Dayn’s expression doesn’t waver, nor does his focus shift from me. If anything, it seems to sharpen, like he’s reading every micro-twitch of my body and translating it into a language only he understands. His fingers flex once against his biceps, a tiny motion, but my body somehow answers without permission, stomach tightening, breath shallowing.
I tear my gaze away, focusing on the glowing runes in the floor.
“We do not consider your presence required for this final round,” Blythe continues, gesturing around the empty chamber. “Nor is it appropriate. This trial requires more solitude; not even Esme’s mother or sister will be here.”
“I understand the protocol, Warden,” Dayn says, voice low, but I catch the edge of steel. “But I will sit as an observer. There is no time to discuss this so I suggest you don’t argue.”
Blythe’s mouth sets in a hard line. I can see the argument warring in her expression, but the truth of his words is undeniable. Our clock is down to zero. She gives a stiff, reluctant nod, the motion sharp with displeasure.
“Fine,” she snaps. “Sit if you must. But touch nothing, or I’ll bury you in this stone myself.”
She turns her full attention back to me, her face a mask of grim purpose. Then her hand is on my nape, firm but gentle, pushing me forward. She steers me to the edge of Merlin’s tomb—dark granite laced with veins that glint as if they’re breathing.
It seems darker now, hungrier, the carvings deeper, the granite radiating a palpable cold that seeps through my fatigues.
I feel Dayn’s gaze burning into my back as Blythe explains, “You will have no introduction or instructions for this final trial. You will simply need to survive it, without breaking.”
Survive. My stomach tightens. That’s all she gives me. She places her hands on my shoulders and guides me down until my knees meet the cold, unforgiving floor. I kneel before the sarcophagus.
“Close your eyes,” Blythe commands from behind me.
I obey, plunging my world into darkness. The sounds of the chamber amplify—the faint drip of water somewhere in the stone, the whisper of Blythe’s robes, the steady, unnerving quiet of the dragon watching me. I feel Blythe’s fingers, cool and dry, press against my temples.
“Your coven is with you,” she murmurs, and her voice becomes distant, like it’s coming from the other side of a long tunnel. “The ancestors watch over you. Do not fail them.”
Her thumbs press harder. A strange, tingling numbness begins at the points of contact, a cold that isn't cold, spreading inward. It snakes through the bones of my skull, down my spine, a chilling wave that dissolves thought, erases sensation. The ground beneath my knees feels like it’s turning to sand. The air thins, the scent of stone and magic fading into a sterile nothingness. My body feels impossibly heavy, then weightless: a pendulum swinging between worlds.
Then I’m falling.
Not down… but inward. The feeling is of being turned inside out, every memory, every secret, every scar exposed to an invisible, knowing light. There is no ground, no sky, only a silent, gray expanse that feels like everything has been put on pause.
This isn’t a construct like the others. There are no forests, crumbling cities, or obsidian plains.
There is only me, and a single, towering bookshelf that stretches into the gray nothingness above and below. It is madeof dark, polished wood, and instead of books, it is filled with… moments. I see them glittering behind thin panes of glass: my first successful blood-sigil, a trembling pattern of a bird drawn from a single drop of my blood; my mother’s hand brushing hair from my face; Jax laughing so hard he snorts soup… my father teaching me to hold a dagger when I was nine, his calloused hands adjusting my small fingers on the hilt, his smile proud and cautious at once. The time I broke my arm falling from the academy’s eastern wall. The day I received my first mission scroll. My life, curated and displayed.
A chill seeps into the gray void, a familiar cold that reminds me of grave dirt and judgment. Then Esther is standing before me, her spectral form more solid here than I have ever seen it. But her eyes are on the shelf rather than on me.
“Disappointing,” she says, her voice echoing in the non-space. She gestures to several of the panes of glass. “So much potential, but still unfulfilled.”
“Why are you here?” I breathe.
“To do what I have always done, child: guide you toward survival. Both yours and our kind’s. Now, I’m here to help you cross this final line.”
“What line?” I ask, my voice thin in the oppressive silence. “What is this place?”
“This is the crucible,” Esther says, her gaze sweeping over the glittering memories. “The final filter. An Ide is not summoned by strength alone. It is summoned by sacrifice. By the willingness to burn away the parts of you that are weak.”
Her spectral hand lifts, pointing to a memory of me at six, crying over a dead bird I'd tried to heal. “This,” she says, her voice laced with calm. “Emotion that offers nothing in return. A drain, a liability.”
The glass pane glows with a sickly light. I feel a tug deep inmy gut, a phantom ache as if that piece of me is being pulled taut.
“To invite the power that awaits, you must be pure purpose,” she continues, her eyes cold as winter stone. “You must offer the Ide a conduit untainted by regret or love. You must choose what to cut away.”
My blood runs colder. This isn't a test of combat where I can dodge and parry, or a trial of endurance where I simply outlast pain. This is like… spiritual surgery. The precise excision of what makes me too human. And my dead, ruthless grandmother is here to hold the knife.
My gaze fixes on the memory of the bird. I remember the frantic beat of its tiny heart against my palm before it went still. The first time I understood that my magic couldn't fix everything. That some things just end.
My throat tightens. “If we did this, would I lose these memories forever?”
