Chapter One:

  “Games of the Triarchs”

  The cell stank of mildew and iron. Moisture dripped constantly from the cracked ceiling, pooling between the uneven stones of the floor where bare feet shuffled in the dark. Somewhere to her left, a man coughed until he gagged. Somewhere to her right, a woman laughed, sharp and sudden, the kind of laughter that came from madness, not joy.

  Helen Athenidis sat with her back to the wall, one knee drawn up, one arm resting on it. Her other hand rested loosely on the hilt of the sword across her lap. The blade was chipped and rusted in places, dulled by use and neglect, but she still kept it close. It wasn’t much anymore. But it was hers.

  The air was always wet down here. Always cold. Always thick with the sound of people breaking quietly. Groans, sobs, whispers. Once, there had been hundreds of them. Players, all brought here under the promise of escape, of purpose, of greatness. Now, there were maybe fifty. Maybe fewer. The ones who weren’t dead had stopped speaking. Some had stopped moving.

  The guards didn’t speak unless it was to mock. The stone ones—hulking sentinels carved in the likeness of forgotten gods—never moved unless someone tried to escape. Then they moved fast. She’d seen it. Once. That had been enough.

  Worse than them were the others. The ones who wore their old Player gear like trophies. Former contestants who had "won" their freedom by becoming enforcers. Broken souls in blood-polished armor, more beast than man. They weren’t bound by mercy. The Triarchs had burned that out of them.

  She shifted slightly, not out of discomfort, but habit. She’d lost track of the days. After the first month, time became abstract. They were fed when the guards remembered. Sometimes they were taken for "training." Sometimes they returned. Sometimes they didn’t.

  Her lips were cracked. Her knuckles scabbed. Her hair, once bound in ceremonial braids, hung loose and damp against her neck. But her eyes hadn’t gone dull. Not yet.

  From somewhere deeper in the holding tunnels, voices stirred. Whispered dread. Someone had heard the guards talking. A new game was coming. Soon. And this one... this one was different.

  They said only half would return.

  Helen hadn’t planned to survive the first game. She certainly hadn’t expected a second.

  None of them had. Not the Players from Athens.

  They’d been inserted into Eldoria just over a month before the nightmare began. The transition had been disorienting—one moment the Dive, the next, Nerathe. An ancient realm cloaked in temples and dust, a place that whispered of gods long dead and games still hungry. Within weeks, the Triarchs had emerged from the ruins like vultures. Three former Players turned something else—demigod, tyrant, jailor—and they took control of the region like it had always belonged to them.

  The rest of the Athenian cohort hadn’t stood a chance. What began as confusion quickly spiraled into structure—twisted Olympic-style trials, each more horrific than the last. Refusal meant death. Resistance meant worse. Participation was survival.

  The first trial was called The Harrowing Gauntlet—a marathon through a collapsing coliseum filled with blood traps and shifting corridors. They said it was “inspired by the Labors of Heracles.” Mostly it inspired terror. Ten died in the first minute. Twenty more by the end. Helen made it through by dragging a stranger across a pit of spikes and throwing another over her shoulder when they couldn’t run anymore. That stranger didn’t survive the next trial. But she remembered his name.

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  The second was The Maze of Breath and Flame—a fire-lit labyrinth filled with poison gas and illusions designed to pit Players against their fears. Helen faced her mother there. Her grandmother too. Both illusions. Both so convincing she hesitated. That hesitation cost her two broken ribs and a burned hand. But she never screamed.

  Then came The Trial of Banners—a team-based competition where only one team would leave intact. They were told to “capture” enemy flags. What they weren’t told was that the flags were bound to actual people. When one flag fell, so did its bearer. Helen made it out, barely. She still saw the eyes of the girl who held the final banner. She hadn’t fought. She had only waited.

  Others had fared worse. Some were turned into guards, their minds broken and reshaped by the Triarchs. Others simply never returned. A few tried to flee. She’d tried once herself. Then again. Both times ended with blood and iron and stone. The statues didn’t judge. They just crushed.

  She’d learned not to ask about tomorrow. Not in this place. But this next trial? It was different. The guards were restless. The whispers were louder.

  “Half,” someone had muttered. “They said only half will walk out.”

  No one knew what that meant.

  But everyone feared it.

  Even Helen.

  They weren’t gods. Not really. But the guards whispered their names like prayers. Or curses.

  The Triarchs of Nerathe—Damarion, Thessala, and Calix. Helen had never seen them up close. Few had. But their influence hung over the cells like smoke. Each game carried their signature. Each horror bore their mark.

  Damarion the Crowned Butcher. The executioner of champions. His events were trials of strength, blood, and spectacle. He was said to bless the strongest fighters with freedom—if they killed enough to earn it. Helen had seen what remained of those “blessed.”

  Thessala the Pale Oracle. Once a Seer, now a shadow of what she once was. Her trials were tests of the mind and soul—gauntlets of illusion, starvation, silence. Some players emerged screaming. Others didn’t emerge at all. It was said she could read your fate just by hearing your breath.

  And Calix the Silver-Tongued. A silk-tongued manipulator who designed games of betrayal, temptation, and politics. Helen hated his events most of all. He didn't kill with steel—he made others do it for him.

  Sometimes, before a trial, one of the Triarchs would appear—projected in light, or glimpsed through veils of fire. Damarion’s voice would echo from the walls, booming and triumphant. Thessala’s whisper would curl through the air, wrapping around your name like a funeral braid. Calix would appear in smoke, offering favors with teeth behind his smile.

  Helen sat in the dark and listened to the guards make their rounds. One of them—a former Player with blood-red armor and a cracked visor—paused outside her cell.

  “You’ll be fighting for Damarion’s pleasure tomorrow,” he rasped. “Make it beautiful.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He lingered. “They say half of you will die. But not quickly. This one’s got style.”

  He laughed and moved on.

  In the silence that followed, Helen closed her eyes.

  Not to pray. Not to rest.

  To remember.

  The cell block shifted when the guards dragged someone back in.

  The stone doors groaned open, spilling torchlight into the corridor. Guards pushed the figure forward—barefoot, bloodied, barely able to walk. A kid, maybe sixteen, with hair matted in sweat and eyes that still burned with disbelief. He stumbled, caught himself on the wall, and looked around as if trying to wake from a dream.

  He wouldn’t last another day.

  The guards laughed as they shoved him toward the farthest cell, right across from Helen. The moment the gate slammed shut, the laughter died away, replaced by the groan of stone grinding back into place.

  The silence returned, thick as ever.

  The boy dropped to his knees, trembling. Helen didn’t speak. Neither did anyone else. Some were already asleep. Some pretending. Others had learned not to look too long at anyone brought back in.

  Eventually, the boy looked up, locking eyes with her through the bars. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “They said I passed. I thought I was being placed in a camp. That there’d be a guild, I thought I won my freedom.”

  She studied him. The torn robe. The cracked Dive mark on his wrist. Athens. He was one of theirs.

  “You won another day,” she said flatly.

  He blinked. “I thought we were going to be heroes.”

  Her voice didn’t change. “So did I.”

  Footsteps echoed from deeper in the hall. A single guard returned—one of the Triarch’s chosen. His face was hidden behind a mask shaped like a theater mask: half tragedy, half grin.

  Without a word, he reached through the boy’s cell, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him hard into the bars. The sound was dull. The boy crumpled.

  “Next time you speak without permission,” the guard said, “you lose your tongue.”

  He turned and walked away, casual as ever.

  Helen exhaled. Slow. Controlled.

  Across from her, the boy whimpered once, then said nothing.

  No one did.

  She leaned her head back against the stone.

  They would all be called soon.

  And half of them wouldn’t return.