“Maybe if you stopped sulking in your self-pity, you’d see that you have everything you need to scale the Gauntlet,” he calls after me, his voice echoing down the hallway. “My self-what?” I turn around, my jaw dropping. “People die,” he says slowly, his jaw ticking before he drags in a deep breath. “It’s going to happen over and over again. It’s the nature of what happens here. What makes you a rider is what you do after people die. You want to know why you’re still alive? Because you’re the scale I currently judge myself against every night. Every day I let you live, I get to convince myself
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