The hexarena shifted beneath morning fog, rune-seams pulsing in patient geometry. The crowd's murmur braided with the sound of training—boots on stone, the scrape of metal, whispered prayers as the trial ground was submerged in thick, misty fog.
Proving a point to every chosen champion in the arena today that this trial would be a gauntlet of engineered cruelty, despite it being a mock challenge of the gods' true trial for their champions.
With puzzles meant to punish mistrust, traps designed to force moral decisions, and divine pokes calibrated to widen any crack between partners. Tension rose as the pair on the trial grounds prepared to face the challenges that were sure to come their way.
The hexarena exhaled a breath of cold fog as Daryn and Lyra stepped into its mouth. Torches along the rim guttered against the mist, their light refracted into a dozen false dawns by polished glass. The field itself was a low-walled labyrinth, a geometry of stone and hinge and rune—mirrors set on swivels, panels that folded like the ribs of a shell, and pockets of seeded fog that clung to the air like a secret. The crowd's roar dimmed to a distant tide; inside the maze, the world narrowed to the sound of their boots and the small, private language they had agreed upon.
Lyra's hand brushed the staff at her hip, a small, habitual prayer. "Remember the signals," she said, voice low enough that only Daryn could hear. "Double pulse to commit. Heel-tap to hold. Forearm press to anchor."
Daryn nodded. The tablet's name—Seris—still sat under his ribs like a hot coal. He felt the moon-mark at his sternum like a compass that sometimes spun. "If a mirror lies," he said, "I'll trust your pulse before my eyes."
She gave him a look that was almost a smile. "And I'll trust your feet before my spells."
They moved together into the fog.
The first corridor was a corridor only in reflection. Mirrors angled to catch torchlight and throw it into impossible exits; a polished face showed a passage that did not exist, a doorway that opened into a wall. The fog around them swallowed sound and softened edges until the world almost felt like a memory.
The Runes that were sewn into the mist blurred their colours, turning the usual language of the arena into a smear aimed to confuse even the keenest of sights. A pressure plate lay hidden beneath a mosaic of stone, its true nature invisible until weight revealed it.
Daryn's first instinct was to chase light. He stepped toward a gleam that promised an opening, and the mirror answered with a corridor that led nowhere. The glass showed him a version of himself already gone, a phantom of motion that tugged at the part of him that wanted to fix things by moving faster.
But Lyra's pulse came first: a thin, cool thread along his forearm, like a fingertip of winter. It was the signal for false. He stopped mid-stride, breath fogging in front of him, and the mirror's corridor dissolved into the dull face of stone.
"False," she whispered. "Left. Two steps, then hold."
Daryn obeyed as the world narrowed to the warmth of her next pulse and the weight of his boots on the ground.
Lyra had not simply memorised runes; she had learned to translate them into skin. Her spell was small and private: a filament of sensation that ran from her palm to his forearm, a language of temperature and rhythm. A warm pulse meant a true corridor; a cool pulse meant a lie. A double pulse meant commit now or never.
She moved like a cartographer, mapping the maze not with sight but with touch. When a mirror angled to show a false exit, Lyra's hand brushed Daryn's sleeve, and the chill threaded along his skin. When a corridor opened true, the warmth bloomed like a coin pressed to the palm. The pulses were not loud; they were intimate...the kind of communication that felt like a promise.
Daryn learned to read them the way he had once read the grain of wood at his father's forge. He matched his footfalls to the pulses, timing his steps to the rhythm of her magic. He moved only on a double pulse, the two beats that meant both of them were committed.
The rule kept them from being baited by reflections and from stepping alone onto pressure plates that would close gates behind them and separate them.
"Two pulses," Lyra murmured as they crossed a false courtyard. "Now."
Daryn did not hesitate. He moved a step, assured by the second pulse that was like a small sun against his skin. And the stone underfoot held steadfast.
They found the pressure plate in a narrow throat between two mirrors. The tile was unremarkable—worn by a thousand feet—but the rune beneath it was clever: it required simultaneous weight on two points to remain inert. Step alone, and the gate at the far end would slam shut, sealing them into a pocket where the arena's designers liked to test patience.
Daryn felt the tile's slight give and froze. The mirror at his right showed Lyra already moving away, a trick of glass that made her seem distant. The fog muffled her breath. For a heartbeat, his training with Kaelen argued for action—push forward, force the gate, make a path. For a heartbeat, his memory of Seris whispered caution.
Lyra's hand slid along his forearm, a warm pulse followed by a cool one—an instruction to hold and wait. She circled the tile, her steps soft as a cat's. The mirror's image tried to tell him she had left, but the pulse told him she had not. He planted his feet and held his weight like an anchor.
Lyra came around the other side and set her foot beside his. The tile registered two weights and stayed still. She pressed his shoulder with a quick forearm tap—anchor—and together they moved. The gate yawned open as if relieved to have been trusted, making a small creeking noise.
"Good," she said, breathless. "Too many teams forget the second foot."
Daryn let out a laugh that was half relief, half something like gratitude. "I almost forgot to wait for you."
"You almost died for a mirror," she said, dry. "Let's call that a lesson, yeah?" Daryn chuckled.
Though the maze did not stop at false corridors and pressure plates. It held promises of layered tricks: mirrors that reflected not only space but sound, making a shout seem to come from behind when it came from ahead; fog that swallowed the timbre of Lyra's voice and left only the rhythm of her pulse; illusions that painted a companion's face on a stranger's body.
At one turn, Daryn saw a child's silhouette in the fog—small, familiar, the shape of a memory he had not known he could still feel. The figure called his name in a voice that matched the lullaby he could almost remember. For a breath, he forgot the signals and moved toward it.
Lyra's hand was there before his foot left the ground. A double pulse, sharp and insistent, cut through the lullaby's pull. "Hold," she said, voice steady. "It's an echo. Breathe."
He closed his eyes and counted the beats she had taught him—four in, one out—and the phantom dissolved into mist. The child's silhouette was a trick of the arena, a bait that preyed on the hollow places inside him. He felt the ache of the near-memory and the steadiness of Lyra's hand at the small of his back.
"You did well," she said. "You almost let the maze take what it wanted."
"What it wanted was for me to forget," he said. Still trying to calm his breathing, "To make me trade memory for motion."
Lyra touched his shoulder to empathise with him. "Then don't trade," she replied. "Let us keep what we can, and we don't give them anymore."