The Gods are Watching

The next few days passed in a haze of preparation, anticipation, and dread. The trials loomed over them like an ever-present shadow, and the tension in the barracks had only grown stronger. The air crackled with whispered rumors, and the contestants had begun to eye one another with suspicion. There were alliances forming, and the first quiet betrayals had already begun.

But it wasn't the others Caius was concerned about. It was something else. Something darker.

Each night, when the others were asleep or pretending to be, Caius couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. He couldn't explain it. It wasn't just paranoia—it was real. The sensation that someone, or something, was observing his every move from the shadows. It was subtle at first—a rustle in the corner of his vision, a flicker of movement that disappeared as soon as he turned his head. But it kept happening. Night after night.

And tonight, as he lay on his cot in the barracks, trying to push the unease from his mind, it returned.

There, at the edge of the room, where the dim light from the overhead lamps couldn't quite reach, there was movement.

Caius's breath caught. He stayed still, pretending to sleep, his senses straining. The shadows at the far corner seemed to shift, warping slightly as though something—or someone—was trying to remain hidden.

A whisper of a sound reached his ears. Barely audible. Like the scrape of shoes on stone, or the faintest sigh of breath.Then, the shape emerged.

A figure, small and hunched, like a shadow in human form. Its outline was blurry, distorted, as though the air around it bent and twisted, refusing to acknowledge its existence. But despite the oddities in its form, one thing was clear—the figure was watching him.

Caius's pulse quickened. His instincts screamed at him to move, to get up and confront this shadow, but his body remained frozen. His heart thudded against his ribs. He tried to steady his breath, but it came in short, sharp gasps.

The figure was too far away to see clearly, but something about it felt wrong. Alien. Not in the way the gods were otherworldly, but in the way something foreign and forbidden lurked just beneath the surface, begging to be uncovered.

The creature—if it could even be called that—didn't move toward him. Instead, it hovered in place, its distorted form flickering in and out of view like a malfunctioning hologram. Caius could feel its gaze on him, pressing into his mind like a weight. He didn't know how, but he could feel it. Watching him.

And then—

The whisper. It was like a voice that wasn't a voice at all, just a presence.

"You're not supposed to be here."

The words slithered through his thoughts, leaving a trail of coldness behind. The voice had no tone, no emotion. It wasn't human.

Caius's breath caught in his throat, his hands instinctively tightening into fists. He wanted to speak, to demand an explanation, but his throat had gone dry. His mind raced, trying to process what was happening.

He wanted to turn and face the figure directly, but something in him resisted. Every fiber of his being told him that to look directly at it would be a mistake. That there was something more dangerous about it than he could comprehend.

The figure tilted its head, an unnatural movement that twisted its body into an almost grotesque angle. Then, as if toying with him, it stepped back into the darkness, vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared.

The room fell silent again. The tension, however, lingered in the air like smoke, curling around his mind, suffocating him with the sense that he had just narrowly escaped something worse than physical harm.

Caius didn't move for what felt like hours, staring into the blackness of the room. But his mind churned with questions. Who was that? What did it want? Why was it targeting him?

The whispers from the shadow kept echoing in his mind. "You're not supposed to be here."

He wanted to brush it off, to tell himself it was just a figment of his imagination—stress, fear, the weight of the trials beginning to break him. But deep down, he knew better.

Something was wrong. Something far bigger than the trials was at play.

The following morning, as he went through the usual drills, the sense of unease did not lift. If anything, it deepened. He watched his fellow contestants with renewed wariness. Had any of them seen the figure? Were they in on whatever was happening to him? Was there anyone he could trust?

And then, in the middle of one of the drills, he saw it again. The shadow flickered at the edge of his vision—just a glimpse—but it was enough.

This time, it was closer.

Caius fought the urge to look directly at it, but his eyes betrayed him. He glanced toward the corner of the training hall.

A distorted figure stood there, too small to be one of the Marked contestants, but too humanoid to be anything else. The figure's form shifted, its features twisting in unnatural ways. It seemed to stare at him with burning eyes, though the face remained too warped to recognize.

It was the same feeling as before—the sensation of being watched, studied, and measured. But this time, something shifted inside him. A feeling of dread crawled up his spine. He had to know.

Who was it? What was it?

The figure didn't move, not at first. But then, as if sensing his gaze, it melted into the shadows again, disappearing in a way that felt almost too unnatural.

Caius's heart was racing. His breath shallow. He wasn't sure if he'd just seen a person or a thing. Whatever it was, it was playing some kind of game with him. And he had no idea what the stakes were.

As the day wore on, he began to notice something else—other contestants were reacting to it, too. They didn't speak, but their eyes flicked to the shadows often, as though they, too, felt something was wrong.

A whisper in the crowd. A brief exchange of glances.

Caius caught sight of Vera Nyx looking his way, her expression unreadable but with a flicker of something in her eyes. She knew.

But what did she know?