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I reached for the chalice, the dark liquid inside shifting, restless, waiting. My fingers twitched.

“Arabella , stop .” Dorian’s voice cracked against the silence. I stiffened. My grip tightened around the Lumen as I turned just enough to see him. His shoulders heaved, eyes raw with fear.

“Don’t do this.” His voice was hoarse. “It’s a gamble. Someone like you, something like you... You might not wake up .” His words hit something fragile in me. Something like me.

Dorian didn’t know what I was about to do, but he was right. I wasn’t ready. Not really. I was terrified. But there was no other way now, not if I wanted to save them.

The High King smiled faintly. “Don’t listen to him,” he coaxed. “He’s only afraid of what you might become.”

A sob broke from the corner of the dais. Ruby was shaking, her hands fisted into the folds of her dress, panic still etched into the tracks on her cheeks. I swallowed against the lump in my throat and turned back toward the altar.

“A good girl,” the High King murmured, “come to pay off her mother’s debts. All it takes is a sip to start the process. To mark yourself as Fallen. ”

I resisted the scream that clawed its way up my throat, the string of profanity I wanted to aim straight for him.

Dante was watching me too, his face locked so cleanly into an expression of disinterest. I hoped, at the very least, that if the Rift severed souls it might sever us, too. Saints, I hoped it could.

The High King tilted his head. “Are you ready to drink, Arabella?”

The plan felt like an impossibly far reach. But I was an impossible thing. Why couldn’t this be, too? I had barely put the pieces together before acting, barely let the thought settle before my hope clung to it like a desperate prayer. It was the only chance I had, the only chance any of us had.

If I was right, and my death freed the Archangels, the ceremony would end.

No one would be forced to take the Rift.

The cards were already soaked in my blood.

If death had sealed them, perhaps death could set them free.

I had to play this role carefully. I had to be perfect.

I had to act like my life depended on it.

“Yes.” I looked the High King in the eyes, and nodded. If only I could confirm my blood was on the cards, still. “I’m ready.”

Think, Arabella. I forced a violent cough from my lungs, letting my knees buckle. I’d gotten into LADA. Magic eluded me. So did sparring. But acting? That, I could do.

The King’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Nerves?”

I coughed again, forcing it deeper, my hand flying to my chest as I stumbled slightly against the platform. “Just give me a moment.” I bowed against the table holding the cards, hoping to catch a closer look at them.

“Arabella?” The king asked. The cards looked normal. A little frayed, browning at the edges, but clean. Horrifyingly clean. My nails bit into my palms. It did nothing to quiet the chaos unraveling inside me.

My mind raced, spiraling through every possibility, every miscalculation. If the deck really held my blood, then the Fall would break it. If it didn’t, I’d die for nothing. But either way, I had made my choice.

I looked up into the crowd, the hundred or so students waiting to die.

Then to Verrine. Then the High King. There was no gloating smirk, no glimmer of triumph in his expression.

He did not press forward, did not urge me along.

He only observed, patient, as though he had all the time in the world to watch me break.

He thought he had already won. Maybe he had. I swallowed hard, forcing down the rising tide of dread.

The Thread stirred, whispering through my bones. “Just one sip. It’ll be easy.”

Something broiled in my chest. Dante had known all of this from the beginning. He’d had every opportunity to finally tell me the truth, and again he’d lied. “You knew he killed my mother,” I hissed back, the chalice shaking in my grip. “Never touch me again.”

With shaking hands, I raised the chalice to my lips. The oil-slick liquid spilled onto my tongue, thick and bitter as rot. I drank greedily, forcing it down as it rose acrid up my throat.

“Arabella!” Verrine screamed, the sound of my name twisting. I’d drained the chalice. I spluttered, coughing as the room slowed, time dilating like a bubble around me.

For a moment, nothing happened. My hands trembled in anticipation. The walls pressed in, thick smoke seeping into my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

My knees gave out, the walls bleeding into shadow. I didn’t know what happened to someone who drank from the chalice like a graduate their first time. I just knew that a half-death, a mark, might not be enough.

The darkness had always hungered for me, and finally it had swallowed me whole.

There was no floor beneath me, no ceiling above, only an abyss without end. The air pressed in like a hand over my mouth, clawing for breath I could not give. Here, time did not crawl or stretch. It simply was , endless and unmoving, a prison without walls or bars.

I wasn’t descending. I felt no wind rushing past me, no sense of motion. Only the sickening pull of something vast and endless, dragging me somewhere time did not reach.

The darkness clung to me like tar, seeping into my skin, spilling down my throat. My limbs convulsed, my fingers reaching for something, anything, but there was nothing to grasp. No sound, no air, no reality. Just the weight of the Fall, unraveling me strand by strand.

I was dying. I knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat, the way my lungs screamed without oxygen. The Rift was supposed to be a passage, a transition, a choice, but this didn’t feel like that. It didn’t even feel peaceful, like Dante said it might. This felt endless.

I choked, my lungs seizing, burning like I had been plunged into ice-cold water. I couldn’t breathe. The pressure intensified, a relentless force pressing me inward, curling my body into itself, forcing the last scraps of air from my chest. I was being torn apart, severed into nothingness.

It might have been days. My vision swam, flickering with glimpses of something. I was sure I was hallucinating. A light.

It glowed like memory, so fragile and far away, like a promise I barely remembered making. Something long forgotten. Just there , above me.

I clawed for it with everything I had left, my lungs a vacuum.

But the weight of the darkness was too much.

It wrapped around my ankles, my wrists, my throat, dragging me further down.

I heard it whispering a name over and over, but I couldn’t be sure who it belonged to, anymore. It might have been mine, once.

My mother had tried to outrun this, and I couldn’t blame her. It was torture. She had tried to trade this all away. And now, here I was, paying the debt she could not. Facing the thing she could not.

The clever thing about the Rift was that although it stole breath, it also stole hurt. Worry. Pain. I let it take all of it, piece by piece. I didn’t want to remember, anymore.

A sob wrenched from my throat, though there was no sound, only the crushing dark swallowing me deeper. My body was breaking apart at the seams, my mind splintering like glass. I knew I was fading.

I let my mind unravel like a spool. The threads were slipping too far to ever catch again, but I let them go. The weight in my chest lessened with every tug, the space between heartbeats growing wider, the strength of them softer. I melted into the feeling.

It was so warm in the darkness, so plush. Who was I? What had I feared? If I could just stay here, forever… I would.

And I nearly did, until something pulled me back.