Page 38 of Architecti
Three hours in, the first candidate dies.We know because the hall blooms in a swarm of entropy moths.The howling screech that rips through the hall wounds something inside me.Was that their last breath for a grieving friend?Lex and Bastien both grab my hands, as if clinging to each other can save the candidate, or maybe it’s the vain hope it will save us.
It does neither.
Another hour goes by, and two more candidates die.Each time, their shriek buries itself in my mind.This is so much worse than reaping a soul.Vacant looks and fear I can cope with.But these howls are pure loss.Grief.Anguish and pain as all their possible futures vanish.
With each death comes another swarm of entropy moths.Their fluttering wings growing until the hum is a hiss and rumble that makes the hall vibrate.
This is what I hate the most.I’ve never liked the moths.Harbingers of souls that need reaping, for me anyway.The more they flutter and fill the hall, the more I fidget, unease coiling like worms inside me.
After the fourth candidate dies, the swarm is so big that the Severance Rite has to pause to clean out the little dustfuckers.
When they reset, Lex is called.
I squeeze her hand.Bastien stands and hugs her.The way we all cling to each other, you’d think we’d known each other our whole lives.But there’s something galvanising about this room and this ritual.
Witnessing death after death.
Soul after soul.
Scream after scream.
This is the kind of nightmare that buries itself deep.It has claws and teeth and the kind of sentience that never dies.
We share matching scars in our hearts now, the kind that no one else understands.
“I don’t want to let you go,” I whisper to Lex.
She’s short, so her hug squeezes my waist.“I’m going to see you both on the other side, aren’t I?”she whispers.But none of us know the answer to that, and after what we’ve witnessed, none of us can lie either.We squeeze her again instead and watch as she makes her way onto the stage and through the door.
Her Severance Rite is short; the next name called much faster than the rest have been.I pray it means she survived and not the alternative.
Half an hour later, Bastien is called.
“If I don’t make?—”
I shove my hand over his mouth.“You will.You have to.”
We hold each other’s gaze.One last beat of before held in a single breath, melded with the hope that we get an after.He nods and then he’s striding towards the stairs to the stage.
His rite takes longer than Lex’s.
Three more candidates pass through the rite, then one dies.Another makes it through their rite only to collapse dead after—so the whispers that follow her limp body in the arms of three professors say.
Professor Malifax clears his throat and straightens his shirt, and I justknow.I feel it in my bones as if the tower itself is whisperingyou’re next.
There’s something odd about Malifax.Cold and unfeeling.I shove it away, the excitement and anxiety of today being too much to handle as it is.
I close my eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Nine years I’ve yearned for this moment.Prayed to the angels that left us, begged the gods who smite us.Pleaded with my parents on the other side to give me this chance.
And now, finally, here it is…
“Mercedes Midnight,” he calls.
I stand, acutely aware that there’s no one left to hug me.No one to wish me luck or tell me it’s going to be okay.
But it will be.
