Footsteps pounded down the corridor. The guards stopped their muttering.
I lifted my head, throat tight, dread scraping my ribs raw.
“They’re ready, Lord of Shadows,” one guard said. “They’ve been at it like rabid dogs.”
A low chuckle slithered out of the darkness, curling through the cracks in the stone like smoke.
“Excellent,” Severen hissed, savoring every syllable. “Let their brotherhood fester until it decays. The smell of betrayal always sweetens the blood. Now, let us begin.”
Lazarus turned his head slightly, his voice barely more than a growl.
“I will rise and win this trial.”
My lips twitched into a smile, but there was no strength behind it. “We’ll see about that.”
The words rang hollow in my mouth. Whatever confidence I once had was long gone, bled out somewhere between guilt and fear.
The smell reached me before he did—musky, reptilian, ancient. The air thickened with it until every breath tasted of scale and venom.
Snakes.
The thing I feared most.
Then Severen stepped into the chamber.
The greenish light warped around him, bending like it obeyed his shape. He stood taller than I remembered, his presence swelling until it filled every corner of the room. Shadows slithered across the floor, curling around his ankles like serpents eager to taste blood. The glow from the splintered walls carved his face into unnatural planes, as if he’d been sculpted from the same black stone that birthed this prison.
The guards flanked him, spears leveled, eyes bright with cruel anticipation.
“Welcome,” Severen said, his lips splitting into that crooked grin. His voice carried like smoke, curling and hissing through the damp air.
“Welcome to the Serpents’ Crucible.”
The air itself seemed to hiss the word.
“The rules are simple,” Severen said, his voice sliding off the stone like a chant. “The snakes will strike whoever lies. To win, you must kill every one of them”—his grin sharpened until it looked like a blade, black eyes flitting between us—“or kill each other. Only one of you will leave this pit alive; perhaps both of you will die.”
The shadows writhed in approval. Somewhere in the dark, scales rasped against stone.
Lazarus’ glare found me—cold, furious, unflinching. His look said one thing—if it came down to blood, he’d see that he lived.
And I knew the truth of it—if the serpents didn’t kill me, he would.
Then my mother’s voice threaded through my head—soft, urgent, impossibly fragile, and it split me open—“You must defeat the snakes together… do not let Severen win.”
For a heartbeat, I wavered.
The guards shoved us forward, and the archway took us in. The breath of the pit hit first—thick, reptilian, fetid—so close it clogged my throat. My bare feet slid on stone at the lip of the pit. Below, the glow pulsed like a festering heart. Serpents overlapped in a living tide, a mass of green and gold scales flashing, tongues tasting the light.
A sawed tree trunk lay across the chasm like a mockery of a bridge, one thin path to the far side, to the dark doorway and whatever false freedom it promised.
Severen stepped beside me, and the shadows at his feet uncoiled as if in greeting. He extended an arm toward the abyss with the theatrics of a butcher unveiling a new slab. “See that doorway? You win if you cross. Simple enough. Unless, of course…” His grin sliced wider, teeth catching the sick light. “…you fall.”
The snakes hissed, tasting the air, waiting.
My stomach dropped at the thought of falling, of being dragged down into a writhing mass, constricted, suffocated until the world was nothing but muscle and teeth. The skin along my arms rose into gooseflesh.
Severen leaned in close; his whisper brushed my ear. “Did I mention the venom?” he asked. “One bite and the visions begin—hallucinations that peel the mind. You won’t know what’s real. You won’t know whether the hand reaching for you belongs to a man… or to a serpent.”
