The trail opened into a clearing surrounded by vines. The trees were coated with the same oozing black liquid. Hollowed and dead, they stood like silent watchers around the writhing roots.
At first, I checked for magic. Closing my eyes, I reached outward for the arcane, and my thoughts came back in a black torrent.
Dark magic. Old. Ancient.
Something moved behind me.
I spun, but saw only trees.
The air thickened. The vines pulsed, slow and steady, like a heartbeat. Even without casting, I could feel it.
Darkness. Living, breathing. Watching.
A sound—or maybe just movement—made me turn again, and suddenly, night fell. One blink, and the world was drowned in shadow.
I searched the treeline, bracing for a wolf or worse. My heart thundered.
Tiny white specks drifted from the sky.Snow, I thought, but it wasn’t winter anymore.
I held out my hand, letting one land on my palm. It dissolved on contact, leaving a faint smear of gray.
Not snow.
Ash.
I looked at the vines again, trying to reason that something was playing with my mind. The pulsing continued, steady as a heartbeat, black tar flowing through in consistent beats.
I walked closer, drawn in by the rhythm. It felt like a song only I could hear. I reached out, certain, without knowing why that if I touched it, I’d understand.
My fingertips brushed the surface. Cold. Burning. The world shifted.
Power surged through me unlike anything I’d ever felt. My mind opened wide, walls crumbling all at once. Images flooded in, but not echoes this time. It was reality, as though I were actually there.
I stood at the mountain’s peak, before the steps of a tower, or was it a keep? Screams echoed from within. Tortured cries and I just wanted it to stop.
I covered my ears.
A man was bound. Wizards cloaked in shadow surrounding him. Murmuring, whispering, scheming.
That wizard in dark green robes.
Kael by his side.
And ash.
So. Much. Ash.
Falling around the keep like snow. Beautiful at first until I realized it was death falling from the sky.
Then, the ground vanished beneath me. I was in free fall down an endless pit, weightless, swallowed by the dark, despair gnawing at my bones.
And when I finally struck the ground, everything went black.
Chapter 17
Kael
This boy would not give us anything. Blood trickled from his split lip where the guard had struck last. Blond hair, streaked red, clung to his face like a second skin. He wheezed with each breath as if it might be his last. Filthy. Wet. Stinking of horse shit.
