Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
“We all think we’re special. We all think we can make it. But the truth is that the Geist have devised a system which proves to us that we are nothing at all.”
There was nothing which distinguished the final Trial from any other.
The same dark tunnel leading to the same metal tubes.
Only this time, the walk toward them felt more like a death march than a victory lap.
Dante was antsy at my side, fidgety, like he was elated for the success.
But now that we were actually here, his nerves were threatening to get the best of him.
He didn’t deserve my comfort. He didn’t deserve anything from me at all. But still, I took his hand into my own.
“One last time,” I repeated. Because I still needed him to survive whatever was on the other side. I wouldn’t die today. I wouldn’t die like this.
When his eyes met mine, a fierce determination settled over his expression, and he nodded firmly before letting go of me and striding off to his own tube. I climbed inside mine, waiting for the familiar hurtling sensation. A moment later, it came.
We were deposited in a room of white. White tiles on the floor, on the walls, even on the ceiling.
White railing on the two pristine white bridges which rose up and arced, parallel to one another, in two perfect semicircles around a chasm of darkness so solid and complete, I couldn’t see through it.
It was simply a void, a crater in the center of the room filled with a blackness that seemed to devour anything it touched.
The bridges started two feet in front of us and ended two feet in front of the rings, arcing out and around that endless crater to form a circle, bringing us back together in the end.
“Do we just…walk the bridges?” Dante asked.
“I guess,” I replied with a shrug.
We hesitated, looking at one another. Were we missing anything?
Is that why no one had ever returned? Was this last Trial impossible to fail because of its simplicity?
Or had they all failed and vanished forever into the depths of that endless chasm?
I gulped and stepped forward. Dante did the same.
We walked slowly forward on each side of the pit, watching each other carefully as we went.
We tried to keep the same pace, though I wasn’t sure it mattered.
My steps were cautious. I didn’t want to risk springing some sort of invisible trap but, with every inch forward, I felt more and more certain that wasn’t going to happen.
We eyed our surroundings as if at any moment a puzzle would reveal itself and we would need to solve it.
But nothing happened. Not even once we both stood right in front of those floating, glowing rings. There was nothing keeping us from them. No glass box, no locked door. Dante looked over to me, and I knew what he was thinking even without our mental link.
Could it possibly be this easy?
I shrugged and raised my arm. He nodded and raised his too. We plunged our fists through the rings.
There was no burning sensation, no branding. Instead, the rings simply closed. And they didn’t reopen.
“Dante?” I asked, voice rising in my panic as I pulled against the ring. “What—”
He let out a grunt, already trying to pull himself free to no avail.
A rumbling shook the room and the floor of the platform started rolling away, drawing back into the walls. The bridges were falling back too.
“No,” I gasped, stepping back, remaining on the tile for as long as I could. “No, no, no.”
“Shit,” Dante cursed. He slipped sideways, crying out in pain as he twisted his arm still attached to the ring.
I scrambled to keep my feet on the tile, but it fell away.
I hung by the ring clamped around my arm, flailing and kicking into the darkness below.
I screamed, fingers of my free hand clawing at the ring, grasping for purchase.
Dante did the same, trying to pull himself up, but to what, I wasn’t sure.
It was hopeless. There was nowhere to go.
And below us was… nothing. Just an endless void.
Victory, a voice hissed, and I flinched.
It was the same sort of experience I’d had with the oath stone.
When my own voice spoke back to me, but there was something different about the tone.
It was more sinister somehow, and clearer.
I was no longer hearing myself as if I were coming from underwater or from across an enormous chasm.
I was hearing myself as if I was physically inside my own head.
But it wasn’t just me. Every word this other me spoke, Dante’s voice echoed. Was this some sort of dream world Dante and Adrian? And how were they speaking to us now? Why did they feel so different, so other?
You have fought to make it this far, the voices hissed in unison. Based on the tortured expression on Dante’s face, he was experiencing the same onslaught. And now, to make it to the end, to claim your victory and join us, you must sacrifice.
Sacrifice, Dante’s voice echoed.
“Join us?” I asked aloud, glancing over to Dante, who seemed just as terrified as I was. His wide eyes found mine, lost.
A bond was formed between you at the first. It must be severed at the last.
Severed at the last…
“Dante, what—”
One of you must choose to sacrifice the other. One will fall. One will rise. Choose.
Choose.
Choose.
“No,” I croaked, horrified. I shook my head vehemently and gazed at Dante in hopeless desperation. “No, they can’t make us.”
Sever the bond. Choose.
I looked down at the chasm of darkness below us, a hollow pit filled with an unending void. I didn’t know how far it went, how long we might fall if freed from the rings, but it seemed clear that we’d never again come out of it, if we were to survive the drop.
Push him, my own voice whispered, and I shook my head.
“No.”
Do it. Do it. Choose. Sacrifice. Choose.
That moment seemed to hold in the air between us for an eternity.
The voices hissing in unison, pushing us to make the choice, trying desperately to drive a wedge between us.
But neither of us moved and, for one brief, glorious moment, I truly believed everything we’d done, all we’d accomplished, had meant something. Not just to me, but to him as well.
Then I looked up.
Dante watched me, no longer fighting against the ring keeping him aloft. He took a breath and closed his eyes. Tears slipped from them and streaked down his face. “I love you, Adrian.”
“What—”
“I’m sorry.”
He raised a fist and slammed it into the ring around my arm. The ring shattered. And I fell.
Eyes wide, limbs flailing in a desperate search for something, anything, to grab onto, I fell. And as that darkness below consumed me, I stared up at Dante’s indifferent expression, a tear running down my cheek. Only one word came close to what this feeling might be.
Betrayal.