My pulse thunders in my ears. I press my shaking hand to the wall, the stone now unyielding and cold beneath my fingers, like it’s mocking me. The silence that follows is suffocating, broken only by my ragged breathing. I hold my aura higher, its dim glow barely cutting through the shadows. The sealed wall looks smooth, seamless—like the entrance never existed at all.
“No,” I whisper, my voice trembling, teetering on the edge of desperation. Memories claw at the edges of my mind—glimpses of the shadowy cells beneath the Aviary, of punishments no child should ever endure. I shove them away, forcing myself to take a deep, steadying breath. “There has to be a way out.”
My fingers tremble as I search the surface in front of me, scraping against the stone in a futile attempt to find a crack, a seam, an imperfection. Anything. My breaths come faster and more erratic, panic digging sharp claws into my ribs. The poison isn’t helping—it seems to constrict and writhe inside me, twisting my limbs into dead weight. My mind feels like it’s moving through sludge, slow and useless, while the faint nausea I’ve been holding at bay claws its way up my throat.
I close my eyes, drawing in another sharp breath through my nose—even when it feels like my lungs are fighting me for every fragment of air.
Palm on the left wall.
Although the effort feels futile, I place my hand on the rough, cold wall and begin tracing a slow circle around the space. As my hand glides along, the stone disappears beneath my palm. I freeze, blinking at the wall next to me. Tentatively, I reach out again, and a bitter smirk twists my lips as my hand disappears through the stone.
I take a step back and raise the aura, casting light higher on the tunnel walls. A thrill runs through me as I spot the carved mark in the rock face, but it’s chased away by confusion.
The mark looks likegoiteía,but also not any I know. Similar to the ones engraved into Keres’s sealed door and the hallway in the servants’ quarters. I narrow, peering closer at the mark, and my eyes widen.
Not just similar—it’s identical to one of the marks from the hallway: a pointed oval split by a jagged line.
The thought is pushed aside as a dull ache blooms at the base of my skull, spreading slowly as the poison works through me. My heart thrums heavily against my ribs, its rhythm echoing in my ears. One hour. Maybe less. I calculate again, counting the moments since the wine passed my lips. The nightshade may not kill me outright, but it’s potent enough to twist the rules of survival, carving away my margin for error.
Failure isn’t an option—every second wasted will cost me more than just this trial.
I force my breathing to steady and press my fingers tighter against the small glow of my aura.
“Come on, Aella. Move forward. Keep moving forward.”
Steeling myself, I take a breath and walk through the false stone.
The sudden burst of lightis so intense, it nearly blinds me.
My vision tilts wildly as a mosaic of color on the ground shifts into a dizzying dance of vibrant hues, a whirl of crimson, azure, and alabaster. I stumble, and a faint crunching sound reverberates. My hand slams against the wall to keep me upright, and I take a stumbling step back as I clutch my aura like it’s the only thread tethering me to sanity.
I blink rapidly, hoping to clear my sight, but the vision before me remains unchanged.
Shafts of golden light pour down from above, illuminating sections of a mosaic floor that stretches the length of the tunnel. At the far end, a door stands waiting, its presence inviting me forward with the hope of escape.
The intricate tiles gleam with shapes and patterns—birds and flowers and beasts. But my gaze snags on the fracture lines spiderwebbing through a section to my left. My stomach lurches as a chunk of the floor crumbles into black nothingness.
My thoughts spiral, frantic and unfocused, colliding like shards of a shattered floor. The crunching sound I’d heard lingers in my mind—tiles breaking underfoot? The ground beneath me now feels steady, the mosaic solid under the soles of my boots. I glance down, forcing myself to focus. A pool of golden light encases me, spilling across the floor and highlighting the slab of untouched tiles beneath my feet.
I survey the space once more, my attention drawn to the patches oftiled floor illuminated by the overhead light. I pause, my eyes narrowing as I study the pattern. It’s far too intentional to be mere coincidence—each pool of light positioned with precision.
A pathway.
My pulse quickens, but I focus on the patches of light. It’s a fragile promise of safety, one I cling to as I move forward. The nausea swells as I step onto the first patch of light-touched tiles. I pause, standing as still as possible as I wait, expecting to drop to my defeat any moment now.
The ground beneath me holds.
My throat is dry and burning when I croak, “Okay, move. Don’t stop.”
I navigate cautiously from one patch of light to the next, each step demanding a slightly longer stride. As I progress, the distance stretches to the point where I’m nearly forced to leap. Approaching the end of the tunnel, I make my next jump just as the golden light flickers. I land clumsily, my balance faltering as I teeter to the right before regaining my footing.
Another section falls away ahead. I force my legs to move again, leaping to a tile marked with an oak leaf. My vision doubles just before I land, and for a sickening moment, I think I’ve miscalculated. My boots scrape against the edge, the tile groaning ominously beneath my weight, but it holds. Barely.
Somewhere in the distance, a faint rhythmic sound stirs—irregular and soft, like the trailing of boots dragging lightly across stone. My chest tightens, and I whip my head back toward the stretch of pathway behind me. The spaces between illuminated tiles remain empty, the gaps wide open to the abyss below.
I shake my head. It must be my own movements echoing wrong, refracting off the walls of this cursed place. Still, the sound lingers longer than it should. Tighter than a figment of my imagination. The pit of my stomach churns with something half formed, uneasy.
I force myself to focus on the illuminated path and its intricate, golden rules. Whatever waits back there, real or not, time is already winning my fight.
