Page 36 of The Shattered Rite
She exhaled shakily and lifted her chin.
Above her, she felt unseen eyes—watching, measuring—though when she looked up, nothing was there. All around her was pressure from unknown sources, pressure she wouldn’t give in to.
She no longer wanted their approval—no longer needed it.
Not now.
The fire in her veins rose like a tide, and she let it.
Let them watch the prophecy take shape.
Interlude 1: Malric
“You are not a man, Malric. You are a blade I keep sheathed until it’s time to bleed the world.”—The Sovereign of Vireth
Malric crouched in the stonework high above the Hall of Holding, swallowed by a sliver of shadow between two forgotten arches where the air stank faintly of stone dust and old blood.
The silence here was absolute. Heavy.
Perfect.
No one ever looked up.
That was their first mistake.
He was the patient sickness in the mortar, the quiet in the corner before the knife slid home. From here, he had already watched four die—two by monster, two by his hand—and not asingle whisper had followed them into the dark. The trials were cruel by design. He simply made them efficient.
The order had been clear enough:
“Cull the strong. Let the monsters take the credit. Make it look like the trials are working.”
Easy. Predictable.
Untilshewalked in.
She came through the yawning stairwell like a ghost dredged from ash and flame. Armor gone, burned to ruin. Only shreds of cloth remained, curling at the edges from heat, sliding against skin marked with something alive. The black shapes weren’t ink—they moved, glinting like molten glass beneath her skin, shifting when she breathed. They coiled over her throat, kissed her collarbones, and dove beneath the pendant that glowed at her sternum with the slow, steady pulse of another heartbeat.
His hands itched. Not to kill her. Totouch.
To find where that strange heat began.
She was built of tension and survival, her red hair wild as if the fire hadn’t wanted to let go. Soot crowned her like something ceremonial. And her eyes—sightless in one sense, yet burning with an awareness that made his skin crawl—sought not what was there, but what was hidden.
He remembered those eyes.
The village.
The night she’d stepped out of her cabin in ill-fitting armor, grief sharp as the smell of iron on her skin. She’d looked right at him—not with challenge, but with… acceptance. As if she’d already measured the weight of danger and decided to carry it anyway.
Now she carried something else, too.
The bond.
It didn’t just cling to her—it claimed her. And gods help him, it made herworse.
Sharper. More dangerous. Moreherself.
She didn’t move like the others, bowed by fear or exhaustion. She moved like judgment—unhurried, unrelenting, as though the ground should be grateful she walked on it.
