Sixteen
There is a place, somewhere between sleeping and waking, where all the things you have ever tried to hide from yourself begin to wilt and die.
They linger there until the stench of death becomes too hard to ignore.
I am in that place now. The last dream before waking, the most visceral, the part with no beginning.
I stand in an infinite mirrored chamber, the floor and ceiling all one seamless reflective skin.
The air is thick with static, like the moment before lightning strikes.
I stand there naked, or as close to it—my Champion uniform is gone, my skin the colour of bruised honey, every flaw and old scar exposed to the cold.
The space around me is silent, but its nothingness beats at my temples.
At first, I see only myself. A thousand versions of me, all staring back. But something is wrong with their movements. They do not mimic mine. My hands twitch, but their hands follow a second later, or not at all, or sometimes too early.
I turn slowly, and the reflections turn with me, lagging, catching up, freezing mid-movement. I am fractured a hundred different ways, and none of them are truly me.
Grainy black dust gathers on the mirrored floor, swirling up in eddies as if exhaled by the walls themselves.
It coats my bare feet, and my skin prickles like the dust is full of teeth, biting and latching on, never letting go.
I try to brush it away, but the dust clings tighter, rising up my calves and onto my thighs, seeking every hollow space.
The urge to run is overwhelming. I want to scream, but my muscles lock, refusing.
I am trapped, a carcass on a hook, as the dust crawls up and inside me.
Breathing becomes impossible, like sucking air through a blanket. I cough, but the sound doesn’t echo in the space. It just drops to the ground and dies.
The dust wants something. It claws at me, burrowing its way to my core. There is nothing to find, but it stays.
Then I realise I am being watched.
Not by my countless reflections—my own faces are all blank and terrified. The audience is elsewhere. I scan the endless mirror, searching for what doesn’t belong.
There, in the far reaches, I see movement that is not mine. A gathering of dark, shrouded figures, their faces warped and blurred, flickering at the edges like ghosts. They are not physically here; they exist only in the reflections.
The closest one is almost a person, hooded in white, gloved hands folded across its chest. A thin, cruel mouth curls. Eyes like beads of black glass rest in a familiar face adorned with jewels and chains. Her name is Sera Vayne. The High Blessed.
She stands with the calm of someone who has orchestrated a thousand executions and never once been present to clean up the blood. Her attention is fixed on me, but her gaze seems to pass beneath my skin, or perhaps she is just staring at the black dust that has covered every inch of my skin.
I try to channel my Mana—even a flicker of light—but the dust pins my hands to my sides. My blood runs cold, my light extinguished. The glassy gaze of Sera Vayne fills every corner of my vision.
There is a sound behind me. A footstep. Something outside of me turns my body.
My bones seem to grind in their sockets.
Another figure emerges from the grainy dark.
He is taller than me, clothed all in black, moving Kael’s predatory grace.
But something is off. His face is Kael’s, but it’s too golden, the mouth wrong in its softness.
The tattoos on his arms writhe, chaotic, leaking ink that drips from his fingers, turning to black dust as it falls.
He approaches with outstretched hands. They look almost tender. I try to scream; but the dust in my lungs swallows every sound. I see it all in the mirrors. My defiance. My naked fear.
The thing wearing Kael’s face comes close enough for me to smell him, but there is nothing familiar, only sweat and something rancid—like a dead animal left too long in the sun.
“You’re not him,” I say, and my own voice comes out amplified, warped. The echo of it trails a second later, as if mocking me. “This isn’t real.”
The false Kael smiles with too many teeth. “Does it matter?” he asks, the voice perfectly his and also not. There is a second voice underneath it, speaking in Sera Vayne’s precise, cutting tone.
He circles around me as the dust climbs further up my body, biting into my hips. Every scar burns, the memories that made them tearing back to life.
The false Kael grabs my wrists in both hands with an impossible strength.
He pins them above my head, pressing me flat into the mirrored wall.
His breath is cold against my ear. “I could make you do anything I want,” he says, but the voice is now a chorus—Kael, Sera Vayne, my own.
“Trust me. I would never hurt you. That’s what he would say, isn’t it? ”
I struggle, but the grip is unbreakable. I try to channel, try to flood myself with light, but the dust is in my blood, in my brain, and the only thing that comes out is a helpless sound that embarrasses me even here.
Sera Vayne is closer in the reflection now, close enough that I can see every detail of her face. She is smiling now, the wrinkle at the side of her mouth deepening.
The false Kael leans in, his lips pausing at my throat. “You think you’re special. But you’re just a hollow thing.”
For a fraction of a second, his grip loosens, and I almost believe it is him. “I’ll fix what they left broken.”
But the feeling doesn’t last, and his grip only gets rougher.
I shake my head, fighting against the grip, the black dust, my memories, but my body is slow, and my muscles grow numb. I feel the tears coming, hot and shameful.
He pins me harder, and the memory comes to life: faceless men in the dorms, the first time I ever bled beneath someone else’s hands, the first time I realised resistance was pointless. The memory blazes so bright I start to leave my body, but the false Kael won’t let me.
“You could be so much more,” he says, still pressing me to the wall. “But all you are is a mistake. A broken thing. You will disappear and the world will not notice.”
I scream, finally, something raw ripping free, and in the mirror, every version of me screams too.
Sera Vayne claps her hands slowly in silent applause.
The false Kael pushes harder, teeth at my shoulder, and my skin splits as he bites down. The blood runs down my chest, and the black dust eats it hungrily.
A crack appears in the mirror, right in the centre of my forehead. It grows, crawling down the face of the mirror, splitting my reflection in half. The chamber shakes, and the dust rises, choking out the sliver of light.
The last thing I see before the mirror explodes in a shower of blood and glass is High Blessed Sera Vayne’s smile, impossibly wide, reflected over and over as the world tears itself to pieces.
I wake, gasping, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, fists clenched so hard my knuckles ache. The room is still, the golden cracks on the ceiling pulsing faintly. My body is whole. My body is my own. There is no dust. No mirrors. But my throat burns, and the taste of rot lingers under my tongue.
For a long moment I cannot move.
I curl into myself, smaller than I’ve ever felt, and wait for the world to feel real again. It never quite does.
I know then that nothing is healed. Nothing is forgotten.
I wonder, not for the first time, if I am already dead. If this is all I am now—what’s left after everything else is taken?
I am pulled from sleep, and this time, it is not gentle.
My eyes snap open to rain battering the glowing blue dome around me. Hexagonal prisms shimmer in the light, the same as in the second trial. The Mother Shard’s magic.
I’m not ready. My bones hurt, and my eyes sting from crying myself to sleep a second time.
When the dome fizzles away, I am instantly soaked. Rain hammers against every surface, slicing the air into ribbons. The ground beneath me hurts to look at; it is mirrored like my dream, the reflection lagging half a breath behind in some cruel game of the Mother Shard’s.
The rain is cold and relentless, running down my spine with a cruel tenderness. Every breath mists, ozone sharp beneath the downpour.
I scramble upright, my boots skidding on the slick glass. The Heartlands are now a series of three concentric mirrored rings, at least fifty paces across, each one raised above the last like giant steps leading to a central dais.
Morwen is visible to my right, a pale shape through the rain.
Marissa and Callen are closer, both looking around, just as wet and confused as I am.
The Heartlands are smaller now. Shrunk by the Mother Shard for this trial.
And I know, with absolute certainty, that Kael is directly opposite on the other side of the arena.
I need to go to him. Whatever happened between us last night, his side is where I want to be.
Above it all floats a crown of pink crystal, banded with purple, pulsing with sickly light. It hovers where the Mother Shard should be, the death counter upon it—a fat, vulgar, golden seven, daring us to try and shrink it.
I look to Marissa first. She has moved, crouching behind a mirrored pillar.
She is already soaked, hair plastered to her face, arms wrapped tight around her knees.
Her eyes find me, huge and shining, and for a moment all I want to do is call out her name.
But the roar of rain against glass is so total that sound has no meaning.
Callen has already started in Morwen’s direction. He doesn’t look back. I guess the lines have been drawn.
A figure flashes on the middle ring ahead—a blur of grey and white. Alaris. He glides more than sprints, using the wind to propel himself recklessly along the glass. He moves too fast, a streak of motion, but I see the panic in the hunch of his shoulders.