Chapter 16 #2
The clock sand spills faster than I expect.
How much time has already passed? A quarter?
More? The grains don’t slow. And yet the four Champions, holding so many lives in their hands, shove the reaching arms aside without care, especially those of the women from Rust Hollow.
Their hair, streaked with shades of red, marks them as the most unworthy of all.
Easy to spot. Easy to ignore.
At least half the gathered souls are Rust Hollow women. My chest tightens as the bitter realization settles in. Even the gods’ magic sees them as disposable.
“What are you waiting for?” Kaelzar’s voice rumbles beside me, so close I can feel the air shift as he speaks.
“The leftovers,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
Because that’s what they are—society’s scraps. Unwanted. Discarded. The other Champions will take their twenty people, leaving more than half behind. The unwanted will be mine to save… or mine to let perish.
And that weight is heavier than any Challenge could ever measure.
Through the pounding in my chest, I notice Zyrel’s movements—deliberate, almost measured. Something in the way he moves keeps my gaze fixed on him.
He weaves through the crowd with intent, stopping before Duke Montague. A flicker of disappointment rises in me at his choice, and I scold myself for it. Even a vile man like the Consul of Trade and Commerce doesn’t deserve to be torn apart by leeches.
Zyrel reaches for him, and the Duke stumbles free the moment their hands connect, sprinting toward his Sanctum.
Once Zyrel frees the Duke, something changes in him. His search becomes looser, almost careless, as if it no longer matters who he saves next.
Why him? Of all the highborn standing frozen in terror, why Montague?
It’s strange, because Lyra Starcrest, Duchess of Aramoor and Consul of Justice and Law, stands right there, yet he pointedly moves around her.
A cold thought slithers through my mind. Is this a calculated choice? Do they have some sort of agreement, something that makes Montague worth saving over the rest?
Zyrel has never struck me as a man who acts without reason, and now his choices feel deliberate in a way that unsettles me.
He’s the first to leave the crowd, selecting three more draped in finery before striding toward his Sanctum as if he’s saving the world itself.
Liona follows next, leading five chosen to safety.
Alaric finishes third.
Seraphina is still moving through the crowd, only two freed so far.
Another metallic click cuts through the air, the leeches' chains tightening. The sound lashes through me, too much like the ones that scarred Kaelzar’s body.
Instinctively, my gaze flicks to him.
He doesn’t react. But he’s not looking at the chains either. His focus stays fixed elsewhere, his expression unreadable, yet I catch the subtle way his shoulders lock, his fingers twitch as if he’s fighting really hard to clench his fists.
Another click.
My attention snaps to the sand clock. Half the sand is gone.
I move.
I launch myself into the crowd, my Godbeast at my heels. What I haven’t told Kaelzar—what I’ve been refusing to admit even to myself—is that I’m going to take more than five.
I slow before the first line of captives, breath caught in my throat as I meet dozens of pleading eyes.
Two rows ahead, Seraphina reaches for a child.
The moment she’s freed, the little girl bolts forward. But instead of running to the Sanctum like the others, she throws her arms around a woman four places away.
“You have to go, my sweet angel,” the woman murmurs, cupping her daughter’s tear-streaked face. “I’ll be fine. Just reach the safe square with the nice Champion. Papa’s waiting at home.”
But the girl only sobs into her mother’s shirt, refusing to let go.
Seraphina grips the girl’s hand. “We have to go,” she orders, pulling.
The child’s wail is so piercing that the Fleshleeches screech in answer, their chains rattling as they lurch forward.
“Time is running out,” Kaelzar growls behind me, his hand landing on my shoulder.
A shiver rips through me. For a heartbeat, my thoughts narrow to that single point of contact, the roughness of his scarred skin against mine.
I suck in a breath, suddenly aware of how close he is. Too close. He’s a distraction I can’t afford. I shake him off, shocked by how that brief touch nearly tears me from the scene before me.
“Please take my mama,” the girl pleads, voice trembling. “Please. Please.”
“You’re my fifth,” Seraphina hisses, yanking harder. The child’s cries split the air, rising higher with each desperate breath.
The beasts surge, snapping their maws toward the sound. Their bodies strain so violently against their bindings that the iron stakes groan under the pressure.
The girl goes limp, collapsing at her mother’s feet, burying her face in her skirts.
Seraphina glares at the woman.
Tears streaming down her face, the mother swallows her grief and pries her daughter’s arms away, whispering something into her ear.
Then, just as suddenly, the girl stills. She lets go.
“I love you, Mama,” she whispers.
Something inside me breaks.
I take one step. Then another.
I know this pain. I know what it’s like to lose a mother because of the gods’ cruelty. I know it so well I can taste it, the iron tang of grief rising in my throat.
I won’t let this child lose hers.
But before I can reach the woman, Seraphina’s sharp gaze snaps toward the nearest Divinity Gaze. Her posture changes. Her chin lowers, shoulders folding inward, just like when I saw her cowering before her parents at the Spectra Judicium.
A sharp breath hisses through her teeth. Then, abruptly, she reaches out and touches the mother. “Go.”
A low roar echoes from outside the crowd. Seraphina’s dragon, too large to force its way through the bodies, calling out in what sounds almost like approval. As if her Godbeast itself is proud of her decision to save one more soul.
I’m close enough to see the tension carved into Seraphina’s frame, her jaw locked so tight it could crack. She hates this.
“You did the right thing,” I say quietly, hoping the mirrors won’t carry my words to her parents.
I half expect her to whirl and strike me for saying it.
As if sensing it, Kaelzar steps beside me. But Seraphina only exhales. “The right thing would be saving them all,” she mutters.
Then, as if realizing she’s spoken aloud, her eyes harden. She bares her teeth. “What kind of Archpriestess would I be if I didn’t know how to make tough choices?”
“The old Archpriest made plenty of tough choices,” I say, remembering the bodies left in his wake, the deaths he justified to preserve the illusion of purity. “And look where it got him. Burned by the same gods he served so blindly. Maybe it’s the right choices that matter.”
Seraphina’s glare burns through me. Then she moves.
Half a breath later, she’s in front of me, her nose nearly touching mine. “You wouldn’t know anything about it,” she hisses, shoving me hard.
I stumble back, colliding into someone. Strong arms catch me, hold me.
I blink, dazed. Where Seraphina had stood, black shadows swirl and linger, jagged and curling like the maw of some predatory beast. Kaelzar’s shadows.
I refuse to wonder what Origin they come from, what creature shaped that darkness.
But Seraphina already spacestepped away, vanishing in a breath.
Then Kaelzar is there, pulling me free from the hands gripping my shoulders too tightly until they finally let go.
I spin to face the man behind me.
He’s probably in his fifth decade. Tall, almost as tall as Kaelzar. The battle-worn slope of his shoulders and the scars etching his skin speak of a man who’s survived more than a dozen fights. But it’s his caramel-colored eyes that strike me hardest.
Something about them feels… familiar. Comforting. And that’s what makes it strange.
Before I realize what I’m doing, my hand lifts toward him, drawn by an instinct I can’t name.
He doesn’t step back. Doesn’t flinch as my blackened fingers brush his arm, breaking whatever invisible hold binds him.
Instead, he simply stares, waiting. For what, I can’t tell.
Kaelzar steps closer. The moment shifts. I realize belatedly that my first assumption was wrong: the man isn’t as tall as I thought. Kaelzar still towers over him, half a head higher.
“Go,” Kaelzar rumbles, his voice low and resonant, vibrating through my bones.
The man studies me a moment longer, as if weighing the cost of disobedience. Then he turns, but pauses just before he leaves.
His gaze flicks back to mine, unreadable. “It wasn’t the gods that ended the Archpriest, girl,” he murmurs. His voice is too soft, so quiet I almost think I imagined it. Then, fainter still, like a whisper slipping through cracks in time: “Though someone tried very hard to make it seem so.”
The words should stop me cold. Should send my mind spiraling.
But—
The clock. I can’t focus on anything else. The grains fall faster, each one a countdown. His eyes dart past me, almost conspiratorial, but my thoughts race ahead, tripping over his warning.
Every second matters. The sand has almost run to its third.
Each falling grain draws me closer to death. Four more lives to save.
I spin, scanning the faces in the crowd—desperate, pleading, hollow with fear. Their weeping tears at me, pulling me in every direction.
How can I choose? Even if I take six more from Rust Hollow, at least ten will still be left behind. Who am I to decide who lives and who dies?
Who am I to play god?
Kaelzar turns toward me. “You have about three minutes to decide,” he says, his voice calm but razor-sharp. “I won’t be able to stop the leeches. You have to move.”
I scan the arena, praying another Champion will step forward.
They don’t. They stand untouched within their Sanctums—safe, unbothered. My gaze finds Zyrel, watching me from his protected circle. His mouth twists into something between amusement and disgust. “Scum,” he mouths, then spits deliberately onto the sand.