I rise, adjusting to the precarious perch with ease. The maze unfurls before me, paths crisscrossing into a labyrinth of uncertainty.
Whatever clever retort I had dies on my lips. Instead, questions rise to the surface of my mind. “What is this place?”
His reply comes instantly. “The Sphere’s magic can transform any place in your realm into anything it wishes. This is most likely a common location, merely altered and currently veiled from the rest of the world.”
Mist sprawls in thick sheets, swallowing the northern edge, but not enough to obscure the massive oval shape of the space. I recognize it as the Tourey Arena, home to the monthly tournament horse and spear games.
From here, I can see where the southern paths remain clear, but for how long?
My eyes continue scanning the shrouded expanse, tracking every shift and flicker within the fog. And then I see it.
A hundred feet away, ice devours the wall’s surface, fangs of frost jutting outward in jagged spires. It creeps forward in slow, deliberate hunger, inching along the stone. Not toward me, but that could change in a breath.
The tops aren’t safe. Nothing is. And the longer we play this game of hiding our minds from each other, the longer it will take for me to find him. If at all.
“You know what?” I snap, dragging my focus away. “I don’t care what you know about me. You want honesty? Take it. Enjoy.”
I shove my mind wide open, reckless, desperate. I need to find him. Need to feel which way to go. If he must choke on my pain, then so be it.
“Now, open your mind, beastie,” I say, my voice cold steel. “Or die before I find you.”
Silence stretches, taut and excruciating. And then a shift. A crack in the walls between us. And I am the one choking. Drowning.
His agony slams into me like a storm-wracked tide. This is a different sort of pain, not in the way flesh wounds or broken bones ache.This pain has curled inside him for so long that it has reshaped him, carved him into the jagged, unyielding thing he is now.
I stagger, gasping. The weight of it is too much.
Kaelzar doesn’t block me out, not this time. He lets me feel it. All of it. And I wish, desperately, that he wouldn’t.
A thousand shattered moments snarl together in the dark of his mind—memories, regrets, shame. I glimpse them only in flashes, like reflections in broken glass.
His thoughts stutter on one in particular: a woman, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, bleeding out in his arms. Kaelzar’s tears fall onto her fading body, then the vision fractures again, kaleidoscopic, slipping through my grasp.
One memory of a promise made. Another of a future torn away. There’s the unbearable certainty that whatever he lost, he will never reclaim.
Then another sharp memory pushes forward. A wrinkled, weathered hand cups Kaelzar’s face. A voice, soft but unyielding, murmurs,“When evil seeks to break you, remember this?—”
Kaelzar’s fury slams through me, a violent surge that severs every image at once, as if by touching this memory, I had trespassed where I was never meant to go.
My breath shudders. I have no words for what I feel, no clever retort to throw at him. I don’t know if I want to push him away or pull him closer, just to lessen the terrible weight of his isolation.
The silence between us is no longer empty. It is filled with something neither of us has words for.
Why did he let me feelallof that? The thought isn’t meant for him, but he hears it anyway.
His answer comes, as if spoken through clenched teeth. “You wanted my mind open.”
My chest tightens. I hadn’t expected this. I was hoping for some advantageous knowledge, but I have no use for his grief.
I swallow hard and force myself to focus. The tether between us pulls me forward, steady and insistent, guiding me like an unseen thread through the maze.
I take a step. Then another. The more I follow it, the more confident I become. Until I’m running.
A mass of fire sweeps across the paths below, crackling like a living thing, but it doesn’t reach the tops of the walls.
A scream slices through the air, sharp and fleeting, but I don’t dwell on it. Those are my competition, I remind myself. I don’t need to worry about their survival. I can barely cling to my own.
The center of the maze is near. That’s where Kaelzar must be. Predictable. Godbeasts in the middle, Champions forced to fight their way inward. I ready myself to sprint the last stretch when a wave of water crashes against the wall, sweeping my feet out from beneath me, knocking me off the wall.
