Page 94 of On Brutal Thrones

Their names disappear into the white, swallowed so completely that I might as well not have spoken at all.

I keep walking, arms out in front of me, the mist curling around my neck and brushing over my cheeks like cold fingers. I wouldn’t call myself claustrophobic, but I feel it now. A sort of terror that snakes its way down my throat and settles like a parasite in my stomach.

What if they’re hurt? What if one of them wandered too close to the mountain’s edge and couldn’t see the drop? What if I’m walking farther away from them with every step?

I stop.

For one horrible moment, I have absolutely no idea what to do. Turn around? Keep going? Call for them again? I can’t even tell which direction I came from. There are no footprints, no trees, no rocks, nothing but white in every direction.

“Thorian!” I scream.

Still nothing.

My breath catches, and I press a trembling hand to my mouth. All I want to do is sit down and cry. But I won’t. All this time, I’ve wanted to slow down. To cry and wail and kick my feet over the unfairness of this entire situation. But I haven’t had the luxury before, and I certainly don’t have it now.

We’re so close to the end.

I have to make it through.

So I keep walking, feeling foolish with my hands stretched out in front of me. Every few steps, I call one of their names. Every time there’s no answer, the pressure in my chest gets a little worse.

After a while, another feeling creeps over my skin. Unease. I reach for my dagger without thinking, pulling it free of its sheath.

There was a time in my life when such an instinct would have been as foreign to me as hurting another person. Now, the weapon feels reassuring in my hand.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Eventually, I stop shouting. If the others haven’t heard me by now, continuing to scream their names might only draw something else to me. The thought makes the silence worse.

Now I hear everything. My own ragged breathing. The soft scuff of my boots against the ground. The faint whisper of mist moving around me.

Every time a shape forms in the white, I jump, clutching my dagger so tightly the hilt digs painfully into my palm. But every shape disappears again. A shadow. A trick of the mist. Nothing.

Then, without warning, I sense a shift. Like a door opening, the world in front of me changes.

I freeze.

The mist still clings to my skin and crowds behind me, but ahead, it pulls away in a wide corridor, revealing water. A lot of water.

I stare, trying to understand what I’m looking at. An ocean? A lake? I can’t tell. It stretches so far that I can’t see the opposite shore, only a pale horizon where water disappears into mist.

My first instinct is to back away.

Instead, I stand there.

Watching.

The mist curls around my ankles, twisting higher along my legs, almost nudging me forward. I glance behind me, but there’s nothing there. No path. No sign of the men. Only that endless wall of white.

Of course.

That’s the thing about the Trials. They have a way of herding you exactly where they want you to go, and this seems like where they want me to go.

It feels like a lifetime ago, but I remember Thorian explaining it to me. Why we had to keep moving. How every challenge would force us toward the Obsidian Spire whether we understood what the gods wanted from us or not.

Apparently, they want me at this lake.

Alone.