“The tournament demands more than skill with blade or fist,” Selen says. “It requires instinct. Adaptation. The ability to face the unexpected and survive.” She reaches into her pocket and produces what looks like a small whistle carved from bone. “Today, you'll demonstrate exactly that.”
Before either of us can react, Selen brings the whistle to her lips and blows. The sound pierces the air, not the shrill note I expected, but something deeper, resonant, that seems to vibrate in my chest cavity. It echoes off the ravine walls, amplifying, until it feels like the very air around us hums with it.
“What are you doing?” Zeriel demands, but Selen is already backing away, gesturing for the others to follow her.
“Surviving,” she calls back. “That's today's lesson.”
The ground beneath us trembles. A distant roar answers the whistle's call—a sound unlike any drake I've encountered before. It's layered, almost harmonic, as if multiple throats cry out at once.
“Selen!” I gasp, but she's already retreating with the others toward the ravine wall.
“Stay together and keep your hoods off,” she instructs. “Use what you have. What you are.”
“How do we even do that when we’ve never been taught?” I cry back.
The sky darkens suddenly as a massive shape obscures the sun. Wings—enormous, translucent—spread across the ravine's opening. But instead of the expected leathery membrane, these wings seem composed of thousands of overlapping, crystalline scales that refract the light into prismatic shards that dance across the ground.
“What is that?” I breathe, stumbling closer to Zeriel. His body slips into a defensive stance, shoulders taught.
The creature descends with surprising grace for its size, landing at the far end of the ravine. It's like no dragon I've everseen—its body serpentine but segmented, as if multiple drake species have been fused into one sinuous form. Each segment shimmers with scales of a different hue: amber at the head, bleeding to emerald, then sapphire, and finally crimson at the tail. Six legs, not four, grip the rocky ground with talons that glint like polished metal.
But it's the heads that steal my breath. Three of them, rising from the same neck, each slightly different in shape and coloration. The central head is largest, crowned with razor-sharp, backward-sweeping horns. The left head is sleeker, serpentine, with no horns but luminous eyes that seem to shift color. The right head is more compact, with a blunter snout and smaller horns that curl forward like a ram's.
“A wild mongrel,” Zeriel says tightly, his eyes fixed on the creature as it advances, all three heads swiveling independently to survey us. “At least one of its genes is prismatic wyrm.”
“What in the hells? How?—”
“Dragon anatomy and breeding habits,” Zeriel replies dryly. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
The central head rears back, jaws parting to reveal dagger-like teeth. A sound builds in its throat—not fire, but something else. Somehow I already sense it’s something worse.
Zeriel grabs my arm and pulls me sideways just as the head unleashes a stream of crystalline shards that shatter against the rock where we stood moments before. The fragments burst into multicolored flames upon impact, scorching the stone.
We scramble behind a boulder, breathing hard. The wyrm advances, its serpentine body flowing over the terrain, unsettlingly fluid.
“Weapons would be useful,” Zeriel mutters, his gaze raking the ravine like a predator testing for weakness. “Unless, of course, you’d care to start coaxing the beast to heel right about now.”
The right head snakes around the boulder, jaws snapping. We dive in opposite directions, the teeth missing us by inches. Theground trembles as the massive body slithers closer, all three heads now focused on us.
Zeriel rolls to his feet, fists curling tight. His chest heaves, and then he shouts, raw, commanding:
“Distract it. I need a minute to… think.”
I don't question him. There's no time. I sprint toward a pile of loose rocks, scooping up a handful and hurling them at the wyrm's left head. The stones ping uselessly off its crystalline scales, but the act is enough. All three heads swivel toward me, eyes narrowing.
I look its middle head dead in the eyes and try to force a connection with it, but something feels wrong. The three-headed wyrm's mind isn't like other dragons I've encountered. It's fragmented, chaotic, like trying to grasp smoke with bare hands. The moment I push into its consciousness, I'm assaulted by competing instincts: hunger, curiosity, territorial rage, all warring for dominance.
“I can't connect properly!” I shout to Zeriel, diving behind another rock as the right head spits a stream of viscous liquid that sizzles against stone. “Its mind is too fractured!”
Zeriel stands about thirty feet away. His body is rigid, eyes closed, hands gripping a boulder as if for support. He’s looking inward, trying to find what’s instinctively there… what he must have already felt at least once before, even if subconsciously, when the sconces trembled during his fight with Blaise.
The air suddenly feels… wrong. Charged, as if the whole ravine is drawing in a breath.
“Whatever you're doing, do it faster!” I yell as the wyrm's tail whips around, smashing into the boulder I'm using for cover. The impact sends me sprawling across the ravine floor, my void-drake suit tearing at the knee. Instinct claws at me: pull up the hood, vanish, survive. Maybe the beast hunts by sight alone. But this is training. Selen’s order is iron in my mind:You don’t hide. Not from this.
The central head looms over me, crystalline teeth gleaming. Iroll desperately, feeling the heat of its breath as I scramble backward on hands and feet. My back hits the ravine wall. Nowhere left to run.
“Zeriel!” My voice cracks with urgency.
