Page 121 of The Shattered Rite
She didn’t know how to answer that. So she didn’t.
Silas shifted, settling beside her on the stone floor, not touching, but near enough that the warmth of him filled the air. A quiet kind of steadiness. Not only a guard but a man choosing to be there.
And this time, she let herself drift. Not into battle-readiness. Not into fear.
Into sleep.
Real sleep.
The dream came fast—and cruel.
She wasn’t alone on the course.
All of them were there—the chosen. Running the trial together. Shoving past one another, bleeding, screaming, breathless. Their faces blurred and streaked with blood, but she recognized them. Every last one. The boy with copper hair. Garic. Stormthresh.
And Whitvale.
He was laughing.
Ahead of her.
And when the boy stumbled, too young, too unsure to stand against him, Whitvale shoved him.
Hard.
Into the blades.
The sound was the worst of it.
Steel cleaving through flesh, bone snapping wetly.
Eliryn’s voice tore itself free in a broken scream—but no one heard. The boy's body twitched against the spinning blade, still trying to hold his insides from spilling through his shaking fingers. His eyes met hers, wide and confused, as if begging her to explain why this was happening.
She staggered forward. She tried to move. To help. To reach him.
Her feet slipped.
On blood.
Her own.
Her heels slid uselessly across slick stone, and she looked down to see her own insides unraveling—no, no, not yet, she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t—
She cried out for Vaeronth.
Nothing answered.
The bond was severed. Silent.
Not even the echo of him remained.
She spun, desperate, choking, gasping, but the walls were too high. Her voice bounced back at her—thin, useless, not hers.
She was nothing here.
Just meat.
The others ran past her. Stormthresh didn’t even look back. Garic—his face, shadowed, unreadable—disappeared into the smoke.
