Except one. A tiny possibility that was more dream than reality.
I didn’t care.
Focusing on it, I pushed, forcing my future toward the path I’d selected. Torture blazed through my veins as my body adjusted. Ages passing in the blink of an eye.
The maelstrom at my center ceased.
My eyes popped open.
“What just happened?” Arlan whispered.
“My future.”
It was going to be a beautiful one.
“What are you about to do?” Arlan asked, the faintest trace of uneasiness in his voice.
My gaze strayed to the silhouette of the oak tree. “I’m going to open a doorway.”
I finally understood what my mind had been trying to tell me all this time. Noctessa and this realm—had no one ever wondered why the same meadow and tree existed in both?
It was because they were mirror images of each other. Both coming into existence at the same time. Their roots extending through time and space to intertwine with their twin. Connected in a way most would never realize.
The realms were never meant to be enemies. Rather, reflections of each other.
It was the hubris and greed of those that came later that made them that way.
If a scientist had to put a name to the phenomenon, they’d probably quote some entanglement on a subatomic level.
All I knew was that their connection could be used to create a doorway.
Closing my eyes, I grasped the chaos inside of me. If allowed to fester and expand, it would eventually escape my control and I’d become the monster of my future.
Unless I found a way to expend some of that power and allow my body to settle into its new form first.
Diving deep in my mind, I returned to the charred meadow and its tree that I now knew was a manifestation of my connection to Noctessa. Alches stepped out from behind the tree, watching as I strode across the ash covered ground.
If anything could convince me I was on the right path, his presence did.
Stopping in front of the ruined tree, I pressed my hand to the trunk, my physical body doing the same to the oak in the Summer Lands. “Here’s that doorway you requested, Liam. I hope you find it in time.”
Shadow and blood.
The two ingredients necessary for my magic to work. That along with the kaleidoscope of summer light, courtesy of Arlan, was all I needed to rip through the defenses protecting the heart of the realm.
I thrust my darkness tinged with golden light into the tree and stepped back as it dissolved the trunk. Flecks of ash wafted, carried by the wind that suddenly blew.
The magic bit deeper, burning away the chains that had bound both realms for so long.
In my mind’s eye, a tiny seed sprouted.
From it, a road of shadow and light opened.
twenty-seven
I was suddenly backin my own body. Seconds having passed in the meadow.
The sun that had seemed so overwhelming seconds before felt different. As if a shade had been drawn between sun and sky. Or a cloud had blocked its face, though the clear blue overhead showed not a single speck of fluffy white as far as the eye could see.
