CHAPTER NINE: OF BLINDFOLDED BLADES, INVISIBLE LINES, AND THE FOREST THAT BREATHED BACK
THIRD PERSON POV
10:41 AM – Phantom Cross Arena | Day 2 of Sports Week
The arena screens flickered to life, casting eerie glows across the seats of Aureum Gymnasium. Everyone inside—every student, every staff member, every parent, judge, and hopeful rival—was silent. Watching.
The Phantom Cross Arena was more than a game field. It was a live, engineered maze—part digital illusion, part physical challenge—comprised of the Arcanum Forest, underground tunnels, and the brutal stone tower sector. Surveillance drones hovered above every inch. Trap sensors blinked with cold, mechanical precision.
The rules were simple:
Stealth. Speed. Strategy.
Retrieve the flags. Don't get caught.
Points were awarded for retrievals and deducted for every trap triggered or drone alert raised.
But what stunned the audience silent... was the moment Arielle Rylance Del Rio stepped onto the field.
Blindfolded.
The cloth over her eyes wasn't just symbolic—it was strategic. Around her neck, faintly pulsing with a silver-blue glow, sat the Artemis Collar—the Hunter's Sync. A slim circlet of orichalcum with micro-rune receptors, tuned to the heartbeat and pulse surges of her entire team.
She didn't need to see. She could feel them. Through the synchronized Courtwide Pulse Link, Riyee read each member of the Ardent Court like a living radar: Saichel's pulse came in fast skips and flickers—reckless, playful, somewhere above in the trees. Thres's was steady and strong, like thunder wrapped in armor. She tracked his every step like seismic waves. Keryn's signature moved in clean staccato taps—methodical, predictable, a metronome of motion.
From the Artemis Collar, she also felt the heavier syncs coming from the strategic spine of the Court: Xythe's heartbeat—controlled chaos, spiking briefly only when his mind fired into focus. Lyle's pulse—unshaken and cold, the monarch's compass, the field's unblinking eye.
These were more than teammates. They were her map.
Every pressure shift, every trap evasion, every pivot—they fed through the pulse-link system and translated through her collar in the form of gut-feel timing, breath surges, and muscle memory she didn't question.
The audience had no clue. All they saw was a girl walking blind into a death trap. And that was exactly what she wanted.
Even KD leaned forward in the upper observation deck, his fingers tightening against the railing. His usual unreadable stare flickered.
"She's blindfolded..." he murmured, disbelief curling into awe.
The announcers hesitated mid-commentary, mics buzzing faintly. Whispers surged through the crowd like electricity:
"Is that allowed?"
"She's going in blind?"
"She's insane!"
"Or she knows something we don't."
Bianchi, seated below the central panel, grit her teeth. "Twelve sensor traps. Twelve. And she just—walked in."
To her right, Jodie smirked. "She didn't just walk in. She's making a statement."
"More like writing an entire novel," Xylia said, mouth full of popcorn, not even blinking.
Errol blinked rapidly. "Did she memorize the field?! Is that even possible?"
Mico shrugged, eyes wide. "She did it with style. That blindfold even matched her crest."
Meanwhile, in the Phantom Cross field, the Ardent team moved.
Saichel Levesque was already darting across upper branches, muttering as he scanned terrain and fed back data.
YOU ARE READING
OPERATION WINTERSPINE (Strings Between Us Book 2)
Teen Fiction✧ STRINGS BETWEEN US ✧ Book Two: Operation Winterspine by miszywitch She thought she buried the war with her title. But some crowns aren't laid down--they're reactivated Arielle Rylance Del Rio walked away from the Ardent Court, from the strategist...
