Eoman slowly pulled himself back from the ledge and dusted himself off. The wide, unhinged grin returned to his face, though his eyes remained fixated on the dark void where Nirro had just vanished.
"This harvest really brings a lot of surprises," Eoman commented idly, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of remorse.
Ryven didn't move. He stood completely rigid, his heavy jaw clenched so tightly that a muscle jumped in his cheek. His intense gaze shifted from the edge of the pit directly to Eoman.
For a fraction of a second, the heavy gravity surrounding Ryven spiked so violently that the gravel beneath his boots was crushed into fine dust.
The children moved back instantly. Jex quickly pulled Kealor and Sapphire away the moment the crushing weight lifted from them.
Ryven wanted to rip Eoman apart. But as his fingers twitched toward his blades, the cold, calculating restraint of a soldier took over. Ryven knew the rules of the game they were playing—and he knew that showing his fury now would only give Eoman more leverage.
As if confirming Ryven's caution, Eoman's eyes gleamed with anticipation, hunting for any sign of his rival's notoriously explosive rage.
With a low, dangerous exhale, Ryven turned his back on Eoman, his voice flat and frozen. "The light is hitting the tree line. The test is over."
Eoman pouted in response, clearly dissatisfied, but Ryven ignored him.
Deep below, the dark abyss was dead silent, save for the wet, rhythmic clicking of the swarm.
Kira's eyes fluttered open. Her body felt as though it had been shattered against the stone floor, a heavy, agonizing numbness spreading from her injured shoulder down her spine. She groaned, her vision swimming in the pitch black. Her hands scraped across gravel, but they didn't touch cold rock. They touched soft fabric. Warm, sticky liquid.
Her breath hitched. As her eyes adjusted to the dim bioluminescence, she saw Nirro lying motionless beside her. A deep gash crossed his forehead, thick, dark blood matting his hair. He had used his own body to shield her from the impact of the second fall. He was entirely unconscious.
Click-click-click.
The noise returned. From the shadows, a dozen pairs of jagged 'M' eyes locked onto Nirro's bleeding head. Three of the flesh-eating critters scrambled forward, their jaws snapping shut as they began to chew frantically on his defenseless arms and shoulders.
She forced herself up. She threw blind punches and desperate kicks, flinging the critters off him. One latched onto her leg, but she ignored the biting pain.
Another crawled up the wall behind them, sneaking toward Nirro's head. She threw herself in front of him, positioning her body as a shield. But the swarm was too large. For every creature she smashed against the wall, two more crawled from the cracks.
She was losing.
Something inside Kira fractured.
The agonizing throb of her wounds vanished, replaced by a suffocating weight that pressed directly down on her chest.
Her breath caught, hitching painfully as her eyes locked onto Nirro's bleeding, defenseless face. He was dying because of her. The crushing guilt of being a curse, the trauma of the fall, the absolute, terrifying realization of her own helplessness—it all rushed up her throat like ash. She couldn't fight them. She couldn't claw them away fast enough.
The air in her lungs felt like liquid lead, tightening around her throat until she couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't bear the agonizing pressure of her own existence.
It was too much to hold inside. She had to rip it out.
So she screamed.
She opened her mouth and let out everything she had left. To Kira, it was just the raw, terrified cry of a broken little girl—hoarse from blood loss, weeping, and utterly desperate. Her own voice rang so loudly in her ears that she was deaf to anything else.
But the moment her cry tore through the pit, something else woke up.
Deep within the darkest, uncharted crevices far below the cavern floor, a heavy, ancient sound exploded. It was the sound of groaning metal and massive, rusted chains rattling and dragging violently across stone, as if something gargantuan and long-imprisoned had just thrashed against its bonds in a blind rage.
The cavern walls popped and groaned under the sudden, violent vibration. Kira's desperate scream traveled up the chasm—but it was instantly drowned out by a low, guttural roar that shook the very foundations of the earth.
Above, already on their way back to their quarters from the edge of the training grounds, Sapphire and Kealor went pale as the ground trembled beneath their boots.
The other children froze in their tracks, clutching their heads as the terrifying sound echoed off the estate walls.
"What was that?!" Sapphire yelled, his hands clamped tightly over his ears.
Kira's faint scream had been barely audible from the depths, but this second sound—this monstrous, subterranean boom—felt like it detonated right under their feet. It was as if her desperate cry had violently awakened a beast sleeping beneath the estate itself.
Ryven's head snapped back toward the void, his hand instantly locking onto the hilt of his blade. His eyes darted to the rocky ground, tracking the ripples of the vibration.
Even Eoman finally stopped smiling. His unhinged grin vanished, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits as he stared past the wall of trees and into the shaking dark.
'Has it begun?' Eoman's thoughts raced, straining his senses to read the shifting air. 'Hmm. Not yet. Can't feel it. A little more probing from now on,' he concluded.
Deep below, the violent thrashing subsided. The sound of the chains began to ease into a slow, dull clink... clink... and then, dead silence.
Kira's strength vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Her vision blurred into solid black patches, her muscles turning to water. Crawling the final few inches, she wrapped her trembling arms around Nirro's shoulders, pulling his heavy, unconscious form close to her chest. She refused to let the dark take him.
With her face buried in his uniform and the echo of the chains fading into the background, Kira's world completely blacked out.