Page 53 of Bone Year

“Death.”

“No.” The voice wraps around me. “You do not fear death. You fear what comesss after. Or rather what doesn’t.”

I’m speechless.

“You fear the void, the end, the eternal nothing. It keepsss you awake at night. It sssitsss on your chest and stealsss your breath. You cannot prove there is something more. And that uncertainty is the thing that truly hauntsss you.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t find my voice.

“You became a healer to fight thisss and have control over the one thing no one can control.”

My chest starts to heave, but I fight it, burying it where I bury everything else.

“You fear the end so profoundly. You want to become an elite healer. A Veilguard who savesss livesss. Sssomeone who stands between the living and the dying.”

The darkness shifts, and an icy chill settles over me as the temperature plummets.

“And yet you have taken a life.”

The tears come before I can stop them. Hot and sharp, spilling down my cheeks. I want to scream no, but it would be a lie.

“Yes.” My voice cracks. I wipe my eyes and look down to see my hands covered in blood. Panic spikes inside me like a jolt to my heart.

“I know this blood.”

I blink. “What?”

“Your father’s blood. It has walked these hallsss.”

My father…was here? He went to Ashwell?

It explains so much. The journals and the acceptance letter. The way he knew things he shouldn’t have known.

“He never told me,” I whisper.

“There is much you have not been told. In time, you will learn.”

Before I can ask what that means, the darkness begins to recede. Light bleeds in at the edges. I feel the ground solidify beneath my feet.

“You have been judged, Maelissss Rosssse. You have been found worthy.” The voice fades. The light grows brighter. “Your eidolon awaits.”

And then I’m through. Standing on the other side of the mirror, gasping for air, shaking from head to toe and flooded with the warmth from the cavern. The chamber is silent. Two hundred students watching. Faculty along the walls like statues.

I look down.

A small shape appears at my feet. Gray fur. Round black eyes. A ringed tail curled around tiny paws.

A raccoon.

Someone in the crowd laughs. Whispers spread like fire catching dry leaves.

“Even the mirror knows she’ll be picking through scraps to survive here,” someone says loudly enough for everyone to hear, and my cheeks burn.

“A bottom feeder for a bottom feeder,” someone else adds. More laughter follows.

I stare at the creature. She stares back.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.