THE LAST DAWN
Chapter 6: The Trial of Blood
The darkness did not lift.
It pressed against Rowan from all sides, cold and heavy, like the weight of a thousand graves. He could not see his hands. He could not see his feet. He could not see the walls. He could only feel — the stone beneath his boots, the cold air in his lungs, the hunger in his chest.
He walked forward.
His footsteps echoed.
The darkness did not part.
It simply shifted.
Made room for him.
As if it had been waiting.
A light appeared.
Not the silver light of the torches. Not the pale light of the gray waste. A red light. Deep and dark, pulsing like a wound, bleeding like a heart.
Rowan walked toward it.
The floor was stone, black and cracked, slick with moisture that smelled of iron and old blood. The walls were stone too, carved with symbols — eyes and mouths and hands and things that looked like words in a language that had never been spoken aloud.
The light grew brighter.
The hunger grew stronger.
And then —
He saw it.
A door.
Not a door of wood or stone or iron.
A door of blood.
It was red — darker than fire, darker than sunset, darker than anything he had ever seen. It pulsed with every heartbeat, throbbed with every breath, bled with every step he took toward it.
“The Trial of Blood,” a voice said.
He turned.
A figure stood behind him.
She was young — younger than Lyra, younger than anyone had a right to be. Her hair was red, her skin was pale, her eyes were black. She wore a dress of crimson silk, and her bare feet were pressed against the stone.
She was beautiful.
She was terrible.
She was the first trial.
“Rowan of Blackreach,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
He raised his knife.
“Who are you?”
The woman smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
“I am the blood. The blood of the first sacrifice. The blood of the hunger. The blood of the end.”
“What do you want?”
She stepped closer.
Her bare feet made no sound.
“I want you to open the door.”
“Why?”
She tilted her head.
“Because on the other side is peace. No more hunger. No more pain. No more fear.”
“That’s what the hunger promised the first sacrifice.”
“The hunger does not lie. It only twists.”
Rowan looked at the door.
At the blood.
At the pulse.
“I won’t open it.”
The woman’s black eyes filled with tears.
“Then you will die. And the world will die with you.”
She lunged.
Rowan swung.
His knife passed through her chest like smoke.
She did not bleed.
She did not fall.
She did not die.
But she touched him.
Her hand — cold, impossibly cold — gripped his throat.
“You cannot hurt me,” she said. “I am not alive. I am not dead. I am between.”
“Then let me through.”
“You cannot go through. The door is closed. The door is always closed. The door is the end.”
“Then I’ll open it myself.”
He walked to the door.
She did not follow.
He pressed his hand against the blood.
The door opened.
Beyond the door was darkness.
And in the darkness, a voice.
Rowan, it said. Rowan. Rowan. Rowan.
He stepped through.