average human’s Reviews > One Small Echo > Status Update

The coal-black curls were feral, bunched thick and tight, falling like a looming storm cloud to cover her shoulders, chest, and arms.
Pretty, Hymn said happily. Shiny.
What are you, a magpie? she griped back.
Her face had the delicate, sloping bone structure of most Stonesigh people, her skin the same golden dusk as her brother’s. Her lips were a pronounced bow, unlike the softer shape of Rion’s.
Her eyes had a cloudy white film over the walnut of her irises and the dark of her pupils, turning the colour opalescent.
She searched through her riotous curls to find the hair tie that had once secured the mass and began attempting to tame it all. It was much easier when she couldn’t see just how bad a job she was doing. Once it was all mangled into a long, thick braid, with stubborn tendrils still breaking free to spring around her face, she began to smooth down her uniform.
Her hand paused at her waist, her eyes narrowing. Beneath the skin of her wrist, something dark and thin and sinuous curled and uncurled. It clung along her bones, coiled in loops and whorls, little wings unfurling, little head slithering to the back of her hand. Maybe Hymn wanted to see himself in the mirror too.
Don’t let them see you, she warned.
Okay, he sounded a little petulant, but the darkness beneath her skin flickered away, and she raised her eyes to the mirror again.
A complete stranger stared back, but she could find little hints of familiarity. A stubborn chin. Hard head. Eyes that burned even behind clouds.
She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped back into the corridor.
The winding staircase at the other end of the corridor was less hateful when she could almost see it. Her cane tapped the edge of each step as usual, but now she caught flashes of boot, stone, boot, stone, as slashes of light from high windows made everything jitter into clarity for a heartbeat at a time. A few Eclipse soldiers passed her on the way down, and she tried to make herself small, sticking close to the wall and out of their way. They didn’t pay her any mind, except for a few distracted and annoyed glances. She supposed it would be annoying to feel like you were sleeping in a corridor with a ticking bomb, and that it would be your responsibility to jump into action the moment it went off. By putting her on their floor, Chasin had made her their problem.
She tried to observe them beneath her lashes, catching sight of dark fabric, mesh and leather, bored scowls, worn boots, a litany of scars and even more concealed weapons.
They moved like predators, terrifyingly silent and efficient. They were also terrifyingly fit. The Eclipse uniform left almost nothing to the imagination, the form-fitting leather and mesh sticking to every muscle and bulge.
She didn’t see a single woman in black.
The next level down must have been for the Crescent banner, as the uniform changed from black to gold, and the hallway was vastly more crowded. She spotted her friends in a group, all moving towards the stairwell, and she stepped out and tucked herself back to the wall, waiting for them. This corridor was darker, without the windows on one side—instead, there were more doors. It created a strange scene where the background consisted mostly of blurry shapes, while the people in motion were clear. She cast her eyes over her friends, her jaw unhinging slightly.
They wore gold.
The Crescent uniform was beautiful. Dark weave shimmered in glimpses beneath a brushed metal breastplate that contoured to the body. Matching plates protected the ribs, shoulders, and forearms—each piece secured tightly with leather straps so nothing shifted out of place. Beneath the armour, the weave seemed to absorb sound and prevent metal-on-metal noise. Their trousers were gold, reinforced along the outer seams, and tucked into brown boots with gold trimming. A short cape hung from their shoulders, reaching just past the waist. It was deep gold on the outside, cream on the inside, and fixed in place with a crescent-shaped clasp at the collarbone. Ky noticed her first, his brows furrowing in. Kaito followed his expression to where she waited, relief rushing over his strong features before the expression was chased away by something more perplexed.
Ky mouthed something to him that looked like “I told you.”
They reached her in silence, and as soon as they stopped moving, their features became blurred, the edges of her vision growing distracted with the outlines of the other Crescent soldiers who were still moving.
“You okay?” Ren asked quietly. She couldn’t make out his face anymore, but she could feel their attention on her.
On her green recruit uniform.
“Fine,” she said. “Better than you lot, anyway. I’m starting my own banner. It’s only for the most elite of the elite of the elite. I’m calling it Nighty-night banner. I’m also going to be the section leader.”
Kaito sighed, ruffling her hair. Ky and Rion chuckled, moving either side of her as she tucked her cane beneath her arm and wound her hands through the crooks of their elbows. With her friends there to guide her, she instinctively released her hold on the second sight, sinking back into comfortable darkness.
Ren followed behind, a quiet, looming presence.
“Eiko …” he started.
“Not now,” Kaito snapped.
Ooh, trouble in paradise, she thought.
Are they a couple? Hymn asked.
No, best friends all their lives. I’ve never seen them fight before.
Is this because he ran away in the Quiet?
If by “ran away” you mean “left us for dead,” then yes.
Hymn made a thoughtful sound. Maybe it was the only way he could survive. I think his monster may be the most vicious of all four of them.
But his monster manifested before the others?
I can only guess, but it’s possible he almost lost control, and it was about to tear free; that’s why it happened faster.
They made their way down to the ground level of the barracks, Kaito and Ren peeling off as they passed the kitchens and catching up with them again as they stepped into the main courtyard. She activated her second sight again just as Ren pushed a bread roll into her hand. He did it silently, not even looking at what he was doing, but instead scanning the area, his squared jaw holding so much tension. The sun burned down, bouncing off metal, glass, and gold, turning Ren’s chocolatey eyes molten as they fixed to a point in the distance, his brows lowering in a fierce expression.
She glanced that same way, blinking at the structure before her. The “stone courtyard” was only partly what she had pictured. There was a courtyard—a flat forecourt of pale stone—but it opened directly into a much larger, sunken arena. The ground dropped away in a broad rectangular basin, its floor made of the same smooth-cut stone, divided up into sections with different flooring and apparatuses she didn’t have the time to examine.
Along the far side, the wall rose high and structured, built in tiers. Wide steps climbed upward to a series of open chambers—viewing rooms, it seemed. They were carved straight into the stone, each positioned to overlook the arena below. It was one of those viewing chambers that Ren was glaring into, but she didn’t have a chance to examine it before someone grunted at their group to get out of the way, forcing them to move into the arena with the other soldiers.
The basin was larger than she had expected. It was long enough to run drills and wide enough to host several training groups at once. The left side was fitted with a stretch of compacted sand bordered by low stone barriers. The right had a flat sparring square marked by darker stone tiles, slightly raised at the edges to contain movement. A line of wooden dummies stood near the far wall, each fitted with jointed arms and worn padding. Racks of blunt weapons had been pushed against another section of the wall, neat and uniform.
The air shifted subtly as bodies gathered, soldiers filling out the tiers of the arena in lazy, sprawling piles across the seats, talking quietly amongst themselves. It reminded her of the first day of the Kingsfete, when all the miners emerged from the mountain after finishing work early, ready to enjoy a rare afternoon off.
The viewing chambers extended deeper than she first thought; some appeared furnished, their fronts open to the arena with railings carved directly into the rock. Others were broader platforms with no seating at all, clearly meant for standing audiences. Light streamed in from the open sky above the basin, illuminating everything in clean, sharp angles.
Three dark-gold banners hung above the central chamber, rippling slowly in the morning breeze. The first was emblazoned in the middle with a shining half-moon, the second with a crescent, and the third with a pitch-black circle. Eiko almost stumbled as four figures approached the railing from within the chamber below the banners.
King Grigori and Queen Noemi were a striking pair. He was just as huge and hulking as Eiko remembered him to be, with broad shoulders and thick arms, his skin a warm gold, weathered in places, with faint sun-darkening along his forearms. His hair was a deep, natural gold shot through with streaks of pale grey at his temples. His beard was full, trimmed close at the sides but long through the chin, framing a square jaw. His eyes were a clear, bright gold; the sun slanted across his face, making them shine. He wore a light, emerald-and-cream, sleeveless, brocaded overcoat, the linen shirt beneath pushed up to his elbows.
Queen Noemi was much smaller in build, and where the king appeared brutish and rough, she was smooth and cool. Her honeyed skin shone, no sunspots in sight. Her glossy hair was a wavy, dune-soft brown, gathered neatly into a pinned style at the back of her head. Her eyes were a saturated emerald green—sharp, bright, and immediately distinct. She wore layered fabrics in soft ivory and muted green, the material light enough that it shifted whenever she breathed or turned her head. They didn’t match in stature, but they matched in presence—one heavy and imposing, the other controlled and precise—as their attention swept the arena.
On the queen’s other side were the two princes. Corvan and Ceran. Despite having seen them only once before, such a long time ago, she could tell them apart instantly.
Ceran’s velvety voice suited him. His hands were braced against the railing as he leaned forward, his jewel-bronze hair waving lazily across a strong forehead, strands framing sly, rust-gold eyes with thick black lashes. He had a full, silky moustache and dark stubble coating a strong, squared jaw, jewelled fingers stroking across his chin as that shrewd gaze surveyed the gathering soldiers. Corvan was the spitting image of his father, but younger and far more handsome. His facial hair was styled like his brother’s, but that was where their similarities ended. Corvan had his father’s natural bulk, whereas Ceran seemed to have built up his musculature to get to their size, so Corvan appeared softer, less hard angling around his features. His gaze was more of a mellowed, glassy gold—far less sharp and shrewd than Ceran’s.
Eiko stared up at them, swallowing tightly. She suddenly felt … unnervingly small.
Cairn exhaled, sharply impatient, stopping by their group. “Move,” he said. “We’re gathering in the centre.”

42%

Ky had been right, all those weeks ago. The royal family were all very good-looking. Corvan clearly took after King Grigori, exuding perfection and charm in his looks and posture, whereas Chasin seemed to have inherited more of his mother’s reserved, cutting beauty. Ceran—perhaps ironically, as the middle son—was an interesting mix of both his parents. Full of brash charm, but with a quality of sly, dangerous intensity.
Chasin, taking after his mother, was beautiful in a way that hardly made sense. A man so tall, so broad, so utterly terrifying, shouldn’t have been beautiful, but everything about him was simply … graceful. His powerful shoulders narrowed to a tapered waist, his long legs eating up the distance without any effort. Every line of his body, outlined by the leather and mesh Eclipse uniform, seemed deliberately and meticulously carved. His posture was perfectly fluid without looking relaxed, held in a presumably constant state of lethal readiness.
His dark hair was a deep black that seemed to reject even the glaring sunlight, and she remembered seeing glints of gold in it when they were children, though she couldn’t make out any of his father’s colouring at all anymore. He wore the sides of his head shorn shorter, but the top carelessly long, exposing the brutal angles of his face—the knife-edged cheekbones, straight nose, and sculpted jaw—while also hiding away his eyes in shadow. Within that shadow, his eyes seemed black. They didn’t shine or flicker in the light. His gaze was flat, steady, unreadable … and so, so dark. When he glanced at her, it was like he was pinning her forcefully in place. She didn’t get a chance to look away—he did it first, glancing over the other recruits, and then flicking his attention briefly up to the viewing chamber, where his family gathered.
His face was flawless. Completely without scars, marks, or imperfections. Smooth, dark bronze skin, sharp structure, a mouth shaped into a permanently firm line. So austere and breathtaking … until she looked lower.
His neck was a lattice of scars.
Thick, pale ridges cut across the skin in every direction. Horrible slashes and punctures, the wounds that she knew continued down his body, though they were currently hidden behind his uniform. She would never forget what he looked like when she dragged him out of that cave. Seeing the result of his Silencing on his skin ten years later was a chilling reminder of what truly waited in the Quiet.
When Chasin moved closer, Eiko realised that he made no sound at all. She couldn’t hear his boots against the stone, or the fabric of his uniform. He stopped a few paces away, turned slightly, and motioned over his shoulder. Eiko had been so fixated on him that she hadn’t noticed the two men behind him. They each carried a large cauldron. The first seemed to be full of hot stones, steam curling into the air. The second sloshed with a thick, luminescent liquid.
Eiko swallowed tightly, watching as they set the cauldron of liquid onto the other and began to stir the liquid. The more they stirred, the more the liquid glowed, until Chasin raised a hand for them to stop.
And then he began to speak, his hands moving rapidly, forming words she had no chance of understanding. She could see Alessandra murmuring lowly to Rion, Kaito, Ky, and Ren.
Must be nice to have a section leader.
Eiko glanced to her side, where Cairn stood, scowling. He rolled his eyes at her, though he had no way of knowing she could see his expression.
“This mineral was mined from the luminescent rock at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Suntide,” he grunted out quietly, turning his eyes back to Chasin. “Your monster has the power to protect you from burning, freezing, or poisoning. Your power over them should now be strong enough for you to command their protection. If they do not protect you, you will lose your arms.”
Eiko stared at the bubbling cauldron, her blood freezing.
What?
Don’t worry, I’ll protect you! Hymn said happily.
Nothing against you, but I remain horrified and about to piss myself.
“If your monster protects you,” Cairn continued in a bored tone, “the mineral will interact with your skin. It will seep into your fingertips and form lace.”
Chasin tugged off his gloves, and Eiko felt her brows jumping up in surprise. The patterns across his dark bronze skin were pitch-black, looping and crossing so closely that it was impossible to determine their pattern from where she stood. The markings continued up, and up, as he rolled his sleeves, stopping just below his elbows. Alessandra and the other female section leader—Ilara—also removed their gloves, revealing markings just as layered and intricate, though theirs ended at their wrists. Alessandra’s was blood red. Ilara’s was pearl white.
“Everyone’s lace will have slight variations,” Cairn continued to translate, even as he tore off his gloves with his teeth, revealing thick black lines across his fingers, covering his hands to the wrist, “making them unique to your monster and your bond. When the bond is strong, the lines will be thick. When the bond is weak, the lines will fray and snap and grow weak and brittle.”
Eiko tried to surreptitiously eye the hands of the section leaders as they all removed their gloves, without giving away that she could see. She wasn’t sure why she was trying to keep it a secret, only that she had absolutely no idea what was happening at any point of the day or night, and it felt prudent to keep her cards very close to her chest.
Haneul and Takoda, who stood with Alessandra, had red and white markings, respectively. Eirik and Tenzin, the other Half-Moon section leaders, both had red markings. All of their lines were strong.
Guess they’re not section leaders for nothing, she muttered to Hymn.
He didn’t respond.
You okay? she pressed.
I’m scared I’ll burn your arms off, he admitted, sounding like he was about to start spiralling into a panic.
You just said you’ll protect me? Like three minutes ago!
“There are three monster classes,” Cairn continued, as Chasin’s marked hands moved in a flurry of speech. “Rustlings, named for their predatory nature and propensity to hunt, will turn your lace pitch-black. These are the rarest monsters. They are considered extremely violent, insane, and evil. Attempting to Silence a Rustling almost always ends in death or madness. If the Silencing is successful, and it holds, you will have harnessed the ultimate weapon. You will be amongst our strongest.”
Eiko searched the hands on display, realising each of the soldiers in the surrounding stands had also taken off their gloves. She couldn’t spot any black lace. Only on Chasin and Cairn.
And then she glanced between Chasin’s mutilated neck and Cairn’s cane, and she wondered if anyone else really had a chance of surviving a Rustling, if even these fearsome men had barely survived.
“Whistlings, named for their rapid flight patterns, will produce a blood-red lace. These monsters are usually large, forceful, and highly aggressive. They will try everything in their power to trick you, to overwhelm you, and to tear free of your bond. If they are successfully mastered, they are a very valuable asset.”
Eiko found her eyes wandering up to the viewing chamber again, wondering what coloured lace the royals were hiding beneath their gloves.
“Murmurings, named for their stealth abilities, will produce a pearl-white lace. These monsters come in all shapes and sizes, though they’re just as dangerous as Whistlings, so don’t be deceived. They are elusive, fast-moving, very difficult to track, and they are considered highly unpredictable. Today, you discover what you invited into your body and mind. A violent Rustling, a fearsome Whistling, or a sly Murmuring.”
Eiko realised that Chasin touched a part of his mouth every time Cairn used one of the words for a monster class, except for Rustling. For that word, he briefly touched beneath his chin. Close to his scars.
Had he created this language?
Chasin paused and then made a single, dismissive motion with his finger and his palm.
“Begin,” Cairn said.
A man stepped forward without hesitation, recognising the word without needing his section leader to translate. Maelon, probably. He had deep-brown skin marked with patches of pale white, each dusted with the faintest freckles. Eiko had never seen anything quite like it. His face had the slightly softer lines of someone younger, but none of that softness reached his eyes. His hair was an unruly brown with cooler grey undertones, and it fell into his stormy grey eyes.
He approached the cauldron, rolled up his sleeves, and paused barely a second before shoving both of his hands into the glowing, bubbling, steaming liquid. His jaw clenched, the lines of his shoulders tight with tension. The liquid erupted in brighter light around his wrists, a violent shimmer crawling halfway up his forearms. Heat curled off him in waves, steam rising from his skin—except his skin wasn’t burning. It seemed to be … absorbing the glow.
When he finally pulled his hands free, the molten sheen dissolved into his skin at once, and lines began to form. Red etched across his fingertips, then swept down in branching, assertive lines to his knuckles. A Whistling. The lines were thin and sparse.
He stepped back without ceremony, shaking his arms out, his expression unchanging. If he felt pain, it wasn’t apparent.
He nodded quickly to a man around his own age, who stepped forward before Maelon was even back to Ilara. Eiko assumed it was Lenny, as he had very similar colouring to Maelon, with copper-brown skin and tightly curled, thick, dark hair. He moved with a tight, coiled energy, sleeves already shoved up to his elbows. He plunged his hands into the liquid with reckless speed, making Eiko flinch slightly.
Cairn cut her a look, and she crinkled her nose, acting like it was the hissing sound coming from the cauldron that she was reacting to.
Lenny bared his teeth and held his breath, every muscle in his shoulders locked into trembling tension. Drops of the glowing substance sputtered up the sides, flecking against his uniform, burning tiny little smoking holes in the material. He didn’t pull away.
When he wrenched his hands out at last, the glow sank into his skin just as it had with Maelon.
Red lace appeared—just as thin and sparse as Maelon’s. Another Whistling.
Eiko could hear the faint shift of feet on stone, the murmur of interest threading through the soldiers in the stands.
Vana stepped forward, slight and trembling, stumbling at first. Eiko realised a little too late that Ilara must have pushed her, when the girl glanced back in shock. She had wild grey eyes, wide and skittish, and short-cropped moonlight hair. She hesitated at the cauldron, looking back towards Ilara again. The captain of Half-Moon banner made a firm, downward gesture with her hand, and Vana swallowed, plunging her hands in with a sharp yelp before she clamped her jaw shut, her eyes squeezing tightly closed. The glow flickered erratically around her fingers, almost uncertain, and she began to rapidly mumble to herself.
“The light, it burns, the sun, it burns, the dark, it burns, the⁠—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Cairn snapped.
She lowered her voice to a whisper, unable to curb the habit completely. When she withdrew, the light didn’t sink immediately into her skin. Instead, it pulsed along the surface in delicate threads before finally disappearing inward. Her lace bloomed across her skin in a pale white spread. A Murmuring. The thin, curling lines were fragile, but unbroken.
Ilara nodded once in approval, and Vana backed away quickly.
“Are you determined to make yourselves look weak?” Alessandra spoke suddenly, her tone dry and cold.
Kaito’s face twitched with an expression he wiped away so fast, Eiko didn’t even get a chance to read it. He stepped forward before any of the other Half-Moon recruits could join Maelon, Lenny, and Vana. He rolled his shoulders back and set his jaw in a way that had Eiko’s heart immediately aching. It wasn’t something she had seen him do before, but she knew that shrug. She had heard it so many times.
It was his nervous tell, despite how sure and steady he appeared.
He lowered his hands slowly into the liquid.
The glow reacted instantly—maybe a little too instantly. It curled around his arms in spiralling, frantic patterns. His whole body tensed. Eiko could feel the restrained panic radiating from him.
Come on, come on, she whispered internally. We didn’t come all this way just for you to turn your arms into stubs.
Kaito gritted his teeth, and it seemed like his legs shuddered briefly. For a terrifying moment, she thought he might collapse face-first into the cauldron, but then he pulled his hands free, gasping as the light sank inward. White lace wrapped around his fingers. Another Murmuring.
Ren stepped up before Kaito even turned from the cauldron, his expression unreadable. He shoved his hands in with a grimace, like he already knew how bad it was about to feel. The light surged up his arms in violent streaks, and his grimace deepened.
When he withdrew, blood-red lace etched across his skin.
Ky moved next, and his red lace looked startlingly similar to Ren’s, though it lacked the angry red flush Ren still boasted, the skin around his markings so raw it looked like he had just spent hours scrubbing at his arms with wire brushes.
When Rion dipped her hands into the cauldron, the glow softened immediately, its violent bubbling smoothing into a calm, steady radiance.
It was … beautiful.
Of course it was.
Movement on the viewing platform stole Eiko’s attention, and she glanced up to see the king leaning forward over the railing with interest. Eiko’s stomach recoiled.
When Rion pulled her hands out, her lace shimmered pearl white, vivid and even. The lines were still thin and scratchy like the other recruits, but Eiko was certain there were a few extra strokes on Rion’s wrists.
“Are you fucking determined to go last?” Cairn grumbled lowly beside her.
“Yes,” she said. “I honestly couldn’t be more determined if I tried.”
“I guess you’re determined for a beating too.”
Chasin looked their way, forcing Eiko’s throat to close up before she could formulate a response. Those shadowed eyes crawled across her for the briefest, most terrifying moment, before flicking to Cairn, and then back to the cauldron.
Her throat refused to loosen enough for her to draw a full breath after that. She barely even paid attention to the last two Half-Moon recruits. All she knew was that the man from Ironglade and the man from Suntide both walked back to their section with hands still attached and white lace wrapped thinly around their fingers.
“Recruit.”
Eiko flinched, but she wasn’t the only one. Everyone flinched at the sudden, scratchy-and-echoey quality of Chasin’s voice.
She jolted forward, seeing that he was staring right at her. Of course he was. He had spoken—called her that word again. He was summoning her for her turn, forced to use his voice because she couldn’t possibly speak his language.
Well … she could, now. But he didn’t need to know that.
Let him keep terrorising every person within hearing distance with that one, scratchy word.
She walked to the cauldron on numb feet.
Hymn? You’re being way too quiet, and it’s freaking me out.
I’m scared, the little monster whispered back. We Silenced wrong. We manifested wrong. What if we do this wrong?
Silencing and manifesting seemed very strenuous and painful for everyone else. I’m fine doing this wrong.
I MIGHT BURN YOUR ARMS OFF!
She flinched instinctively at the scream inside her head, jerking away from the cauldron. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kaito jolt forward a step, his hand out, but Rion quickly pulled him back, whispering something to him.
Eiko sucked in a deep, steadying breath, her cane tracing along the ground as she walked in the direction of the bubbling, hissing mineral, only pausing when her cane clanked against the bottom cauldron.
She told her arms to rise.
They would not.
I don’t know if I can do this, she realised. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Hymn, but the little monster had never Silenced before. He didn’t know how any of this worked.
He had no idea how to protect her, and she had no idea how to demand it.
She was almost certain that if she plunged her hands into that molten mineral, it would be a very big and very painful mistake.
“Quit time-wasting, blind girl,” Cairn grunted.
Yes, that’s what she was doing. Time-wasting. Not having a full-body, interior meltdown.
She swallowed hard, feeling everyone’s eyes on her. The recruits waiting beside the cauldron. The section leaders. The captains. Cairn. The commander. The ring of soldiers in the stands. The king and queen above. The princes.
I’ll protect you, Hymn said again, much more meekly this time. I promise, Eiko.
All right, she thought back, because there really was no other option. Let’s both pretend we know what we’re doing.
She dropped her cane and raised her hands.
They were trembling. So she shoved them into the mineral to hide her fear from everyone else. The heat reached her first, a thick, radiant wall that singed the hairs on her wrists. Her instinct was to jerk back, but she tightened every muscle and pushed forward.
Pain slammed into her.
She couldn’t help the hoarse sound that tore from her throat as the liquid swallowed her hands, and then her wrists. It wasn’t like water or oil. It felt like being shoved, bone-first, into molten stone.
She didn’t even have the breath to scream.
Hymn shrieked inside her chest and then did something she had never felt before. He wrapped himself around her tendons and bones, pressing tight against her skin from the inside, as though he were trying to thicken it, reinforce it, make a barrier of himself.
It hurts, it hurts, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
It’s working, she told him through gritted teeth, her jaw locked so hard it ached. If you stop whatever you’re doing, I lose my arms.
The glow flared up around her forearms, bright enough that several recruits squinted and turned their faces. Steam roared upward in a column, drowning her in heat and light. Her knees buckled. She forced them straight again, sweat pricking along her spine.
“How l-long do I—” she stuttered out, but her voice broke on the last word.
“Until it releases you,” Cairn replied flatly.
What? It had seemed so straightforward for everyone else. The liquid tried to climb higher up her arms, hungry, dragging at her, the sensation like burning hands trying to pull her down. Hymn strained against it, pushing outwards, bracing. Eiko felt every tremor of his effort. Every faltering slip. Her own vision blurred at the edges, unconsciousness threatening.
Please, she thought, unsure if she was speaking to Hymn, praying to the sun, or pleading with the mineral itself.
The boiling glow shuddered, and then, suddenly, it released its grip on her. The roaring heat snapped back to a deep, humming warmth. The pain ebbed to a fierce ache. Eiko gasped in a deep, shuddering breath.
Now, Hymn panted. Quickly!
She pulled her hands out of the cauldron. Light clung to her skin, refusing to release her. It crawled along her fingers like liquid gold, seeping into the lines of her palms and racing along the backs of her hands in fast, branching strokes. She stared, unable to breathe.
It wasn’t settling into red.
It wasn’t settling into white.
It … wasn’t even settling into black.
It remained gold.
Thin, fragile lines of gold bloomed against her skin, tracing every bone and tendon. They climbed over her knuckles, slipped between her fingers, and split and rejoined in an intricate, untidy web. For a heartbeat, she hoped they would stop at her fingertips. Just a fragile, polite little flourish like everyone else had.
They didn’t. Of course they didn’t.
The lines kept going—still thin and wispy, but they climbed up past the base of her thumb. Over her wrists. Along the narrow bones of her forearms. They stopped near the crook of her elbow, as if reluctantly surrendering their claim on the rest of her.
By the time the glow finally dimmed, both arms were marked almost to where Chasin’s sleeves ended.
Her lace was the same length as his.
Silence crashed over the arena. Eiko turned slowly, her eyes racing over all the faces. It took her a second to realise the difference in what she was seeing.
Her friends were worried and confused. Vana was frantically mumbling, her head shaking. The Oakensnare man and the Suntide man both appeared confused.
Everyone else was horrified.
Cairn and Chasin had both taken an instinctive step towards her, their hands resting on weapons strapped to their belts. Cairn’s cane toppled to the ground, forgotten, his eyes stuck to her hands.
Alessandra choked out a single, stunned word: “Whispering.”
It rippled across the soldiers in the surrounding stands like a frigid breeze.
Whispering.
Whispering.
Whispering.
“Impossible,” Ilara was spluttering. “She’s survived days⁠—”
Hymn? Eiko called out desperately, eyeing the stillness of Chasin and Cairn, who were surveying her like she wasn’t even a person anymore.
They were watching her as though her tiny baby monster had just been exposed in some way and was about to rip free of her skin and scorch the entire arena.
What’s a Whispering? she demanded. Chasin said nothing about Whisperings.
“No one survives—no one—” Takoda was quietly arguing with Alessandra, who looked to have briefly put her hand over his to stop him … drawing a weapon? “It’s going to tear through that tiny fucking girl.”
I don’t know what’s happening. Hymn’s voice was small. Afraid.
“It’s the killer, the killer, can you feel it? Can you see it, can you hear it?” Vana ranted, stumbling back a few steps.
Eiko stared down at herself. She felt suddenly dizzy. The gold lines were a thin, fragile mess: jittering branches, uneven strokes. Nothing like the solid, carved-black lines on Chasin’s arms. Nothing like the bold red or steady white of the other section leaders.
Her lace looked … wrong.
Hymn was right. They had done this wrong, just as they had done everything else wrong.
The Godsguard shifted like a single organism on the verge of attack. The air tasted electric, every soldier’s monster straining to be free. They were drawing closer. Moving into the arena. Circling. Waiting.
Eiko looked for her brother.
She couldn’t even remember the last time she had looked to her big brother for help. She usually liked to fight her battles on her own. She was usually brave. She was usually so brave and stupid and foolish, and look where it got her.
She met her brother’s eyes and felt her own fill with tears.
Kaito stepped forward without hesitation, and this time, Rion didn’t stop him.
He ignored Alessandra’s sharp warning not to move and walked calmly to her side. And then he turned his back on her, tucking her behind his arm, facing off against the person he saw as the greatest threat to her safety in that moment.
Prince Chasin.
Ren was there before she even realised he was moving, and then Rion and Ky were completing the circle around her.
All of their backs were to her.