Page 6 of The Faebound Trials (Mates and Madness: The Phantom Prince and The Bloodweaver #1)

Bloodweavers. With Fae?

There were no walls.

There were no glades.

I was standing in the middle. It was an open area without pillars supporting the place.

When I tipped my head to look above, a gigantic floating ceiling was fixed in the air.

It made me remember the ceiling of a colosseum I’d seen in Enara but it didn’t have pillars or walls.

It made me question the reality I had known.

“Name?”

So sick of hearing the same question without hearing the whole sentence made me want to bash my head against the ground.

Why do they keep asking just ‘name’?

I was mentally overwhelmed as I processed everything.

“Lowen Vespertine!”

I was shocked when I exploded like that.

Maybe because I was too exhausted keeping myself alive while suffering from the frozen barren land they had left me in. And when I opened my eyes, I was met with incredible heat.

Or maybe because the world was frustrating me with how people kept asking me of my name every single time since I had decided to steal someone’s destiny.

The frustration stemmed from lying through my teeth every single time of not being able to say my real name out loud.

Maybe it was the price of living someone else’s fate. Of stealing something that wasn’t meant to be mine.

Maybe this was punishment.

Can I really live like this?

Every time I’d say the name of the destiny’s owner, my chest contracts, heavy against my heart.

It gets suffocating and crushing, overwhelming and stifling. My mind gets blurry, clouding my better judgment.

I was beginning to hate this.

But you chose this. Too late to backout.

You’ve stolen his name. You’ve stolen his life.

I cursed under my breath.

“We got ourselves a new bloodweaver. A corrupted one. Get her to the curb.”

They grabbed me by the arm. I was too exhausted to fight back. To ask the question what he meant by that.

I let them drag me to wherever they felt like bringing me.

Was this another place like the Phyton Frosts?

“Am I gonna freeze to the brink of death again?”

“Close but no.”

I didn’t notice how dashing the guy holding my right arm was when he smiled. Too exhausted to even care about everything I just stared respectfully at the guy.

I giggled like a fool, my smile stretching widely in my face.

I don’t always see men with a stance as glorious as his or a smile as captivating as his, so might as well let him distract me from my reality.

I admired how his muscles flexed when they threw me to the Curb.

Reality drowned me the minute I was slammed to the floor. Disbelief washed over me.

My head almost cracked open until my elbows took the fall. The scrape would heal but the annoyance wouldn’t.

“You could’ve just dropped me nicely!”

Until I stopped when the Curb came to view.

The Curb was an open arena surrounded by heavy stone walls. Rows of seats descended steeply against the silver encrusted stone.

I flinched as I felt dizzy staring at the depth of the arena.

My eyes skimmed over a statue of a lion gilded with bones to a blindfolded woman holding a rusted spear in the air, her mouth wide open in victorious scream.

The smell of fresh air and smoke-riddled bones muddled my brain. But the wide elevated center made me stare.

Blue crystal-clear water surrounded the elevated center ground. It flows in a single direction, an infinite circle of hypnotizing sapphire blue.

My awe was cut short when a deafening roar of an explosion rippled through the ground.

Before I knew it, I was running.

I picked up my pace when suddenly balls of fire fell from nowhere. All I knew was that it emerged from the sky and was falling on us. So, I ran without thinking.

I ran until I felt like my feet would tear apart from my legs.

The others who I hadn’t noticed broke into a run too, following my lead. They were humans too. I didn’t know what part of the arena they came from. I didn’t even know I wasn’t alone.

They didn’t bother explaining things to me. I wish they would. What did they mean corrupt? Did they know that I killed a man and stole his destiny?

The smell of burning rotten animals or flesh flooded my senses. I gagged and spat on the ground to try to keep myself sane.

Until someone from my left was almost hit by the giant ball of fire.

Until it wasn’t.

It wasn’t what I thought it was.

It wasn’t just a ball of fire.

When it hit the ground, a crater formed from the impact. Smoke and dust made it impossible to see clearly, chunks of small debris flew.

Until lumps of flesh and red meat covered in crimson blood splashed around.

The ball of fire had pieces of flesh and organs. Human organs.

I thought it was animal burning. It wasn’t.

Someone screamed and from the sound of it, they fell from the back but I didn’t bother to look or help. I never stopped running.

When I reached the infinite circle surrounding the center elevated arena, blue light clouded my senses, it burned and exploded.

My hands shot up to cover my eyes, I crouched to shield my body as it continued to pierce through. White searing hot light took away my sense of sight. Until all I could see was blue light. Burning blue light.

I screamed as the piercing burning sensation went through my head. I became aware of everything, and it hurt so bad that hot tears fell desperately on my cheeks.

I could feel the back of my neck twisting. I could hear the nerves on my neck protruding then snapping.

Then I heard the sound of the clock ticking, the threads of time warping. The woven fates of the past, present, and the future slipping and turning then forming endless delicate paths.

None of this made sense.

I could feel my eyes bleeding and yet I forced my eyes to open.

Until I found myself covered in dust and ash. To my right, bodies laid unmoving on the ground.

Bloodweavers. Mortals.

“What just happened?”

“Bloodweaving.” A boy my age spoke.

I turned to see him. We met eye to eye. His height was equal to mine. Afraid that his broken glasses would pierce his eyes, my eyes fell to his face marred with a white scar across his cheek.

“No. Before all that. The ball of fire!”

“Bloodweavers who failed the test.”

I grew silent.

“The flesh was real? Those were real body organs?”

Disbelief dawned upon me.

Vile formed, threatening to come out. I held it in by standing upright. The world tilted and spun. Wrong decision. I sat back down.

“What do you mean by that? Wasn’t that too extreme for the first test?”

“For you it might have been new. But this wasn’t the first trial. It wasn’t even a test.”

He looked down and I noticed the deep scars in his palms tracing a pattern of jagged lines. Each line was carved erratically. I looked away.

“What is that then if not the trial?”

“It’s an ongoing trial for them. We were just unlucky we’re beneath their trial grounds.”

“I’m about to lose my mind.”

My lungs tightened around my heart.

“Don’t. Those who lose their mind couldn’t weave back the threads. Losing your mind means losing your grasps on the threads. Those bloody things you’ve seen earlier were bloodweavers who released their hold on the thread, resulting in violent explosions of their minds and their bodies. Time Threading isn’t for the weak mind. Our power heavily relies on our mind.”

“How long have you been here? What’s your name?”

“My name’s Atley. Five months. Every month, I have to go through a trial for two weeks. This is my fifth trial, my third attempt to pass the final trial. And I’m stuck. If I don’t pass this final attempt, I’ll be in pieces too.”

“Do you know why the fae makes these trials? At this point I think they just wanted to blow us up.”

He sighed. I noticed how exhaustion rimmed his eyes.

“I have no clue. None of these faes can time travel because if they do, their physical bodies would burst into pieces like what you’ve seen earlier. The fae were not gifted with the power of bloodweaving. Only humans who were born bloodweavers can thread time with a higher chance of living because we can weave our body back into its original state.”

He kept speaking because he noticed my expression. He knew I knew nothing about bloodweaving.

“The ball of fire was the physical manifestation of a bloodweaver attempting to thread time. When they fall short, when their minds can’t handle the pressure of Timethreading, they blow up. The successful ones would vanish into the air, waking up in the timeline they were assigned. That’s when a bloodweaver successfully passed the trial. That’s when you start working for Enoranthas.”

“Who chooses the timeline we’re assigned?”

“The fae. They would give you an assigned timeline along with a task. The goal is to bring an assigned ‘object’ back here.”

“What is this place?”

“This is a place outside of time. A perfect place to hide their crimes.”

“Okay. When do I get my assigned task and timeline?”

His eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Weren’t you supposed to get your assigned timeline the moment you step into the arena?”

We both grew quiet.