The air in Merlin’s chamber feels thick with the ghosts of yesterday’s trial. I stand in the center of the room, my body aching with a phantom exhaustion from the Grave Recall. My mother stands near the door, her hands twisting a sprig of dried wolfsbane, while Brynn stands still beside her. Warden Blythe faces me, her posture rigid.
“The Infinite Challenge is a trial of endurance,” Blythe says, her voice echoing in the chamber. “You will be placed within a constructed reality. It will adapt. It will learn. The situation will shift on the hour. You have one objective: survive for twenty-four cycles. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I say, my voice steady. The coven needs it.I will not fail.
Blythe nods, a flicker of something—approval, perhaps—in her dark eyes. She begins a new chant, her words sharp and guttural, slicing through the air. The runes carved into the floor around me begin to glow with a swirling, unstable silver. The light crawls up my boots, my legs, wrapping around me like ethereal chains.
Then the silver light intensifies, and the world dissolves. The stone floor gives way to nothing. The faces of my family warp and stretch into grotesque masks before shattering. A roar fills my ears, the sound of reality tearing itself apart. I am falling, tumbling through a void of screaming color and crushing pressure.
And then, silence.
My feet are on what feels like damp earth. The scent of pine and wet leaves fills my lungs. Above me, a sliver of a moon hangs in a starless, black sky, casting the world in shades of silver and gray. I am in a forest. It looks like the woods surrounding Darkbirch, the trees ancient and familiar.
But the air is wrong. It is too still, too quiet. There are no night birds, no rustle of unseen creatures in the undergrowth. It is a perfect, dead replica.
A twig snaps behind me.
I spin, my hand already on my sword. Two figures emerge from the deep shadows between the trees. My breath catches in my throat.
Connor the werewolf, but strangely not in his wolf form. And… Isander.
Connor’s familiar, lopsided grin is fixed on his face, but his eyes are flat, empty pools of silver reflecting the moonlight. Isander stands beside him, his usual grace replaced by a stiff, predatory stillness. They are my friends. My allies. Members of my coven.
“Took you long enough, Salem,” Connor says, his voice a perfect imitation, yet devoid of its usual warmth. He cracks his knuckles, and the sound is unnaturally loud in the silence.
“Esme,” Isander murmurs, and my name on his lips sounds like a violation. “We’ve been waiting.”
In the real world, I haven't seen Isander once since returning to Darkbirch. We’ve both been too busy going our separateways. Now here he stands before me, this strange copy my first glimpse of his face.
And yet they are not them. I know this on a level deeper than thought. They are puppets, constructs of this place designed to look like them, to sound like them. But knowing it doesn’t stop the knot of ice from forming in my stomach.
They attack. Connor becomes a blur of speed, his movements impossibly fast as he lunges, his hands already morphing, nails elongating into claws. He transforms only half-way; not fully wolf, remaining a man-wolf, which could be more lethal. It gives him more precision.
Isander melts into the shadows at the edge of my vision, circling to flank me.
My training takes over. I parry Connor’s first strike, the screech of his claws on my blade setting my teeth on edge. I twist, lashing out with a kick that he catches, his grip like iron. I use the momentum to swing myself around, breaking his hold and putting distance between us.
A hot breath on my neck. “You're slow tonight, Esme,” the thing wearing Isander's face whispers.
I spin, my blade arcing to block a dagger that materialized in his hand. The impact reverberates through my bones. My darkblood magic pulses beneath my skin, begging for release, but I can't risk it—not here. Blythe warned me that The Infinite Challenge drains magical reserves faster than physical strength. Twenty-four hours of survival means rationing every shadow I can summon.
Steel against steel. Duck. Parry. Thrust. My muscles feel like they’re burning with Dayn's borrowed power as I match their unnatural strength. My silver-tipped blade would make this easier, especially against Connor's half-wolf form, but my hands still hesitate. My mind knows these are constructs, but my heart flinches at Connor's familiar grin, at Isander's eyes that oncewatched over me at Heathborne. Each strike feels like severing a memory.
But I have no choice. I find an opening. As Connor lunges again, I drop low, sweeping his legs out from under him. Before he can recover, my blade is at his throat. The empty silver eyes stare up at me, the fake grin weirdly plastered on his wolfish face.
“Do it,” he growls.
I grit my teeth as I drive the sword home, a scream building in my throat that I refuse to release. There is no sound, no gush of blood. His form just... dissolves into shimmering dust that settles on the forest floor, clinging to my trembling hands. I don't have time to grieve, but grief takes me anyway—a violent, crushing wave.
Isander is on me next, his face a mask of cold fury, wearing features I once trusted with my life. I meet his attack head-on, my grief fueling a desperate, cold rage that burns away everything but the need to survive. Our blades clash in a furious dance, each impact jarring memories of training together, of his annoyingly alluring smiles. I disarm him, his dagger flying into the darkness, and for a heartbeat, I see recognition flicker in those empty eyes. My blade flashes in the moonlight as I drive it through his heart, then wrench upward in a fluid motion, severing his head from his shoulders. He crumbles into a cloud of silent, pale particles that scatter across the forest floor like dust.
The silence returns, heavier than before. I stand panting, my body screaming with exertion, my soul feeling like it's been scoured raw. I wipe my eyes with the back of a hand, tasting salt and copper on my lips. “I'm sorry,” I whisper to the dust that was once my friends, knowing they can't hear me, even knowing they were never real.
I force myself to move, to push deeper into the dead woods. I have to keep going.
I walk for what feels like an hour, the scenery never changing. The same black trees, the same damp earth. It’s a loop. A cage. Then I hear it again.
A twig snaps.
