Seventeen
Light returns to the world—wholly, violently. Blinding shards, all of them too bright.
I blink away the rain—my tears—and sunlight ricochets off every flat surface; a thousand blades aimed at my raw eyes.
Even the rain, gone now, leaves prisms of glare that slice across my vision.
I am on my knees, the glass ground slick with blood, and Marissa is a heap of trembling limbs in my arms.
She is breathing steadier now. I whisper her name, hoping for a response, but my tongue is made of dust. There is only the wet, metallic stink of blood. Her eyelids twitch. Her lips work around words she cannot get out.
I shift my weight. That’s when I feel it—the agony, sudden and pure, blooming from my shoulder in a hot, white burst, as though my body has only just realised my arm is dead weight.
The pain pulses—sharp enough to make me retch.
My sleeve is saturated, torn where a shard of the cracked ground sliced me open.
My palm is a ruin of deep red, trying to knit itself together—one slow clot at a time.
I tear a piece of my shirt hem and wrap it around my palm.
I make the mistake of forming a fist and nearly pass out.
My other arm fares better—only strained. It cradles Marissa, the only thing holding us together, but it trembles.
Marissa’s leg is a wreck. The wound is sealed but it’s hideous. Another strip of my uniform is tied around her thigh, stained through. Where the sword sliced her open, the skin is now fused in a lumpy ridge, the burn so raw I can smell it over everything else.
She opens her eyes. I expect them to be glazed. Empty, even. But they’re not.
“How did you do that?” she hisses, peeking at the wound beneath the scrap of fabric.
I bat her hand away. “Don’t touch it,” I snap.
She tries to sit up and nearly howls. Her leg won’t cooperate. “You’re an idiot,” she manages. “You should just leave me. I’m only getting in your way.”
I want to tell her that she’s wrong. That I couldn’t have left her. But the words freeze in my throat—choked by the truth of it. She’s right. Surviving is so much harder when someone else matters.
Around us, the mirrored arena feels smaller than before, shrunken and broken.
The three concentric rings have realigned themselves into steps, each one higher than the next, all leading to the central dais.
Above the dais, the Mother Shard’s crystal floats, pink and purple, the number eight boring into me like a stare.
Movement stirs atop the dais. A black flare—shadow, writhing and alive. The flare expands, forming a hemisphere of swirling darkness across part of the dais. Around it, flecks of fire spark and vanish.
“Kael,” I say. Not a question. A direction. A need.
Marissa sees it too. She clings to my sleeve, her fingers cold and weak. “You should go,” she says. “You have to help them.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I say. “We can go together.”
She shakes her head, tears already welling. “My leg’s useless. You’d be carrying me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your busted arm.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I hook my good arm under her and lift. Pain lances through my injured arm, so sharp it turns my vision white. My knees give out, dropping us both to the mirrored floor.
Marissa grits her teeth. “You have to. I’ll be fine. I can hide—”
“There is nowhere to hide here.” The words rip out of me, louder than I mean them to. But the arena is naked. Just swords and pillars and glass. “If the sword rain starts again—”
She punches my chest, feeble but desperate. “Listen to me! They’re not hunting me. They want you and Kael.” Her eyes—brown and gold—cut straight through me. “He needs you. Just go.”
I shake my head, refusing to hear her. My mind cycles through every possible outcome, and none of them end with her alive and safe.
A shriek interrupts us—not human, but the sound of fire clashing with something denser. On the dais, the shadow dome shudders under assault. A pillar of flame lances up, splitting the darkness for a second before it knits closed again, slick and seamless as water.
Marissa claws at my wrist, dragging my gaze back to her. “He saved you. Now save him.”
It’s so unfair. The choice is a blade at my throat.
Either way, I’m the one who cuts.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, voice thin but determined.
It feels like a lie.
She lets go and sinks back to the ground. I watch her, memorising the lines of her face, the trembling of her mouth. She is so alive, even now. I want to believe her. I want her safe. Here. Breathing. Untouched.
Another explosion lights the sky above—this one brighter, white and orange, reflecting in the mirrors. I see figures on the dais, wreathed in fire, trailing embers. The Fireborn are holding nothing back.
I get to my feet, the world pitching, but I steady myself. My left arm dangles, useless. With my good hand, I brush the hair from Marissa’s face.
“Don’t die,” she says. Her voice is a command.
“I won’t.”
I leave her there. Every step is a betrayal. I feel each one land. I will count them for the rest of my life.
But if I can find Kael, if I can help him, maybe that life will be long enough to matter.
I fix my gaze on the large step before me, slick and sharp. I start moving.
Each step is worse than the last. My shoulder grinds with every motion, the blood from my wounds leaving a trail behind me. The sun burns directly overhead, a savage eye that turns the mirrored ground into a second sky. There is nowhere to hide.
At the edge of the middle ring, I look back. Marissa watches me, unmoving. Her fate is a tossed coin yet to fall.
I say her name in my mind over and over, until the pain in my chest is louder than the pain in my body.
I keep going.
I will find my light on the way. My Mana. Whatever is left of it.
For him.
Or I will die trying.
The climb onto the middle ring is agony.
The only mercy is that the swords embedded in the ring-wall double as footholds.
Some are buried hilt-deep in the stone. Others hold by barely an inch.
I pull myself up with one hand, the other tucked into my waistband to limit its movement, but even then, pain sparks through my shoulder.
The blood-soaked dressing around my palm leaves a red print on every hilt I touch. The blood mixes with the drying rain, pooling in the etched grooves before dripping onto the ground below. The arena is drinking me dry of whatever life I have left.
I haul myself over the edge. As I do, the sunlight shifts.
It is less blinding now, or maybe I am simply getting used to it.
It is a familiar ache—the same burn I felt training at the barracks.
Sunlight bouncing off white stone walls until everything was on fire, until I could barely see through the sweat.
I squint, letting my pupils adjust. My vision sharpens, colours intensifying as rainbow prisms dance at the edges.
With every step, the pain dulls just a fraction. The light does not weaken me. How could it? I was born under light like this. Raised in it. I use that to keep moving.
As I near the edge of the central ring-wall, the dais rises higher into the sky.
This trial is fucking rigged against me.
There is no way up. No swords piercing this ring. No footholds. Nothing.
Of course. The cruelty only reached the outer ring.
Above me on the dais, the shadow dome is still under siege, but the attacks are less frequent. Licks of flame whip over the edge, recoiling from the shadows.
Something falls—no, is thrown—from the dais, tumbling end over end. Against the glare, I cannot see what it is. I jump back, bracing for impact as the shape grows larger. At the last second, I see the grey uniform.
Alaris.
He is going to hit the ground hard enough to break. Without thinking, I throw up my good hand and channel. A curtain of golden light arcs from my palm, catching Alaris mid-fall—slowing him just enough that he lands with a hard thud instead of a fatal crash. He rolls, battered but alive.
I am on him instantly. “Are you—”
He cuts me off, spitting out a bloody tooth. “Fucking hell. Thanks for the assist.”
I stare, uncomprehending. “You should be in pieces.”
“Should be,” he agrees, brushing off the debris. “Good thing you were here, eh?” He looks at me finally. “You’ve got a little something—” He gestures to my face.
I wipe at my mouth. More blood.
He notices my arm, dangling loose once again.
He looks me up and down—really looks this time—and grimaces. “I mean this nicely—but what the fuck happened to you?”
I don’t know where to begin. I shake my head, something like a laugh catching in my chest.
It sounds wrong. Like something inside me giving way.
Above us, a new roar. The Fireborn must be attacking the shadow dome in earnest now. A chorus of voices—shouts and battle cries—fills the air.
“What’s happening up there?” I ask.
Alaris gestures up with his chin. “The Fireborn, you mean? They’ve been trying to get into that shadow dome that your Shadowborn and his bodyguards made. They’ve been holed up in there for ages.”
Nyxen and Vaelis are here too. That helps. A little. At least Kael isn’t alone.
A tremor ripples through the arena, and the dais rises even further into the sky.
“Fuck,” Alaris says, not even bothering to hide his panic. “I guess the Mother Shard wants a finale. Are you ready for round three?”
He smirks, spits blood onto the ground, and shrugs. “Or maybe it’s round four, who knows?”
My eyes flick to the outer ring. It is barely visible through the prismatic haze. Marissa and Morwen are out there still. But... everyone else seems to be on the dais.
“How do we get up there?” I ask, and to my surprise Alaris smiles, a wicked grin that, for just a moment, makes him look almost like himself.
“I can get us up there. It might hurt a bit, though.”
“It can’t get any worse.”
“That’s the spirit.”