The screams changed.
What had been wild excitement turned raw. Frightened. Visceral.
Then came the blood.
It started all at once—soldiers in disguise drawing hidden shivs and blades, lunging into the crowd. One after another. Slashing. Stabbing. People fell, clutching wounds, screaming.
Panic rippled outward like fire.
“No!” I shouted, the word torn from my throat.
A wave of red surged through the chaos—Sentinels, cutting through the crowd with drawn blades. The screaming intensified.
From the opposite side, another tide rose—soldiers in royal blue, their armour catching the firelight.
The Shattered Crown.
Both forces were armed. Both were advancing.
And in the chaos, I caught flashes of silver-grey tunics weaving through the fray.
The Shades.
My heart dropped.
We were surrounded—and well and truly screwed.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“There she is!” someone shouted.
Screams broke the air like snapped wires. Steel rang out. The crowd turned to panic, and the arena erupted.
The air snapped.
One scream turned into twenty. Then a hundred.
The crowd erupted, bodies crashing into each other like waves slamming against cliffs. Panic had a sound—a guttural, all-consuming roar—and it swallowed the Pit whole.
A loud cracking sound filled the air as the rails holding back the spectators from the pit began to shatter and crack
Waves of bodies tumbled into the pit as the seat railings gave way, cracking like thunder.
I barely managed to throw myself clear—my shoulder slammed into the curved stone wall, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs.
Across the chaos, I saw Leo.
“Elle!” he shouted, his voice ragged—just before the panicking crowd surged between us, swallowing him whole.
I scrambled up, desperate, but I was already too late. A stampede had broken loose. Screaming bodies crashed into me from all sides—elbows, boots, panic. I was forced down, slammed to the ground.
My knees hit sand and bone.
I couldn’t move.
Crushed beneath the weight of the mob, I curled in on myself, hands locked over my head as chaos thundered above me.
And I screamed.
