Thirteen
There is no beginning.
No edges.
No up and no down.
There is no intake of breath to mark a start.
I am suspended in an endless ocean that does not move, does not ripple. There is only weight—absolute and crushing—the weight of being at the deepest part of the world.
The water around me is black. Not like ink, but the kind of black that leaves no room for light. Like Kael’s eyes when he is taken by whatever force rules his emotions.
The only thing that proves it is water is the way it clings to my skin and squeezes my lungs when I open my mouth to scream.
But I do not drown.
I wait for the pain of suffocation, but it never comes.
The world is silent except for the throb of blood in my ears and the faint, echoing murmur of a voice.
The words are impossible to make out at first, but I know the source: the Mother Shard, or some spectre of her, hidden from view, concealed in the darkness that surrounds me.
Something pulses in the distance. It vibrates, blurring the boundary between sound and touch. Each beat crushes me more, my will to fight buckling under the increased pressure.
I’ve never swum, so I don’t know what to do with my arms and legs. They drift, limp and useless, every flailing movement swallowed by the heaviness of the infinite sea.
There is no end to it. Only the unnerving certainty of being fixed in place, paralysed by the dark.
All at once, I feel as though I’ve always been here.
Like this is all there has ever been.
“What are you?” the Mother Shard finally asks, her voice muffled.
The question repeats, echoing in a distorted chorus of unintelligible murmurs.
I open my mouth to answer, but water rushes in and fills my throat.
I’m sure I am dying, but nothing happens.
I remain. Luceris Navin. Or the drowned hollow that wears his name.
The pulse grows stronger. The ocean around me bubbles with pressure, a frightening force that pushes against my skin, trying to force its way inside. Whatever it is, it wants in. It wants to get beneath my ribs and tear me apart.
A flicker of blue appears in the darkness, at the very edge of my fractured vision. Twin points of light, far away at first, then closer, approaching with a lazy, almost delicate grace. Two blue orbs in the dark.
Watching.
I try to recoil, but the water restrains me.
The blue eyes hang there in the void. Their stare is cold but not cruel. It feels more like curiosity than predation.
“What are you?” the Mother Shard asks again. But now, she is not alone.
The blue eyes echo her words, whispering in a chorus that softens the question. “Do you know what you are?”
The words press against my mind, urging me to answer.
I try, but all I have are questions.
Am I a mistake?
What does she mean by fire in the sea?
Am I a puppet? A flaw?
Or am I nothing at all, just a bystander trapped in a game for a god and her playthings?
“You feel lost,” the blue eyes say, each word falling like a stone into the sea. “But nothing is ever truly lost. Lost things are often guided. Lost things are...soon found.”
My body starts to fray. The water peels me apart, layer by layer. But instead of pain, there is only relief, as though every cell in my body has been waiting to shed the great burden of being alive.
“Are you one of them?” the Mother Shard asks, her voice further away now, as though she has lost interest. “Or are you a shadow? A beast come to kill?”
The blue eyes come closer. I see now that they do not belong to a face. They are windows of blue fire—windows into a world full of black crystal and sparkling midnight-coloured dust. I want to close my eyes, but the blue fire holds them open, forcing me to stare into the abyss within.
“You think you are weak,” the blue eyes say. “That is why you survive. Others mistake it for cowardice. You believe it is all you can be. But you are wrong.”
I sink further.
There is no bottom, but the pressure grows, building and building. I fear I will be compressed into nothing and disappear.
Yet still I remain. Hollow and ruined. But unbroken.
“I think you know,” the blue eyes say. “I think you have always known.”
Memories flood through me.
My first kill on the bridge.
Marissa’s tiny hands in mine.
Kael’s lips on mine.
The cold clarity of him. The way his scent lingers, sweet and spiced.
The blue eyes see all this, and more.
They draw so close, I am blinded by the colour of the flames. In the flickering blue fire, I see a reflection of myself I do not recognise: not a boy or a man, not a hero or a blinding light, but the shell of a spirit starved for meaning and purpose.
The spirit is not lost. It is wanted, hunted and hated all at once.
The pressure clamps down, and I forget the borders of my own skin. I fuse with the water. With the blue flames. With the endless dark.
For a moment, I am everything.
The Mother Shard’s voice returns, certainty sharpening her tone.
“You will answer me,” she says. “I will know what you are.”
The world goes black once again.
I dissolve, leaving only the echo of a question I still don’t know how to answer.
I come to inside a coffin of blue light, upright and weightless, not touching any surface. Beyond it, there is only endless space and the dull shimmer of the distant sun. I think I am falling, but there is no movement—only the hum of Mana all around me, like a song holding the world together.
The blue light is made of hexagonal prisms, smooth and glowing. I press my palm against it, and it repels me, alive and beating. I am dressed in a fresh white uniform, and my skin prickles with static.
To my right, Marissa and Callen hang not far away, each sealed in their own blue cylinder, eyes wide as rabbits caught in a snare. Further beyond, more blue cylinders float in the open air, each holding a body I can’t make out.
Below us, the tip of the Mother Shard rises, a jagged pink crystal formation fused with lines of gold sitting atop it like a crown. On its surface, the number three glows in burning gold.
Three dead. Three already gone.
Six islands of rock float around her, each different in size, each crumbling in its own way. Loose stone spills from their edges, larger chunks breaking away into the mist below. My palms go slick as understanding settles over me.
This is the Air trial. It has to be.
The blue coffins dissolve without warning, and my body drops. I fall—screaming as the wind peels my lips back—until I hit an invisible surface inches from the ground. It catches me without pain.
A moment later, I fall the rest of the way.
I stagger up, breathless and shaking. Marissa lands next to me with a cry and collapses to her knees, sobbing. Callen falls last, rolling awkwardly before getting to his feet with a grunt.
The Heartlands are gone. Only floating islands remain.
The ground beneath my feet is veined with gold, too much like my room back in the Embrace.
There is almost no cover, and my footing feels unsteady the moment I notice.
The island feels as though it is drifting, buffeted by gale-force winds, but no matter how it moves, the Mother Shard remains fixed at the centre.
Her death counter stays visible, as if it has been placed there for me alone.
We make our way to the edge, careful with every step, to get a better look at our surroundings.
Wind tears mist between the islands in thick, silver sheets, reducing the figures on the neighbouring rocks to shifting shapes.
I can count two people on the island to our left and two on the island to our right, but I can’t make out their faces, or even the colours of their uniforms. Earth, Air or Water, maybe.
Marissa grabs my sleeve, her knuckles white. “Where are we?” she asks.
“Very high in the sky by the looks of it,” Callen says. “But there’s so much mist, you can’t see the ground.”
Marissa’s face pales, and she takes a few steps back. “I hate heights,” she grumbles.
“Everything will be fine,” I say.
“You said that last time too,” she mumbles.
The wind howls, and the ground shifts beneath us, as if jostled by an unseen hand. I can’t see any Overseers. No Mana Echoes either.
It’s unnerving. We are alone in the sky.
The gaps between the islands are dizzying—impassable chasms filled with floating chunks of rock, flat slates of stone and loose detritus. All of it spins in the shrieking wind.
“What are we meant to do?” Marissa says. She hugs her elbows, shivering against the cold. “We can’t even reach the other Offerings.”
Callen’s face hardens. “Maybe we’re meant to kill our own this time. Maybe the Mother Shard is trying to force our hand.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe myself. “She calls us Champions. She spoke of power and glory in the Embrace. Survival. Not slaughtering the people we came in with.”
“What would you know about what the Mother Shard wants?” Callen snaps, kicking a loose rock towards the edge. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess,” he mutters, low enough that I’m not meant to hear.
I pretend not to hear him and look around for clues instead.
The two figures on the island to the left have made their way to the edge of their floating prison. The wind tears the mist thin enough to reveal flashes of dark green uniform. The Earthborn. Rask and Orla.
Do they intend to attack us every single trial? I’m sick of them already.
Panic prickles through me at the thought of what Orla might be able to do with all this loose rock, but they only stand there, gesturing sharply in the distance.
“We should stay put for now,” I say. “Maybe the trial will force someone else to move first.”
Callen spits over the edge. “I don’t want to stay with you,” he says, and something in my chest tightens before I can stop it. “I think the Mother Shard is angry, and you’re one of the reasons why.”
I stare at him, too stunned to speak.
Marissa looks at him with pleading eyes. “Please don’t do this, Callen. Please stop.”
“Why me?” I ask, because apparently I need to hear him say it plainly.
“You know why!” Callen sneers. “You—You’re not like us.”