About an hour past before we emerged into a room so dark I briefly suspected my eyes had filed for retirement.
A handful of torches flickered against the walls, providing just enough light to confirm that, yes, something awful waited in the shadows I couldn't quite pierce.
Wonderful.
Exactly what my nerves needed.
I blinked several times as my pupils attempted to negotiate with the gloom. Slowly, the shapes around me resolved. Two black marble benches sat dead-center in the chamber like opposing monoliths, polished to an almost mirror-like sheen despite the dim.
Weapons lined the walls, some of which I'd never seen before—blades bent into shapes that implied crafters with more imagination than sanity, spears with heads like blooming metal flowers, and something that looked suspiciously like a gardening tool possessed by a demon with anger issues.
Directly ahead, a narrow set of stairs led upward into what seemed to be utter darkness. The whole place radiated that humid, subterranean musk—the deep, well-lived funk of sweat and steel baked into the room from years of use. I wrinkled my nose and waved a hand in front of my face.
"Saints above," I muttered, fanning harder. "It smells like someone bottled a locker room and released it down here as a war crime."
Iskanda chuckled as she strode ahead with her usual grace. "You get used to it." she said, not even missing a step.
She strode toward one of the benches and dropped onto it with the ease of someone accustomed to turning ominous dungeons into resting spots. With a simple wave of her fingers, she motioned for me to sit across from her.
I obeyed, because when a tall, terrifying huntress with an eldritch bow-in-waiting told you to sit, you sat. Also, because my knees were shaking, but that was a detail I chose to keep between me and the marble beneath my thighs.
I exhaled slowly, letting the ambient dread settle around me. "So," I said, glancing around, "what pit of horror have you dragged me into this time?"
"The basement of the tower's central arena," she replied calmly, as though this were perfectly normal. "We still have about an hour before midnight."
I cleared my throat, trying to play it cool despite the electric flutter rattling through my chest.
Iskanda lifted an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching. "You're anxious."
"I'm what?" I scoffed, shooing the air with a lazy hand as though brushing off some persistent fly. "No. No, certainly not. Me? Anxious? That's adorable. Absolutely not. I—"
"Loona." She leaned forward slightly, her eyes gleaming beneath the torchlight in that annoyingly perceptive way of hers. "Your hands are shaking."
I glanced down at my traitorous fingers vibrating like freshly plucked harp strings. "…They do that sometimes," I lied, curling them into fists and tucking them between my thighs for safety.
Iskanda let out a laugh—though the nice kind, the one that didn't sting. "It's alright to be nervous. This match isn't just some exhibition." She paused for effect, as though allowing the weight to settle on my already strained lungs. "Your performance tonight decides the trajectory of your future. Your fate. Where you stand in this tower... and in the city."
My stomach dropped so hard it nearly punched through the floor. Every muscle in my spine locked up, and a cold sweat snapped to life across my shoulders.
Iskanda, sensing my internal panic, softened her tone a fraction. "And on top of that… this match was arranged by the Director himself. An event that hasn't happened in nearly a decade."
I paused, letting her words sink in. "So no pressure," I whispered.
Iskanda smirked. "Exactly."
I stared at her. She stared back. Then I let my jaw hang open in mock betrayal. "You know, your approach to calming nerves is impeccable. Truly. I feel so much better. Perhaps next you can remind me of my mortality, maybe list my past failures in alphabetical order."
"I could," she mused, tilting her head, "or I could do something else to ease your nerves." She dragged her tongue slowly across her upper lip, eyes gleaming playfully.
Heat shot straight up my neck, blooming across my cheeks so fast it felt like an allergic reaction. "Whoa—no. No, no, absolutely not. Not again. No weaponized flirting when I'm in such a fragile state. It's inhumane. There are rules here. Ethical boundaries."
Iskanda chuckled again, soft and deep. She leaned back, crossing her arms beneath her chest. "Suit yourself."
I huffed, crossing my own legs in defense. "Trust me, my nerves are doing fine," I insisted. "They're just… vibrating enthusiastically inside my body. That's normal. That's healthy. Some cultures probably consider it a sign of—of coming greatness."
"Sure they do," she murmured, slightly amused.
It was odd. For someone so imposing, so frighteningly capable of violence, Iskanda had this way of making the world feel… smaller. Contained. Like nothing in the shadows could touch me unless she allowed it.
Several minutes stretched between us, broken only by the sound of dripping water somewhere in the distance.
Iskanda suddenly straightened then. "Ah, I nearly forgot. I have something to give you before the match begins."
She lifted her palms out in front of her. They remained still for a beat.
Then the floor rippled.
Not metaphorically. Not in that poetic, figurative way people use when they're trying to sound mystical.
No—the marble truly rippled, spreading from her seated form in an expanding wave. My breath caught, and even the torches along the walls quivered, their flames thinning, bending inward as though bowing in reverence—or bracing themselves for whatever was about to awaken.
From the trembling floor, those two jagged shards wrenched themselves free—black as a starless void, humming with a low undertone that vibrated through my ribs.
The shards shot upward into her waiting palms without so much as a whisper of friction.
Iskanda caught them without flinching, her hands closing around the raw, jagged edges as though the shards themselves recognized her touch and softened in obedience. Then she brought them together in one decisive motion. They melded with each other with a sharp, resonant click.
Her bow materialized between her hands—vast, heavy, beautiful. Its limbs curved like the horns of some divine beast.
Then she turned it, reversing her grip, and extended the weapon toward me.
I waved my hands frantically, a chaotic symphony of desperate flailing, trying to convince her that no, I absolutely did not need the jagged black monstrosity she was shoving toward me.
"I—uh, I really don't think—" My words sputtered out, broken, as if the sheer presence of the weapon had leaked into my brain and short-circuited any semblance of coherent sentence structure.
My palms trembled visibly, betraying the calm I was desperately trying to project, while the jagged edges of the bow seemed to glint maliciously in the dim light, as though mocking my nervous hesitation.
Iskanda rolled her eyes—a motion so sharp and decisive it could have cut through steel if anyone dared to test it—and shoved the weapon further into my grip. I barely caught it, my fingers closing around the cold, jagged surface.
"You will use it," she said, "There is no room for negotiation." Her eyes glittered with a dangerous combination of expectation and that playful mischief I'd learned to dread.
I cocked my head at her, trying to channel some semblance of authority despite the fact that my hands were still shaking slightly.
"And… why exactly?" I asked, voice quieter than I intended.
She arched a single brow at me, that imperious tilt that made me want to crawl into a corner and whisper apologies to every inanimate object in the room.
"Because," she said, leaning forward slightly, "not only is your fate riding on this match, Loona, but so is mine. Every advantage you can take, you will take. I'm not taking any chances."
The casual weight of her words landed like a hammer in my chest, sharp enough to make me inhale audibly, and my stomach did that delicate flutter-of-terror thing that felt suspiciously like a minor heart attack.
I nodded, forcing my mind to cooperate, and lowered my gaze to the weapon in my hands. The black surface was no longer just a bow—it was a statement, an extension of some eldritch will I wasn't entirely ready to shoulder.
Light seemed to vanish into its ridges, pooling and swirling like a dark lake trapped in solid form. I inhaled slowly, trying to organize my thoughts, which promptly disintegrated like dry ash in a windstorm.
"…What is it even made of?" I asked, keeping my voice casual, though I wasn't sure casual was actually in my vocabulary at the moment.
"Blackbane," she replied, almost lazily, as if the answer were obvious and I was the one being absurd. Her tone suggested she could go into a full lecture about the rare ore and its mystical properties, but decided against it. "I'll explain later," she added.
I tilted the weapon in my hands experimentally, rolling it over my fingers, careful not to nick myself on its cruelly jagged edges.
"And… how exactly am I supposed to use this?" I asked, voice dripping with a mix of curiosity and self-preservation, like a cat gingerly pawing a suspiciously wiggling worm.
Iskanda smirked, a cruelly knowing curl of her lips, and leaned back against the bench with an air of casual omniscience. "First," she said, "we transfer ownership. The weapon must know whose hands it serves."
My eyes narrowed. "Transfer ownership? With what? Some kind of medieval paperwork, or—"
Before I could finish, Iskanda flicked a thin, razor-sharp knife from between her breasts, spinning it effortlessly through the air like a gymnast tossing a baton.
My hands barely caught it, knuckles whitening as it teetered dangerously between my fingers. She didn't miss a beat. "Produce a well of blood at the tip of your finger," she instructed, calm and imperious. I stared at her blankly, blinking. "Uh… you mean, like, real blood?"
"Yes," she replied with a blank expression. "Your blood."
My throat went dry, and a small, helpless groan escaped me. I pressed my fingertip to the blade, watching as a droplet of deep crimson appeared there, glistening in the torchlight like a tiny ruby.
"Now mark the weapon," she instructed next, a simple command loaded with the weight of worlds. I pressed the blood against the black surface, which absorbed it instantly, its ridges almost humming in response.
The sensation wasn't unpleasant, not exactly. It felt like the weapon recognized me, or perhaps I recognized it—it was difficult to tell which way the magic flowed.
I set the knife down carefully. Iskanda leaned forward slightly and began chanting in a language that sounded as though it were older than the marble beneath our feet, curling around my ears like a cold wind.
The air seemed to warp around her tongue, twisting and stretching in impossible ways, the words resonating against my chest.
"Repeat after me," she commanded.
I stumbled over the pronunciation, the syllables slipping past my lips with hesitation, my tongue tangling against the unfamiliar sounds. My own voice felt strange, uncomfortably alien, and yet… I persisted.
With three painstaking repetitions, I felt a strange resonance, a subtle pulse echoing through my hands, down my arms, and into my chest.
Then, without warning, the black material began to shift. The jagged bow melted and reshaped itself into twin daggers, sleek and wicked, edges humming like a caged storm.
I gawked, heart skipping wildly, as Iskanda's approving smirk floated over me. "Perfect," she said. "The weapon is now connected to your soul. The blackbane will obey you. Understand that it is now an extension of your will."
My brows knit together. "Okay, but—why the daggers?"
She tilted her head, resting an elbow on her knee. "Blackbane is alive in its own way," she said. "It senses its wielder. It will choose the form it believes is most suited to your instincts—your agility, your fighting style, your… temperament." Iskanda's gaze drifted slowly down my slender arms, then back up to my face with a knowing smile. "Unless you override it with your will, it defaults to what it thinks will best suit you."
My fingers tightened instinctively around the twin blades.
"Now try forming a spear," she instructed next, a casual command, as if she were asking me to tie my shoes.
I focused, closing my eyes, willing the black material to respond. My arms strained slightly, the weight of concentration pressing on my skull, but slowly, painstakingly, a long, wicked spear formed in my hands.
"Great, now let's see if you can make it obey," she said as her she flicked her wrist toward the far wall. The obsidian surface shimmered as if bracing itself, which was rude, honestly, considering I was the one about to work up a sweat.
I inhaled, spun the spear once—not elegantly, but confidently enough that from a distance someone could mistake me for competent—and hurled it.
I watched it whistle through the air before it struck the wall hard enough to send a tremor through the room. For a heartbeat it shivered there, trying hard to melt into the obsidian surface like it desperately wanted to be free of me.
But then Iskanda barked, "Don't let it vanish. Call it back."
"Call it back?" I echoed, blinking hard. "How?"
"Reach for it," she said, stepping around me. "Feel the connection. Send your energy to your palm, then command it."
I pressed both palms forward then, letting a pulse of enhancement ripple outward from my skin, a warm electric surge that crawled up my arms and into the lingering thread between me and the weapon.
The spear jerked once, twice, resisted for a beat, until suddenly the whole thing slipped free from the stone and snapped backwards into my grasp with a satisfying weight that made me grin.
We continued like that for a while, Iskanda teaching me how to shift the weapon between forms mid-movement, to keep it fluid and hungry in my hands rather than stiff and hesitant. She drilled me on timing, on feeling the subtle tug of the blackbane's instincts, until each shift felt less like a transformation and more like exhaling into a shape I'd always known.
I lowered the weapon, shaking with exhilaration, and then, with more confidence, I reshaped it back into the form of a bow, smaller this time, manageable in my trembling hands.
A smirk crept across my face. Yes. Yes, I could wield this.
"If you wish to dismiss the weapon, simply drop it to the floor with the intent for it to vanish," Iskanda added casually. "It will return from whence it came."
I blinked. "…And where is that exactly?" She opened her mouth to answer, a ghost of amusement in her eyes, when something echoed across the chamber.
My eyes snapped toward the source, heart skipping an anxious beat, only to catch a faint movement from the shadows.
Iskanda's attendant, who I'd completely forgotten was standing in the room with us, emerged from the gloom with unnerving precision, his hand snapping closed a small pocket watch. The sound echoed crisp and sharp, bouncing off the walls and making my stomach do an unpleasant little flip.
"It's time," he said simply.