Lis closes her eyes. “Shadow Domain. Level Eight.”
Both Moe and I freeze. I don’t knowhowshe knows, but that’s not important now.
“Level Eight?” I echo.
“Shadow domain, too?” Moe’s voice is filled with worry.
Lis continues. “You should be around a level five. Not yet six, that would have come with a qualitative change and you would have felt it.”
“How can I defeat someone three levels above me?” I ask, suddenly petrified.
“Nyk…” Moe whispers, grabbing onto my sleeve.
“Remember your training,” Lis states. “And don’t die. The way will manifest itself.”
I want to ask her to be less vague, to tell me precise ways in which I can fight this warrior. But before I can do so, the world shifts.
Reality fractures into crimson shards and black static. Moe, Lis and everyone who remained in audience are pulled aside behind the invisible barrier as the arena builds itself from the ground up.
Stone rises around me in towering arches and shattered columns. A vast cathedral takes shape beneath a blood-red sky.
Broken stained glass hangs in jagged remnants from windows high above, casting fractured strips of crimson and violet over the floor below.
Moonlight—or whatever passes for it in this cursed realm—spills through the gaps in pale shafts, carving islands of illumination amid an ocean of shadow.
The floor is cracked black marble slick with something old and dark, and every towering pillar throws long, uneven shadows in every direction.
A shadow wielder’s paradise.
My stomach sinks.
Across the nave, perhaps forty feet away, my opponent stands with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, as though he is welcoming me in his own abode.
He is tall, broad through the shoulders, dressed in fitted black armor that gleams dully beneath the fractured light. His hair is the color of wet ink, cropped close at the sides and longer on top. His face bears the sort of sharp, clean symmetry usually reserved for nobility or predators. There is no tension in him or anticipation. There is no sign that he views this as anything but a tedious obligation.
His eyes slide over me once then makes a tsk sound.
“Well,” he says, his voice carrying easily through the cathedral. “That is disappointing.”
I grit my teeth “You expected someone else?”
“I expected more.” His gaze drifts over my frame in naked dismissal. “This is the anomaly they’re whispering about? The one climbing too quickly?”
Once more, he mentions theanomalyand it makes me wonder if other warriors talk about me, if they whisper about my abilities or my prowess andhowthey do it. Do they actually respect me and find me worthy as an adversary, or do they…mock me as seems to be the case with the male in front of me.
He tilts his head to the side.
“Either the system is malfunctioning,” he muses, “or standards have fallen catastrophically.”
Rage flares hot in my chest.
“Enough talking,” I say as I attack.
A shadow explodes from beneath my feet and races up my arm, hardening into a jagged blade as I close the distance in a heartbeat and slash straight for his throat.
He does not move—at least not until the very last second. His white teeth gleam in a blinding light just before he shifts to the side.
My blade cuts through empty air.
