“Speak for yourself,” muttered Virgil. Ife and Javier seemed as eager to go through the portal as he was, which was to say not at all.
“The four of you are needed here to guard the portal,” Sidraeus said. “You’re our tether back to the living worlds.”
There was a heavy, tense silence as they all looked at one another. Emory met Baz’s gaze, waiting for him to be ready. He moved closer to her, to Sidraeus, to the dark maw of the portal that opened between them.
“Be careful,” Nisha said. “All of you.”
Emory squeezed her hand in a silent goodbye, a promise they’d see each other soon. She made to step through the portal, but Sidraeus stopped her with a grave expression.
“Remember what I said.” He spoke the words to her, but clearly meant them for Baz, too. “This isnothinglike the sleepscape you have come to know. Traveling between worlds is one thing. Traveling the path between godsworld and abyss… there is no knowing what you might see or which direction it might push you.”
Baz tamped down the fear rising inside him. Such was the purpose of this path: for souls to choose between what was essentially two very different afterlives. As ferrier of souls, Sidraeus’s role had been to lead stray ones to this very path for them to move on to the next phase of death. Here, the souls of the dead who traveled the path were plagued by hallucinations, the worst parts of their psyche drawn up to torment them. These visions and how they dealt with them—what they chose to do with this mortal baggage they carried—were meant to lure them one way or the other. Either to the godsworld where they would be reincarnated through the fountain, or to the abyss where they would suffer damnation.
The souls judge themselves,Sidraeus had said.The choice is theirs alone.
To Sidraeus’s knowledge, no living mortal had ever walked the path, so there was no knowing how these visions would affect Baz and Emory now.
Sidraeus stepped through the portal ahead of them, as if to ensure the way was clear, or perhaps to appease this realm of death by presenting a familiar face first.
Emory gave Baz a final glance, and for a moment Baz was brought back to the last time he’d seen her go through a door. Only that time, it was a door he could not follow her through. Now that they were doing this together, whatever awaited them on the other side suddenly felt less daunting. The same thought seemed to cross her mind, a fond little smile tugging at the corner of her lips. The steel blue of her eyes was steady and sure, an ocean that would not let anything stop it, not even death. They seemed to hold a promise. That everything would be all right.
She stepped into the dark, and Baz followed.
Sidraeus was right; this was not the same star-lined path they’d all come to know.
The dark that swallowed them seemed infinite, oppressive; the very path beneath their feet made of the blackest obsidian. The only reason Baz could tell there evenwasa path and he wasn’t simply floating in a void-like space was due to the odd, silvery flames lining the way at wide intervals, hanging between columns of obsidian that bordered the path.
Directly in front of them was an altar, also made of obsidian, above which an ornate hourglass hovered a few inches in the air, laid on its side. Inside, a stardust-like material swirled in a perfect infinity loop, continuous and unbroken.
When a life ends, one’s soul is repurposed. Returned to the fabric of the universe. Think of an hourglass being flipped over, sand filling a previously empty bulb. An end becoming a beginning.
The god of balance’s words pounded in Baz’s ears as he took in the hourglass. Its iron frame was wrought with the finest of detail, the glass bulbs pristine and polished. It seemed to pulse with a great, unfathomable power. And Baz had seen it before, sketched on a canvas by the god’s own hand.
Fate’s central core, the god had called it.
Here was the heart of fate, hanging between heaven and hell. The very instrument responsible for producing the threads that the loom wove into fate’s tapestry.
Indeed, Baz could see these threads shimmering ever so faintly out of the hourglass. There seemed to be thousands of them,billionsof them, expanding out of the hourglass, crisscrossing like an elaborate web just like the god of balance had drawn.
Baz knew, with sudden clarity, that this was why he was here. Fate’s central core… it called to him, pulled on his soul. As if it had been waiting for him, the Timespinner, to step into his true role.
Mouth suddenly dry, Baz turned to Emory and Sidraeus—and found he was alone.
Panic seized him. He couldn’t tell up from down anymore, as if the path had turned sideways, a tree tipped on its side so that there was no distinguishing abyss from godsworld. He did not know which direction to move, or if he should stay here with the hourglass marking the way out, waiting for the others to reappear.
That’s when he saw her.
“Romie?”
His sister looked almost as shocked and elated as he felt. Her face split into a smile he had sorely missed, the kind of wide grin that brought him back to better days, to summers spent beneath the willow tree as kids, careless and free.
“Baz!” She threw her arms around his neck. “You’re here.”
He fought back tears, a laugh, a sob. She felt so real, so solid.They pulled apart, and Baz couldn’t even recall the last time he’d seen her. It felt like it was yesterday; it felt like a lifetime ago. She looked the same, other than her hair being a bit longer. Her brown eyes shone with starlight, with mischief and dreaming.
“This can’t be real,” Baz murmured. He looked around, suddenly reminded who he’d come here with. “Emory…”
“Don’t worry about her,” Romie said pleasantly. “She got what was coming.”
