Page 71 of The Shattered Rite
She stood alone again, breathing hard.
You must not let it draw from you,Vaeronth said.The more fear you offer, the more faces it will wear.
She flexed her fingers tighter on the sword. Steel in hand, doubt in throat. Par for the course.
This was only the beginning and she could barely grasp the magic that was all around her, that would try and break her.
And deeper within the maze, she could feel it: something waiting. Watching.
The trial wasn’t only about surviving.
It was about unraveling.
Walls reared up, slick with moss, mist curling at their bases. The air thrummed, alive with rune-glow, alive with something watching.
A hiss echoed to her right.
She spun—nothing but shifting shadow.
Don’t chase echoes,Vaeronth warned.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” she muttered. “Unless they try to kill me first.”
A section of wall groaned shut behind her, sealing her in.
“Perfect. One way forward. I love not having options.”
She moved silently, balanced. The sword was becoming a familiar weight in her hand.
She turned a corner and froze.
A man lay crumpled, limbs bent at impossible angles. Blood soaked the stone around him. A dagger rested in his hand a little too neatly.
Eyes open. Unblinking.
Eliryn,Vaeronth whispered.Look closer.
She crept forward. The stillness in the body was too precise. Staged.
“It’s a trap,” she breathed.
The corpse twitched—first a fingertip dragging grit, then a ripple under the skin like rats running the length of a sack. Joints popped wetly. The head rolled toward her and the mouth split—not opening, splitting—from the corners back toward the ears. Gums peeled high, showing a second row of needle-teeth that hadn’t belonged to any human jaw.
She moved without thinking. Weight dropped. Back foot braced. Steel in her hand.
The thing snapped upright with a wire-yank lurch. Eliryn slid inside its reach, low and fast, blade flashing once across the throat. The edge met cartilage with a glassy skitter before giving—a hot sheet of black-red spilled over her knuckles, vinegar-sharp, coin-bitter. The creature didn’t fall. It lunged.
She pivoted on the ball of her foot, left shoulder tucked, brought the blade up under the jaw and drove. The point punched through palate; the hilt hit teeth with a dull clack. Bone gripped the steel. She twisted hard, felt something thin and crucial snip.
The body spasmed—hands clawing at nothing. She ripped the blade free, boots slipping on slick stone, then stamped its knee. Ligaments went with a rubbery pop; the joint collapsed. The thing folded, not like a man, but like a trap losing tension.
It didn’t bleed right. The sludge hissed where it touched the floor, smoking in hair-fine threads. Skin sloughed in wet sheets; the face caved from within as if fire were eating it from the bones outward. In two heartbeats it was a husk. In three, a heap of wet soot and teeth.
Eliryn held her stance, blade high, breath knifing in and out. Her wrist throbbed; her forearm was sticky to the elbow. The stench hit late—old pennies, hot vinegar, rot—and she gagged it back, eyes sweeping the dark for the next twitch.
Not a corpse,Vaeronth murmured, weight and heat in her mind.
She didn’t lower the blade. Not yet.
