Chapter 12
LYRA
The next days dragged and blurred, each one marked by the match glowing like a curse on the posting board.
Every time I passed the courtyard, I swore I could feel eyes on me, whispers following in my wake.I tried to ignore them.
Tried to believe Vareena’s quiet assurances, Dax’s reckless jokes, even Lidia’s blunt mutters that Neseryn “bled like anyone else.” But nothing stuck.
Training became unbearable.
The light wouldn’t answer, no matter how I begged. Each morning I stood with the initiates, palms lifted, breath steady, trying to coax even a flicker into my hands. And each morning I failed.
The others—raw but eager—at least managed sparks. A beam here, a weak shield there. One boy managed to conjure a halo so bright he nearly blinded the row beside him. They laughed, shook off mistakes, kept going.
And me? I might as well have been stone.
Mistress Calis’s gaze cut like a knife from across the field. She didn’t shout, didn’t shame me outright, but the silence in her disapproval was worse than fire. When the others shifted to paired drills, I found myself shunted to the side again.
By the third day, my chest ached from the weight of it. From the emptiness where light should have been.
I left before drills ended, my skin hot with humiliation.
The Sanctum was sprawling, endless paths winding between training rings and lecture halls. I wandered them to cool my head, though my feet carried me without direction. Shadows pooled long between the spires, early autumn wind slicing sharp enough to sting my lungs.
Somehow, I ended at the edge of the Crucible.
It was empty now, its wide circle of stone scarred with burn marks, gouges, bloodstains half-scrubbed away. The arena seemed to breathe, as though waiting for the next body it would chew up and spit out.
I gripped the railing until my knuckles whitened. This is where it ends. Where she’ll unravel me in front of everyone.
My chest tightened, breath shallow. I reached instinctively for light and willed it to fill me, to prove I wasn’t already lost.
Nothing.
Then cold stirred beneath my ribs.
Thick. A shadow curling in my lungs, pushing at my fingertips. I gasped and snatched my hands back from the railing as if the stone itself had burned me.
The air around me dimmed for a heartbeat. Then it was gone.
I stood trembling, breath ragged.
Not mine. Not mine. Not mine.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Vareena had offered to study together, but I’d claimed exhaustion. Truth was, the thought of sitting under her careful eyes while my insides threatened to betray me was unbearable.
Instead, I lay awake in the dark, staring at the faint shimmer of starlight through the dormitory window. My ribs ached where the rune lay dormant. My throat felt tight, as though words had gathered there without belonging to me.
And then—soft as a sigh—the Codex’s voice unfurled in my mind.
Fear does not hide power, Starborn. It feeds it.
I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut. “Go away,” I whispered into the pillow.
You cannot run from what you are.
“I don’t even know what that means.” My voice cracked. “I don’t want to know.”
Silence stretched, vast and terrible. Then:
She will tear the truth from you. Be ready to bleed for it.
I shoved my head beneath the blanket, heart racing so hard I thought I might choke on it. The Codex’s words clung to me long after the voice faded, twisting into my dreams.
The days slid forward like knives. I tried to fill them—lectures on history I barely understood, meals I barely tasted, walks across the grounds where the others tried, in their own ways, to draw me into their circle.
Emrin pressed a smooth stone into my palm one afternoon, green veins running through it like vines. “For steadiness,” she said. “Hold it when you’re nervous. It’s helped me before.”
Dax dropped into step beside me the next day, grinning despite the bruise blooming on his jaw. “You know,” he said, “if you swing first, you might surprise her. People expect you to fold.”
“I’ll die faster,” I muttered.
He shrugged. “At least it’ll be memorable. That’s something.”
Raiden clapped me on the shoulder with a grin that was too big to be real. “Don’t let her pretty face fool you. She’ll gut you if you let her. Keep your guard high.”
Lidia rolled her eyes and shoved him away. But when her gaze cut back to me, flame flickering low at her knuckles, her face was hard. “If she tries to humiliate you, humiliate her first.”
They meant to help. I knew they did. But their words were tinder to the fire already burning in my chest. Every reminder of the match, every warning, every attempt at comfort—it all pressed the same truth harder and harder into my bones.
I wasn’t ready.
And yet, the days kept falling away until the week was nearly gone.
The morning before the match, I found myself back at the Crucible. The arena yawned wide and empty again, pale sunlight catching on the jagged cracks in its floor.
Vareena joined me silently, standing at the railing with her hands folded. Her presence was quiet but unyielding, like stone beneath shifting soil.
“You’re thinking yourself in circles,” she said finally.
I didn’t deny it.
Her gaze softened. “You don’t have to win tomorrow. Just stand. Just show them you can.”
The words should have comforted me. They didn’t.
Because deep down, I wasn’t afraid of losing.
I was afraid of what might come out of me when I tried to win.
The day of the match arrived like a blade at my throat.
The Sanctum buzzed, word spreading fast. I felt the weight of stares as I crossed the courtyard, the sound of my name whispered in disbelief, in mockery, in pity.
By the time I reached the Crucible, the stands were filling. Candidates pressed in shoulder to shoulder, Overseers already taking their posts.
I forced my feet forward, every muscle locked against the scream in my chest.
In the gallery above, Kieran leaned against the railing, arms folded. His stare pinned me, sharp and cold, cutting through the roar of the crowd.
Vareena’s hand brushed my shoulder as she passed me to the sidelines. Her whisper was soft, certain. “Don’t hold back.”
I stepped into the Crucible.
Not because I was ready.
But because there was no choice left.