Page 191 of The Blood Rites

Golden-red light spirals through the blackness, bright enough to hurt my eyes after so much time in the dark. It winds upwards, twisting before being absorbed into the death counter above. The number flickers: fourteen, then fifteen.

I know, without question, who is dead.

Serraith burned fast, agitated and manic by the end. He would have been the first to grow impatient in the dark. The first to try and set the world on fire, just to see if he could. But Kael is the predator here.

It’s almost comforting, but terror prickles at the back of my neck regardless.

Efficient. Brutal. No mercy, not anymore.

I stay still, breathing slow, waiting for the world to move.

Nothing comes for me.

But I know, as sure as anything, that somewhere in the dark, fire and shadow are searching for the light.

I move. Not because I want to, but because stillness in the dark feels too similar to death, only slower.

Every step is an act of faith that I don’t possess. The sand shifts underfoot, sometimes soft as flour, sometimes knotted with hidden ridges. I keep walking with the ocean on my right, a ghostly anchor to the world. The sound is everything: crash, hiss, repeat. It’s my compass and my clock. The rest of the arena offers nothing to measure by. For all I know, I could walk forever, circling the same patch of the shore, a moth with no flame to follow.

My hands sweep ahead, hoping to find obstacles before they find me. I listen, heart hammering so loud I’m sure it will give me away to the world. My feet make soft shuffling noises in the wet sand. I try to walk without sound, every muscle tensed.

I want to call out for Kael. The urge is so primal, it sits like a knife in my chest. But I clamp my jaw and bear it. He’s not the only thing out here in the dark.

I drift, losing track of time. The death counter becomes a measure—still fifteen, unchanged.

The air shifts, sharp and sour, the way it does before a storm. My skin prickles with it.

Then the world explodes.

Pillars of fire erupt from the sand—six, no, seven at once, in a patternless scatter of flame. The light is so sudden it burns the outline of everything into my eyes: jagged black rocks rising from the sand like broken teeth; foaming waves crashing against them, the spray gold in the burning light. The fires stretch into the sky, columns that snarl and spit, some lasting only seconds before snuffing out, the rest pouring upwards in slow-motion torrents.

I drop flat to the sand, covering my head as the heat scorches my back. My own shadow flashes sharp beneath me, and I flinch. For a second, I can see the entire arena—a beach of dark-grey sand surrounded by ocean, towers of black rock, wet and shining in the manmade daybreak. Then the fires begin to die and the world starts to recede back into the void.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. In the new silence, I hear footsteps.

Not mine.

Not Kael’s.

I don’t know how, but I know it’s not him.

They come from up ahead, where the pillars of fire were the brightest. Soft at first, then growing steadier.

A shadow moves across the sand—impossible, there is no light—but I feel the displacement, the way the world flexes to make room for him.

Atheron.

He steps into the dead spot where a column of fire just was. He’s calm and deliberate, hands clasped behind his back. The dying firelight catches the angles of his face, and for a moment, he looks less like a man and more like a statue made of orange glass.

He puts a finger to his lips and grins.

It’s a warning, or a threat, or maybe just a joke for his own amusement.

He isn’t here for me. Not really. He is here to draw out Kael.

He doesn’t look at me directly, but past me, to the blackness behind, as if Kael will materialise there any second.

We wait like that, a silent stand-off, the world frozen. I wonder if Kael is already here, watching, calculating.