Eighteen
My room is too quiet. The golden cracks in the ceiling throb with light, matching the rhythm inside my chest, but my eyes keep drifting to the door.
I am healed. My skin remembers nothing of the flames—only the older scars remain, buried deep, untouched by the Mother Shard. But the ghost of burning still crawls across my back, and the smell of melting flesh clings to the back of my throat. I can’t shake it. I let it happen.
Alaris should be alive. I let my guard down, and Atheron landed the only blow that mattered.
I expected the trial to end after Maleiros’ essence was absorbed—when the death counter shifted.
I don’t know why I thought that. I know nothing about what the Mother Shard wants. Alaris paid for that mistake.
Another mark I won’t be allowed to forget.
My hands still shake. I press them flat against my knees, trying to hold the tremor in. My fingers look foreign—clean, unbroken, stripped of the blood and cuts that marked them during the trial. The Mother Shard is efficient in her repairs.
My body is whole. The rest of me isn’t.
I glance at the door again.
Pathetic.
Before now, Kael always came to me. He would knock, then enter without waiting. He would look at me with those dark eyes, and I’d be lost in him. I want that comfort now.
I despise myself for it.
I’m embarrassed by how quickly my pain turns to longing.
“We barely know each other,” I whisper, like that should be enough to fix it.
If I close my eyes, I can replay every instant of the trial. It felt like days, but it can only have been a few hours. The rain. The blood. Marissa lying on the glass as I left her. The scream as the trial ended.
That’s what gnaws at me now. It was familiar—Marissa, maybe. Or Morwen. The sounds blur together in my mind.
Too much pain. Too many voices.
I have to move.
I push to my feet, steadying myself against the wall before stepping into the corridor.
The Embrace feels haunted—not by ghosts, but by absence. Silence fills the space where people used to be. More than half of us are gone. The only sound—or is it a feeling?—is the faint hum of Mana. It feels like it’s under my skin. In the walls. Everywhere.
I almost turn towards Kael’s door. The urge comes sharp and immediate, but I kill it just as quickly.
Nyxen and Vaelis are stepping out of his room.
Nyxen looks worse than I’ve ever seen him—paler, hollowed, his eyes darker somehow. Vaelis holds himself with careful composure, as if nothing here has touched him.
We stop, a strange set of statues in the corridor.
Nyxen looks at me, then at my trembling hands, then at my face again. “You don’t look well,” he says.
Polite. More so than I expected.
“I’m doing just great, thanks,” I reply. My voice sounds brittle.
Vaelis tilts his head. His eyes are hard to read. They always are. “You should give him some space,” he says.
Kael.
I nod. I want to ask why, but I don’t want to sound desperate, so I let the words die in my throat.
Nyxen studies me, then nods toward Marissa’s door. “Why don’t you check on your friend instead?”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to.
They move past me, but Vaelis stops, just a pace away, and says, “We are grateful to you for ending the trial. You saved us—him.”
The words are flat, the gratitude barely recognisable.
“It was Alaris,” I murmur. “I did nothing.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Nyxen says. “You did something for Kael. We felt it.”
There is a pause.
Vaelis exhales softly. “But.”
I brace myself.
“Whatever this is between you and him—it’s costing him.”
The coldness of it gets under my ribs.
“He doesn’t know how to stop,” Vaelis adds, quieter now.
Nyxen’s voice doesn’t soften. “You don’t understand what he becomes when he breaks... and he will.”
I think I do. I feel it in my bones, and it terrifies me.
Nyxen’s expression closes off, but his eyes flicker, like he is remembering something he would rather not. “Do not force my hand,” he says.
The threat is clear, and Vaelis doesn’t contradict him.
I nod. What else is there to do?
They head down the corridor, footsteps fading, but the words stay behind, clinging to me like smoke.
When I am alone again, guilt creeps back in.
Is that all I am now? A poison—even to the people I want to save.
My gaze drifts to Callen’s door. I only let myself look for a moment. Any longer, and I’ll come apart in this corridor. I can’t afford that right now.
I turn to the right instead. I have to see Marissa.
I knock and wait for her response, even as another part of me wants nothing more than to barricade myself in my room and disappear.
Marissa sits cross-legged on her bed, hands tucked under her thighs, staring at the wall. Her hair, normally bright and unruly, is flat and lifeless. She doesn’t look at me. Not until I shut the door behind me.
For one awful moment, I think she’s a ghost. But her eyes come alive—wide and brown—when she looks at me.
My legs almost buckle with relief. “Hey.”
“You made it,” she says.
“Barely.” I force a grin, but it doesn’t stay long.
We stare at each other for a few heartbeats, the silence settling in like something familiar.
“I’m sorry I left you,” I blurt, before she can say anything. “During the trial, I—”
She shakes her head. “Don’t be,” she says. Her voice is clipped, like she’s been practising this very speech. “I’m not your responsibility. It was me who told you to go.”
I want to argue—to tell her she is. That with Callen gone, we only have each other. But I see the way her hands tremble in her lap. She is holding herself together by will alone. I wonder if there will ever be a time when she doesn't have to cry.
She looks at me as the tears come. “Serraith—he came for me.” Her voice gets smaller with every word, until it’s just a breath. “I thought I was going to die,” she whispers. “Alone.”
I cross the room, my knees actually buckling this time as I sit beside her.
“I’m here now,” I say, but it’s not good enough. I wasn’t there when she needed me.
She laughs, the sound cracking in her throat. “Did Kael make it? I assume so, or I don’t think you’d be out of bed.”
“You think I need him that much?”
She huffs. “I’d be like that too, if someone looked at me the way he looks at you.”
I wince, too quickly. “That’s not—” I stop. “It’s not like that.”
Marissa just rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. “He looks at you like you’re the only other person in this place. You can pretend not to notice, but I’m not blind.”
I smile, just barely, and let the silence settle around us.
She tries to keep her smile on. She really does. She pulls away slightly, stranded in herself. Then whatever has been holding her together gives way, and she lets herself sob into her hands. “I can’t believe Callen’s gone.”
I put my arms around her, and she melts into me.
Eventually, her breathing slows, but she doesn’t lift her head.
I don’t say anything else. There’s nothing left to say. I could talk about Callen’s sacrifice. I could try to explain why I left her, or what I was really thinking, but it doesn’t matter. I left her. I chose.
I just hold her and pretend that I deserve to.
She wipes her face on her sleeve, then looks up at me. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”
I want to lie, to give her hope. So, I do.
“You might,” I say.
She snorts. “Liar.”
We share the silence again, but it isn’t so heavy now.
We’ve known our fate since we were chosen. Somehow, that doesn’t make it easier to face.
I think of Alaris, who came here on a gamble and died like a real Champion. I want to tell her. I want to say that he’s gone. But the words won’t come. Like if I don’t say it out loud, he might still show up at dinner.
Instead, I squeeze her shoulder. “If you win, don’t let them bury me somewhere ugly.”
She punches my arm. “That’s not funny.”
I manage a laugh, weak and wet, but it’s a laugh all the same.
We lean against each other, and I try not to think about anything else. I try not to think about her being one of the last good things left here.
The hum of the Embrace seeps into my bones again, reminding me that another trial is coming. More death. More chances to fail them.
For now, I just hold her—like letting go would make it come faster.
The Dome should be for training. For surviving the next trial. Right now, it feels like a cell. I just want to hit something that can’t look me in the eye.
I’ve been here for an hour, maybe more. My knuckles feel raw—even as the skin knits itself together between blows.
The target dummy sways, its sandbag torso blooming with fist-shaped imprints.
Each strike lands with a shallow thud that echoes through the hollow room.
I keep hitting. I want to feel something break that isn’t me.
I picture Alaris burning. Not the golden afterglow of his life force, but the way his flesh peeled from his bones beneath me, taking parts of me with him. The smell of it, the sound of his voice right before the end. The promise I made that I have no way of keeping. He deserved better than that.
I couldn’t save him.
I don’t save anyone.
I swing again, this time with my whole body, and it’s a mess. The impact jars my teeth, rattling my skull as the vibrations travel up my arm.
I hear footsteps behind me—my blood chills—but I don’t turn around.
“Your form is sloppy,” says Kael, his tone even, clinical.
I grit my teeth to stop my heart from giving me away. “I know.”
He watches me in silence.
I keep hitting the dummy, but secretly I’m waiting. For his critique, his command, anything. I just want to hear his voice. Fuck. That sounds pathetic.
Instead, he steps in close. The chill of his Mana brushes over me, but the warmth coming from his skin is undeniable—the burn of recent pain, or something deeper, some hunger I don’t understand.