Sol shifted on the worn concrete of the staging area. The concrete chill through his boots, anchoring him while everything else slowly slid out of alignment. The faint metallic scent of old blood and heated metal assaulted his nose. The clock above the gate ticked towards midday, but time felt warped to him.

  His hand slipped into his coat pocket to curl his fingers around his weapon. The grip was steady, yet there was an odd compulsion to strike first, to hit harder than necessary. Even as he recognized the irrationality, he could not release it, or get rid of it. The weapon felt alive in his palm, whispering promises of control and consequences alike. The urge was intoxicating, magnetic. Strike first. Strike harder. Strike to claim. Strike for victory, for precedence.

  How odd…

  The crowd roared as the bell tolled outside; the gates grind to open, spilling light and steam into the arena's edges. A disembodied voice announced the commencement of the trial that was to conclude Midday in a haughty tone, and he heard it in a muffle. It must be the same man who delivered the first speech, Sol concluded.

  Midday. The moment of judgment.

  He swallowed, forcing calm, but the compulsion did not waver. The participant realized as he entered the arena, that it is not that hanging metallic platform or a maze, but a massive, sprawling battle ground before him with billowing dust. It was as if the battlefield had absorbed every past victory, every forgotten failure within it's vastness. It had terraformed the night prior it seemed. But to treat the battle of midday so differently from the rest, how odd.

  When he stepped out of the shadows, Sol felt exposed. The space was alive, surely, with the roaring crowd. He nervously pulled the hood of his cloak lower. His golden gaze fell to the center, and Mattheos was already there, waiting in the circle of light. His white cloak fell in perfect lines around him, and his eyes were fixed on Sol, mirroring his flat expression. Against Sol, he was truly a warrior of light, and all that it reigned over. Against him, Sol’s internal distortion sharpened, the predatory rhythm in his chest accelerated.

  They didn't speak when they stood before each other with enough distance, only exchanged wordlessly through the eyes. No words were needed. Here, in the hush before violence, they spoke volumes. He recalled the conversation they shared earlier that day. Mattheos, the boy who had all, yet nothing at all. How strange. You and I... We are not... alike, Sol concluded.

  Somewhere above, the priests began to chant the same cadence Sol had heard that morning. Each syllables dragged across his mind and his chest tightened, his fingers twitched on the trigger of his gun he had pulled out a while ago with instincts.

  Fight.

  The bell tolled , the crowd roared, and the thrum in his head surged. And the part of Sol that usually planned, waited and observed was gone.

  End it. His instincts spoke.

  Mattheos moved along him with a blur across the floor. Sol drew with his first shot ringing through the air, but Mattheos twisted past it with a clean blur in Sol's vision; a blur of red and white. The bullet snapped the edge of his cloak instead of his chest as it had intended.

  The crowd erupted.

  Mattheos closed the distance in three long strides, fists ready and striking. Sol's arms jarred as he blocked, with the second blow grazing his temple hard enough to spark white across his vision. He staggered back, firing again, blindly, forcing Mattheos to roll aside in dust. The thrum grew louder, harmonizing with the pace of their strikes. Sol's hands felt too fast, and too certain, as if someone else was deciding when to pull the trigger; a marionette on strings.

  End him, it repeated.

  He ducked under a hook, spun, and aimed point-blank at Mattheos.

  Kill him!

  Sol stilled, eyes wide. But Mattheos seized the moment. His fist slammed into Sol's ribs. Pain flared, red and raw, and the boy clenched his teeth before coughing blood. The punch packed more than he could bear. Fresh crimson splattered over the dirt, contrasting with the pale sand before it was consumed by the parched arena. The resonance pressed harder in his skull, whispering that pain meant nothing.

  The only way to end this was to kill.

  Kill him.

  "No," Sol growled under his breath. He staggered back two steps, one hand pressed to his temple, the other gripping a pistol that suddenly felt heavier than iron. Heat swarmed his vision. He was battling himself, more than he was fighting his rival.

  Mattheos saw the opening and something in him snapped too. Gone was the calm, baiting fighter from their last match, replaced by the raw, straight-line fury burn in his scarlet gaze, his strides pounding into the stone like war drums.

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  Sol dropped low just as the first blow cut through where his head had been. Mattheos punched the air. The second punch was caught on Sol's forearm, the impact numbing his elbow. With a grunt, he pivoted, driving his boot into Mattheos' side hard enough to knock him off balance. Dust swirled around them in the storm of fury. They were the eyes of their storms.

  Mattheos did not stagger, but he halted for a moment.

  Sol brought his pistol up and stopped. His finger hovered over the trigger, trembling. He could end this now, one clean shot, but that was exactly what they wanted. It was exactly what had happened once. A memory flashed before his eyes, red wet staining his sleeves, burning, searing into his skin.

  Jolting like he had been shocked, Sol stepped back, letting the barrel lower. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, out of sync with the chanting and cheering above. And Mattheos straightened while wiping a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth. His lips curled into something between a grin and a snarl.

  "You're hesitating," Mattheos sneered in a low voice.

  Sol's chest rose and fell, his pistol still hanging at his side. "The Trial... is it really meant to kill?" He finally asked. It made flicker pass over Mattheos' face that made him look almost offended with the frown he carried.

  "Fool." He lunged again, and faster than before. Nothing like Sol remembered him in the previous fight. This was no contest of skill now but a straight drive to break bones, to spill blood. To kill.

  Sol ducked under the strike, caught the next on his forearm, and shoved Mattheos back with a hard kick to the ribs. Dust billowed around them, slipping into the lungs. He was keeping up with him, slowly but surely.

  Adapt. Move. Think. He recalled Loen's teachings, thinking how the boy had always been aggressive, but his punches had never hit this hard, though as he was shorter, yet quick. Loen never intended to kill, after all.

  The crowd roared again, as if they could taste the violence in the air.

  Mattheos' eyes burned now with the scarlet fire of the Sun, and his face settled into something close to a snarl. He came on harder, fists flashing in brutal combinations. While, Sol's body reacted before a thought. He twisted, ducked, and blocked and rolled away with his shadowed cloak flaring.

  Then, he felt it in the marrow of his bones, a foreign warmth. Into his mind slipped the corruption, blending like oil kneeled before fire. But somewhere beneath the pressure, the edge of his consciousness held rather stubbornly.

  He remembered the promise that was whispered over cold fluttering grass, to a friend who would never answer again.

  He would win.

  Win.

  Win.

  Win.

  Kill.

  He leveled his pistol at an approaching Mattheos' head. His finger curled on the trigger. The world narrowed to breath, into a linear path. Every other sound dissolved. The corruption pulsed once beneath his skull ordering to end the threat, the obstacle between him and his victory.

  Mattheos stopped as his gaze locked on Sol's, not the gun.

  "Your breath," he said so only someone prepared to kill could hear it, "isn't steady enough."

  But Sol did not hear it.

  Beneath the hangar, the witch floated in a violet hue amidst her rippling mirrors. Her tome flipped through pages, as she chanted, "O the Sun watching us! By your golden will! Let eyes see truth, let hearts beat free! Break the spell that is cast upon us!"

  A single ripple of golden light unfurled from the witch’s raised hand, spiraling outward like sunbeams. It ripped through the gloom, colliding with the invisible lattice of the priests’ spell. For a moment, the golden wave washed over Sol and the others, leaving a subtle warmth on their skin, a clarity in their vision that had been absent moments before.

  The corruption in Sol's mind was gone. The thrum went silent for that moment as if it had to flee. Blinking himself into reality, he saw his own hands holding the pistol still aimed at Mattheos, his rival's chest rising and falling raggedly beneath him as he stood mirroring Sol's expression. Sol stepped back, lowering the weapon. He watched as the crowd's cheers turned to a confused murmur.

  Above all, the priests' voices faltered.

  "And the winner of our second trial!" The announcer's voice boomed above all, "Sol!"

  He stepped back in realization, he had won. Almost won. He had dodged, countered all of Mattheos' blows, but the victory in his body felt hollow. Almost, as if something else was guiding him, like a puppet hanging from threads. He had been fighting not his rival, but something else. Sol lets panic seep into his mind, frantically searching for someone in the crowd who could anchor him—for a human tether to remind him that what he had done was his own

  Breathing ragged, his legs guided him towards the gate of the arena, and each step was a plea to escapism. He needed to get out of here.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  The unnatural haze in Mattheos' eyes, the phantom pull in his own chest, and especially the way his body had moved almost without him was all wrong.

  The crowd's murmuring blurred into a distant shrill, with their faces twisting in and out of focus. Sol's chest tightened as he reached the gate. He wasn't looking for their praise. Or anyone's for that matter. Instead, he found Marguerite, no, it was Marguerite who found him.

  "Sol, listen to me!" She interrupted the ringing of his ears. Marguerite's hand was on his arm before he could step away. Her grip cold despite the heat of the lamps. She leaned close, to let her eyes scan him, and his beaten up appearance.

  "This trial is for a successor to something—something otherworldly!" She announced the worst news that blends into a shrill in his ear, nor he had he intended to hear her, lost and confused. "You do not have to stay! You can stop here, Sol! You are a winner!"

  He barely heard the last, as the phantom pull in his chest pulsed again, dragging his attention upward. Somewhere above the crowd, in the higher audience, a robed figure leaned forward as if listening to them.

  "I will—"

  Marguerite's words cut off. The chains overhead give a sudden, rattling shudder. Metal screamed somewhere in the arena. Dust rained down like ash within it's circumference. Attendants began shouting for the crowd to remain seated, and the priests resumed their chant.

  Marguerite's grip tightened on Sol, as if trying to protect him from everything.

  "It's starting sooner than I thought." The man besides her lifted his lamp, green fire burning and illuminating the three.

  The battle of Dusk had begun.