This place was designed to break you.
It wasn't just the cold, or the stone, or the knife-sharp wind that howled through the corridors. It was the sameness.
Every hall was black marble. Every archway was a perfect, cold, white stone. Every staircase spiraled in the exact same way, leading to another hall that looked exactly like the one I'd just left. There were no signs. No guides. It was a fortress built as a maze, and I was the rat they'd just dropped into it.
I was late.
My first "Introductory Trial" was in ten minutes, in the Crucible, and I had no idea where the Crucible was. I'd followed a group of other rooks, but they'd turned a corner, and when I'd followed, they were gone.
They did that on purpose.
I gritted my teeth, my stomach twisting with a familiar, acidic mix of hunger and anger. Rhys's ration bar from last night was a distant, chalky memory.
"West wing, third sub-level, Hall of Arms," Rhys had stammered at me this morning before scurrying away.
What did any of that even mean?
I was in a hall. It looked like every other hall. I was lost. I was going to be late. And Varrick's "do not be late" had the ring of a man who would gleefully "remove" someone for it.
Fine.
I stopped trying to be smart and just picked a direction. I shoved open a heavy, black-wood door and descended a spiral stairwell, my boots echoing in the oppressive, absolute silence.
I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, my head down, already planning to run...
And I hit a wall.
A solid, unmoving... warm wall.
I slammed into it full-force, my shoulder cracking against what felt like a rod of iron. The air flew from my lungs. "Oof"...
But it wasn't a wall.
It was a person.
And the second my skin, my hand, my shoulder, the side of my face, made contact with the fine, black wool of his uniform, the world tilted.
A jolt. Not just a shock, like static, but a lurch.
It was the most horrifying, invasive, sickening feeling I had ever had.
My magic, the cold, empty void I kept chained in my gut, leaped inside me. It didn't feel like my power. It felt like a hungry, desperate animal, suddenly seeing... what? Food? No. Home.
It pulled.
A raw, physical, magnetic pull. It felt like a hook had been sunk into my stomach and was trying to rip my Anima right out of me.
At the exact same instant, an opposite force slammed into me. A power that was not mine. It was light, and heat, and order. It was Aether. Pure, bright, and so strong it was an arrogant force. It felt like it was trying to invade me, to rush into my void, to fill the emptiness.
It was a push and a pull. A violent, magical collision that happened in a single, agonizing second.
It was the worst thing I had ever felt.
My skin crawled. My stomach revolted. I felt dizzy, exposed, and filthy.
I recoiled, stumbling back, and shoved him as hard as I could. "Get out of my way!"
My voice was a raw, panicked growl. I was breathing hard, my body screaming violation, violation, violation.
He hadn't even budged.
Caelen (POV)
I was thinking about Lyras.
I was always thinking about Lyras. About his eyes, once so sharp and full of arrogant, older-brother humor, now... blank. Empty. The eyes of a perfect, obedient Hound.
My father believed his masterpiece was a secret. He thought no one knew that the "Grand Boon" was a lie. That the "prize" for winning this tournament wasn't a wish, but a magical, mental leash.
He thought I was his perfect, ambitious heir, desperate to win, just as Lyras had been.
I was his perfect heir. My posture was perfect. My Aether was controlled. My path through this world was as clean and straight as the lines of this castle.
I was walking down the West Corridor, heading toward the Crucible, my mind a fortress of perfect, cold control. I was tracing the steps I would take in the trial. I was analyzing the other competitors. I was...
A gnat.
A small, chaotic, filthy thing slammed into me.
I am the heir of House Valerius. My Aether is so finely controlled that I walk in a constant, invisible bubble of kinetic force. No one ever touches me.
This thing... this person... hit me with enough force to breach that barrier.
And the moment her skin touched my uniform, my world, my perfectly controlled, perfectly ordered world, shattered.
The pull.
It was her.
I hadn't felt it since the plaza. That cold, sucking void. That black hole that screamed wrongness.
But in the plaza, it had been a distant tug. This... this was contact.
The Anima in her, the raw, chaotic, unraveling magic, felt like a thousand tiny, greedy hooks, sinking into my skin, into my Aether, trying to pull it apart. To unmake me.
At the same time, my own magic, my Animus, rebelled. It didn't recoil. It surged. It was a tide of pure, solid light, a wave of absolute order that wanted to rush into her, to fill that void, to scour her clean, to fix the fundamental blasphemy that she was.
It was a push and a pull. My magic is trying to fix her; her magic is trying to break me.
The sensation was beyond pain. It was... revulsion. It was a violation so deep, so fundamental to my very being, that I wanted to purge my own body.
I stumbled, my perfect control broken, a gasp of pure disgust tearing from my throat.
She shoved me. Her. She shoved me. "Get out of my way!" she snarled.
I looked at her, truly looked at her for the first time.
And I felt... nothing. The control was back. The Aether-wall was back. The fortress was rebuilt.
She was just... a girl. A Dreg-rat, dressed in a rook's uniform that was two sizes too big. Her face was smudged with soot she'd probably had on for days, her hair a tangled, greasy mess, and her eyes... her eyes were wild, like a cornered animal.
I just felt tired. I was disgusted by the feeling, but I was just tired of her.
"Watch where you're going," I said. My voice was cold. It was the voice I used on servants. On lesser things.
I meticulously brushed off the shoulder of my uniform where she had touched me, as if trying to wipe away her filth.
She just glared at me, her fists clenched, breathing like she'd just run a mile. The hatred in her eyes was so raw, so common.
And that's when I recognized her.
The rage. The chaos. The un-making of the stone.
"You," I said, the word dripping with contempt. "You're the rat from the Qualifier. The one with the... trick."
She took a half-step back, her eyes narrowing. "I don't know who you are, and I don't care. I'm late."
She tried to push past me.
I didn't move. I simply was. A wall of black wool and cold Aether, barring her path.
I looked down at her. At the pointless, stupid, animal fury in her face. At the desperation. She had no idea what this place was. She had no idea what she was playing at. She was an ant, trying to fight a mountain.
"Go home," I said. It was not a suggestion. It was not a warning. It was a judgment.
"What did you say?" she hissed.
"Go home, gutter-rat," I said, my voice quiet, but carrying all the weight of my name. "You think you're a fighter. You're just... loud. You don't belong here. This place will eat you alive."
I stepped aside, a perfect, polite, and insulting dismissal.
She stood there, frozen, her entire body shaking with a rage that was, I had to admit, impressive in its sheer, uncontrolled scale.
I didn't wait to see what she would do. I had a trial to attend.
I turned my back on her, the greatest insult of all, and walked away, the sound of my clean, perfect, booted footsteps echoing on the marble.