The tingle in my hands, that sign that my powers were failing, rushed into my palms instead.
Dammit.
“Rykr,” I croaked out into the bond. The doorway to his mind was firmly shut, though. He couldn’t hear me, or he wasn’t letting me in. Gods knew why.
I was alone here—wherever the hell I was—and I was dying.
I struggled to my feet, the pain nearly unbearable. I needed to get my bearings, figure out what options I had, if any.
Heading toward the distant glow of light, I hunched over, keeping one arm tight against my wound. The only hope I had lay in the fact that they hadn’t killed me yet … at least not outright. But Seth had bragged about hitting me with a dragon’s blood bolt, which meant that death would be imminent.
Not yet, though.
Maybe Haldron wanted to torment me for a while longer.
But what had that glow in Seth’s eyes meant?
Seth wasn’t a skinwraith. And the vuk hadn’t been either—even though I had jumped to that conclusion after Giulia.
Which meant this had to be something else. Something I hadn’t considered.
My head ached so severely that it felt as though a spike had gone through my skull.
I appeared to be in some sort of narrow corridor chiseled out of stone. Each step toward the light made me wonder if this wasn’t all just part of Haldron’s plan—to lure me into something else. But what choice did I have? Curl up and die?
Another step took me past a doorway, and I trembled as I went past. The stone door groaned shut behind me, and the sound echoed through the narrow corridor like the final toll of a death knell. I flinched, not at the sound itself, but at the silence that followed—a stifling, unnatural stillness that pressed against my ears, my skin, my very bones.
I was alone.
The quivering torchlight ahead of me died with the closing of the doors, leaving only a dim, shifting glow from some unseen source—I could barely see.
I reached out toward the wall, using it to guide myself forward. It was slick with moisture, the rough surface veined with roots that pulsed faintly beneath the stone, like veins in a corpse. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of damp earth, moss … and blood.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, loud enough to drown out my thoughts. I forced a breath through clenched teeth, willing myself forward. I know what this is. The first of the Skorn trials. The Hall of Echoes. A place designed to strip you bare, to drag your deepest fears into the light and watch you bleed beneath their weight.
“You should have let him die.”
The voice slithered through the darkness, soft and cold, like frost creeping over glass. I froze mid-step, my pulse leaping into my throat. I turned, scanning the shadows behind me.
Nothing. Just the oppressive dark, the flicker of distant, failing light.
“You should have let him die.”
Closer this time, almost brushing against my ear. I spun again, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.
“Who’s there?” The sound was brittle in the vast, empty space.
Silence answered.
I forced my feet to move. The corridor narrowed as I pressed forward, the walls closing in until my shoulders nearly brushed the slick, pulsing stone. My fingers itched to reach for a weapon, but mine had been taken away. And this wasn’t a battle of blades. It was a battle of the soul.
“You can’t save them.”
I clenched my jaw, pushing the voice aside. It wasn’t real. None of this was real.
Up ahead, a faint glow became brighter, as though moonlight spilled through a window cut into the tunnel. Silvery, cold, and eerie.
Illuminating her.
