Page 174 of The Blood Rites

I clench my teeth and focus. I need to move. Think.

The Mother Shard can’t want me dead. Not yet.

I go still, just for a moment, and breathe. I try to slow my heart. I count the seconds and wait.

The next drop hits exactly where I expect—between the shoulder blades. A blossom of raw, incandescent agony bores through fabric and flesh and straight into the meat. I scream again, but the cave eats the sound and makes it feel small and pathetic.

The smell comes first as burnt cloth, then as something far worse: my own skin cooking.

I don’t vomit, but I want to.

The knowledge of what I need to do is so clear it makes me want to cry. But knowing and doing are different things. I have to wait for my body to betray me, to become so desperate that the pain of doing nothing outweighs the pain of action. I can feel the blood bubble and clot where the drop hit me.

I am ready for the second drop.

I twist my shoulder under it, bracing myself as it lands. It splashes against the manacle, then runs down my raised arm and into the crease of my armpit, a line of agony that lights me on fire. I think I pass out for a second—the cave is very far away, and I am floating in the dark, just a pair of suspended hands, nothing else. I come back to find the pain waiting for me. It never left. It just waited politely until I could return.

The third drop hits the metal and drips down the back of my arm, searing my tricep. The flesh there is thinner, and the pain is sharper, more immediate. It feels like the nerves there are screaming at me: stop, stop, stop. But I don’t stop. I can’t.

Every drop is a new version of pain, and my mind begins to hold them as separate things, like books on a shelf. One is sharp, one is dull and throbbing, one is so hot it feels like nothing at all.

I start to get creative. I rock myself sideways, angling the manacle beneath the drip. The metal sizzles. It doesn’t give, but I can see a faint change in its colour. Where the white-hot bead hits, the metal becomes blotched and brittle. If I can get enough on one spot, maybe I can break it.

Another drop. It splashes on to my ribs, where the shirt is already burned away and the skin is blistered. The pain burns every thought out of me. I dangle from the chains, knees no longer locking, the world a haze. When I come back, I am gasping for air, my throat raw from screams I don’t remember.

It’s working though. The manacle on my left wrist has cracked; a thin fracture running the length of the band. I time the next drop, twisting just enough to take most of it on the metal instead of my skin. I pull hard, and I feel the manacle flex—just a hair, but enough to know it’s not invincible.

Another drop. Another wave of pain. This one bounces off the metal and spatters my palm, melting through skin and tendon. My hand seizes, and I can’t unclench even though I want to. Tears stream down my face, but I am so far beyond shame they barely register.

I pull hard on the chain with every muscle I have left. The crack widens. It’s so close. I brace myself, let another droplet hit my wrist, then wrench down as hard as I can.

The manacle snaps. My left arm falls limp, a dead weight, and the sudden shift yanks my right shoulder so hard my vision goes white. I grab uselessly at the remaining manacle with my left hand, using the last of my strength to pull and twist. The weakened band gives, and I fall.

I am not ready for the landing. I crash face-first onto the stone, the burns on my body raging in protest. My hands are too blistered and swollen to help.

I stay down, breathing into the floor, until the pain ebbs enough to let me think. Fiery drops keep falling, splattering the stone around me and spitting tiny beads onto my back and neck. I force my body to move, crawling forward, using elbows and knees to drag myself to safety.

I reach the cave wall and use it to pull myself upright. The skin on my back is a mess—layers of burned and cracked flesh. I can’t tell if it’s blood running down my back, melted fabric, or both.

The only way forward is a tunnel leading deeper into the rock. The air is even hotter here, and the walls pulse with an eerie red light.

I need to keep moving. If I don’t, I’m going to die here.

The tunnels are like arteries—veined in red, pulsing with heat. Every step draws sweat from my skin, soaking through what’s left of my shirt and mixing with the blood. The walls shimmer, bending the light like a living fever.

My back is a map of wounds, and I can barely move my left arm. My wrists are wrapped in shreds of what used to be my sleeves, the blood soaking through so fast and bright that it leaves red handprints behind me, marking my path.

I stagger forward, sometimes upright, sometimes crawling, but always forward. Beneath the floor, through cracks, I see rivers of fire—wide and slow-moving, full of shapes that gurgle beneath the surface. Sometimes the floor turns translucent, and I see faces in the fire screaming at me as I limp by.

The air is so hot it feels like I’m swallowing shattered glass. My lips are so cracked that when I try to lick them, my tongue sticks and tears at the seams. My vision narrows further every minute, the world collapsing in until all I can think is: next step, next step.

At first, the whispers are soft, barely there—the faintest hint of the Mother Shard. But soon, her voice fills the tunnels, then my head, overlapping with fragments of old memories and new threats.

“You’re almost there, my sweet child.”

“Why do you run?”

“He cannot save you.”