Page 72 of The Shattered Rite
“That… shouldn’t have worked,” she murmured. “I’ve never even trained with a sword.”
And yet you wield it as if it remembers you,Vaeronth said gently.It’s in your blood, Eliryn. You are not only yourself now.
She looked down at the blade. It felt like an extension of herself, like it was meant for her alone.
“Will I always feel like I’m guessing?”
In time, the guessing becomes knowing.
A panicked sound echoed from the mist.
She pivoted at the shout.
A figure blew past her—wild-eyed, mouth chapped white with fear. “Run!” His shoulder clipped hers and was gone, boots skidding, the word ricocheting down stone like a thrown coin.
The wall to her left bulged.
Mortar spidered, stone distended, and something peeled itself out of the masonry—ribbed like a cage made wrong, all bone-lattice and shadow sinew. It hit the floor mid-snarle, talons clicking, a skull-face with no eyes hunting on sound and heat alone.
Eliryn dropped her weight. Blade up. Left foot back. The pendant at her sternum warmed—one beat, two—and the runes along her forearms flared in answer.
It lunged.
She slipped inside the first strike, shadow-claws raking sparks off stone where her head had been. The thingstank—cold lime and old blood. She drove her edge across the nearest limb; it parted like brittle coral, a dry crack and a scatter of pale shards skittering over flagstone.
The creature pivoted on three limbs, faster than a living thing should, and rammed her with its chest-cage. Impact knocked breath and thought; she hit a pillar with her shoulder and saw a spray of white stars that weren’t magic. It came again, mouth yawning with a harp of needle-teeth, and she jammed her boot into its joint, twisted, brought the blade up under the angle of bone, and lifted.
A seam opened.
Sound followed—high, glass-keen—and then the thing fractured, not falling butexpandinginto ruin: a million splinters blown outward on a breath that wasn’t air. Shards hissed past her cheeks and hair; some stuck and sang, thin buzzing notes, before dropping. Fine chalk burst into a white halo, the taste of quarry dust and coins on her tongue. The echo went on too long, like bells ringing under water.
She stayed crouched, blade between her and the debris, ears ringing, lungs burning as grit settled in a gray drift around her boots. A line of heat stung across her cheek; she swiped it, fingertips coming away red and grainy.
“That one nearly took my head,” she gasped.
You were graceful,Vaeronth said, amused—thunder made indulgent.In a newborn hatchling sort of way.
She snorted, breath hitching. “You’re doing wonders for my ego, you know.”
She pressed deeper into the maze, the air thickening with heat.
“The air here is different,” she murmured. “Smells like… fire.”
She emerged into a wide chamber veined with glowing minerals. Smoke coiled near the broken dome. The sky beyond was bruised crimson, neither dusk nor dawn.
Five figures stood below, circling each other warily.
As she stepped down into the chamber, she recognized three of them at once.
The tall boy with copper hair, who had looked too young for the trials. His eyes were wide with terror.
The broad-shouldered man who had tried to shame her after the first test. He met her stare with a thin, ugly smile.
And the slender, snake-eyed one, watching her like he was deciding precisely where to strike.
The other two she didn’t remember, but all five shifted as she approached, tension coiling tight enough to snap.
No illusions,Vaeronth murmured.Only threats.
