Prologue

Five Minutes Before the Drop

The woman powdering blood beneath my eyes asks what I want the empire to call me when I die.

“Vesper.”

“Only Vesper?”

“Only Vesper.”

She writes it on my throat in silver pigment.

The dressing room has no mirrors. That is the first kindness the Mourning House offers and the last one I expect. Black curtains cover every reflective surface. Even the makeup artist’s scissors have been painted matte to prevent the broadcast lenses from catching a true face too early.

Above us, the audience chants.

The sound travels through six floors of stone and expensive insulation, millions of voices reduced to a single hungry pulse.

VES-PER.

VES-PER.

They learned my false name thirty seconds ago.

They already want to watch me bleed.

“Hold still.” The makeup artist brushes more crimson beneath my cheekbone. “Death-mages test pale under mirror light.”

“I am pale.”

“Not dramatically.”

A stagehand fastens a black crystal at my collar. Hidden inside is enough surveillance magic to record my heartbeat, body temperature, magical output, and last words. The contract calls it a contestant safety measure.

The contract also grants the network ownership of my death.

I signed anyway.

Somewhere inside the Mourning House, my mother’s soul is either imprisoned or waiting to prove she was never the victim I made her.

I will accept either answer.

The curtain behind me opens.

Cold silver light cuts across the floor. A production assistant gestures me toward a narrow corridor lined with black glass. I keep my eyes down. Every panel holds a lens, and the House punishes anyone who acknowledges the machinery behind its illusion.

Act natural.

Do not look into the cameras.

Never speak your true name.

The rules are simple enough to print on memorial cards.

At the end of the corridor, eleven contestants stand on separate drop platforms. Their costumes announce the roles chosen for them: innocent, seducer, brute, scholar, traitor. Mine is death-mage, which is at least accurate.

Across the chamber waits the returning champion.

Rhys Noct.

He stands with his arms folded, wearing sleeveless shadow leather and the expression of a man attending his own execution for the second time. Darkness moves beneath his skin like a second circulation. A ribbon of it curls from his wrist, tests the air, then retreats.

The audience screams his stage name.

RHYS.

RHYS.

He does not react.

Last season, he survived every room. The network rewarded him with a contract requiring him to return until a challenger killed him or the audience stopped paying.

The audience has not stopped paying.

His gaze passes over the contestants and catches on me.

The shadow at his feet goes still.

I have seen his face in a thousand broadcasts, but a lens never captured the exhaustion around his eyes. It also never showed the fine scars where control runes were removed from his throat.

“Contestants,” announces a voice from the ceiling, “welcome to the Mourning House.”

Odds blaze across the floor.

My survival chance opens at nine percent.

Rhys’s opens at eighty-three.

A voting prompt appears between us.

CHOOSE THE FIRST PAIR.

Numbers climb.

The audience selects Rhys and me before any other option reaches half our total.

He looks at the result, then at me.

“Unlucky,” I say.

His mouth almost curves. “For which of us?”

The host enters through a door made of light. She wears white, as if innocence can be tailored.

“The empire remembers our champion,” she says. “But does our champion remember mercy?”

A second voting prompt appears.

WHAT SHOULD RHYS DO WITH VESPER?

PROTECT HER.

BETRAY HER.

KILL HER.

The final option surges ahead.

The crowd becomes thunder.

Rhys watches the numbers without blinking. “Do you know how to build a dead angle?”

The question is too quiet for the host and exactly loud enough for my collar crystal.

“Do you?”

“Two people. Two shadows. Two separate exits.”

An answer disguised as instruction.

The House wants intimacy performed for its lenses. Rhys is offering privacy engineered outside them.

That makes him either the first honest man in the building or the most dangerous liar.

“Why help me?”

“I did not say I would.”

The host circles us. “Our viewers have made their choice.”

KILL HER reaches ninety-one percent.

My collar crystal warms as the network converts votes into a binding objective. Rhys rolls one shoulder. The shadow ribbon returns, winding around his forearm but never crossing the space between us.

His restraint is more unsettling than a threat.

The host smiles at me. “Any final message before the drop?”

This is the moment the contestants are supposed to plead with the audience. Promise romance. Promise revenge. Promise a beautiful death.

I think of my mother teaching me the first law of necromancy: a name is a door, and grief is what opens it.

“Yes,” I say.

The chamber quiets.

I look at Rhys rather than the cameras.

“If he kills me, make sure he does it off broadcast.”

The audience erupts.

Rhys’s shadow lashes once across the floor, startled into honesty.

The host laughs. “Chemistry already.”

“Strategy,” he says.

“Those are not mutually exclusive.”

The platform beneath my boots unlocks.

Far below, obsidian walls rearrange around a central black door. Mirror facets wake by the million. Monsters shift in cages. The Mourning House prepares its opening shot.

Rhys steps onto the platform beside mine.

“When we land,” he says, “do not look at the walls.”

“And if the audience orders you to kill me?”

His dark eyes hold mine.

“Give them a better story.”

The countdown reaches one.

The floor disappears.