Not real. Not real. Not real.
When I open my eyes, I hurl the shadow dagger at the figure. The blade slices through him. His expression doesn’t falter before his image shatters and dissolves into mist.
I collapse to my knees, shaking.
Pressing trembling hands to the floor, I force air into my lungs. I have to keep going. I’ll be ready next time. That one justcaught me off guard. I won’t let it break me.
I push to my feet, shadows curling protectively around me as I continue down the path.
But I’m wrong. I’mnotready for what I see next.
Another set of stairs, leading to a chamber with no roof, only a canopy of more twisting branches. The walls crumble inward, but rise too high to see over. The air smells of rot and rain, almost exactly like the cursed lands of Gravenholme.
At the center lies my father in a bed.
Not as I left him. His skin is gray, his breathing ragged. Blood trails from the corners of his mouth, staining the pillow, and he has black veins traveling all over his body. His eyes gloss with pain.
“You failed me, Renya.” His voice is weak but cutting. “You caused this. It’s your fault this kingdom will be without a king. You let me die.”
His chest rises once, twice before going still. His gaze goes lifeless.
A strangled sound tears from me. My back slams against the wall, my hand flying to cover my mouth. I don’t remember moving, don’t remember retreating, but I’ve taken several steps back.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
My shadows coil around me, sensing my distress, trying to hold me together.
I force myself forward on shaking legs, refusing to look again at the figure on the bed. The path out lies on the far side of the chamber, and I stumble through it without a glance behind.
Time blurs.
I don’t know how long I walk. Minutes. Hours. The Labyrinth is endless, with narrow corridors splitting into broken staircases and shattered rooms collapsing in on themselves. My feet carry me onward, but no matter how far I go, I cannot shake the image of my father’s lifeless eyes.
I quicken my pace when I spot light ahead, a wild thought rising in my mind that maybe this is it. Maybe I’ve reached the exit.
I burst through an archway only to come to a halt.
No portal.
Instead, I stand in a vast room. A ballroom, though it’s little more than a ruin. The ceiling soars above, made of fractured glass that lets sunlight pour in. Stained glass windows gleam high on the walls, colors still rich despite time’s decay. Doors stand in three places—one to my right, one across the hall ahead, and one at the top of a double grand staircase to my left. The stairs sweep upward to a mezzanine, where a set of gilded doors waits.
I take only three steps inside before the air changes.
The war camp, twenty-eight years ago, springs to life around me.
Kallan pulls me by the arm, begging me to run. I watch my stubborn refusal, our whispered argument in the dark. His desperate pleading. My reluctant surrender.
Then…the attack.
The vampire dropping from the trees.
Kallan shoving me aside, his magic lighting his sword. I can’t move, can’t help. I can only watch as the memory plays out exactly as it did. My men falling. Him fighting alone. Him—
I scream. Scream as though the sound could change it, as though warning him might alter what I already know is carved into stone. Nothing changes. The illusion does not break.
The vampire strikes. Kallan falls.
My scream overlaps with the one from my past self, echoing across time until the sound becomes unbearable.
