I'd never watched a Tuv Pit fight in person— it was too dangerous with the K-guards— but today I pushed recklessly through the crowd. The fight had been called last minute, and it was an ascendant trial, with two winners moving onto the Puckers, which only added to the excitement and chaos. Men and women laughed and joked, exchanging bets, gossiping about why the fight had been moved up and why a new combatant had been added last minute. Children wormed their way through the crowd or ate sweets vendors sold on the edges of the crowd. If I'd been able to feel anything, I would have felt sick that I'd once been one of these people, enjoying the trials. Instead, I felt cold. Empty.

The announcers began to talk, but I couldn't hear them. Every sound was muffled by the ringing in my ears, the sudden weight in my limbs, the screaming need to do something, anything.

I could turn myself in. Explain it was me and not Yaneli. But that wouldn't save Yaneli.

If Xyla and Yaneli were both fighting, then maybe they could work together and win. Ascendment Trials were usually the bloodiest, most brutal fights, alliances formed and broken on the floor of the pit. If Xyla and Yaneli fought together, they'd have an advantage. But Wesson had said only Yaneli was fighting... so where was Xyla?

The announcer's voice cut through the crowd. Like I'd picked up a white hot coal, the world came into sharp, painful focus.

The Letter Trial started in sixty seconds. I was out of time.

I thrust my way through the crowd, forcing my way through the ring of onlookers gathered at the railing. When I reached the edge, I stared down the sheer walls into the metal pit. The red circle enclosed the pit, and inside it stood Yaneli, the smallest form by far. No flash of white-blond hair shone—Xyla wasn't there. Yaneli would face the other winner's alone.

Ten... Nine... Eight...

"It was me!" I screamed, "I'm the guilty one!" My voice was drowned out by the growing roar and the boiling mass of people crushing me against the rail. The timer ticked down to zero.

"Live in the Beast," the announcers shouted. The crowd roared back, "Die in the Beast!" as I shouted, "Stop! It was me!" But no one listened— I was a Z, nothing and no one, now more than ever.

The Letter Trial began.

Men rushed for the center pile of weapons, and anything I could say or do became useless in the frenzy of the crowd. Below, Yaneli rushed forward. I couldn't breathe as I lost her form in the mass of bodies.

Then I saw her, emerging from the weapon pile, a shield in hand.

She was still alive.

She lifted the shield as a man with a sword advanced towards— a winner I remembered for brutally killing everyone in his first Tuv trial. He swung the sword against the metal again and again, beating her back further and further, the sound like a death toll. He laughed as he advanced.

"Stop! STOP!" Tears ran down my face. "It wasn't her! It was me!"

Yaneli's arm's trembled. She nearly fell as the man swung for her feet, then almost didn't get up again.

The crowd buffeted me, as the man cut sideways, catching her calf. Her mouth opened, but I couldn't hear the scream of pain as she fell to her knees.

The crowd blurred. The roar grew dim.

She's going to die.

My hands grabbed the top of the railing.

Yaneli dropped the shield, tilting her head back.

It was like another person moved— not an unlettered girl but a machine built of flesh and bone and blood. A machine that couldn't watch another person die in a pit when she could stop it.

I elbowed against the crushing crowd, found the smallest space to pull myself on top of the railing, hooked a foot over, then both.

And then, with a scream of rage, I vaulted into the pit.

I'd seen it happen once before. A mother weeping at the railing, her son about to die below her. She'd jumped into the Pit, and the moment she hit the ground, she had entered herself into the first Letter Trial. Her sacrifice only prolonged the inevitable. She watched her son die and then died next to him. 

Once you jumped in, you became a part of the letter trial yourself. 

At least I had better aim.