The bridge hung across the shallow pit like a narrow promise—no wider than a man's stride, its surface a mosaic of rune-tiles that pulsed faintly in the arena light. Torches rimmed the arena, their flames trembling in the mist and catching on the tiles' enamel like warning beacons. Along the rim, they threw long, nervous shadows as the crowd's murmur tightened into a single, expectant thread.
The shallow pit beneath was a cruel compromise: deep enough to bruise and break rhythm, shallow enough that a fall would not kill but would cost everything the Trial measured—time, standing, reputation. The designers had built a stage for spectacle and cruelty in equal measure.
Lyra and Daryn stepped onto the first tile together, shoulders nearly touching. The tiles glowed in ally-hues—soft blues and pale silver—then, as if the floor had a mind of its own, one tile flickered toward a warning red. The bridge was a living test: colors promised safety and then, without warning, reneged. Alive with enchantment, the bridge was lined runes that could flip allegiance, mirrors that angled to lie, and sound-echoes that bent truth into bait. Hesitation would be punished. Misreading color would be costly.
They had rehearsed signals until the motions felt like muscle memory; Lyra's taps and Daryn's heel stomps that anchored him and a variant—two quick stomps—that meant wait, do not react with Lyra's forearm press that meant "hold your center" , put there duo synchronization into a deadly cadence. They had layered these human cues over small, precise magics: stabilizing lattices that could force a tile to keep its current state for a handful of heartbeats and suppression knots that dulled a rune's urge to flip.
Midway across, the tile beneath Daryn's left foot flared from blue to hot red. The change was a sting through leather and bone. His instinct urged him to step back; his training with Kaelen urging him to plant and push forward. The feeling of the tile's betrayal was like a pulse under his sole.
Lyra's hand brushed his wrist—two quick taps and he remembered the prearranged warning. More confident, he answered with the heel-stomp: a planted, deliberate strike that locked his weight and told his body to hold. The tile shuddered but did not flip. Lyra's lips moved weaving a lattice that wrapped the tile in a temporary law. For three breaths the rune held its color before Daryn pushed off. The lattice sighing away as he cleared the tile.
"Good," she breathed, voice low enough that only he could hear. "Keep the rhythm."
He let out a breath that tasted like iron and relief. The bridge had tested them and found their timing intact.
The crossing became choreography. Lyra's double tap warned of inversion; a single forearm press meant anchor now. Daryn's heel-stomp had variants: one stomp to hold, two quick stomps to mean wait. They threaded these cues through Lyra's spells—short lattices that forced a tile to keep its hue for a handful of heartbeats, tiny suppression knots that dulled a tile's tendency to flip.
When the arena tried speed—flipping three tiles in a row—Lyra threaded a lattice across the next two and Daryn used his weight to lock the third. When a tile threatened to flip under Lyra's foot, Daryn shifted his center to counter the sudden torque, bracing her as if he were a living anchor. Their solution was not magic alone nor muscle alone; it was the marriage of both, timed to the beat of their agreed signals.
A trainer's shout rose from the gallery—an observation, a note—but the bridge swallowed it. The world narrowed to the pulse of runes and the small, private language of touch.
The arena saved its cruelest test for the center. A mirrored panel angled so that, from Daryn's line of sight, Lyra's arm flashed and her blade arced toward him. The illusion carried sound—her voice, distorted into a shout that sounded like accusation. The crowd's gasp folded into the trap's design: provoke a reaction, punish the reflex.
Daryn's muscles tensed. The old, hot surge of anger—of ledger and loss and the tablet under Lyra's cloak—rose like a tide. He felt the urge to strike, to answer the perceived betrayal with steel. For a breath the world narrowed to the flash of metal and the imagined sting.
"How could she ?" Daryn said as he braced himself and prepared for the strike.