Page 22 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

Mortar spidered, stone distended, and something peeled itself out of the masonry—ribbed like a cage made wrong, all bone-lattice and shadow sinew. It hit the floor mid-snarle, talons clicking, a skull-face with no eyes hunting on sound and heat alone.

Eliryn dropped her weight. Blade up. Left foot back. The pendant at her sternum warmed—one beat, two—and the runes along her forearms flared in answer.

It lunged.

She slipped inside the first strike, shadow-claws raking sparks off stone where her head had been. The thing stank —cold lime and old blood. She drove her edge across the nearest limb; it parted like brittle coral, a dry crack and a scatter of pale shards skittering over flagstone.

The creature pivoted on three limbs, faster than a living thing should, and rammed her with its chest-cage.

Impact knocked breath and thought; she hit a pillar with her shoulder and saw a spray of white stars that weren’t magic.

It came again, mouth yawning with a harp of needle-teeth, and she jammed her boot into its joint, twisted, brought the blade up under the angle of bone, and lifted.

A seam opened.

Sound followed—high, glass-keen—and then the thing fractured, not falling but expanding into ruin: a million splinters blown outward on a breath that wasn’t air.

Shards hissed past her cheeks and hair; some stuck and sang, thin buzzing notes, before dropping.

Fine chalk burst into a white halo, the taste of quarry dust and coins on her tongue.

The echo went on too long, like bells ringing under water.

She stayed crouched, blade between her and the debris, ears ringing, lungs burning as grit settled in a gray drift around her boots. A line of heat stung across her cheek; she swiped it, fingertips coming away red and grainy.

“That one nearly took my head,” she gasped.

You were graceful, Vaeronth said, amused—thunder made indulgent. In a newborn hatchling sort of way.

She snorted, breath hitching. “You’re doing wonders for my ego, you know.”

She pressed deeper into the maze, the air thickening with heat.

“The air here is different,” she murmured. “Smells like… fire.”

She emerged into a wide chamber veined with glowing minerals. Smoke coiled near the broken dome. The sky beyond was bruised crimson, neither dusk nor dawn.

Five figures stood below, circling each other warily.

As she stepped down into the chamber, she recognized three of them at once.

The tall boy with copper hair, who had looked too young for the trials. His eyes were wide with terror.

The broad-shouldered man who had tried to shame her after the first test. He met her stare with a thin, ugly smile.

And the slender, snake-eyed one, watching her like he was deciding precisely where to strike.

The other two she didn’t remember, but all five shifted as she approached, tension coiling tight enough to snap.

No illusions, Vaeronth murmured. Only threats.

The copper-haired boy took a stumbling step back.

The snake-eyed man tilted his head, studying her with a reptile’s patience.

The broad-shouldered one came forward a half pace, axe in hand.

“So the little dragonblood thinks she belongs here,” he said, voice low and poisonous.

She didn’t answer. The blade in her hand gleamed, steady as her heartbeat.

“She moves like she’s not afraid,” the snake-eyed man observed. “Maybe she isn’t.”

Then, a screech.

A beast erupted from the shadows behind them—smoke and claw. One of the unknown men shrieked as it dragged him back into the darkness, his voice cutting off like a severed limb, wet and sudden.

The broad-shouldered man lunged at her with a roar, taking advantage of the chaos.

Left, Vaeronth hissed. Step left—then pivot.

She obeyed without thought. His axe slammed into stone, shattering the space where her shoulder had been.

Now. Strike his knee.

Her blade flashed. She felt the jolt as it connected, the man’s bellow of pain.

Again—guard high!

She blocked his backhand swing, arms trembling with the impact. Sparks burst where metal met metal.

“Filthy cursed-blood,” he spat, staggering back.

Behind her, the snake-eyed man vanished into the smoke. The copper-haired boy ran.

Her attacker tried to raise his axe again—too slow. She hooked his ankle and shoved. He hit the ground hard, air whooshing out of him.

Not dead. But not getting up soon.

You see? Vaeronth whispered. Combat suits you. You only have to believe in yourself.

She panted, heart hammering.

“This should be beyond impossible. I’m moving like I’ve done this before,” she whispered.

In your soul, you have.

She turned, the chamber empty but threats near in the shadows.

A corridor glimmered beyond—green and cold.

She took one step, then stopped.

He appeared in the space ahead in the blink of an eye.

Malric .

He stepped out of the wrecked dark where the wall had just birthed teeth. Dust ribboned off his coat; a thin white shard clicked under his boot and stilled. He stopped within reach, then—deliberately—took half a step back.

“You again?” Her voice was rough. The blade in her hand quivered once and held.

His gaze took her in with a quick, exact sweep: cut along the cheekbone, grit stuck in the lashes of her right eye, blood slicking her knuckles, the left wrist overworking. “You’re hurt,” he said. Observation, not pity. “Blink before it crusts. You’ll lose depth.”

She didn’t move.

He slid a square of dark cloth from his sleeve and held it out—fingers open, palm visible, no advance. “For the eye.”

She stared a beat, then took it without lowering the blade. The cloth was clean. Warm from his wrist. She wiped once; the world sharpened by a degree.

“Better,” he said. “Now breathe. Three counts in, four out. Your left wrist is lying to you—shift your grip or you’ll drop the point when you cut.”

Her jaw clenched. She adjusted anyway. The tremor eased.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked, watching him over steel.

“It costs me nothing,” he said, soft. “And you’re more useful alive.”

“Useful to whom?”

“To whatever comes next.”

That should have chilled her. It didn’t. Not quite. He was studying her, yes—but not like prey. More like a craftsman evaluating a tool he intended to keep sharp.

“Step back,” she said.

He did. No argument. Choice, not surrender.

The corridor breathed around them, the sour tang of the last creature still in the air.

Far down the passage, a faint tink like cooled glass under stress.

His head turned toward it. “When you hear that,” he murmured, “the walls are thinning. Don’t hug the stone—stay center, watch for mortar spidering. ”

“You know these things well,” she said.

“I’ve walked this space before.” A glance to her hands. “And you’re beginning to tire.”

“You’re an illusion,” she said flatly.

“Am I?”

“That or you’re somehow a part of the trials. Or you’ve been following me again.”

“I’m not here just for you,” he said, voice low and infuriatingly calm. “I have work to do.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Work.”

“And you, it seems, are very good at finding trouble.”

Her pulse kicked up. “So you are part of this?”

He smiled, a flicker of amusement warming his eyes.

“Not exactly,” he murmured. “Not officially. But you assumed that I was an illusion at first? That’s telling.”

“Telling how?”

“For you to have seen me here before means you must have been thinking about me,” he said softly.

Her grip on the sword tightened. “I’m a little busy trying not to die to be thinking about you.”

Gods above, why did her heartbeat betray her so loudly it was hard to think?

“You look like you know how to multitask.”

He considered her a heartbeat longer, then added, almost as if against habit, “When the air turns vinegar, don’t cut high. They open low.”

She filed it before she could stop herself. “Why tell me?”

“You don’t need another new scar,” he said simply. “Not tonight.”

Vaeronth murmured in the warm weight of her mind. He prowls. But his blades are sheathed—for now.

Eliryn let a sliver of tension go. Not trust. Not yet. Just the notch that keeps a bowstring from fraying. “If I see you again… friend or foe?”

He tilted his head as if considering.

“If I wanted you dead,” he said, voice gentle as a confession, “you wouldn't have the breath to be asking questions.”

He stepped past at an angle that didn’t put his back to her, close enough that she felt the calm of him, the unhurried pulse of someone who didn’t need the dramatics of danger to be dangerous.

As he moved, he spoke without looking. “Center of the hall. Avoid alcoves with lime dust—the ones that breathe. And don’t let your left hand carry your pride. ”

She almost smiled. Almost. “Noted.”

“Try not to die, Eliryn,” he called over his shoulder. “I’d find that rather… anticlimactic.”

Eliryn held her stance until her breath obeyed. The sword steadied in her grip where he’d told her to shift it; the cloth was warm in her palm. Against sense, something in her eased by a hair.

“He is not kindness,” she said under her breath.

No, Vaeronth agreed, heavy and intent.

Eliryn stood frozen, the sword trembling faintly in her grip.

“I still don’t trust him.”

Good.

She turned slowly toward the corridor, but her gaze lingered on the place he’d disappeared, on the swirling darkness still softening back into silence.

She tried to steady her breathing, to pretend the encounter hadn’t shaken her. But it had.

More than any monster so far.

Because she could brace herself for claws and fangs and illusions that wanted blood.

But Malric…

Malric was something else entirely.

Something she couldn’t name.

She turned away, willing her thoughts into stillness. If she refused to dwell on the impossibility of magic and monsters, or how naturally the sword had fit her hand, she would not linger on Malric either, or wonder what part he played in these cruel games.

Let him play his game. She'd win hers.