Page 140 of House Ignis

Asher was already waiting in our assigned quadrant, his silhouette cutting a sharp line against the mist.

And as much as I hated to admit it? A dark, traitorous part of me was glad I was paired with him. Because if we both made it to the end—after all the silence, the shadows, and the mess he'd made of my head—I wanted to be the one to beat his smug, broody, arrogant ass into the sand. With fire. And a very wide smile.

We watched pair after pair take on the maze.

This round was brutal, a battlefield of constantly shifting platforms, elemental traps firing from enchanted walls, and unpredictable terrain that forced you to move, think, and strike without a second's pause.

Darcy and Sera were paired together, and gods, they held their own. They were smooth and tactical, moving like shadows to flank their Umbra opponents with synchronized bursts of darkness.

It wasn't flashy, but it was clean. Controlled.

Ember and Ezra, however, fought like chaos incarnate. Ember tossed fire like it was confetti while Ezra moved behind her with shadow blades and quick shields. Somehow, it worked.

They bickered the entire time, of course, but they pushed their opponents—two Ventus twins with matching daggers and tempers—straight to the edge. Apparently, mutual irritation did wonders for magical compatibility.

Mavrik and Rhea obliterated their match. Mavrik's water arcs moved in perfect synchrony with Leviathan, his massive dark-winged water dragon, making them almost untouchable.

Rhea's precision with Vesper, her viper, sealed every gap they left. Their opponents barely knew what hit them.

Then there was Maddy—thank the gods she'd been paired with Zaria. Calm and precise, the two of them worked like a tide and a fortress. Zaria sent controlled waves to disarm their enemies. while Maddy used high-precision gusts to knock them off their footing.

Their opponents—a fire wielder named Kaelen Voss and a water wielder named Lira Solen—couldn't keep up with the coordination.

And then it was our turn.

"Asher Maddox and Ava Pyreson," Theron barked.

I exhaled slowly and stepped onto the platform beside him. Our opponents waited at the far end of the shifting sand. Asher rolled his shoulders, shadows already slipping beneath his boots like spilled ink.

"You ready, darling?" he murmured, that signature grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Gods. He was impossible. Hot and cold. Grinning one second, unreadable the next.

It drove me absolutely insane, especially with the memory of last night still lodged firmly in my head. But I lifted my chin, summoned fire to my palms, and met his smirk with a jagged one of my own.

"Born ready."

The battlefield shifted beneath our feet—stone platforms grinding upward from the arena floor, floating in uneven rows above the sand. Some spun slowly while others hissed with active runes. Jets of steam burst randomly from cracks between the stones. This was the Pit: no steady ground, no mercy.

Tyric Dorn stood across from us, tall and thick-shouldered, beside him was his boundling—a massive obsidian badger with spiked fur and glowing yellow eyes.

A walking mountain of earth and muscle. Beside him stood Naelle Virel, a sleek water-wielder from Tideris with deep blue skin and sea-glass hair. Her hands were already glowing with swirling mist, and her boundling—a silver-scaled stingray—floated behind her like a ghost in the water.

I stepped onto the first platform, Aether padding beside me.

The moment my boot hit stone, he launched from the waiting zone in a graceful leap, landing with a low, predatory growl.

His fur bristled as his muscles coiled for the strike. Zya materialized beside Asher, elegant and lethal. Shadows coiled around her paws like ribbons. She didn't growl. She just moved, focused and eerily quiet.

The signal rune flared crimson in the air.

GO.

Naelle struck first. Water lashed out in lethal, pressurized ribbons as her stingray, Neria, whirled ahead of her like a spinning saw blade. High-pressure whips slashed across the battlefield, aimed to knock us clean off our perches.

"Aether—left!" I shouted through the bond.

He pivoted instantly, intercepting the strike with a powerful, bounding leap. No one in the stands heard our coordination, but the four-way link between me, Asher, Zya, and Aether pulsed like wildfire.