The words fade, but the weight of them settles. “Purge it.” “Cleanse the corruption.” The empire’s favorite words.
That’s all we are to them, too. Corruptions to be exploited, then purged.
Zeriel doesn’t answer immediately, but the cold certainty he sends across our link brushes sharp against my own.That’s all we’ve ever been.
And yet you entered their game,I can’t help but think.To play by their rules. The emperor’s rules.
Zeriel’s answer slices into my mind like ice.Not theirs. Never theirs. Mine.
Before I can process it, the fae symbols carved into the stone begin to glow with a strange, intense orange. The air feels suddenly thicker, and the patterns on the walls appear to shift, to writhe. The carved crowns seem to bleed shadow. The winged thrones seem to beat with a phantom pulse.
I’m not sure if I’m hallucinating or if it’s actually happening.
Zarah Teshal takes a hesitant step forward, and the stone beneath her feet erupts. A spear of sharpened rock, obsidian-black and unnatural, punches through the floor with the force of a battering ram. She leaps back with a curse, but her ward isn’t as fast. The spear impales the young man through the chest, lifting him a foot into the air before retracting back into the stone, leaving only a spreading pool of blood.
The temple is hunting us.Zeriel’s thought pierces me.
It’s not even ancient fae magic. At least, not the natural kind. It’s been twisted... weaponized.
A display for the crowd,I think.
Propaganda for the crowd,he replies.
Zeriel’s response is a shard of glass in my mind. The symbols,the stone… it’s like they’re being forced, controlled, corrupted by some external power source.And the emperor and all who support him want us to believe this corruption is ours. That this is what our nature truly is—or leads to. Destruction. Chaos.
The champions scatter, pressing themselves against pillars. The floor becomes a death trap, spears of black rock stabbing upward in a random, vicious pattern.
Stairs,Zeriel sends.Up.
He points with his blade toward a grand, sweeping staircase at the far end of the hall. It’s our only way forward. We break from cover, sprinting across the treacherous floor. A spear erupts just behind my heel, the wind of its passage whipping my hair. Zeriel shoves me forward, his body shielding mine as we race for the stairs.
Blaise is a step ahead of us, moving with liquid grace. He seems to almost know where the spears will strike, flowing around the danger as if it’s a dance partner.
We reach the staircase, a spiral of gray stone that winds up into shadows. As we take the first steps, the air grows heavier, thick with… an almost mental pressure that makes my skull ache.
The carvings on the walls here are different too—depicting scenes of life in a world I only know through stolen fragments and old bedtime stories. There’s a fruit market in a bustling fae city, children chasing each other through the roots of a colossal tree, lovers twining their fingers in midair as they float on some invisible current. The faces are round and open, mouths frozen in joy, eyes reflecting a kind of belonging I can barely imagine.
But as we pass, the images blur… twisting into nightmares.
A carving of a mother holding her child melts, the stone morphing until it depicts a figure in imperial armor tearing the child from her arms. The lovers are torn apart, the male in iron shackles. The market becomes a riot, the fruit trodden into the dirt as soldiers march through the crowd. A scene of a festival, of dancers and musicians, warps into a public execution, the dancers now hanging from gibbets.
It’s like… a psychological assault. Every step forcing us to witness the perversion of our own history.
And I can’t help wonder?—
is this the temple itself fighting back? Its true nature straining against the story being forced upon it, against the empire’s lies?
The place feels almost alive enough to be sentient. Steeped in millennia of ritual and power.
The pressure intensifies, and a wave of nausea hits me. The world tilts, the stone steps seeming to dissolve beneath my feet.
And then it’s something different. A sharper kind of assault. The walls, heavy with memory, begin dredging up my own.
“You lied to me,” my father’s voice hisses, taut with betrayal. The image sharpens: sunlight spilling through tall windows, turning dust motes into tiny drifting stars. My father stands rigid, his shadow falling long across the floor.
My mother’s reply trembles, but her chin is lifted: “I lied to protect her. To protect us. You don’t understand?—”
The scene snaps abruptly, swimming into another.A female fae with hair like spun moonlight stands with her back to a window. Celisse, I somehow know immediately. She is luminous, ethereal, but her face is pale with a desperate sorrow. “It was to protect you,” she whispers, her voice trembling.
