The floor. Cold stone. I am there again, at Aidel’s mercy. The lich-lord is coming for me.

Shadowcloud…

I awoke fully, coming to my senses and pushing myself up to a half-sitting position.

Where am I?

The darkness was, if anything, more complete than it had been with my eyes shut. Not a glimmer of light broke into the chamber in which I’d been placed.

The cell in which I’d been imprisoned… I corrected myself.

Is this Zyger? I questioned.

But no – I still had my power. I could feel it. Subdued, weakened somehow, but still there.

It might’ve been a huge empty room, or a tiny one – I couldn’t tell from here in the middle of the floor, and I didn’t feel a pressing urge to explore. I curled up in a ball instead, shivering.

Nentheleme… give me strength!

But she couldn’t hear me – not because of where I was, but what I was. I’d shirked my duty. I’d acted as an agent of intimidation and violence. I was properly censured.

They’d taken my robe and mask, my satchel and amulets, leaving me in my tunic and pants. They’d even taken my boots, and my bare feet were like blocks of ice. The cold was permeating my skin, frost creeping into my bones, making it hard to breathe – I suspected that, were there light to see by, those halting breaths would’ve been misting on the air.

They really don’t care if I live or die.

A million tattered thoughts rolled through my head. People, places, events. Regrets.

Was it possible Tyr Kayn slipped through the net and returned, to cast me down?

Linnard Reyd’s face, exploding in red.

I clenched my teeth and whined a bit. There wasn’t a sylph, wasn’t even a rat to hear me now.

It was my fault. It was all my fault. I would reap what I’d sown.

But no. The damage had already been done, hadn’t it? My actions on Em’s – on Emrelet’s doorstep merely forced her hand. Even if I hadn’t shown up last night (what I assumed to be last night…) she still would’ve been after me. I still would’ve ended up here. It was, as Irimar said, quite simply my destiny.

Destined to give it all for this city. Destined to have it all spat right back in my face.

Did I slaughter a thousand innocents? No. Did I wage a decade-long vigilante war, executing those whom I pleased? No. I was like Neverwish. A victim of circumstance. I was innocent, or relatively-so at least, condemned for simple mistakes, errors of judgement…

Or was it even an error? Were the heretics even really wrong? After what Emrelet did to Nighteye, something in me had transformed and I was still having trouble identifying all the ramifications. I’d witnessed the brutality of summary justice up close but it didn’t make me want to shy away from violence – it’d just made me angrier. I couldn’t blame it all on the vampire because I could feel it as I lay there, and he couldn’t have been farther from me than he was right now.

At last I resolved to find out some more about my surroundings. I slowly got to my feet, and shivered anew as their soles touched the frosty floor for the first time.

The cell, my new world, was small. I’d barely moved, my arm outstretched before me, when my numb fingers made contact with the wall. Six feet by eight feet roughly, and I could find no aperture, no door; they must’ve used wizardry to seal it back up behind me once I’d been shoved in here. A subtle bit of air-flow told me there might be a hole in the ceiling but I couldn’t find it – the roof was low enough for me to touch at full extension, yet it appeared to be nothing but seamless rock when I explored it. Maybe my fingers were just too numb right now.

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There wasn’t even a bucket. They clearly expected me to just do my business in the corner. It wasn’t like they cared.

I sighed. I was hesitant to use my powers, because I knew there was no way they’d have put me in here if they thought I could escape.

Portals? They wouldn’t open. I could feel some form of obstruction, clever runes inscribed somewhere suppressing not only my power but the portals themselves. I might’ve broken through, given time and energy and… will.

Force-lines? They responded, but what use were they really? When they came for me, it would be with an enchanter. Resistance would last only so long. And doubtless there were other shields waiting to meet mine, out beyond the cell’s walls. I wouldn’t be permitted to harm anyone, even if I’d wanted to.

I hadn’t taken the opportunity to rejoin with my gremlin and satyrs after my trip to Etherium – I’d made time for the wraith and sylph, but it didn’t matter now anyway. They were gone. Maybe Bor had been able to make me expel them. Maybe they’d shoved my comatose body through a gateway, forcing their expulsion from me.

I wasn’t phasing my way out of this one.

I sat down again, back against the wall, but the chill quickly overcame me, persuading me to stay on my feet, pace about a bit.

It didn’t last long – my toes couldn’t take it for more than ten minutes.

The very moment I sat back down again and fell on my other side, curling my arms around myself in desperate attempt to warm up, a voice penetrated my head.

“Kas.”

Even if he detested me now, it was like a gift from the heavens to hear his voice, a messenger sent from the Horned One herself.

“Bor!”

“Kas… I was supposed to make you sleep until your sentencin’… You’re supposed to be awake to hear that, I guess… And I can’t go in a heretic’s mind when they’re sleepin’, can I? But I had to wake you. I couldn’t let it go.”

The hope of Yune sprung up in my breast, the fire in my soul igniting anew.

“Bor – thank you! If you can make the wizards set me free, give me a hole, I’ll be out of Mund, out of your hair –”

“That isn’t why I’m here.”

The iciness returned, chill covering my skin like a breath of fog I couldn’t see, colder than ever.

“Look, Spirit – I didn’t do anything wrong – and Em killed Nighteye –”

“Nothing wrong? You struck out at her –“

“That isn’t how it happened!”

“What? Are you serious? You droppin’ darkmage!” His psychic bellow was difficult to absorb. “I trusted you. And I thought I felt betrayed after Neverwish! Man. What’s next? You goin’ to tell me you didn’t hit her dad either, it’s all lies, right? I don’t care! I only want to know about Tanra. She’s missin’, no one can find her – did you do somethin’ to her?”

“To her? Gods, man, no! She ran, after…”

“After Em saw you together.”

I scowled in the darkness, hearing him use her name like that.

“I see your mind, Kas. I won’t delve too deep, but I can see your jealousy, your hate. Fine. Maybe you didn’t kill her. But you poisoned her. You stole my girlfriend. Now maybe I’ll steal yours.”

“No – Bor! Spirit! Please! Spiritwhisper! Borasir!”

But it was too late. He was gone, and he didn’t even put me back to sleep, didn’t grant me even that small mercy.

I grew hungry, thirsty, tired – eventually the exhaustion took over, and I stretched myself out on the floor again, welcoming the cold, welcoming the threat of unconsciousness, death. My mind slipped away into fantasy. I remembered the rain falling as we made our way from the Tower of Mourning to the Diamond Mare, that first time. I remembered the scents of the shrine of Yune when the betrayer took me to enter Etherium, the morning I found Zabalam and Avaelar.

I remembered the taste of my wizard’s lips. Her smile. Her smile…

But most of all, it was the real start of it all. The Cannibal Six. Lord Objectionable and the Bone Ring. Kicking the grave.

Leaving the twins to go there that fateful morning. Going alone, so that I could finally vent my pent-up grief.

The twins…

What if I never went, never kicked their grave, never met Zel? Would I still just be Kas, oblivious to everything that was really happening in the city, in the world?

No. Because we would’ve died in the first Incursion. Tanra might’ve died without me, and, even if she’d become Killstop anyway, there’s nothing to suggest she’d have sent Ciraya to Mud Lane without Feychilde in her visions.

But I couldn’t placate myself with that fact. Thoughts of the Incursion only made me think of the vulnerable people I’d left behind – the very notion that I’d never see any of them again made me sink into the prospect of death with a renewed sense of surrender.

There was something to renouncing it all that smacked of dishonour. It wasn’t what the gods wanted. It displeased me on a fundamental level of my being to be abdicating that very being, letting it go.

I couldn’t blame the gods; nor could I explain myself to them, if the time came. I was in a hell of my own creation, a dreadful waiting room, anticipating the gateways of the Twelve Hells opening for me.

Jaid. Jaroan. Please be okay. Please be safe. I’ll – I failed you, like they failed me, failed all of us.

Forget me. Just erase me from your minds and try to live. Most of all, try to be free. Do it better than I did.

Perhaps I could live in that freedom; perhaps I could let it be my salvation, taking me up to Celestium despite my crimes. The shadowland beckoned, but it wouldn’t be the end. Not if there was Justice.

For I knew – it was only in death that I might now find a freedom of my own.

* * *