But he turned away. His jaw locked. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
Something caved in my chest.
Ungrateful bastard. He survived the last trial because of me—because I forced him to eat when he would have rather starved, because I tore what he could not. And now he looked at me like I was the monster.
Severen lifted his fist, bones clinking softly. His grin tore his mouth wide, teeth the color of old parchment.
“Begin,” he roared.
The gates screamed open.
A lion burst through—skin stretched thin over ribs, mane stiff with dried blood. Its roar shook dust from the ceiling. Behind it came a tiger, heavier, striped in filth and scars. The two circled, growls twisting together into one long, starving cry.
Severen drifted backward into the dark. His form broke apart like smoke, but his presence stayed—cold, coiled, waiting.
Then the world fractured.
Men screamed.
The lion’s roar drowned them all. Blood hit the walls in hot sprays. Rusted blades clanged. A skull cracked under a club. The air thickened with iron and fear until it burned to breathe.
A shard of metal caught the torchlight—a broken blade, half-buried in the dirt. I lunged, knees striking stone, hand outstretched?—
And another prisoner snatched it first.
“No!”
The word tore from my throat, half snarl, half roar. Fury ignited through me like oil to flame. I caught his wrist, wrenched it back, and drove his arm hard across my knee.
The bone snapped with a sound that silenced everything else. His scream split the air, sharp and animal. The blade slipped from his grasp, clattering to the floor, already wet with his blood before it had ever met a beast.
My fingers closed around the hilt.
And for the first time in days, I smiled.
Across the chamber, Lazarus gripped a rusted spear. His jaw was set, eyes locked on the lion in front of him—a starving creature, ribs jutting beneath its hide, foam hanging from its jaws.
The beast lunged.
Lazarus met it head-on. The spear struck true, plunging deep into its eye. The lion’s scream was not a sound made for mortal ears—it rattled the torches, shook dust from the ceiling. It clawed the air blindly, desperate to tear him apart.
Before I could think, I was beside him. My blade flashed once, splitting the air, tearing through the soft flesh of its throat while he forced the spear deeper. Together, we brought it down.
The lion thrashed once, twice—then stilled. Blood spread thick beneath it, soaking into the dirt, creeping toward our feet. We stood over it, panting, our faces lit red by the torches.
And in that flicker of silence, something twisted in me—something dark and hungry that liked the way it felt.
The iron gates groaned again.
From the shadows came the scrape of claws, the guttural snarl of new hunger. Wolves slunk forward—mangy, wild-eyed, froth dripping from their jaws. Behind them, another tiger prowled into the light, ribs sharp beneath its striped hide, its breath steaming in the cold.
They came for us—not out of need, but for the pleasure of the kill.
The chamber pulsed with blood and noise.
Lazarus and I moved as one—shadows stitched together by instinct and history. For a fleeting breath, it felt like the old days, before betrayal had leeched through the seams of our bond. The rhythm returned to us as if the world itself had paused to watch. His strikes, my follow-throughs. His breath, my echo. Survival sang in our veins, a hymn forged from hunger and despair.
Around us, the prison howled.
