Chapter Seven:

  “The Masked Hunt”

  It began with Calix’s laughter.

  Not loud. Not cruel. Just… pleased.

  The coliseum changed while they were still blinking from the Trial of Chains—Damarion’s test, a contest of endurance and combat that had left two dead, one unconscious, and John’s knuckles split wide open. The ground beneath them shifted like it had come loose from gravity. Torchlight dimmed. Fog crept in—not rising, not falling, just... appearing. The scent of cedar, iron, and crushed marble filled the air.

  John stood in the center of the arena with Rai, Helen, and a fourth—Thorn, a quiet girl with a sharp mouth and a tendency to keep her back to walls. Across from them, four others waited, faces obscured in the mist. No one spoke.

  Then Calix stepped forward from the shadows above the stands. His voice didn’t boom. It purred.

  “Ah, children of chance. How lovely to see you made it this far.”

  John tensed. RW had been barred from entry the moment they were chosen. She hadn’t argued, but she hadn’t liked it either. Now, they were in this alone.

  “Eight souls,” Calix continued. “Two teams. One prize: survival.”

  He clapped once, and eight white masks appeared midair, then floated down like falling leaves.

  John’s mask landed in his hand before he realized he’d reached for it. It was smooth, cool porcelain—blank, save for a curling black symbol scrawled above the eye.

  “You will not choose your role,” Calix said. “Your mask already knows what you are.”

  The masks began to glow.

  “One of you is prey,” Calix said. “The others, hunters. But don’t worry—prey sees everything. Hunters see almost nothing.”

  A pause.

  “Of course, you also won’t know who’s on your team. That would spoil the theater.”

  He raised a hand. The fog thickened, curling like smoke around the players’ feet.

  “Oh,” he added, “and one final note. There is only one gate. When the prey is found, it will open. And it only lets four pass.”

  He smiled.

  “Good luck.”

  The masks locked into place.

  And the hunt began.

  John could barely see through the eye slits.

  The mask didn’t block vision, not exactly. But the light shifted through it, bent and warped like the world was underwater. Edges bled. Distances lied. He blinked twice to clear his sight, but it didn’t help. Shapes moved in the fog—quick, slow, upright, crawling. Some weren’t people.

  The garden maze loomed around him, alive and wrong. Not hedges, but stone walls slick with condensation. Vines slithered between cracks like veins. Statues lined the corridors, their faces too smooth or too broken to read. The air buzzed with something—not insects, not magic, just pressure.

  John turned in place. No sign of Rai. No sign of Helen. He didn’t even know if they were on his team.

  Behind him, something ran.

  He pivoted, blade half-drawn—but no one was there. Just fog, curling tight around his feet like it wanted to keep him still.

  He moved.

  Each step echoed differently. The sound didn’t bounce—it staggered, like the maze was catching it, reshaping it, and throwing it back late. Left turns led to right walls. Paths narrowed then widened again for no reason.

  He wasn’t panicking. Not yet.

  But he felt the game watching.

  Calix’s voice had faded, but the rules hung sharp in John’s mind: three hunters, one prey. The Prey would know. That was the twist. All John knew was that he wasn't the prey. The Prey could see clearly—and they’d know they were being hunted. But the Hunters? They were masked in fog and doubt, stumbling forward without knowing their own teammates.

  But the danger wasn’t just in failing to find the prey—it was in choosing wrong. If you attacked the wrong target, the mask shattered, and they were gone. Permanently. Kill the wrong person, and you lost them forever. Worse—maybe you were the prey. And the second you were found, your name would be the next echo in the fog.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He needed to find someone—test them, read them—before this place started bending more than just sound.

  A shape passed through the corridor ahead.

  Too tall for Helen. Too quick for Rai.

  John crouched low, hands steady on his twin hilts.

  The hunt had begun.

  But he still didn’t know who—or what—he was hunting.

  Helen moved like a ghost.

  The mask gave her clarity. Not just vision, but focus. While the others stumbled through corridors blurred by fog and distortion, she saw the maze for what it was: a theater of panic, a cage of choices.

  Every step she took landed clean. No echoes, no hesitation. She ducked beneath crumbling archways, climbed shallow terraces where vines clawed through the stone, and paused at every corner, listening.

  She was prey.

  And she remembered what Calix had said: “Only the prey sees clearly.”

  Three of them were hunting her now. And she didn’t know who any of them were.

  At least—not yet.

  She crouched behind a headless statue, watching a masked figure pass by the far corridor. Broad shoulders, steady gait. Not Rai. Not Thorn. Probably John. He moved like someone holding back too much.

  She didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Not without giving herself away. But she marked the corridor and his direction.

  Another figure darted left—a smaller frame, fast, erratic. The mask tilted too high. Thorn? Maybe. Or a stranger. Maybe someone who didn’t care who they were supposed to kill.

  Helen slid into the shadows again, breath slow and measured. She didn’t need to win this game. She just needed to outlast the ones who broke first.

  A statue near her rotated.

  Its mouth opened—and Calix’s voice spilled out.

  “Would you like to know who’s closest, little ghost?”

  Helen didn’t answer.

  “Not even curious?”

  She turned her head slowly toward the statue. Its eyes glowed faintly blue.

  “You’re clever,” Calix said. “Clever girls tend to die last. But not always. Wouldn’t it be nice to know who to run from?”

  Helen stood. “I already do.”

  The statue’s glow dimmed.

  Behind her, something scraped along the wall.

  She didn’t wait.

  She ran.

  Rai moved in silence.

  She’d split off from the others the moment the fog deepened, letting instinct pull her sideways through the twisting corridors. There was no map here—just pressure, broken stone, and the ever-present hiss of torchlight that flickered but never died. The mask distorted everything. Depth, distance, direction. All lies.

  She’d caught glimpses of shapes—too tall, too fast, too heavy-footed. None she trusted. No names, no signals, no alliances.

  Not in here.

  She paused beneath an arched walkway where vines choked the ceiling like veins pulled too tight. The air smelled like wet ash and old stone.

  Then she heard footsteps. Fast. Sloppy.

  A figure barreled around the corner, skidding. Tall. Lean. Masked. The stance was familiar—but so was the way they raised their blade.

  They swung low.

  Rai ducked. Spun. The fan snapped open in her hand and caught the blade mid-arc. She pushed. Twisted.

  The attacker staggered back.

  She didn’t press. Yet.

  “Stop,” she said, voice sharp through the fog. “You’re not thinking.”

  The figure froze. Just for a breath.

  “Rai?”

  The voice was male. Familiar.

  “John?”

  He lowered his weapon. “I didn’t know—”

  “Of course you didn’t. That’s the game.”

  They stared at each other through masks that gave no answers.

  A breath passed.

  Then Rai’s fan lifted again.

  “Say the wrong thing,” she said, “and I test it anyway.”

  John raised both hands slowly. “You’re the one who always said fear gets people killed.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  They stood like that for a moment longer—tense, fog swirling around them.

  Then something screamed deeper in the maze.

  They didn’t speak. Just moved.

  Side by side, blades drawn, trust still missing—but direction clear.

  Toward the sound.

  Thorn had been running for too long.

  She wasn’t the fastest, or the strongest, but she was smart. Fast enough to avoid a direct hit. Smart enough to keep moving. The fog didn’t play fair, and neither did the maze. Paths she doubled back to were never the same. Statues shifted. Walls bled moisture and groaned like they missed screaming.

  She slipped beneath a broken arch, heart pounding, and crouched low behind a twisted fountain where time had erased the faces of its statues—smooth, blank, and silent.

  Footsteps.

  Light, deliberate. Approaching from the north corridor. Not running. Stalking.

  Thorn kept still.

  She didn’t know who was hunting her. She didn’t even know who her team was. But someone was getting closer.

  Then she heard it—a voice. Soft. Almost kind.

  “Wrong place to hide.”

  She surged up, blade already drawn. The figure was close. Too close.

  They moved fast—too fast. Thorn’s strike missed by inches.

  The figure pivoted and slammed something into her mask.

  Glass cracked.

  Everything stopped.

  The figure backed away, breath heavy.

  Thorn reached up, fingertips brushing the fracture line across her mask.

  “No,” she said. “Please—”

  The crack split like lightning. Her breath caught. Then the world disappeared in blue.

  Light poured out. Blue, sharp, sudden. Thorn’s body collapsed before it hit the floor, dissolving into glittering fragments.

  Gone.

  The figure stood over the space where she’d been, mask still whole.

  And then they ran.

  The gate appeared without warning.

  One moment the maze was endless corridors and echoing dread—the next, the fog parted, and the archway stood ahead like it had always been there. Wide. Ancient. Carved with the same three-crown crest that marked every Triarch trial. Beyond it: steps leading up, firelight flickering at the top.

  John stopped at the edge of a narrow platform, Rai just behind him. Their weapons were drawn but low. The silence between them had held since the scream—the one that came just before the blue light burst in the west corridor.

  Someone was gone.

  Maybe Thorn. Maybe not.

  Helen arrived next, breath sharp, hands empty.

  Three.

  The gate hummed.

  “Wait,” a voice from behind.

  They stood together in silence, not looking at each other, not yet. Rai tapped her fan against her leg. Helen paced once, then stopped.

  A shape emerged from the fog.

  A fourth.

  Tall. A slight limp.

  John didn’t recognize the outline—the stance, the way the shoulders carried tension like it had settled there for years. Neither did Rai. Helen stepped forward, but the figure raised a hand—palm open, slow.

  “I’m not here to fight,” the figure said.

  The voice was steady. Familiar. But not comforting.

  “What happened back there?” Rai asked.

  A pause. Then: “They struck first. I finished it.”

  John studied the shape. The mask was cracked. Not broken—just split across the right eye. A scar that hadn’t finished forming.

  The gate pulsed once.

  Four.

  It opened.

  The light beyond it was orange, hazy, and full of smoke.

  Without a word, they walked through.

  Behind them, the fog swallowed the rest whole.

  And the hunt was over.