Chapter 8
Iam wrenched into my new surroundings as if shoved through the narrow slat of an hourglass neck—compressed, reshaped, then flung into open air.
My stomach flips, my skin tightens, and a gasp claws its way free as I thrust my arm forward, seeking balance.
Sensation slams into me all at once, but I still find it difficult to open my eyes.
Calista’s magic, sinuous and invasive, coils through my insides like a great worm. Nestled within its folds, there’s also that airy, delicate bubble. It’s foreign and fragile, as if the wrong breath might burst it and send whatever cottony sweetness contained inside spilling through me.
And then there’s something else.
A presence pressing against my mind, grabbing for space. My own head feels too small, too crowded.
I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow against the loud rasp of my own breath. What is happening? How can my single body contain so many different things, things that don’t belong.
“Pull yourself together,” a voice says, one I know and currently hate.
My eyes snap open, and I whirl around. Gray stone walls rise in every direction, ivy clinging to the cracks, small green flowers creeping through like nature’s defiant invasion. Paths snake away left, right, two more ahead. A maze. But behind me? Nothing. No one.
Am I hallucinating?
“No, you’re not,” Kaelzar growls, his voice sliding through my skull, thick with contempt. “The Sphere has released its magic. Our minds are tethered. This Trial decides whether you’re worthy of your Godbeast. Worthy of me.” A pause. Then, scathing, “Though I think we both know the answer to that.”
Worthy? Bloodied and humiliated, I feel worthy of nothing.
But who is he to remind me? Anger licks up my spine, hot and quick, curling tight like a whip ready to strike.
Coil and settle. Controlled and contained.
I exhale sharply. “You’re my Godbeast. Worthy or not, you’re bound to me now. So get out of my head so I can think.”
“I’d love to, but that’s not how this works,” he says, his disgust so tangible I can almost taste it. “You have to find me before it kills me.”
Kills him?
“If I die, you fail,” he continues, voice like ice. “No Godbeast, no Champion. No second chances.”
A cold pit opens inside me. This is not just a race through a maze, it’s a battle against time. Against the other Champions. If I don’t find him first, if something else gets to him then I am unworthy.
He speaks as if he’s already written off my chances. The thought makes me want to punch him in the throat, just to cut off his insufferable voice.
“You could try,” he murmurs, amused.
I hadn’t spoken aloud. The realization slams into me. “You can hear everything in my head?”
“Unfortunately.”
And it goes both ways. His voice, clipped, unwilling, those must be the thoughts slipping past his guard. The ones he doesn’t mean to share.
My mind is a battlefield of chaos and locked doors, and now it’s open, exposed, to him.
I force myself to focus. I have a goal. Find my Godbeast. Nothing else. “Tell me what you see,” I snap.
“Stone walls.” His tone is flat. As if I’ve asked the world’s most idiotic question.
“Keep being unhelpful, and I might just let—” I halt. A new question forms. “Wait. Who would try to kill you?”
As if in response, the air trembles with an eerie crackling sound, swelling into a roar.
I turn, my pulse hammering. The sound grows, hissing and snapping.
Then, from around the corner, a wall of fire surges into view.
Flames, molten and furious, devour one of the stone paths, their light casting shadows against the ivy-covered walls.
The heat slams into me, stealing my breath, curling around me like a living thing hungry for flesh.
It moves unnaturally, deliberate in its hunger.
“Run,” Kaelzar orders.
And I do. I gather my skirts, still damp and clinging, and sprint toward the path on my right, vaguely aware that the hand I sliced against the stone doesn’t hurt at all. But there’s no time to check why.
Left. Right. Right—another turn.
The fire chases, licking at my heels. I run faster. I race along the stone walls, the fire hunting me, relentless, its ravenous glow painting the path ahead in shifting gold and crimson. My skin prickles, sweat slicking my back as exhaustion and fear twist like strangling vines in my chest.
Every breath sears my throat.
“There has to be water somewhere,” Kaelzar’s voice carves through the haze in my mind, as if he’s been speaking and I only now hear him. “Keep running.”
I am a fool to believe I could do this. An utter fool.
I should have taken Ryker’s offer. Even Rust Hollow would have been preferable to this race against death itself.
The fire snarls behind me, closing in. The heat licks at my back, blistering the air. I lunge around another sharp turn—
—and barrel into something solid. Someone.
The impact is sudden, violent. A crushing force yanks at my entire body, as if the world itself has collapsed inward.
A breathless, suffocating void swallows me whole. There is no gravity, no direction, only a horrible sensation of being stretched, compressed, then flung forward.
And then—pain.
My back slams against the ground, the breath knocked from my lungs. My mind struggles to make sense of the wrongness in my body, the way my skin prickles as if I have just stepped through something I was never meant to.
The sky looms above, startling in its clarity.
The fire—gone.
The heat—vanished.
The suffocating scent of burning ivy—replaced by damp stone and fresh air.
For a moment, I can’t move. My limbs are sluggish, disconnected from my will. The world around me is too sharp, too real, as if I have been spilled into a reality I wasn’t prepared for.
My ears ring and my heart slams against my ribs.
I inhale, but the air feels thin, weightless, as if the atmosphere itself has yet to settle around me. What just happened?
I roll onto my side, fingers clawing at the stone beneath me, desperate for something solid, familiar. My stomach twists, my head pounding. The fire. The maze. The Challenge.
Where am I?
Someone is beside me. Crouched. Panting. My body tenses instinctively, and I try to push up, but my arms tremble under my weight. I blink rapidly, forcing my vision to clear.
Seraphina.
I scramble backward, pulse hammering. What am I doing next to her? Where is the fire?
Seraphina’s head tilts toward me, slow and deliberate, as if even the effort of moving is agony. But even in her weakness, something in her eyes remains unyielding—a silent, venomous promise.
Her hawk-sharp gaze flicks to mine, then glazes over, her focus slipping, as if she’s momentarily untethered from herself. Her lips part in a snarl, but instead of venom, only drool dribbles free.
“She’s still fighting off the effects of her magic. She’s not used to it, just like you were not used to yours,” Kaelzar murmurs, his voice curling through my thoughts. “You must have run into her just as she was about to spacestep, and she took you with her.”
Spacestep. My confusion at the word must have traveled through our invisible bond, because I can feel him roll his eyes in annoyance.
“She can traverse space in an instant, bend the very fabric of distance with a mere thought,” he explains.
I barely have time to grasp the enormity of what’s happened before Kaelzar continues, his tone infuriatingly casual.
“And yes, her crouching does make her look as pathetic as you. Now go before she recovers.”
Something ugly rises in me at how easily he flays my thoughts apart, picking at what I barely admit to myself.
But he’s right. I shouldn’t care, but I do. Because Seraphina isn’t weak. Her gaze snaps back into focus for the briefest moment. Not vacant. Not dazed. Calculating.
The way she stares at the red strand in my hair is unsettling, feral in its intensity. Resentment churns behind those piercing eyes, something festering beneath her pretty, practiced exterior. She won’t allow herself to lose.
Not to me. Not to anyone.
A shiver of unease prickles at my skin, something that has nothing to do with the Trial or Kaelzar’s insults.
I don’t wait for her to recover.
I push to my feet and run, legs trembling, barely carrying me forward, but forward, nonetheless. When I reach a corner that opens in only two directions, with long, straight paths on either side, reducing the chance of another surprise attack, I press my back against the rough stone.
The jagged edges bite through my sweat-dampened dress, grounding me in the moment. I scan both paths, ensuring they remain empty, before allowing my eyes to slip shut for a single breath.
“Great time for a nap. Is that all you’re good for?” Kaelzar’s voice slithers through my mind.
“Why do you hate me so much?” I throw the thought at him, snapping my eyes open to the sky.
As if answering, something unfurls in my mind—not my own thoughts, but his. Not words, but feelings.
And the despair is suffocating. It crashes over me, a grief so immense it feels like a living thing. Whatever he lost when he was dragged into this realm, whatever future he had envisioned… it is gone. And with it, the fragile, withering hope he clung to.
A whimper slips past my lips. My fingers tighten against my chest as tears spill before I can stop them. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t waste your breath apologizing,” he growls, the connection between us snapping shut like a slammed door, severing the shared torment. “Your words are useless.”
The sudden absence of his grief leaves me gasping.
His anger, his loathing—those I can bear. But the thing I just touched? That raw, infinite loss? I never want to feel that again.
And yet his words, cruel as they are, do what they always do. They stiffen my spine.