By day sixty, survival has become instinct. Move. Rest. Assess. Repair. Repeat. The arctic isn’t just a place; it’s a sentient opponent constantly testing my limits—and laughing at my failures.

  Day sixty-three. The sled jerks to a stop, skidding on hidden ice. Something’s off. I scan ahead—then spot it: a pit, nearly invisible, the snow caved in.

  At the bottom, Elen. Her gear is shredded, her body twisted at a bad angle. Every twitch makes the snow walls tremble.

  I drop to my knees at the edge. “Stop moving,” I call down. “You’ll bring the whole thing down.”

  She looks up, face smeared with blood and grit, flicking her thumbnail against her tooth even now. “Rescued by a Crimson. Universe, you’ve got jokes.”

  “I’m not rescuing you,” I say. “Just stay still.”

  I lash together a rope, hands clumsy and slow, vision swimming. Every knot I tie takes double the effort—my left hand numb from cold, my right arm useless. I slip trying to anchor the rope, smacking my knee hard against the sled. For a second, black spots dance in my eyes.

  Pulling Elen up is torture. My body screams at me to quit with every inch. Sweat stings the wound on my arm and makes my grip slick. The rope slips once, and I almost lose her—only catching the line with a panicked, jerky motion that sends lightning through my shoulder. I nearly black out. She dangles, cursing, while I gasp for breath, fighting not to let go.

  When she finally clears the edge, she collapses in the snow, gasping. Her leg is bent wrong—compound fracture, bone poking through. I wince.

  I set her bone, my hands shaking so badly I nearly miss the alignment on the first try. Her scream jolts me back to focus, but even then, my vision swims and for a moment I think I might vomit or pass out entirely.

  “This’ll hurt,” I warn, and brace her knee. She bites down on a strip of hide. I set the bone—one sharp, clean motion. Her scream vanishes into the wind.

  I dress the wound with melted snow and moss, hands shaking from cold and adrenaline. I splint her leg with scavenged metal and wrap it tight.

  She tries to joke. “Not how I pictured my rescue.”

  “‘Rescue’ is generous,” I mutter. “You’re just less useful dead, there,” I say flatly. “You’ll live.”

  She laughs, ragged. “Good deed for the decade done. You can abandon me now.”

  “Not a chance.” I drag her onto the sled, ignoring her protests. “You’re not walking anywhere. Dead weight or not, you’re coming.”

  She winces. “House Crimson. So warm and compassionate.”

  “Survival doesn’t care about compassion,” I say flat.

  “But you dragged me out,” she says. The sled groans under her. She hisses, “I hate you.”

  “Survival isn’t a popularity contest,” I say dryly.

  I pause, the midnight stone catching a glint. “Some losses teach you that leaving someone behind is its own kind of failure.”

  Dragging Elen on the sled feels like punishment. Each step is slower than the last, my legs turning to lead, my lungs burning. My injured arm throbs with every bump, every jolt a fresh reminder of how close I am to collapsing. Twice, I stumble and almost dump her back into the snow. She curses, I grit my teeth, and force myself upright.

  By the time we reach a shallow ridge for shelter, I can barely see straight. I fumble the shelter setup, drop the heat pack and nearly tear Elen’s brace off by accident. Only her glare—and the thought of leaving her to die—keeps me moving.

  The wind screams around us—a brutal reminder of how small we really are.

  Night falls hard and fast. I wedge us both into a hollow under the ridge, the sled braced against the wind, Elen half-conscious and shivering beside me. For a while, neither of us speaks. There’s nothing to say. The cold is a third presence—merciless, pressing in, stripping away anything that isn’t survival.

  I check her splint, fingers numb. “Still with me?” I ask.

  She grunts, eyes squeezed shut. “Barely. This is the worst spa day ever.”

  I almost laugh, but it comes out a ragged cough. My own fever is flaring again, thoughts blurring around the edges. I force myself to focus—pack more snow around the shelter, check Elen’s pulse, ration out half a piece of wolf jerky. Every movement feels like it’s happening underwater.

  Eventually, Elen falls asleep. Her breath rattles in the dark, shallow and uneven. I watch the wind whip snow across the entrance, counting seconds and breaths. My mind drifts—back to Lia, to the pendant’s cool weight, to the question that’s gnawed at me since this trial began: what am I willing to sacrifice to find the truth?

  Sleep comes in fragments—ten minutes here, a shiver there, always interrupted by pain or the sudden, sharp fear that we won’t wake up at all. I keep my improvised knife close, muscles tense, waiting for that inevitable moment when the cold or the wolves decide to test us again.

  Dawn is less a sunrise and more a shift from black to gray. Elen stirs, groans. “Still alive?” she mutters.

  “Debatable,” I say. My voice is barely more than a scrape. “But yeah.”

  We eat what’s left of the wolf jerky, melt snow for water. Elen’s leg is swollen, the skin stretched tight and angry. Infection’s a real risk, so I dig out my last strip of antibiotic moss and pack it around the wound. She doesn’t complain, just clenches her jaw and stares at the horizon like she could will the sun to rise faster.

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  We stay put for most of the day, conserving what little strength we have. The wind eases, but the cold never really leaves. I check our makeshift shelter for cracks, patch what I can, and listen to Elen’s breathing. It steadies, bit by bit. She’s tough—tougher than most. Under different circumstances, I think we might’ve actually been friends.

  By dusk, we’re ready to move. I haul Elen onto the sled again, every muscle in my body protesting, but the alternative is leaving her behind—and I won’t do that. We set out into the pale light, two battered figures against the endless white.

  Every kilometer is an ordeal in pain. The landscape blurs, footsteps blending with the hiss of wind and the scrape of the sled. Sometimes Elen mutters encouragement, sometimes she just curses the universe. I don’t answer. All my energy goes into putting one foot in front of the other.

  When night falls again, we make camp beneath a jagged overhang. This time, Elen helps—splinting her own leg, rationing supplies, even managing a weak smile when I hand her the last piece of dried meat. “We make a hell of a team,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I reply, “if the goal is mutual suffering.”

  She snorts, then settles in, pulling the wolf pelt over her shoulders. I lean back against the stone, exhausted, but strangely hopeful. For the first time since the Trials began, I don’t feel completely alone.

  Tomorrow, the journey continues—just two survivors, stubborn and scarred, refusing to quit.

  Rest stops aren’t really a thing in the Arctic, not when your shelter is stitched together from wolf pelts and whatever scraps you can scavenge. I’m not exactly roughing it in style—my gear looks like a post-apocalyptic Pinterest fail—but hey, it’s still holding together. Barely.

  Elen and I huddle under our makeshift tent, the wind howling like it has a personal vendetta. She breaks the silence, voice low, tracing an old scar on her arm like it’s a roadmap no one wants to follow.

  “My parents mapped out every detail of my life,” she says. “Every choice was an illusion. A calculation.”

  I snort, because yeah—I get it. “Freedom’s overrated anyway. Mostly it’s just the right to choose which disaster you trip into. Trust me, I’ve tested the theory.”

  Elen lets out this laugh—sharp, bitter. “And if your north star was never even yours to begin with?”

  I shrug, shifting my weight and wincing as my “custom” boot (read: patched with wire and hope) pinches my toes. “I’m the queen of self-imposed pressure. Being Adam’s daughter means everyone’s waiting for me to screw up in spectacular fashion. That’s its own prison, y’know?”

  “At least you had the illusion of choice,” Elen mutters.

  “Choice is just a fancy word for ‘pick your poison,’” I reply.

  The wind rattles our shelter. Freedom, cages—they’re all just different flavors of stuck.

  The Arctic doesn’t care about our family trauma. It just keeps trying to kill us. Elen’s bundled in my sled—her leg a disaster zone I patched up with sticks, moss, and what’s left of my medical kit. The sled itself? Built from scavenged metal, wolf bones, and stubbornness. It creaks with every bump, but it’s the best I’ve got. That, and a whole lot of duct tape.

  By the time I spot the iceberg looming on the horizon—this monstrous, frozen tombstone—I’ve been hauling Elen for thirteen days. Not that I’m counting or anything. Some days it feels like I’m moving backward, slogging eight kilometers through hellish ice fields. On the good days, when Atreu’s weather gods are distracted, maybe twenty. My “enhanced” Atrean genes are supposed to make this easier, but I’m pretty sure all they do is make the pain last longer.

  Elen, ever the backseat survivalist, pipes up whenever I look too close to death. “We’re burning too much energy. Adjust your route. That ridge’ll block the wind.”

  I want to tell her to steer herself, but she’s got a point. Every ounce matters. I’ve ditched everything non-essential—extra gear, pride, the fantasy of having any dignity left. My sled is basically a mobile trash heap with attitude.

  Navigation is… creative. I piece together half-remembered coordinates, read the landscape like it’s trying to trip me, and check Lia’s pendant around my neck whenever I need to remember why I haven’t just lain down and let the wolves have me.

  Elen’s both dead weight and the only reason I’m still moving. She cuts through my exhaustion with cold logic, keeps me from making dumb mistakes—like, say, trying to cross a thin patch of ice because it “looks faster.” She’s got a tactical mind sharp enough to slice through steel, and I’d hate her for it if I weren’t so grateful.

  “We’re not dying here,” Elen says one night, her voice barely above the wind. “Not after everything.”

  “After everything, dying would just be lazy,” I mutter. “I’ve put way too much effort into this mess.”

  By the time we reach the iceberg—three kilometers out, a chunk of frozen hell floating in more frozen hell—I’m running on fumes and sarcasm.

  “That’s our target,” I tell Elen, nodding at the iceberg. “Center stage. Try to look impressed.”

  She squints at it, unimpressed. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Not just an iceberg. It’s our way out,” I say, touching Lia’s pendant for luck or maybe just superstition.

  The water between us and the iceberg isn’t just cold. It’s a murder attempt. My “gear” is patched with wire, old pelts, and hope. The sled, with Elen inside, weighs a ton, and I’m the lucky idiot who gets to swim for both of us.

  Elen spots the currents and barks out orders like she’s still leading a squad. “Fifteen degrees to port. Current’s pulling left.”

  “Copy, Captain,” I mutter. My arms are burning, my teeth are chattering, and my makeshift gloves are about as helpful as wet paper towels.

  Then the water goes from “sucks” to “nightmare fuel.” Something moves under us—a bioengineered horror with claws and glowing patches, like the world’s worst rave under the ice. I can’t let go of the sled, so dodging isn’t an option.

  “Elen, we’ve got company!” I yell, muscles screaming.

  She’s a blur—knife out, even with a busted leg, and when the creature lunges, she slices through its appendage like she’s peeling an orange. Blood sprays, it recoils, and for a second, I’m actually glad she’s on my side.

  “Keep swimming,” she snaps, wiping monster goo from her face.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I grunt, dragging us the last stretch to the iceberg, arms one cramp away from mutiny.

  We collapse onto the ice, two broken toys in a heap of misery. The water around us is a graveyard—candidates frozen beneath the surface, faces twisted or eerily calm, their gear drifting like haunted souvenirs.

  “Jesus,” Elen mutters. “Didn’t even make it to the surface.”

  I nod, not trusting myself to speak. Survival isn’t noble. It’s ugly, and it’s lonely.

  We crawl toward the center of the iceberg, joining a ragged cluster of survivors. No one’s friendly. Everyone’s calculating—who’s a threat, who’s a resource, who’s next to die.

  At the center, ancient double doors wait. Big, dramatic, and totally not ominous at all.

  Between rationing what’s left of our supplies, patching our gear (I’m down to sewing with fishing line I scavenged from a dead guy), and fending off hypothermia, Elen and I actually start talking. Not just tactics, but the real stuff—her ruthless upbringing, my search for Lia, the weird way trauma tastes the same no matter what house you’re from.

  Sometimes she calls me her “sister in suffering.” I tell her that’s the worst compliment I’ve ever gotten. We laugh. It’s not pretty, but it keeps us human.

  We’re down to thirty-two out of sixty-three. One trial down, three to go. The iceberg is our world now—a frozen prison, everyone watching everyone else with predator eyes. The doors don’t open. They vibrate, humming with the promise of one more round of misery.

  As the doors blast open and heat floods in, I hold tight to Elen’s shoulder—half anchor, half promise. We’re battered, bruised, and nowhere near done. The arctic tried to freeze us out; now the desert will try to burn us down.

  But I’m still here. We’re still here.

  I barely have time to catch my breath before the world flips on its axis. Snow vanishes beneath my boots, replaced by burning sand. The air shimmers, thick with the promise of new horrors. I grip Lia’s pendant—my talisman, my truth.