Chapter 22 #3
“No.” Light exploded from me in every direction. The creatures vanished. The woman did not. The blue glass wall cracked around her.
The pedestal shifted until became a cradle.
Silver. Small. Broken. Inside it, a baby cried.
Every part of me stopped moving.
My Shadow rune burned beneath my skin. I nearly went down.
“No.” Lidia’s hand clamped around my wrist. Pain snapped through the fog. “They want a reaction from you.”
“I know.”
“Then stop giving it to them.” Easy for her to say. The crying continued. Emrin moved in front of me. Roots climbed around her legs, across her hips, anchoring her to the floor as though she intended to become part of the stone itself.
The largest creature crawled from the darkness again. It went toward the cradle. My Light gathered. Cold stirred beneath it.
Shadow.
The projection already covered the floor in darkness. But this part moved wrong. Against the current. Toward me. Vareena saw.
I knew because her face went white.
Kieran felt it.
His head snapped toward Halos. “End it.” His voice crossed the Crucible cleanly.
Halos did not look at him. “Continue.”
My stomach dropped as the creature reached toward the cradle. The baby screamed.
I did too.
Light tore out of me.
Not a beam this time. A detonation.
The wardstones flared silver. Then black. Then red. And the creature disappeared. The cradle disappeared. The hall disappeared.
For one impossible heartbeat, stars burned across the daylight above the Crucible. Every candidate looked up.
They were not projected stars. It was not the pale gold illusions Light wielders practiced.
Silver-blue points burned where no stars should have existed. The shadows beneath the wardstones recoiled and the wards slammed down.
Daylight returned to the crucible and the projection vanished.
I remained standing only because Emrin caught my elbow. My breathing came in broken pulls. The darkness near my boots withdrew into the cracked wardline. I felt it leave. Across the ring, Neseryn was not looking at the stars.
She was looking at the stone beside my foot.
My stomach tightened.
Her eyes lifted. Violet met mine.
She narrowed her eyes and looked toward Halos. Calis had gone pale. Kaiz was staring at the fractured wardstone. Rhovan crouched near one of the cracks without touching it.
Magister Halos stood. “Again.” The word landed like a blow.
Calis turned. “Magister.”
“Again.”
“Her readings are unstable.”
“That is why we are here.”
Vareena moved toward the wardline. Raiden caught her around the forearm before she crossed it. “Let go.”
“No.” Her head snapped toward him.
Raiden did not release her. “You cannot go through that ward while it’s resetting.”
“They’re going to put her back in.”
“I know.”
“Then let me go.”
“You’ll hurt yourself and accomplish nothing.” Vareena’s Light sparked around her fingers. Raiden’s grip tightened. Not enough to hurt, but enough to keep her from interfering. Her face changed. Not anger now.
Fear.
“She just got here.”
Raiden’s voice dropped. “I know.”
“She doesn’t even know what they’re doing to her.”
“I know.” Vareena looked at me through the fractured ward. Raiden stood beside her and did not let go. For once, she didn’t pull away.
Kieran moved one step. His shadows moved with him. The candidates nearest the Umbra boundary shifted back.
Halos finally looked at him. “Is there something you would like to say, Nyxara?”
When Kieran answered, his voice held nothing at all. “They completed the assessment.”
“She survived it.” Kieran said nothing. Halos looked at me. “Just as she survived when wraiths entered Edenlo. We know fear wakes her Light.” His gaze moved briefly toward the cracked wardstone beneath my boots. “I want to know what else it wakes.”
Cold moved through my blood. He didn’t know. Not yet. But he suspected. That was why there had been no Shadow candidate in my group.
That was why the projection had been different. That was why five Overseers had come to watch. This had never been about whether I could work with Emrin and Lidia. It was about what happened when they left a hole in the group and waited to see whether I filled it.
Calis’s jaw tightened.
She knew it too.
Maybe she had known before I stepped inside. I couldn’t decide which possibility was worse. Around the Crucible, candidates had stopped looking at me like a new Light wielder from the Hollowlands. They were looking at the broken wards. At the place where stars had appeared in daylight.
At the darkness that had moved when no Shadow wielder stood inside the ring.
Questions were beginning. I could see them forming before anyone dared speak.
Neseryn remained silent. Her violet-black Shadow curled once around one ankle.
Dax stood several feet behind her. For once, there was no grin on his face.
He was looking at me too. Not afraid. He was trying to understand. Vareena wasn’t. Her eyes stayed on mine. She already knew. Kieran already knew. And Halos was getting close enough that cold gathered beneath my ribs.
Magister Halos looked toward the wardkeepers.
“Reset the wards.”