For the fire, for Cassian, for everything.
Corvessa raised her palm, and a wave of ice roared toward me, thick as a wall. I slashed Valkaryn through it, shards breaking like glass. She followed with a whip of lightning that cracked so close my ears rang. I ducked, lunging close to her, so close, but she spun with inhuman speed, her blade biting a line across my shoulder.
Cold magic swirled around her in a cyclone, drawing the heat from my skin. My fingers began to stiffen on Valkaryn’s hilt. Corvessa flickedher hand again, and the moisture in the air froze solid, locking my boots to the ground in crystal shackles.
Valkaryn thrummed in my grip.
‘Get ready.’She told me.
Every muscle in my body tensed, and then a blanket of violet magic erupted from the blade, blasting through ice and air alike. Corvessa moved to block, but was too late. The purple light saturated her skin, and she froze in place, eyes wide but unable to move.
I rushed forward, not knowing how long this would hold.
“For the Dregs,” I whispered into her face and carved Valkaryn cleanly through her neck.
Her head hit the stone with a dull thud. Her body followed, folding in two pieces.
I looked up at the clock. One minute left.
“Kaelric!” I screamed, leaping over Corvessa’s corpse as the door behind her burst open. There was a narrow hallway with stairs ahead. I took them two at a time, breath tearing from my chest.
At the top, Kaelric stood bound on a stone column, darkness yawning below. I edged onto his platform, Valkaryn cutting through the ropes at his wrists and ankles. The magic bindings dissolved into smoke, leaving raw welts behind.
He ripped away his blindfold, then leapt, catching me and steadying us on the staircase’s edge.
The clock struck the hour as both stone columns vanished like sand in a strong wind.
To my left, Kirk’s wolfkin screamed as he fell into the abyss. Kirk’s roar followed, raw and broken down below in the labyrinth.
Kaelric’s grin split his face, causing my knees to go weak. “You did it, magicless human. You won the Arcane Trials.”
And with those words, the mountain awoke.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The mountain shuddered, a deep, resonant quake that rattled the air in my lungs. Light speared through the stone, blinding, searing, and for a heartbeat, I thought the world itself had split in two.
When the glare faded, I was no longer in the labyrinth.
I stood on an endless expanse of white marble, polished so smooth it mirrored the stars above. The sky was black and vast, constellations glittering in unfamiliar shapes, as though I had stepped beyond the world I knew.
At the center of the marble plain stood a man clad in ancient silver armor. His eyes burned faintly gold, like embers trapped in glass. When he spoke, his voicerolled through the air from every direction at once, carrying the weight of command.
“Champion,” he said, the word like a crown placed on my head. “You have earned your place among the Chosen.”
Chosen.The word curled through me, heady and serious.
He took a step forward, the sound of his boots ringing like a bell across the marble. “Few have survived the Arcane Trials. Fewer still have done so without the gift of magic in their veins. Yet you, magicless one, have triumphed.” His gaze held a kindness I wasn’t prepared for, a proudness. “Now you will be offered a power that will be written into your blood, passed to every child born of your line until the stars themselves fade.”
A warm wind rose from nowhere, wrapping around me. It wasn’t just air, it was raw magic, threaded with heat and cold, light and shadow. It slid under my skin, a strange, intoxicating hum that made my pulse stutter. I could feel what it promised: fire blooming at my fingertips, frost curling from my breath, storms bending to my will.
“With this gift,” he said, “you will never be helpless again. Men will kneel to your command. No enemy will survive your wrath. Your children will be born strong, and their children after them, until your name is legend.”
For a moment, the marble floor rippled like water, showing me visions: my family, clean and fed, no longer in rags; the Dregs rebuilt into a community vast and strong and shining; me standing at the heart of it, magic bursting from my hands like I’d been born to it.
All I had to do was take it.
The man stepped closer to me, and my chest tightened. His power was nearly overwhelming. The magic in the air pressed close, coaxing me to surrender.
