This was not a forest. It was a humiliation.
The "Haunted Forest" was just another, larger arena in the Crucible, a vast, domed-over cavern designed to impersonate a forest. The ceiling, a hundred feet up, was all black rock, but a sick, greenish light pulsed from clusters of glowing fungi on the walls. The air was thick, wet, and smelled of rotten leaves and something metallic, like old blood.
Professor Varrick hadn't even given us time to process. The moment he'd roared "Now," guards had prodded us, prodded us, like cattle, into the dark, wet tunnel.
And I was forced to walk next to her.
I kept three feet of space between us. It was not enough.
The Resonance, the feeling she had ignited in me, was no longer a distant, annoying pull. It was a constant, low-grade agony.
It was a thrum beneath my skin, a grinding in my teeth. It was a noise. My Aether, the pure, clean, orderly light inside me, was agitated. It was like living with a tuning fork striking the wrong note, over and over, vibrating in my very bones.
My magic was screaming at me from two different directions.
One half, the Animus, was trying to fix her. It saw her, her chaotic Anima, as a wound in the world. It wanted to surge forward, to pour into her, to fill her wrongness with light and order. It was a violent, invasive, pure instinct.
The other half was revulsion. The Anima in her was a black hole, a parasite. It felt like it was trying to siphon my Aether, to unravel my control, to feed on my light.
My magic was trying to attack her and flee from her at the exact same time.
And the result was this: a low, agonizing, physical sickness. A headache behind my eyes. A tightness in my chest. A constant, infuriating distraction.
She, of course, seemed oblivious, which only made it worse. She was walking with her shoulders hunched, her head on a swivel, her hand resting on the hilt of the cheap, ugly knife I saw strapped to her boot. She looked like the Dreg-rat she was, smelling danger in every shadow.
She had no idea that the real danger was the magical, agonizing war we were creating just by breathing the same air.
We emerged into a clearing, a circle of damp, black earth. The other pairs were fanning out, disappearing into the thick, unnatural mist that clung to the ground.
A voice, Varrick's, boomed from invisible grilles in the rock ceiling.
"The hunt is simple. This forest is home to... things. You are the hunters. But you are also the bait. Your trial ends when you bring me a trophy. Or when the things bring me you. The horn will sound in three minutes. Find a place to hide. Or a place to die. Your choice."
Three minutes.
I was trapped in a damp, artificial hell, shackled to a magical parasite, for three minutes.
She moved to the edge of the clearing, her back to me, and started scanning the trees. She was ignoring me, as if our pairing was a simple inconvenience, like bad weather.
The thrum in my skull spiked. The sheer arrogance of her, that she, the cause of this magical filth, was not even aware of it.
"Stop it," I said.
My voice was sharp. It cut through the damp air.
She froze, but she didn't turn. "Stop what? Breathing?"
"Stop... that," I snapped, gesturing at her. "The... noise. Your magic. It's... loud."
That made her turn. Her face was a mask of soot and confusion, which quickly hardened into her default expression: pure, animal hate. "I'm not doing anything, you prick. I'm trying to keep us from getting killed."
"You are existing," I seethd, taking a step toward her. The Resonance screamed, like two magnets being forced together, and I flinched, my stomach rolling. I stopped. "Just... stay."
I couldn't think. I couldn't focus. I couldn't weave. Not with this... this static she was creating.
I had to re-establish control. I was Caelen val-Valerius. I was order. This rat would not be the reason I failed.
"We have two minutes," I said, my voice dropping into the cold, level tone I used for commands. "Here are the rules for our... partnership."
She crossed her arms, a look of utter disbelief on her face.
"Rule one," I said, holding up a finger. "You will stay ten feet away from me at all times. Your proximity is... unpleasant."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Rule two. You will not speak to me. I do not require your insights, your opinions, or your Dregs-level commentary. I need to focus, and your voice is an irritant."
"You..." she started, her voice a low growl.
"Rule three," I said, speaking over her, "and this is the most important one. You will not, under any circumstances... touch me."
The memory of our collision in the hall, that agonizing, push-pull violation, made my skin crawl. "I will not have your filth on me."
I let the words hang in the air. I had laid the groundwork. I had created the order.
"I am here to win this trial," I said, the final, cold pronouncement. "Professor Varrick, in his... wisdom... has shackled me to you. But I will not let a parasite drag me down. I will pass this trial, Anya Rostova. I will succeed despite you."
I had stated the facts. I had set the boundaries. I felt, for the first time, a sliver of my control returning.
And then she laughed.
It was not a laugh. It was a short, sharp, ugly bark of pure, unadulterated rage.
Anya POV
He was... unbelievable.
I had been trying to ignore him. Trying to ignore the sick, dizzy feeling that was rolling in my stomach, the one that had started the second we were forced to walk side-by-side.
It was him. His magic. It was so... much. It was a pressure in the air, a bright, arrogant, perfect magic that made my own dark, chaotic Anima feel like it was a cornered animal. It was his fault. He was a walking headache, and he was so full of himself he couldn't even see it.
He was standing there, his face a perfect mask of cold, handsome disgust, laying down... rules.
Don't touch me. Don't speak. Stay away.
Like I was the problem. Like I was the filth.
"...I will succeed despite you."
That was it.
The rage, the Dregs-rage, the qualifier-rage, the rage from him calling me a gutter-rat in the hall, all of it just snapped.
He wasn't a partner. He wasn't even an ally. He was just another bully in a cleaner uniform.
"What did you say?" I whispered, my voice shaking.
"I said"
I didn't let him finish. I crossed the ten feet he'd demanded in two steps and did the one thing he'd forbidden.
I shoved him.
I put both my hands on his pristine, perfect, black-wool chest and shoved him.
"I don't need you to win!" I snarled, my face inches from his. "I don't need your help. I don't need your stupid, perfect magic. I've been surviving my whole life without you. You stay out of my way!"
Caelen POV
The second her hands, her small, calloused, filthy hands, made contact with my chest, the world ended.
It wasn't a push. It was an detonation.
The Resonance, the thrum, the static, it wasn't a noise anymore. It was a scream.
A white-hot, agonizing explosion of pure, colliding magic. My Aether surged, a violent tide of order, trying to incinerate the Anima she was pushing against me. Her Anima pulled, a void of pure chaos, trying to unravel the light.
It was a physical, agonizing bang.
It threw us both backward.
She flew back, landing hard on the damp earth.
I staggered, my Aether shield flaring to life instinctively, a jagged, cracked, uncontrolled thing. The collision had bypassed my mind, my control, and spoken directly to my magic.
The pain was... exquisite. It was a thousand needles of ice and fire, all over my skin.
I looked at her. She was on the ground, her eyes wide, gas-ping. She'd felt it too.
I am going to kill her.
The thought wasn't mine. It was my magic's. It was the pure, logical, instinct of my Aether. This chaos must be sterilized. This wound must be cauterized.
I raised my hand. A blade of Aether, the same jagged, unstable, furious blade from the Gauntlet, flickered into existence. It was screaming that high-pitched, tooth-rattling sound.
I was losing control.
And I did not care.
I took a step toward her. "You... shouldn't... have... touched... me."
Her eyes were wide with terror. She knew. She knew what was coming.
I raised the blade.
And a horn, a sound so loud and so deep it was not heard but felt, a groaning, bronze BWAAAAAAAAA, shook the very foundations of the mountain.
It shattered the blade. It shattered the moment.
It broke the spell.
My Aether recoiled, the blade dissolving. I was left breathing hard, my body shaking. I had... I had almost.
The horn sounded again, a mournful, terrible echo.
And then, from deep in the glowing, artificial forest, something screamed.
It was not a human scream. It was a high, thin, clicking sound, a chorus of a hundred hungry things.
The horn had not been for us.
It had been a dinner bell.
The hunt had begun.