All around me, offerings whisper about their suspected affinities, clinging to family stories and coincidences like lifelines. Their words speak of confidence, but their voices betray them—a shakiness and frantic energy that reveals the terror they're trying so desperately to hide.

"They're all delusional," Nolan mutters beside me. "At best, one in six of us survives this."

"Then why do you sound so confident?" I ask.

He gives me a thin smile. "It’s like I said. My cousin said I have fire affinity markers. Strong ones."

"I hope you're right." I mean it. Despite barely knowing him, I don't want any of these people to die. But I also don't want to die myself, and the realization sits like a stone in my gut—a selfish, heavy thing I can't quite dislodge.

A guard's voice suddenly cuts through the chamber, silencing all the voices. "Eris Moraven."

A girl near the front straightens her shoulders, looks around nervously, and then walks forward. "Wish me luck," she says.

A few nearby offerings mutter encouraging words.

The doors swing open just enough to admit her, then close with a heavy thud that reverberates through the stone floor.

The room falls silent. We all wait, barely breathing.

Ten seconds pass. Twenty.

Then we hear it—a scream so filled with terror and pain it doesn't sound human, cut short by a wet, tearing sound that turns my stomach. Blue light flashes beneath the doors, and the smell of ozone fills the air along with the coppery tang of blood.

Someone near me retches. A girl begins to sob quietly, the sound muffled by her hands pressed desperately against her mouth.

The playful whispers and hopeful chatter doesn't return. Silence reigns, because now we all understand what we're really waiting for.

Our turns to die.

2

"Nessa Thorne."

My name echoes through the antechamber, and my stomach drops like it's been cut loose from its moorings. The stench of burnt flesh still lingers from when Nolan entered that room thirty minutes ago. His screams had been mercifully brief.

The fire affinity markers he was so confident about hadn’t saved him.

And now it's my turn.

Mireen's hand finds my arm, her copper-red braid coiled like a crown around her head catching the dim, flickering torchlight. "Good luck, Nessa." She gives me a small, encouraging smile that crinkles the crescent-shaped scar at the corner of one eye. "Remember, if you die in there I win the bet.”

I grin. “I’ll see you on the other side, Mireen.”

Just a few short days ago, I thought I already gave up my life when I volunteered. But now I feel soul shaking terror, like I want nothing more than to run from this room and this claustrophobic place. It’s as if some stubborn shred of hope has shone through thick clouds—a beam of yellow cutting across a gray landscape— and now it’s the only thing I can see.