Dawn bled into the camp like thin, grey water, washing over the neat rows of tents and the smouldering remains of the fire pits. The fragile illusion of order shattered with the first cry.
"Rot take it! The water's been tampered with!"
The shout, raw and disbelieving, sliced through the stillness. It was like tossing a stone into a silent pond. Chaos followed instantly. Tents flapped open, bodies stumbled out, blinking and confused, only to find panic blooming like wildfire. I watched them rush toward the supply tarp where last night's gear—rations, water, flint kits, bindings—had been handed out.
"The powder's missing!"
"Who did this?!"
"The stitching on my waterskin's frayed! It'll burst!"
"Mine too! The strap's half-cut!"
I was already moving, my pack—the one Marco and I assembled back in Sundra—tight in my grip. My heart thudded in my chest as I scanned the crowd, eyes darting from face to face. Anger was catching fast. Young, early twenties. Narrow features. Clean-cut hair. Thin lips. I started cataloguing every face I passed. A farmer's son, already shouting, eyes wild. A haunted woman cradling a torn waterskin. A lanky boy on the verge of tears over shredded bandages.
But the face from the shadows last night? No where to be seen.
"Looking for someone?" Marco slid up beside me, voice low, no trace of his usual teasing smirk. His jaw was set tight as he opened his assigned supply pack, showing me the deep, purposeful gash across the bottom. A clean sabotage—enough to spill everything without notice.
Good thing we weren't relying on the issued gear.
"Him," I hissed, barely above the rising din. "He's not here. Must be from one of the other groups."
Marco's jaw twitched. He nodded once, curt. "Keep it quiet. For now." He tilted his head toward Roan and Aila, who were both crouched over Roan's pack. Aila had a finger shoved through a tear in the side, scowling.
We pushed through the growing storm of voices and flailing limbs. "Ours too," I said flatly, holding up Marco's pack as we reached them.
Aila's head snapped up, her ponytail swinging. "This is going to be a problem."
I then explained how I'd seen the two saboteurs last night but too late to actually do anything.
"Convenient," she muttered, eyes sharp as blades as they swept over me and Marco. "How do we know it wasn't you two? Get rid of the competition early?"
Roan straightened. "Unlikely," he said after a beat, his voice calm. "This," he gestured to the packs, "was planned. Precise. We all got the news at the same time last night. We were reeling. Iris and Marco…" He paused, eyes flicking to me, "looked like they were one step from shattering. Panic doesn't slice this clean."
Aila narrowed her eyes at him, then turned her gaze back to us. "His logic suits, I suppose." She gave me the smallest shrug. "No offense. Just thinking logically."
"None taken," I said, though my voice came out tight. I understood suspicion. It was how people survived now.
"I am very much offended!" Marco said, one hand pressed dramatically to his chest. "What do you take me for, Aila? A backstabbing weasel? I'm a front-stabbing weasel, thank you. Much more honourable."
She rolled her eyes and turned back to the tear in Roan's pack, ignoring Marco's fake outrage. Before he could continue, a strange ripple passed through the camp—a stillness, sharp and sudden. The shouts, the rustling, the chaos, it all fell silent.
Beta Cael and his riders had returned.
They emerged from the trees like ghosts, their massive volanema wolves gliding forward with that eerie, predatory grace. Cael dismounted slowly, surveying the mess we'd become. His weathered face didn't shift, didn't show an ounce of surprise at the scattered, broken gear or the fear twisting across our faces.
"Quiet," he said. He didn't shout, but the weight of that single word smothered everything else.
"The other three groups are receiving these instructions as we speak. Your trial begins now."
He turned and pointed toward the towering wall of mountain behind our camp.
"Beyond that ridge lies the Field of Thorns, it is also your destination. You must reach it by sundown."
A stunned breath passed through the group. That mountain was no trail. It was a beast, snow biting at its peaks.
"The culling," Roan murmured beside me.
My blood turned to ice. "Culling?"
Cael's eyes flicked to Roan, then back to the rest of us. "Precisely. You number fifty here. The other groups? One hundred and three, seventy-eight, and one hundred and twenty-eight. Total aspirants: three hundred and fifty-nine."
The number hit me like a punch to the gut. It was too much. Too many.
"For the first trial to conclude," Cael continued, his tone dead and emotionless, "the field must hold only fifty percent of your current number. No more."
A long, choking silence followed. Then understanding slammed into us like a falling boulder.
"Fifty percent?!" someone screamed. "You mean… we have to kill each other? Out there?!"
Cael's expression didn't flicker. "I did not specify where. The trial begins the moment you enter the wilderness between here and the Field of Thorns. How you achieve the required reduction is not our concern. Only the result."
A sick wave of whispers surged around me. My stomach twisted. They want us to turn on each other. Thin our own numbers. No mess on their hands.
"This is madness!" a man shouted, stepping forward. His face was pale, his voice cracking. "Our gear! It's been sabotaged! We were set up to fail!"
Cael looked at the damaged packs with something that might have been disdain… or complete indifference. "We provided the gear. Its condition upon departure is your responsibility. Perhaps…" he said, eyes narrowing, "you simply lost the trial before it began."
The man's rage cracked into fear. "And if we don't go?" he croaked. "What if we refuse?"
Cael didn't answer. Instead, he turned slightly, his gaze shifting to the rider on the grey wolf—the one who'd barked at us last night. The rider smirked and leaned forward, stroking the head of his beast.
His wolf bared its fangs in a snarl that made my blood chill.
"Then," the rider said, voice gleeful, "Kyklos here would love to feast on your warm flesh, candidate. Saves him the hunt. Saves us the mess. The culling happens regardless. The only choice you have is where you die."
The wolf growled low, a promise of pain. The message was clear: step into the blood-soaked unknown or die here like cattle.
Cael remounted. "Sundown. The Field of Thorns. Fifty percent."
He let that number hang in the air one final time.
Then they turned as one, the wolves vanishing back into the forest, silent as ghosts.
And we were left standing in the ruins of order, surrounded by slashed gear and a mountain that now looked less like a path and more like a throat, waiting to swallow us whole.
The true trial hadn't begun with a roar. It began in silence and cover of the night.
A death sentence sealed in dawnlight.
I tightened my grip on my pack and scanned the faces around me. I wasn't just looking for the saboteur anymore.
I was looking for threats. The culling had begun after all.
The group began to move, hesitation dragging at every step. Some pushed forward quickly, already hungry for distance or maybe desperate to prove they weren't afraid. Others lingered, like us, still reeling.
The sun had only just started climbing above the peaks, a pale halo behind the jagged ridgeline. It was a cruel kind of light—too soft to warm, too weak to illuminate the darkness we were walking into.
"We should go," Marco said quietly beside me. He adjusted the straps of his half-weighted pack, breath steady, eyes alert.
I nodded, but didn't move. "You know," I murmured, "you're the only one I trust right now."
His head tilted slightly toward me, but he didn't respond. .
"I mean it," I continued. "Aila and Roan? They're just as likely to slit our throats in our sleep as anyone else out here. They might not mean to—not yet. But by sundown? Who knows what we'll be."
I turned, already walking, pulling Marco with me by the strap of his pack.
But Aila's voice cut across the brittle quiet behind us. "I promise not to kill any of you."
I paused. Slowly, I turned back. Her arms were folded, auburn ponytail catching in the breeze. Her voice hadn't trembled, but something about her expression looked too calm.
Roan, standing beside her, lifted an eyebrow. "And what if you break it?" he asked. "We'd be too dead to call you a liar."
Aila's smile didn't reach her eyes.
"I promise too," I said before either could speak again. My voice was sharp but steady. "We don't have to trust each other all the way. Just enough. A group's less likely to be targeted. Safer in numbers. At least, for now."
Marco made a low noise of agreement beside me. Roan exhaled through his nose, long and slow. He nodded once.
"Fine," he said. "But we leave last. Let the rest thin themselves out. I'd rather not wake up with someone's knife in my lung."
"Good plan," I said, already feeling my shoulders ease just a little. A strategy was a start to better survival.
Roan started walking toward the treeline without another word, and Aila fell in step beside him. Marco and I followed close behind. The others had scattered like frightened birds, and I could feel the emptiness closing in around us with every step.
The trail up the ridge was narrow, and treacherous. Roots clawed up from the earth like the fingers of corpses. Rocks shifted underfoot. Snow bit at our boots the higher we climbed.
It was maybe an hour in when I started to regret it.
Not the group. The weight.
Flynn's things. The extra supplies I'd bought for him—goggles, salves, rope, little comforts no one else would care about. Now it was just dead weight. I hadn't even thought to give them to anyone. Someone else might've needed them. Might've lived longer for it.
Marco had taken half, but even then… my back screamed with every incline.
I glanced sideways at him. His jaw was tight. Sweat clung to his temple. He didn't complain.
"You okay?" I asked under my breath.
He gave me a look that was half are you serious and half always, but I saw the strain behind it.
Still, he nodded.
"Next time I say I've got a good idea," he muttered, "punch me."
"Deal," I said, my lips twitching in a brief, bitter smile. "But only if I survive this."
"Optimist," he said.
Roan, just ahead, heard us and gave a humorless snort. "Won't be much of a difference," he said without looking back. "Whether we kill to survive or just walk past the bodies—we'll all come out of this changed."
I didn't answer.
Because he was right. The mountain didn't care if we murdered or endured. By sundown, either way, we'd be less than we were when we started.