch myself before I say more and shift the conversation. “What did you like to do,” I ask, to distract her, “before this?”
She blinks rapidly. “What does it matter?” she murmurs, but then her mouth quirks, almost against her will. “I used to read. Not that there are many books in the lower rings. I read every one I could find, then read them all again and again.”
I nod in understanding. “I’ve never been much of a reader. I’ve been swinging a sword for the last couple of years.”
She glances at me, her eyes filled with sympathy, but she shakes it off. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fight,” she admits. “I’m good with a dagger, but I can hardly feel my Mana, even without the bands.”
I want to tell her there’s still a chance, but I don’t have the spirit to lie to her.
We fall silent after that. The bridge stretches endlessly ahead through pale fog and shifting light, disappearing somewhere beyond the horizon. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other and try not to think about how far away the Dominion already feels.
Eventually Marissa speaks again.
“What do you think it’s really like?”
“The Rites?”
She nods.
None of us answer immediately, because the truth is painfully simple.
We don’t know. Not really.
We know stories and fragments. Rumours whispered in dorms and barracks after dark by people trying to scare each other. Fire that melts steel. Shadows opening where no shadows should exist.
The Blessed teach us the rules of the Blood Rites from childhood, but never the truth of them.
Eighteen Offerings. Three from each Dominion. One survivor. Everything beyond that feels half-mythical.
“They say the Fireborn can burn people alive from the inside out,” Marissa says quietly.
“People say a lot of things,” Callen replies.
“They also say the Shadowborn appear out of nowhere,” Marissa says quietly. “Like they can slip through walls.”
“They’re just ghost stories for scaring children,” he says.
“But you believe them,” she shrugs.
He doesn’t answer her directly, which is answer enough.
I lower my gaze to my wrists. Even now, without the bands, I can still feel their weight.
The humming beneath the bridge intensifies suddenly, sharp enough that my breath catches. Heat spreads through my chest in one violent pulse before settling again.
Marissa notices me stiffen. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” The answer comes too quickly. A lie.
The sensation keeps building the further we move from the Dominion. It’s not around me, but inside me, like something beneath my skin is slowly waking up.
I force myself to breathe evenly and push it back down where it belongs.
The Overseers continue drifting ahead of us through the mist, their forms shifting strangely whenever I try to focus on them for too long.
Sometimes they almost resemble people. Sometimes they don’t resemble anything human at all.
I stare too long at the nearest one and realise I cannot properly hold its face in my mind. The features slide strangely every time I try to focus on them.
Deep breaths. Keep it together. Callen’s silhouette is sharp against the glare. He moves like a man walking to the gallows, every step measured and resigned. I don’t know what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s just counting the steps, clinging to the rhythm of survival.
Marissa’s steps slow. She glances over again, her knuckles white where she grips her own arm.
“Do you ever wonder,” she says, voice barely louder than the hum in my ears, “why it has to be this way? Why the Rites at all?”
I shake my head.
I’ve always had bigger problems.
“There are worse fates than death,” Callen says, his tone flat yet surprisingly gentle. “Suppressed forever? Or have a chance to fight? I know what I’d rather. I can feel it now, dancing under my skin, like it wants to be free. But I don’t know how to channel.”
I don’t answer. My own secret gnaws at me. This poor girl, so scared of what is to come. This boy, resolute as he faces his fate head-on. And me, lying to them both barefaced.
I don’t even know what lives inside me.
“What happens when we reach the end?” I ask suddenly.
The Overseer ahead of us slows, its head tilting sharply sideways. “Your progress is satisfactory,” it says.
The answer is so useless I almost laugh.
“That isn’t an answer,” Callen says flatly, reading my mind.
The Overseer turns towards him slowly. “All will be understood upon arrival in the Heartlands.”
Marissa shivers once it faces forward again. “I hate them.”
None of us disagree.
Time begins to lose shape out on the bridge. The world narrows to light beneath our feet, mist curling around the Overseers, and the endless humming of the Mother Shard somewhere ahead of us.
Then, slowly, the sky begins to change.
At first, I think I’m imagining it. The gold light behind us dims by such small degrees that it barely seems real, but when I finally glance upwards properly, I realise the sun is moving.
Actually moving.
I stop walking for half a second, but no one notices.
The sun lowers gradually towards the horizon, spilling streaks of orange and crimson across the sea below. I stare at it, unable to look away.
In the Light Dominion, the Vein keeps the sky bright at all hours. Endless daylight. Endless gold. I grew up hearing stories about sunsets the same way children hear stories about monsters.
I never realised they were real.
The world darkens slowly around us, the last light clinging stubbornly to the water before finally slipping beneath the horizon.
Night follows behind it.
Not sudden. Not frightening. Just quiet.
Marissa lets out a soft, shaking breath beside me.