I charge, obscured from view and faster than the hellbeast can anticipate with my two magic blades. I swipe with Fleet—but the beast is quick. It dodges and all I can see is the shadow it cuts across the growing darkness, blacker than black; the crimson of its hellfire eyes…and the glint of its claws in the moonlight as it swipes at me.
Pain explodes in my side. I know as I slam into the groundthat I’ve broken something inside me. A metallic warmth coats my tongue. White spots bloom in my vision.
But there’s a fire in my veins, a light dancing beneath my skin. I’m filled with a euphoric rush of life energy, the knowledge that I have survived this long and I will survive again.
I will not be prey.
I spit out a mouthful of blood, hoist Healer into my palms, and push myself onto my feet. My sight has sharpened, and the sounds of the forest roar in my ears. Everything looks brighter, the leaves of the willows, the tips of the grasses, the roots of the trees all threaded through with gold.
I raise Fleet and turn to face the beast.
Except…there’s nothing there. Just a patch of empty shadows between the trees…and Number Five’s pale hand, limp on the ground.
The rush of adrenaline wanes. My vision and hearing dull. My crescent blades slip from my grasp, and my knees hit the ground.
That’s when a long, sonorous note reverberates across the temple grounds.
The gong.
The Third Trial is about to start.
—
“Candidates.”Jing’xiù’s voice rings across the grounds, carried by magic. It filters through my pain, reining my consciousness in to focus.“Welcome to the Third Trial, and by the dragons, do we have a show for you tonight.”
As he speaks, each star in the sky begins to glow. Light pours from them, streaming to coalesce like silver threads.
“The Temple of Dawn has been transformed: twelve battlegrounds, each denoted by a zodiac sign.”
My hand shakes as I take out Healer and activate the talisman with my spirit energy. Warmth rushes through me, and my pain begins to dull. I crane my head up and watch the starlight form distinct lines: a circle divided into twelve quadrants. Within each, the outline of an animal begins to take form.
“In a few moments, your golden bracelet will morph into a waist pendant showing a symbol that corresponds with one other candidate. Your task is to meet that candidate at your assigned battleground and steal their pendant. Once you win, your pendant will direct you to your next battleground. Your aim is to collect as many pendants as you can by the end of the trial.”
Healer’s talisman has cleared my mind to the point where I can think through the instructions. Bà used to keep a celestial sphere in his room, a way of timekeeping from the gods. I can see it now, the dusty old thing, with a dial whose shadow shifted with the course of the sun. Each animal of the zodiac represented a certain hour…as well as a direction.
Tonight, I see the celestial sphere carved into the stars.
My wrist warms as my golden bracelet unfurls and wraps around my waist like a ribbon. It solidifies, and a pendant hangs from my hip. I raise it to see a rat engraved on the surface.
Midnight Rat,I think,of True North.
That means my battleground should be deep within the Celestial Gardens. And I have an inkling of where exactly it’s going to lead. Straight north through to the back of the gardens is a set of cliffs overlooking the Silver Sea: a narrow and unpredictable body of water within the immortal realm, prone to great storms and whirlpools and said to beinhabited by mythological beings—dragon carp, sea serpents, and merfolk.
Pain lances through my ribs as I haul myself to my feet. I grip Healer harder, but the talisman on the blade borrows from my own spirit energy.
I’m in no state to fight, or even run.
But if I don’t try, I will be disqualified from the trials.
And I will lose Ma forever.
I grit my teeth. The starlight overhead dusts the Celestial Gardens in a ghostly sheen as I begin to hobble north. Each step is agony; several times, I pause to catch my breath. Even with Healer’s talisman dulling my pain, I can feel the full extent of it beginning to seep through the cracks. In the silence, I hear screams from the other battlegrounds.
The trees around me start to lighten. Between the leaves of the canopy, I make out the form of a rat in this quadrant of the celestial sphere. And beyond is the open night and the rush of ocean waves.
I’ve arrived.
I scope out my surroundings. No sight of my opponent, but in my current state, the only way I’ll stand a chance against them is to fight with stealth.
