I had already downed two glasses of wine, the warmth of it sitting low in my chest, and I was making my way toward a third when I noticed two pairs of eyes watching me from across the hall.
There was none of the hostility I had grown used to tonight in either of them.
If anything, they looked curious.
Both appeared to be participants in the Rite, though instead of the sharp silver hair most of the hall carried, theirs was a paler shade, almost grey beneath the Ichor orbs, washed out enough that it made them look even more separate from everyone around them.
The boy leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, looking relaxed. The girl beside him stood much stiffer, her features softer and more open, though the nervousness in her expression was obvious even from across the room.
Collaterals, probably.
They did not look as though they belonged in this crowd any more than I did, and it did not take much guessing to work out they had been getting the same looks I had all night, only quieter ones.
Perfect, just the people I was looking for.
The girl tensed the moment I drew close, her eyes dropping away as soon as mine landed on her. The boy noticed it too, his gaze narrowing slightly before he leaned over and murmured something to her that I could not quite catch.
"I should apologise in advance," I said, stopping in front of them. "In case the house has not been especially welcoming to its guests tonight."
The boy looked past me at the silver-haired crowd, then back at me, a small smile touching his mouth.
"Honestly, the house is the least welcoming part of the whole night," he said. "And you probably understand that better than anyone."
"Unfortunately, I do live here," I said. "Which means I have had considerably more time to get used to it."
The girl looked between the two of us, still unsure what to make of me, while the boy’s smile widened slightly.
"You have probably already heard who I am," I continued, holding a hand out to him. "Does not feel like we have actually met, though."
"Corin," he said, taking it. His grip was firm but brief. "Makes sense we have not. We are collaterals."
"Talia," the girl added quickly from beside him, her voice catching faintly around the word. "It is nice to meet you, my lord."
I tilted my head at that.
My lord. That was new.
What was with her? Did I really look that scary?
"Do not worry," Corin said, glancing toward Talia. "He is not like the rest of them."
"And how would you know that?" I asked.
He met my gaze again, his expression turning almost amused.
"You would not be standing here speaking to us if you were."
Fair enough, I suppose.
Talia seemed to work up the courage to look at me again, only for her attention to drop immediately toward the cuff covering my wrist.
"Is it true?" she asked.
"Is what true?"
Her face turned slightly red, but she pushed through it anyway.
"That you have to feed your Mark a human life every day?"
For a second, I only stared at her.
Then a laugh escaped me before I could stop it, and I watched a visible shiver run through her shoulders.
"Only on days that end in y," I said.
Corin choked on a laugh beside her, though Talia went even paler.
Her eyes widened.
"Yun," Corin muttered, sounding halfway between amused and horrified.
Talia looked as though she wanted to disappear into the wall behind her.
Before I could respond, the low hum of conversation filling the hall began to die away, whispers and clinking glasses fading into something closer to silence.
"Looks like it is finally starting," Corin murmured, his attention shifting toward the centre of the room.
I turned with him and found Harren already crossing the floor.
He stepped onto the low platform built at the centre of the hall, and the moment his feet settled there, his presence seemed to deepen.
The pressure of the Waking Dream rolled over the room in a slow, suffocating wave, heavy enough that every lingering conversation stopped before he had even spoken.
No one moved.
No one dared to.
Harren allowed the silence to stretch for several seconds, his violet eyes moving over every family gathered beneath him.
"It has been decades since the expedition that claimed the lives of some of this house’s finest," he said at last, his voice carrying easily across the hall.
The change in the crowd was immediate.
"Since then, the Rifts have continued to bleed into every part of this world. More of them open each year. More of our kind fail to return from their depths. More Hollow cross through them. More families learn what it costs when one of those Rifts is not undone in time."
He paused, his gaze moving slowly across the room.
"People call House Claiom the weakest of the six great houses. Let them. A name spoken by those who do not understand what this house has endured means very little."
"This house still stands because each generation has been taught to stand after the one before it. The Rite exists because strength that has not been tested is only a lie someone tells themselves."
His eyes settled on the younger faces gathered nearest to the front.
"This year, the Rite will be held in the Brink."
The response was immediate.
Murmurs broke out across the hall, hushed at first before spreading louder, fear and calculation winding through the voices around us.
I understood exactly why from the memories I now carried.
The Brink was not far from Lucidia, and not long ago a Rift had opened there without being undone in time.
Harren waited until the noise had risen high enough to fill the room, then spoke again.
"The forest has been surveyed. Its outer paths have been cleared, and the Hollow presence within has been confirmed. You are expected to encounter only Starved threats."
Only Starved.
Right. Really comforting.
Awakened like us were supposed to take comfort in fighting the lowest category of Hollow, as if any of us had seen what one looked like when it was trying to tear through a person’s throat.
Harren’s expression did not change.
"Do not mistake that for safety," he continued. "A Starved Hollow does not need intelligence to kill you. It only needs hunger, numbers, and one moment in which you decide you are stronger than you are."
His words smothered the murmurings entirely.
"You will enter the Brink at dawn a week from now. You will remain within it for three days. At the final bell, the contestant carrying the highest score will be named victor of this year’s Rite."
An attendant stepped onto the platform with a black case held in both hands. Harren opened it, revealing a row of small pale-metal badges, each marked with the narrow horn sigil of Dream.
"Each badge will be bound to its bearer before entry. It will connect to your Ledger and record the Hollow you bring down. You will be able to see your own score, as well as where you stand against the other contestants." Read this novel at novelping(.)com for the best experience.
The hall remained silent now, though the silence had changed. Nobody was afraid of what the badges could do; they were already calculating what they meant.
"You may challenge another contestant," Harren said. "If you defeat them decisively and claim their badge, one third of their accumulated score will pass to you. Their Rite ends there."
This time the ripple through the room carried something different. It was not fear. It was interest, sharp and immediate, as eyes began to move between the people who would be entering the forest together.
Of course. It was not enough to throw us into a Hollow-filled forest and tell us to survive. They had to make sure we were competing with each other as well.
"Killing another contestant is forbidden," Harren said, and his voice was so calm that it took a moment for the meaning to settle.
"There will be no exception for anger, panic, rivalry or opportunity. Anyone who kills during the Rite will answer to the house."
That settled something, though not all of it. People could still do a great deal to each other without crossing the clean line of murder.
Harren rested one hand against the open case.
"The badges are also your safeguard. If you yield yours, if it is claimed, or if injury leaves you unable to continue, it will call the recovery teams."
For a moment, that almost sounded reassuring.
Then he continued.
"They will come. Do not expect them to reach you before the danger does."
Nobody needed him to explain the rest. The teams could know exactly where your badge was, but that did not mean you would survive long enough for them to find you.
"Do not treat the badge as something that makes you safe," Harren said. "It gives the house a direction. The rest depends on distance, the forest, and what has found you before we do."
Several faces had gone pale by then, and honestly, I could not blame them.
"Elder Osric’s mirrors will follow every contestant through the Rite. They will direct recovery where they can and record what occurs within the Brink. They are not a hand over your shoulder. You will make your own decisions in that forest, and you will carry what those decisions cost."
So the house would watch every second of it. Every kill. Every desperate scramble to survive.
It made sense, I supposed. It was a Rite. Of course they would want to watch.
Still, some part of me hated that fact more than anything else Harren had said.
I looked around the hall at the pale faces of everyone my age, all of them trying to look braver than they felt now that the thing waiting for us had finally been given a shape.
Yet all I felt was a strange sense of calm.
The thought of fighting Hollow might have terrified the person I had been on Earth. Hell, two months ago it probably would have terrified me still.
But after that fucking Trial, after all those deaths carved into my mind, after reliving pieces of them every night the moment I closed my eyes, being afraid of this Rite felt almost laughable.
What was the worst this world could do to me now?
Kill me?
Well, fortunately or unfortunately, I had already died too many times to give much of a shit about it.
Harren stepped back from the platform without another word. The pressure in the room eased slowly, and conversation began to return to the hall, though it carried an entirely different weight now, lower and more cautious than before.
Beside me, Corin let out a slow breath, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.
"Well," he said, glancing sideways at me. "That was considerably more cheerful than I expected."
"You came to a Claiom gathering expecting cheerful?"
He looked toward the badge case, his expression sharpening slightly.
"Guess we will see how it goes," he said. "If we cross paths out there, we should settle it properly."
I looked at him for a moment, then let a faint smile pull at my mouth.
"Would not have it any other way."
"I will take that as a promise, then," he muttered, his lips curving slightly.