The third circle flares crimson above the door. Heat presses down. Crushing. Sweat evaporates before it forms.
Lightning arcs through the chamber. The pattern from the second trial persists, random and chaotic, but each bolt carries crimson now, as if the light itself has been infected.
I lean against the weight. Test it. Metal groans. My legs shake from the last attempt. Each breath burns.
The weight lowers to the tracks. Grinding clang.
The trial begins.
I plant my hands against scorching metal. Push.
The weight slides forward. An inch. Another. Heat roars. Lightning strikes the chains above. Sparks rain down.
The air changes again, not heat rising, something else. Something falling.
Fog rises from floor cracks. Gray tendrils curl around my boots. Climbing. The chamber fills with mist that tastes of copper. Smoke. Something else.
I know this fog.
Something inside me shifts, a hairline fracture in a wall I did not know could break.
Lightning strikes the weight. Direct hit.
Force travels through my arms. Into bone. I cry out. Do not let go. Heat burns. Shock rattles my teeth. The fog thickens, rising with each push.
Heat makes the fog writhe. Lightning illuminates shapes within it. The fog presses closer. Suffocating.
I push harder. The weight slides another foot. Muscles scream. Metal sears blistered palms. Lightning strikes the tracks ahead. I pause.
The fog presses closer.
The fracture widens.
Two shapes form in the mist.
Eggs.
Massive. Smooth. Glowing with light I recognize. Light I put there. Sealed inside.
Lightning arcs through the vision. The eggs illuminate in stark white flashes. Heat makes the shells shimmer. Edges distort. Cracks spider across the surfaces. The sound echoes wrong, inside my skull and in the chamber simultaneously.
Dark liquid spills from the breaks. Viscous. Reaching.
For me.
She was supposed to stay buried.
The liquid steams. Dissolves into smoke that joins the fog. The eggs collapse.
But the fog remains. Thicker now. Pressing against my skin like cold hands.
I push harder. The weight grinds forward. Tracks beneath glow red from friction. Lightning strikes behind me. The discharge races along the metal floor, up through my boots, adding voltage to the heat already consuming me.
The weight reaches a quarter distance. Stops.
The fog swirls. Changes.
Warmth floods through the heat. Different. Sunlight. A courtyard I buried years ago.
No. I did think of it. Pushed it down into the dark place where thoughts go to die.
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Now it escapes.
I am three years old. Barefoot on smooth stone. My mother's laugh echoes, bright and warm and impossible. She stands with arms outstretched. Hair catching light. Smile radiant.
I run toward her.
The weight feels lighter. The trial fades. Just for a moment. Long enough to forget where I am.
Lightning strikes.
The memory twists.
Courtyard darkens. Sunlight drains away like water through cracks. I am smaller. Younger. Sitting on cold floor. Tears streaming.
Mother kneels beside me. Her arms wrap around my shoulders. Protective. Not enough. Never enough.
Uncle Titus looms. His shadow stretches too long, too dark, lit from behind by crimson light that pulses with my heartbeat. His expression carved stone.
Heat intensifies. The memory sharpens. More real.
Voices rise around me, not from the memory, from deeper. From the place where I locked them away.
"Demon."
"Balah-born."
"Unnatural."
Each word strikes like lightning. My younger self sobs harder. Face buried in Mother's embrace. I watch from outside the memory. From inside it.
Both.
Neither.
I am the child crying. I am the boy standing in fog.
I force myself back. Plant my hands firmer against the weight. Push.
Chains groan. The fog pulses with each inch of movement, squeezed from me like water from a sponge. Heat radiates up through the tracks. Lightning arcs in rapid succession, a web of electric discharge turning the fog into strobing nightmare.
The fracture splits wider.
The weight reaches halfway. Beyond. Each push requires fighting on three fronts. Body against heat. Timing against lightning. Mind against fog.
No rhythm can hold all three. No perfect form.
Only endurance.
Binah moves through the chaos. Her arms flow through sequences I recognize. Wave of Stillness. Blade of the Wind. She navigates between lightning strikes. The heat does not touch her. The fog parts around her movements.
She is showing me something. Or mocking me.
The weight grinds forward another foot. The door draws closer but feels no more attainable.
Fog thickens until I can barely see the weight beneath my hands.
Shapes form. Not eggs. Not courtyard sunlight.
Older. Sharper.
I am four. Maybe five. Pinned to the ground. Septimus above me. His face twisted with contempt I have seen a thousand times. His fists rain down.
Each strike lands burning hot. Lightning flashes freeze the impacts. One blow. Another. Another. The fog swallows his laughter but amplifies his voice until it fills the chamber.
Pain sears through me. Not memory of pain. Pain itself. Fresh. Immediate.
Laughter surrounds us. Mocking. Relentless. Others join. Kicks. Jeers. They blend with the metallic rattle of chains above the weight.
Each blow lands heavy. Every whispered "demon." Every turned back. Every door closed in my face.
I do not fight back. Not yet. Not this time.
But something inside me counts. Stores each strike like kindling waiting for a spark. Each kick added to an invisible ledger.
Growing heavier.
"Get up." I whisper it through gritted teeth.
To my younger self. To my current self. Does not matter. Neither of us can move.
The younger me does not get up. He lies there. Takes it. Endures.
The thing inside him waits.
My arms tremble against the weight. Heat makes my vision swim. Lightning strikes my shoulder. The shock travels down my spine.
Real pain. Memory pain. They merge.
Three feet remaining. Two.
I cannot tell heat from memory. Lightning strikes from inside my skull. From outside. The fog is so thick I cannot see beyond the weight beneath my palms.
Only push. Only move. Only endure.
Binah's movements begin to distort. Or perhaps she moves perfectly and I am breaking. Heat warps the air around her. Lightning illuminates her in flashes. The fog stretches her silhouette at angles that should not exist.
Showing me the path.
Or I have lost the ability to see.
The crack becomes a gap, a seam opening in the wall I built inside myself. The wall that holds everything I cannot afford to feel.
The Inner Hell.
I feel it breach. Feel something slip through before I can force it closed.
Not the recent memories pressing against the barrier. Not the eggs. Not the courtyard. Not Septimus's fists.
Something from the foundation. From the first stones I laid when I learned what it meant to bury pain.
The day the counting stopped.
The day something else woke.
I push with everything I have. The weight slides forward another inch. Heat. Lightning. Fog. All three crushing me simultaneously.
Body. Reflex. Mind.
All three fail.
The memory escapes.
Fragments. Disjointed. Repeating.
A rock in my hand.
The gap widens. I cannot seal what has already broken through. Cannot push it closed because everything I am is being spent just to keep the weight from rolling backward.
Little Enna's scream echoes through the chamber. Through time. Through the gap that will not close.
My vision fails. Edges blur. Dissolve. The chamber, the weight, the door, all of it fading into gray mist shot through with crimson light and electric arcs.
Binah's movements stop. Her violet eyes find mine through the chaos. Calm. Unreadable. Watching.
I try to hold on. Try to push. Try to seal the breach.
The gap remains open.
The memory floods through.
Heat burns away my skin. Lightning stops my heart. Fog fills my lungs.
There is nowhere left to put the pain.
Darkness creeps in from the edges. My head drops forward.
The last thing I feel is the weight of what I can no longer contain.
Then nothing but the echo:
There is a rock in my hand.
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