The Abyssal Trials

Elias's POV

"You are going to die in there," Old Perrin said.

Elias didn't stop walking. "You said that yesterday."

"I mean it this time!"

"You meant it yesterday too," he called back, and went down.

Forty-three steps. He'd counted them twice already, first two nights ago when he found the entrance and stood at the top talking himself into going down, then last night when he went and the chamber was empty and nothing happened and he came back up feeling stupid.

Tonight felt different.

The pale light rising from below was brighter and the air had a charge to it that made his teeth ache. The chamber opened at the bottom, wide and dark at the edges, cold and still. The platform sat in the center with a slow pulse of light on it and Elias walked straight to it because he had not been sneaking out every night for a week to stand at the edges and stare.

His foot touched the platform.

Bloodline detected. Curse classification: Terminal. Trial One initiated.

"Terminal," Elias said. "Right. Hello to you too."

Endurance threshold engaged. Estimated survival probability: twelve percent.

"Twelve. So not zero."

Correct. Not zero.

"I can work with not zero," he said.

Then his left leg broke and he hit the floor.

No warning, no impact, just pressure arriving inside the bone and his leg gave out and he went down hard on one knee and bit the inside of his cheek and stayed quiet because making noise wasn't going to change anything.

Threshold one of seven. The platform is three feet to your left.

"I know where the platform is," Elias said through his teeth. "I was just on it."

Survival probability is time sensitive.

"Is that your way of telling me to hurry up?"

Yes.

He started crawling. Left leg dragging, elbows doing the work, two feet across cold stone and then his right shoulder separated at the joint and the heat of it shot straight up his neck and he dropped flat.

Threshold two of seven.

Survival probability: nine percent.

"Stop announcing the probability," Elias said. "It's not helping."

It is accurate.

"Accurate and helpful are different things."

He got his hand onto the platform edge and pulled and his shoulder had a lot of opinions about that and he ignored all of them and hauled himself up and lay there on his back while the light pulsed warm beneath him.

Threshold cleared. Initiating threshold three.

"Already"

His ribs went. Three of them, left side, and every bit of air left his lungs at once and he lay there waiting to find out if he was going to keep breathing or not.

He kept breathing.

Remain conscious to continue.

"Working on it," Elias wheezed.

Threshold four.

Two fingers on his left hand bent sideways at the knuckle with a sound he felt more than heard. He turned his face away and focused on the cold of the platform against his back until it passed.

Threshold five.

His vision blurred hard and fast, a white spike behind his left eye that flared and held and he pressed his palm flat against the platform and breathed through it in slow counts until it cleared.

Threshold six.

His whole spine locked and his back arched off the platform and slammed back down and he bit through his cheek properly that time and tasted blood and lay there staring up at the dark ceiling gripping the edge of the platform with both hands because the curse mark on his wrist had been killing his family since before he was born and it had not killed him yet and he was not letting it start now.

Threshold six cleared. Final threshold initiating.

"Do it," Elias said.

Everything broke at once and he stopped counting and just held on.

He came back to himself still on the platform, still breathing, every part of him reporting damage and then the warmth arrived and moved through him and fixed the reports one by one and then it stopped being warmth and became something heavier that pressed into his blood and his bones and his curse mark all at once and Elias made a sound he didn't plan and then it was done.

He sat up. Looked at his hands. Whole. Shoulder set. Fingers straight. The curse mark on his wrist looked the same and felt completely different, like a door that hadn't opened but finally knew it could.

Trial One complete. Ability transferred: Fractured Ascent. Pain sustained during threshold events converts directly to power output. The more it costs you, the harder you hit.

Elias read it twice. "You broke me in seven places to give me an ability that runs on getting broken."

Correct.

"So the whole point was that it had to hurt that much."

The ability cannot transfer without the cost. That is the design.

"Whose design?" he said.

The system didn't answer.

He stood up, walked back to the forty-three steps and climbed all of them and came out into pale grey dawn air. Perrin was gone. The village was silent. He was standing outside looking at his wrist when the voice came from directly behind him.

"You weren't supposed to survive that." Calm. Close. Impossible, because he had watched Perrin leave and there was nobody else out here. "Nobody has. Not in sixty years."

Elias turned around slowly.

A girl stood at the entrance to the passage he had just climbed out of, watching him with her head tilted like she was still working out what to do with the fact that he was standing there.

"Who are you?" he said.

She didn't answer that. "The better question is why

the dungeon just changed its own rules for you." She held his gaze steady. "Don't you want to know what that means?”