Hmm.

  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

  Perhaps my performance hadn’t been as airtight as I’d assumed. Wasn’t I supposed to moan err- cry out, properly, after being struck with a literal whip? There was an art to suffering, apparently, and I might have underperformed.

  As for why I was acting at all… it seemed my first trial had already begun. The evidence was floating helpfully in front of my face, a screen that had yet to take the hint and disappear.

  [All 8 champions have crossed onto the realm. Your trial starts now, brave one. May you be victorious.]

  The moment I stepped through the entrance into the second phase, I ceased to be where I was. Immediately, I was… elsewhere. It felt like a void without edges or sequence, a place where even the act of thinking slid away before it could finish forming. Time had no grip there. For all I knew, I lingered for a thousand years, or less than a heartbeat.

  Still, the screen’s announcement gave me a useful constraint. All eight champions had arrived. Which meant we had all been suspended in that peculiar state until the last one crossed over. So, at most, I’d been stuck there for twelve hours.

  Twelve hours wasn’t much. And yet, it was unsettling how it registered as nothing at all.

  I shook my head sharply and reasserted myself into the present. Sensation rushed back in with a lack of ceremony. The first thing I noticed was the cold. Not Varkaigrad’s familiar, honest cold, but something subtler. This chill had a lingering quality to it, a faintly invasive edge. Not dangerous, just irritating.

  Then came the surroundings.

  Snow blanketed everything. A caravan crawled forward across the white expanse, hauled by beasts I did not recognize. They weren’t uniform either, there was variation among them, enough to suggest intention rather than coincidence. I counted five carts in total, each drawn by a different creature.

  Behind me stood a waryn. A wolf-kin. White mane, golden eyes burning with open hostility, mounted atop a massive wolf. He wore heavy black armor and held a whip still wet with blood.

  My blood.

  As for me, I was in chains. Actual chains. My clothing consisted of rags, and my body felt smaller, reduced somehow, its familiar weight and presence stripped away. The shadowed dress I had worn before was gone, along with the form that had filled it so comfortably. An inconvenience. A temporary one, I hoped.

  I wasn’t alone. Other figures trudged along in restraints, more captives like me. Prisoners, perhaps. Slaves, more likely. Around us moved additional waryn riders on their lycan mounts.

  I kept my gaze fixed forward, observing everything through my air sense. And then the lessons surfaced, one after another, neatly arranged. Phase two. I remembered now.

  I was reliving the world’s memory, inhabiting the body of someone who had lived through this moment. Which meant my priorities were clear. First: identify where I was. Second: determine when I was. Everything else came after.

  I had prepared for this. Thoroughly. I had devoured every scrap of recorded history I could get my hands on. Fragmented, biased, incomplete as it was. I had studied previous champions, their trials, their mistakes, their survivals. From all of it, I’d extracted a workable set of rules.

  Rules that, unfortunately, forbade immediate and enthusiastic violence.

  So instead of flaying this creature alive for daring to lay a hand on me, I stayed silent. I even let out a small, pitiful sound for pain I did not feel, but could convincingly suggest.

  Internally, I nodded to myself. Restraint and patience. I would see this through properly.

  For now, I would play the part.

  A clever dragon, after all, knows when to wait.

  I had other ways of extracting information, far more direct ones, but I had filed those neatly away as a last resort. There was no urgency pressing at my back. Time, for once, was behaving.

  Hmm. Hmm.

  Unfortunately, my performance appeared to have insulted the sensibilities of the waryn holding the whip. Perhaps my suffering lacked conviction. Perhaps I didn’t sound sufficiently frail for a sickly maiden in chains. Tsk.

  He lifted his arm again, the whip flashing as it cut through the air toward me. I reacted instantly— stumbling, shrinking, scrambling in what I hoped looked like genuine fear.

  The strike never landed.

  Another hand caught the whip mid-arc.

  “What the hell are you doing?” a second voice growled from behind.

  I turned my attention without turning my head. This waryn had a mane of white hair rather than grey, though his eyes burned with the same ferocious gold. He looked… refined. Elegant, even. He wore robes instead of armor, their cut seemed ceremonial rather than practical.

  The first waryn snarled. “Can’t you see? These bastards are getting bold. Trying to feed this thing. Don’t blame me for disciplining them.”

  Them, apparently, referred to the three prisoners shackled near me, dressed in the same rags. Their horns and scaly tails marked them clearly as drakkari. They were terrified. One of them, a girl about my apparent age, clutched a canteen of water with shaking hands, her gaze fixed on the snow as sweat beaded at her temples despite the cold.

  I logged the detail, then set it aside as the larger pattern began to assemble itself.

  The elegant waryn exhaled slowly and released the whip. “I know we aren’t required to deliver them in one piece,” he said flatly, “but she is the last person you should be striking.”

  The arrogant one barked a laugh. “Why?” His resentful eyes slid back to me. “Because she used to serve in one of those temples that tyrant dragon built? What, are you afraid that dead monster will claw its way out of the grave to punish me?”

  His words carried contempt, but something else too. There was sickly sweet smell of fear, buried under that bluster.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “You never know how it might be with their kind,” the elegant waryn replied. That was all. He didn’t elaborate.

  He glanced at me once, briefly. There was pity in his eyes. Then he urged his wolf forward and moved on.

  The first waryn glared after him, lips curled, then snapped his attention back to me. “Move it!” he shouted. “We reach the Valley by sundown, or none of us live!”

  With that, he turned and followed the other.

  I frowned internally.

  A dragon! He had spoken of a dragon, one that built temples. A tyrant, by his telling. That alone was… notable. Dragons, in the present era, were revered abstractions at best. Ancestors. Myths dressed in reverence. Not rulers. Not builders.

  And certainly not recent enough to leave priestesses behind.

  The realization settled slowly. I knew the historical record well enough to be sure of this much: in the past five hundred years, dragons had not walked openly among the beastkin. They had not ruled, nor raised temples, nor appointed servants.

  They had been erased.

  Not forgotten or faded. Removed.

  Whatever time I was standing in now, it predated that erasure.

  And then a weight settled in my chest. Just how far back had I been thrown?

  I shook myself internally before that thought could spiral into something unusable. Speculation without data was indulgence, not strategy. I needed information, starting with the body I was wearing.

  Emaciated. Black hair. Bronze horns. Starved and dehydrated to the point where the sensations were only now surfacing, as if the body had grown numb from neglect. How long did it take to reduce someone to this state? Long enough to be deliberate. Long enough to be cruel.

  A priestess of a tyrant dragon.

  A dragon that was dead.

  And judging by the way they spoke of it, not ancient-dead. Recent enough to still carry fear.

  I swallowed. Partly because my throat felt like dust— swallowing without saliva was an exercise in futility— but partly because the situation tugged hard at something deeper. That old, coiled draconic curiosity stirred sharply. I had so many unanswered questions about my kind’s past, about what had been erased and why. And now, whether by chance or by the Colosseum’s deliberate hand, I had been dropped into a time where those answers might still exist.

  Tempting. Maybe dangerous. But definitely delicious.

  I reined myself in as murmurs rose behind me.

  “What were you thinking, trying to feed that… thing?” an older man whispered harshly. “Have you seen her eyes this whole way? I swear there’s still something of that vile tyrant in them. What crime did we commit to be chained beside her?”

  A second voice followed, a middle-aged woman. “Truly. To be bound with someone like that! What punishment is this?”

  The girl, she couldn’t have been much older than me, in this body, flinched as if struck again by their words. I caught sight of a fresh lash across her back. The skin was still raw. She had been whipped before me. For my sake.

  “I-I didn’t see any of that,” she stammered, her voice trembling. “S-she was hungry. And thirsty. They n-never gave her anything, so I… I shared mine.”

  She was close to tears, but there was no malice in her expression. If anything, she looked apologetic. Toward me.

  That was when it clicked.

  I had misplayed it.

  A priestess of a tyrant dragon would not crumble from a single whip. She would not whimper. She certainly would not flinch like prey, especially not one rumored to carry the tyrant’s gaze. My earlier improvised performance had been sloppy.

  Embarrassing.

  I let the fear drain from my posture. Straightened slightly despite the chains. My expression smoothed into something blank, distant and dangerous.

  Neutral.

  The effect was immediate.

  The color drained from the older man’s face. The woman recoiled as if struck.

  “I knew it,” the man hissed. “The vile thing was acting.”

  “How devious,” the woman whispered, shrinking back.

  The girl remained where she was, frozen but still not hostile.

  Yes.

  This felt right.

  With that, the chains binding me jerked as the caravan lurched forward. As we moved, scraps of conversation began to stitch themselves together, mostly between our jailers, who were predominantly wolf-kin, and the prisoners, who were largely drakkari. Piece by piece, a picture emerged.

  First, my suspicion was confirmed. Whatever era I’d been dropped into, a “tyrant dragon” had been slain only recently. None of them spoke its name. They skirted around it with care, as though uttering it might invite calamity.

  Unfortunate for them. Calamity was already walking in their midst.

  With the dragon’s fall, the region had been thrown into upheaval. Power was shifting violently and without ceremony. I didn’t even know if this land was called Vraal’Kor yet. Varkaigrad almost certainly did not exist at this point, which meant the families and sects I knew were either fractured, nascent, or something else entirely.

  The caravan itself told a story. It carried the hallmarks of a raiding party, supplies, livestock, captives. From what I gathered, a village tied to the temple had been sacked. The temple where this body, my current body, had served as a priestess.

  The information was incomplete, riddled with gaps. Motives were unclear. Our exact status even more so. Slaves were the obvious assumption; history had enough precedent for that. Other questions pressed at me as well. Where were the other champions? The trials were meant to test each of us individually, shaped to our limits. It was reasonable to assume they weren’t anywhere near me.

  If there was one thing I’d learned about the Colosseum, it was that it was fair in its cruelty. If I’d been placed in a situation that challenged me, then anyone else dropped here would likely die outright. Perhaps our paths would cross in later trials, there were three more after all, but for now, survival meant focus.

  So I filed away my conclusions and turned my attention back to the caravan.

  This was not going to be a simple trial.

  Not a single person here rose above a low red core, not even the waryns riding those massive wolves. Most of the prisoners hovered between gray and yellow. The girl who had shared her water with me hadn’t even reached that. Her core was black.

  I could have slaughtered them all in the time it took to blink.

  Which was precisely why I didn’t.

  Recklessness was how people died in trials like these. So I let myself be dragged along by the chains, every sense alert, every reaction leashed.

  The caravan crawled across the snowy plains. Progress was slow and strained. Even the waryns with red cores carried themselves tensely, glancing at the horizon more often than necessary. They knew there was danger out here.

  They just weren’t confident they could face it.

  I learned why soon enough.

  A sharp, hissing shriek tore through the air. It was wet, distorted and unmistakably monstrous. The waryns reacted at once, spurring their mounts forward to intercept. What emerged made even me pause.

  An eel-like creature had hauled itself onto land, its massive body sprawled across the path. It was grotesquely out of place. Feral bite marks and claw wounds riddled its flesh, each injury weeping a viscous, corrosive blood that hissed as it splattered onto the snow. Whatever had hurt it had done so savagely, and then abandoned it.

  The arrogant waryn charged first.

  The eel’s eyes snapped toward him, twin crimson orbs burning with naked hatred. But that was all it could do. Its body convulsed uselessly against the ground, flopping with violent intent and no means to act on it. It spat some foul projectile, acidic, perhaps, but it sailed wide, easily dodged.

  Their first blows failed to pierce its thick hide, yet the creature was already compromised. Immobilized. Bleeding. Each repeated strike deepened the damage, aggravating wounds that refused to close. It didn’t take long. The eel shuddered, seized, and went still.

  Dead.

  I narrowed my senses.

  Rank five.

  The same as me.

  And yet… something was wrong.

  It didn’t fit. A predator like that didn’t belong here. There were no lakes nearby, no deep waters where it could thrive. Had something dragged it onto land? If so, why abandon it after wounding it so thoroughly? Had it not been worth eating?

  That last thought lingered longer than it should have.

  I eyed the corpse with frank hunger, the body’s starvation amplifying the instinct until it was almost intrusive. With effort, I pushed it down. Not yet. Cover first.

  Still, unease crept in as I watched the waryns. They didn’t celebrate. There was no relief. No triumph. Only tight expressions and wary glances cast outward, as if the eel had been the least of their worries.

  The waryn who delivered the killing blow suddenly stiffened.

  His gaze fixed on empty air. His pupils sharpened. He was reading something.

  As though an invisible screen hung before his eyes.

  The realization struck me cleanly and all at once.

  They had a system too!

  This was before the era I knew, before the system abandoned humanoid species and turned its favor solely toward monsters. I was standing in a time when it still governed them all.

  I barely had time to process the implication.

  A sharp disturbance cut through my senses.

  A projectile was already in motion.

  And it was coming straight for my head.

  Jade (Currently a Starving, Shackled Priestess of a Dead Tyrant Dragon)

  Status: Emaciated. Chained. Historically misplaced.

  Has accidentally intimidated civilians by standing up straight.

  Internal Thoughts:

  “Okay, yes, slavery is bad.”

  “But also this era’s history must be phenomenal.”

  “Focus, Jade. Priorities. Survive first. Eat later. Think about history third.”

  The Waryn with the Whip (Very Confident, Very Wrong)

  Believes he is:

  ? bravely disciplining a potentially dangerous relic of a tyrant,

  ? enforcing order during a fragile transition of power.

  ? Has whipped a dragon.

  ? Once.

  ? Did not die immediately.

  ? Is doomed.

  The Elegant Waryn (Knows Better, Refuses to Elaborate)

  Internal Monologue:

  “No.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I am not being paid enough to provoke a curse.”

  If someone inspires that much superstition, you don’t poke them with farm equipment.

  The Girl Who Shared Her Water and Food (Black Core, Zero Survival Instincts)

  Feels bad for a dragon (who likes to feel pain.)

  Was whipped for it.

  Nods to herself anyway.

  She did the right thing.

  Next time, she will make sure none of the guards are anywhere close.

  Jade’s Dragon Instincts (Unhelpful but Enthusiastic)

  Suggestions Provided:

  ? “Eat the eel.”

  ? “Eat the guards and their wolves.”

  ? “Eat the snow! (?)”

  ? “Eat the caravan.”

  ? “Later.”

  +16 Adv. Chapters on Patreon!!

  Discord