The Top Boy Is My Mate

Chapter 10: Shadows in the wall

Zara’s POV

The next day, we were all seated in the cafeteria when it was announced.

“All second-years will participate in tonight’s mandatory trial. Partners have been assigned. Report to the North Wing at dusk.”

I barely tasted my food after that. Not that I’d been eating much. But what made my pulse trip wasn’t the trial. It was when my name was read aloud, paired with one I’d hoped to avoid.

“Zara Blackwood. Atlas King.”

Again!

The way his eyes lifted to meet mine across the hall, like a storm building behind them, I knew tonight wouldn’t just be about surviving the dark.

….

By dusk, the North Wing was alive with the sound of boots, the nervous shuffle of students adjusting the straps of lanterns and packs. The instructors handed out the barest essentials: a map that looked like it’d been ripped by some beast, a half-filled vial of silver dust, and a single rusting key.

“Stay alive,” the instructor said with a grin too sharp to be kind.

The iron door to the tunnels groaned open. Cold air met us like a slap. Atlas took the lead without a word, his lantern casting strange, flickering shapes on the walls.

I followed, heart thudding.

….

The tunnels swallowed us whole.

They were tighter than I expected, stone pressing close on either side, the ceiling low enough that Atlas had to hunch slightly. Every step echoed, too loud, as if the tunnels wanted to announce us to whatever waited deeper in the dark.

“This way,” Atlas muttered, studying the map. His voice was rough, and distant.

I didn’t argue. What could I say to the boy who kept looking at me like I was a ghost?

Minutes, maybe hours passed. The map led nowhere. The turns didn’t match. The tunnels twisted in ways that made no sense, left became right, up felt down.

Worse were the whispers. Soft at first. A trick of the wind, I told myself, but they grew louder.

“Mira.” A distant eerie voice came.

I froze. “Did you hear that?”

Atlas stopped, glancing back. His brow furrowed, shadows deepening the scar that slashed across his cheek. “What?”

But before I could answer, something skittered in the dark. A shape, too fast, too thin, moved along the wall.

Atlas was beside me in a breath, pulling me back into a narrow crevice between the stones. His body pressed against mine, solid, warm despite the chill.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. His breath stirred the hair at my temple.

My heart pounded. His scent wrapped around me, familiar and strange all at once.

He was looking down at me, so close our noses almost touched. And in his gaze, I saw it again. That searching. That aching.

“Why do you smell like her?” he murmured.

I didn’t understand. Who? Who did I smell like?

The creature passed, a shadow with too many eyes, glinting red in the lantern glow. When it was gone, Atlas let out a slow breath, stepping back.

“We have to keep moving,” he said, voice tight.

We did. But the tunnels didn’t let us go easily.

….

The carvings started further in. Symbols that looked like they should have crumbled with time but glowed faintly as we passed. A wolf. A crescent moon. A girl’s face, etched into the stone, her silver eyes seeming to follow us.

I reached out, fingers brushing one of the symbols.

Warmth bloomed under my skin. A flash—

A memory?

I stood here before. Not as Zara, but as someone else. A girl with silver eyes. Atlas at my side.

I jerked my hand back, breath shallow.

Atlas watched me, suspicion and something softer battling in his gaze.

We kept walking.

Finally, we found it: the chamber. A wide cavern, the relic, a dagger with a black blade, resting on a pedestal of bone.

But it wasn’t unguarded.

A beast crouched beside it. Shadow-furred, half-wolf, half-nightmare. Its eyes locked on us, and it lunged.

Atlas shoved me aside, drawing its attention. “Zara—use the dust!”

My hands fumbled for the vial. The creature’s teeth snapped inches from his throat. I flung the silver dust. It caught the air like glittering fire, and the beast recoiled with a howl that made the stone tremble.

Atlas grabbed the dagger. But as he did, the floor cracked beneath us.

We fell. We landed hard. My elbow scraped raw, breath knocked from my lungs.

The cavern we’d fallen into was older than the tunnels above. Its walls were covered in murals, wolves, moons, battles. And at the center of them all, over and over: a girl.

She looked like me. Exactly like me.

Atlas stared, face pale in the lantern’s glow.

“Mira…” he whispered.

The way he said it, soft yet broken, made my heart twist.

I looked at the mural again. The girl’s face carved into the stone. My face. The same high cheekbones. The same mark below the left eye, shaped like a crescent, one I’d never noticed until now, my fingertips brushing the skin, feeling the faint ridge. I felt nothing familiar.

“I’m not her,” I said, though my voice shook.

Atlas didn’t answer at first. His gaze dragged over my face like he was trying to memorize it all over again. Or trying to find the pieces that didn’t belong.

“Yes. You’re not her. You could never be Mira,” he sharply.

I stared at him, didn’t know what to say. What was the use of arguing with an arrogant bastard like this? So I ignored him.

The chamber felt hollower the longer we stood in it. The walls seemed to breathe, the murals alive in the flicker of our lantern. I swore I heard voices, the same ones from the tunnels, calling Mira.

A low rumble shook the stones beneath our feet. Dust sifted down like falling ash.

“We need to get out of here.” Atlas’s voice snapped me back. His hand closed around mine, firm, and warm.