Chapter 8 #3
I flail in the water, grasping for anything, fingers tangling in the thick vines that snake along the stone. The current is violent, trying to wrench me free, twisting and pulling like a beast determined to drown me.
My body slams into the wall, then is yanked away, only to be thrown back against unyielding stone. My head cracks against it, and darkness edges my vision.
My fingers slip and the world tilts just before something inside me shatters. A bubble of magic bursts and heat floods my veins, molten and searing, racing through my body like wildfire.
For a split second, the pain in my head intensifies, turning into a sharp, blinding agony, as if the broken pieces of me are being welded back together.
Then, just as suddenly, it vanishes. A strange, humming warmth takes its place, spreading outward like the echo of a dying flame.
My bones knit themselves back together, seamless and whole, as though the injury had never happened.
I emerge from the water, gasping for breath as water streams from my nose. My fingers fumble, digging into the vines. My body thrums, the aftershock of magic leaving my muscles trembling.
I barely register Kaelzar’s voice, only the singular instinct: climb, move, survive.
Through the tether, Kaelzar is roaring, but his words are lost beneath my thunderous panic. His desperation slams into me, his plea raw and unguarded.
He would sacrifice everything—everything—if it meant I survived.
If it meant he could return home and finish what he left undone.
My lungs burn as I swim toward the nearest wall, fingers scraping against moss-slicked stone. Ivy clings stubbornly to the surface, giving me just enough grip to find purchase.
“Climb,” Kaelzar orders. But this time, his voice is unguarded, almost… pleading. I don’t have time to think about why. Before I can obey, something clamps onto my leg.
A sharp yank nearly wrenches me free of my hold. I look down. Wild, terrified eyes meet mine. A Champion. He grips my leg with bruising force, his fingers digging into my skin.
I don’t know his name. But I remember his Godbeast—a gray dragon with wings sliced off completely, two stumps in their stead. A desperate thought emerges. Can I save both of us?
“If I die, you die with me, whore,” he snarls, his nails puncturing my skin.
Save myself it is.
“Kick him in the face! Use those damned legs!” Kaelzar snaps.
I do. My foot connects, and something cracks beneath the force. He doesn’t let go.
I kick again, harder this time, my fingers digging into the rock, the rush of water trying to claim us both. His grip falters, weakens. And then, finally, his fingers slip and the current seizes him.
His scream is swallowed by the churning water. And then he is gone.
Coldness settles over me. I barely feel the absence of his weight. My body moves on instinct, pressing my forehead against the stone as I force air into my lungs.
Minutes later, the water recedes, retreating like a beast satisfied with its kill.
I exhale and climb. The top of the wall comes into view, and I drag myself over it, chest heaving, muscles burning. Below, the maze sprawls in twisting paths of death and fire. I barely spare it a glance before pushing forward.
Move. Keep moving.
My limbs are shaking. My lungs still burn from the water. The memory of it—of being submerged, breath stolen, body trapped—won’t leave me. I press a hand to my ribs, trying to steady my breath, but Kaelzar’s voice slithers into my mind before I can stop him.
“I felt that.”
A cold shudder works its way down my spine. “Felt what?”
“The moment before you gave up.”
I force out a breath, sharp and uneven. I want to argue, to spit back something cruel, but my voice catches in my throat. Because he’s right.
For just a breath, I had let go. Shame curls low in my stomach, spreading like frost beneath my skin.
It wasn’t the fire, the water, or even the Challenge itself that had nearly undone me.
It was the knowing, the creeping certainty that if I failed here, it would prove that I wasn’t worthy, just like Kaelzar said.
But I won’t think about that. I won’t.
I swallow hard and push the feeling down, stuffing it into the place where all unspoken things go. The part of me that already knows how it ends. The tether pulses between us, raw and open.
And suddenly, I’m drowning all over again. But not in water.
The memory of darkness overtakes me. Stale air. The suffocating press of too-small walls, the ache of held breath, my lungs burning for relief that will never come.
My eight-year-old hands press against the inside of a cabinet, fingers trembling over smooth, varnished wood.
Blood drips down my forehead, the sting sharp where the glass cut me. The scent of whiskey lingers in the air, thick and smothering. Suffocating.
Don’t cry. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
The day had started with hope—fragile, foolish hope. Morning light spilling through the windows. My father’s silhouette hunched in his chair, his grip loose around the glass he barely lifted.
My mother’s portrait hung above the mantle, its edges warped from age, the paint dull. He stared at it for so long, as if waiting for her to step out of the frame.
I knocked, quiet but insistent. His head didn’t turn. “I miss her,” I whispered. “Can I visit her in Rust Hollow?”
The glass flew before I saw his arm move. Shattered against my face. I hit the floor. Like I hit the river.
Pain sparked hot along my temple, vision fracturing like the shards scattered across the wooden floorboards.
And then—his hands. Rough, unforgiving. He wrenched me up, shoved me backward, and I hit the cabinet with a thud. The doors slammed shut, sealing me inside.
No air. No space. Nothing but the dark and the press of my own fear.
Time stretched and blurred. His voice rose and fell outside the cabinet as I curled tighter, lungs burning. The weight of the wood against my back was no different from the river pulling me under.
The scent of blood and whiskey thickened with the dust in the cabinet, coiling in my throat. My stomach twisted, hollow and aching, thirst knotting in my throat.
I should not have spoken. Should not have missed her. If he hurt me this much, he must be hurting more. My mother did this to him. She made him do this to me.
Hatred bloomed—small, sharp, and new. I would never speak of her again. Never think of her.
And then it was late afternoon. The lock clicked open. The housekeeper’s shadow loomed over me, stretching into the darkness like an omen. My lips parted, shaping an apology before I could stop them.
The memory fractures. My breath catches. My chest is still too tight, still aching from the water. I’m not in the cabinet. I’m not drowning.
The maze slams back into focus, its air sharp and cool against my skin. I gulp it in, breath after breath, just to remind myself that I can.
Kaelzar says nothing. The quiet of our connection is unbearable.
“No! You don’t get to see that.” I shove the memory away, force myself to my feet, and keep running.
The tether pulls me toward Kaelzar. Stronger. Closer. Urgent.
After a few moments, I see him. He stands in the center of a small space between walls, remnants of his shadow magic flickering around him like dying embers.
His gray eyes lock onto mine, and the connection between us hums alive, electric. But there’s something wrong.
The frost has already crept to his feet.
I scramble down the wall, half sliding. Ice splinters across the stone, leaving only a narrow strip of bare ground between us.
I lurch for it, balancing on that sliver as I reach him.
The moment I do, I press my hand to his chest, my pulse hammering.
A few more seconds and the ice would have claimed him.
His skin is already too pale, his breath shallow, his body on the verge of locking in place. I was almost too late.
The air remains thick with biting cold, but the ice stops, frozen in its advance.
For a heartbeat, there is nothing. Just silence. My pulse is a ragged drumbeat in the void. Then, reality slams into place. I didn’t fail.
Kaelzar is beside me, alive. My trembling fingers tighten around his arm, as if to reassure myself that he is here. A second slower, and I would have been reaching for a corpse.
His breath shudders out, slow and controlled. His eyes flick to me with some reluctant acknowledgment that I have done what he doubted. That I have reached him in time.
A single beat of silence passes between us, taut and weighted. Then he exhales, voice rough. “You cut it close.”
I manage a breathless laugh, my chest still tight with exhaustion. “You doubted me?”
His gaze lingers, the ember-light of his magic casting sharp shadows against his face. “I did.” A pause, his voice lower. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have.”
The admission is quiet, almost imperceptible, but it rings louder than any insult he’s ever thrown at me.
I don’t allow myself to dwell on it. The Trial is far from over, but the victory tastes sweeter now.
We stand there for a moment, caught in the stillness, and a strange, tenuous peace settles between us, as fragile as the frost that lingers around our feet.
Then, as if the moment itself shatters, the magic surges again. The ice quivers and the Challenge presses onward as the world bends around us.
And we disappear.