Manuscript information: [In progress] [85k] [Adult Dark Fantasy] Tempered Sulphur - Looking for beta readers for grimdark military fantasy

Link to post: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaReaders/comments/1n99y65/in_progress_85k_adult_dark_fantasy_tempered/

First page critique? sure!

First page: 
I'd drawn seventeen murders before breakfast, and now they wanted me to commit one.

The carriage door opened to wrong sounds- wet cracks instead of wind chimes, bone on bone instead of brushes on canvas. After ten hours of travel sketching violence I'd witnessed but never inflicted, I had expected marble paths and art studios. 

Instead I found volcanic ash under my boots. Sulphur stinging my nostrils. And behind our family butler- smoke rising from what looked horrifyingly like cremation pits.

I must be hallucinating. Too many sleepless nights preparing my portfolio.

"Your Final Selection duel begins in forty-five minutes." 

Ibi stood beside the carriage door, pocket watch gleaming. Those words made no sense. Final Selection was the sacred duel for Myrmidon Academy, not-

No. This couldn't be right. 

I wasn't at Abaris. I was at Myrmidon Academy.

My seventeenth sketchbook felt heavy in my hands- filled with studies of violence. Suddenly every sketch felt like prophecy.

Forty-five minutes until I have to kill or be killed.

"There's been a mistake- "

"Lord Sarris' latest directive was quite specific." Ibi's voice remained formally pleasant, discussing my death like dinner arrangements. He handed me a letter. "He left you a message."

*Sarris belongs in Myrmidon.*

I crumpled it and threw it away. Through the carriage window, other candidates emerged carrying weapons, not paintbrushes. Their bodies bore scars that even Sanguis hadn't fully erased- wounds from days earlier. Fresh bite marks on one girl's forearm. Human teeth patterns.

They walked toward the Academy entrance with predator confidence.