Page 190 of The Blood Rites

“Impossible,” she says, but the voice is smaller.

She sounds afraid.

The expanse fractures and the Overseers scream. The noise is bright enough to hurt. Numbers crawl on every surface, black and red and gold, all of them counting: up, down, sideways, none of them aligning.

The walls of the world buckle inwards. XVII is scratched over and over again across the sky, the ground, even on my own hands.

The Mother Shard’s voice is everywhere now, inside and out, whispering and screaming at the same time.

“The count must resolve. True, true, true, tr—”

All of the voices join as one.

“SEVENTEEN.”

The world goes black. There is no sound.

But as the void begins to eat me alive, her voice comes again, alone, stripped of all its power.

“You remind me of someone,” she says again.

Then I am awake.

I wake flat on my stomach, ribs pressed into cold sand. There is no up. No down. For a second, I think I’m still in the dream. I blink and blink, but the darkness is absolute. My eyes ache with the effort of seeing nothing. Not black, not even a shade—just the total lack of anything.

I try to move, and the first thing I feel is the sand: gritty, wet, sticky with some kind of residue. There is salt beneath my nails and inside my nose. The world narrows to the crash and retreat of waves nearby, the rhythm slow and steady, at war with my own heartbeat. The air is sharp, slicing at my lungs with every shallow breath.

My hands are outstretched, palms down in the grit. I arch my back and my shirt clings to me with saltwater and sweat.

I turn my face up, and through the darkness the death counter burns high above, suspended like a coin flipped but never caught. It is the only light in the world, gold and unwavering, yet it casts none. It’s just there. The number is fourteen.

I lie there for a long time, cataloguing the world. The cold sand. The nearby ocean. The nothingness of the void. Every sound echoes in my skull, as though I’m in a cave, or a box. The air hums—not a sound, but a vibration trapped in the walls of the world. The Mother Shard is listening.

I push myself upright, careful and silent, and nothing changes. The dark does not recede. I wave my hands in front of my nose and see nothing. I could be blind, or the world could be gone. Maybe both are true.

I reach for my Mana—out of fear, or newfound habit—and the light bubbles up, ready to answer. But I force it down. The urge to make light is instinctive, animal, but I know there are enemies in the dark, and the death that follows will not be kind.

The silence between the crash of the waves grows unbearable. I start to hear other things in it: a footstep, a click of teeth, the wet suck of movement somewhere behind me. I hold my breath and wait, body tight. Nothing moves. Maybe it’s in my head.

I decide to move anyway.

The cold bites through my legs until my feet go numb. The sand is uneven, ridged with the remnants of old waves. I keep the ocean to my right, a fixed line in the world. There is nothing else to orient myself by.

I shuffle forward with careful steps. Every shift of my weight feels deafening. I want to run, but I know better.

The death counter waits above, unblinking.

I keep walking, arms outstretched, fingertips feeling ahead for anything—rock, wall, the edge of the world. There is only more sand. Maybe the arena is endless. Maybe I’m the only one alive, and the darkness is my prize. A god could be that cruel.

I think about Kael. I hope he’s at home in the dark, that he’s already searching for me. But he might be hunting someone else. The thought makes me dizzy.

I don’t know how long I walk for, but my legs start to ache, and the world remains unchanged. The crash of the waves never gets closer or farther. It just is, and I am nowhere.

Then, far across the sand, a pinprick of orange. It’s so small that for a second, I think I’ve imagined it. But it’s there, a thread of fire, small as a candle, the only other living thing I’ve seen.

I freeze, my breath turning to stone in my chest.

The flame flickers once, twice. Then it vanishes. The silence rushes in, louder than the ocean, heavier than anything else.