Page 113 of The Shattered Rite
“We did it,” she rasped aloud, her voice breaking.
Vaeronth’s reply came like embers stirred to life.
You did it.
Eliryn’s lips twitched faintly. “I mean. You're definitely the reason we're alive but I wouldn’t say no to some applause.”
There was silence.
Then, dryly:Your sense of humor is very curious.
She laughed, cracked and tired.
Below, the arena shifted again, hungry for the next.
She watched the next chosen enter: the woman from Stormthresh.
She moved like someone who’d spent her life slipping between dangers, but this arena was built to swallow even the gifted.
She passed the glass path with only shallow cuts, climbing much faster than Eliryn had managed. She leapt, flipped, dodged spinning saws and retracting steps. She almost made it.
Almost.
One of the bridges shifted just a heartbeat earlier than the woman anticipated. It caught her mid-leap. Her foot missed the landing. She tried to grab the edge, but the entire platform retracted like a closing jaw.
She vanished into the fog with a strangled scream.
The platform reset. Stone scraped. Smoke billowed.
The third chosen stepped through next.
Broad-shouldered. Tarn’s Hill’s warrior, axe in hand. He stared up at the course with cold determination.
He didn’t waste time.
He tore through the lower level, crushing traps underfoot. Brute force served him well at first, he used the axe to jam moving panels, to wedge open passageways that threatened to slam shut. He even knocked a falling spear from the air.
Eliryn took a moment to admire his resourcefulness; she had never once thought to use her own weapon in that way.
But force can’t outlast unpredictability.
In the middle of the fire-rail segment, he paused.
Too long.
Something was triggered beneath him. A hiss of pressure.
A spike rose straight through the floor—through his back, his heart, out his chest.
He didn’t even have the chance to scream.
Eliryn flinched as his body was dragged under the platform, vanishing.
And again the arena shifted to welcome the next.
The fourth to enter was the snake.
Whitvale.
