All in all, she’d had much more to explain than I did, but I’d gone first.

Kye shifted her weight, glaring at me with an intensity I wished I could’ve gotten used to. “So you are a mage?” she asked, tilting her head at my cringing face. “But I thought you—“

My hands waved through the air as if trying to disperse her misconceptions physically. “No. I’m not a mage,” I said, my voice still breathy. Oppressive afternoon sun beat down on my face, making my ever-frustrating body sweat through the collar. The exhaustion setting into my bones mixed with Kye’s ever-present stare only made all of it worse.

The tall woman’s lips curled, her eyes sharpening. “You said your hands were engulfed in flames. That sounds like magic to me.”

Wincing again under the weight of her scrutiny, I nodded. And then I immediately shook my head. “It does sound like magic, but I’m not a mage. There were flames, but they weren’t my flames.”

My walking partner nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. “And how does that work?”

I gritted my teeth, trying to quell the frustration building inside. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t me.”

She clicked her tongue softly, turning her narrowed eyes away and down the lined dirt path. Angling her head from side to side, she just stared out at the horizon, eventually dragging my gaze along with her.

In front of us, the dirt path extended for hundreds of paces, cutting through the plains just as it always had. It looked, from where we walked in idle arbitration, that there wasn’t a town anywhere near. But slowly and steadily, the farms around us were growing less sparse; they were growing less chaotic. Some semblance of actual, organized civilization was returning to the land. I grasped onto that thought.

Turning back to me with one of her eyebrows half raised, Kye finally responded. “So. It wasn’t your magic. Does that mean someone else did the magic… for you? Some other soul bent energy from a far range just to help you?”

My face scrunched up and I found my head shaking again. But when I opened my mouth to retort, nothing came out. I just… didn’t know how to describe it. When I’d been choking, I’d thought I was going to die. I’d thought I was at the end of the line—that the beast was waiting mere minutes away. But something had stopped that. Something had saved me.

“It only happened when I was about to die,” I said, trying to keep the bitter bite from my tone. “When he’d tested me—asked me only to make a simple flame, I hadn’t been able to do it.” I watched Kye nod skeptically. The disbelief didn’t even waver in her eyes. “Before it happened, there was some sort of banging in my head, as if my skull was a cage and something desperately wanted to get out.”

Finally, something changed in Kye’s eyes. The light brown quivered for a second, responding to a shift in her mind. “That is the most unusual way I’ve ever heard of a mage realizing their potential.”

“But I’m not a mage,” I said, nearly spitting the words through my teeth.

“Right. So something inside of you is a mage.”

I blinked, half-nodding before jerking my head backward. “What? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

She just shrugged, chuckling dryly to herself. “Does it make less sense than sudden magical abilities happening for you this late in your life?”

I nearly scoffed. “This late in my—“ Then I stopped, my eyes widening as I realized my new, youthful self. Looking down at my body, I knew I was young. I couldn’t have been older than the practiced woman in front of me. But I didn’t actually know how old. I didn’t actually even know my own age. “How early is a mage supposed to realize their powers?”

Kye’s little chuckle turned into an all-out laugh at my statement. “Way earlier than this,” she said. “Although, I’m not so sure. Maybe you’re just a bit slow.”

My eyebrows dropped and I glared at her. The disrespect burned my skin. I’d earned better than this. But she didn’t even notice. As the seconds wore on, her laughter only picked up.

“That doesn’t matter though,” I said with as little emotion in my voice as I could manage. “All I know is that it wasn’t me.”

Then with a realization coming to me steadily, I checked the back of my mind. Whatever was there, it was sleeping again. An irritated noise crawled out of my throat. Sarin couldn’t come fast enough.

Kye stared at me skeptically. “How did you get captured anyway?”

I blinked, the question hitting harder than it should’ve. Recent memories rushed back. So much had happened in the past two days. I’d been reborn only a day ago, and now I was escaping from a prison camp and questioning my own magic? It didn’t make much sense. None of it really made much sense. All it did was leave a sour taste in my mouth.

Remembering her question, I nodded. “I was on my way to town and they ambushed me,” I answered. I did not want to go into detail about what had happened before that. My story still confused even me, and I doubted that her understanding would’ve reached the same heights as the warm barkeep.

She raised an eyebrow. I didn’t miss the way her fingers curled into a fist. “Where were you coming from?”

I shrugged and gave the shortest answer. “From some old tavern back down the road.”

Kye’s face lit up in an instant. Then she remembered the suspicion she held and chose her words carefully. “The rustic one?” I hesitated before nodding. “The one with the cheerful and caring owner?” I nodded again. A genuine smile ghosted at her lips. “You came from Sal’s place?” She nudged me on the shoulder playfully, causing my weak muscles to scream. I would’ve rolled my eyes if I hadn’t been forced to grimace in pain.

Regaining my composure, I shrugged. “I didn’t know that’s what it was called.”

She nodded knowingly, looking forward and clicking her tongue. “Then you probably didn’t stay for very long.”

“I only stayed one night,” I said. From the corner of my eye, I could see Kye glancing over me every few seconds. My fingers curled and I forced myself to take a breath. It was like she trusted me even less because I mentioned some tavern.

Kye made a knowing sound and turned to me. “If you could be staying at Sal’s right now, why are you walking to Sarin? You are not in any condition to be walking this far.” I didn’t miss the smirk that floated on her lips at the tail end of her sentence.

Her words churned through my head as I shook away the disrespect yet again. Hesitating, I considered how much to reveal. “I need to get to Credon as quickly as possible.”

She squinted at me. The questions in her eyes didn’t disappear. “Credon? The town is called Sarin.”

I nearly stopped in my tracks, my brow furrowing. For a moment, I just blinked in disbelief. “I know what the town is called. I am tryingto get to Credon, though. I thought it would be a good place to start.”

Kye’s fists tightened. “Where is Credon? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

My brows knitted together. Again, the woman’s words didn’t make any sense. Credon was the capital. It was the richest city on the continent. It was my home. How could she not know of it? “It is near the coast, on the centerline of the kingdom by the same name. Do you really not know where it is?”

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Kye raised an eyebrow at me, smirked, then scoffed. “I can’t just know every little place on this continent by heart, you know.”

I was already shaking my head. “It’s the capital, though. You must’ve heard of it.”

“The capital of what?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. Once more, I could feel the burn of her antagonism against my skin. Meeting her gaze with my own, I felt pride for my kingdom swell up.

“The capital of Credon,” I said shortly. “The greatest kingdom on the continent.”

She snickered. I shot her a glare, but that only seemed to amuse her even more. The stubborn suspicion broke away in a storm of chuckles. “What continent?” she asked. “There hasn’t been a kingdom here for hundreds of years. Did you get lost in someone’s accounts of the past before you got yourself captured and locked in a cell?”

I blinked, tilting my head. The words she’d used stuck out like sore thumbs. They flooded my mind, spinning and spinning until I could make enough sense of each of them. Unfortunately for me though, that time wasn’t very close at hand. I shook my head, setting aside the confusion and returning to her question.

“Tecta,” I said. “There are at least a dozen kingdoms on Tecta.”

She jerked her head back, still chuckling. Then she blinked, the sounds escaping her lips morphing into light breaths. Finally, the slight glimmer of recognition lit up in her eyes. “Tecta? Isn’t that the continent to the north?”

Continent to the north? What was she talking about? There was nothing north of Tecta. It was surrounded on that side by the eternal sea. Doubt rose up but I forced it down, summoning what information I’d learned from my lessons as a child. For some reason, they felt slippery and hard to grasp, but I got enough. Slowly, steadily, I pieced it all together. And all at once, the conclusion came down on me like a falling church.

There was nothing to the north of Tecta. But there was a continent to the south. I swallowed, turning back to my walking partner. “Where are we, again?”

She stared at me, bewildered. I widened my eyes and nodded, trying to push past the wall of dread building up between me and all of my goals. “We’re in the middle of the road right now.”

I shook my head. “No. Which continent are we on?”

She snorted again but played along. “We’re in Ruia.”

I cringed, the world shattering around me. In an instant, my mind was sent whirling and everything I’d known since the night I’d been reborn was called into question. Looking back to the woman in the blue cloth uniform, I tried to find a joke. I tried to find some semblance of a lie, but there wasn’t any. She was telling the truth.

The beast—the vile, mindless reaper had given me a second chance at life. It had thought I would fail, setting me up for a return visit from the very start. And on top of all of that, it had put me in Ruia. The corrupted continent. The outlands of the world. A lawless wasteland, from everything that I knew.

“Shit,” I mumbled.

“What the hell is up with you?” Kye asked, an edge entering her voice. My hand dropped down to my side, but there was no sword there. I was unarmed. I was completely and utterly defenseless.

“I must be confused,” I spat through my teeth.

She eyed me still, obviously not impressed by my response. I clenched my jaw and hung my head, just continuing to walk on. Kye kept pace with me though and glared with increasing curiosity the whole way. “What’s your name?”

I blinked, her calm tone catching me off guard. Even the thought of that sent a shiver down my spine. “Agil,” I said. “My name is Agil.” I didn’t look up, but I could see her rolling the name over in her mind. The momentary silence felt nice. Especially now. I had far too much to think about.

“Why were you at Sal’s in the first place?” Kye asked. She didn’t seem to care for the fact that I didn’t want to talk.

But, remembering my feeble body, I complied. “I needed a place to sleep. As you can see, I don’t have all that much to my name.”

She exhaled sharply through her nose. “I can see that rather well. What happened to you anyway?”

I scrunched my nose, distaste rising on my tongue. And it seemed I wasn’t the only one bothered by the question as I felt movement in the back of my mind. Whatever was back there shuddered, shying away from even the idea of a response.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” I said instead, complying with the wishes of everything in my head.

Kye made an unsure sound in her throat but nodded. “Alright. I won’t push it. You did break me out of that cell.” I nodded. It was good that she remembered something like that. “And you’re interesting enough. It wouldn’t do well to have you dead.”

The smirk that accompanied the last of her words stung, but I let it go. Silence crept in afterward. That was good, I decided. Thoughts were still spinning in my head, barely catching a foothold anywhere. I didn’t like it—in fact, I hated it with a passion. But as I clenched my fist and felt pain in my fingers, I knew it was useless. This was my life now, whether I liked it or not.

From what I knew, Ruia was a continent of disorder. It was the spawn of discord, of all chaotic magic in the world. Almost all of the folktales I’d been told as a child had been set in Ruia. Maybe it was just a convenient spot, I thought now as I glanced around. But still, remembering the purple flame that the bandit had summoned out of thin air, I couldn’t shrug it off so easily. No matter what I thought, it didn’t sit right. Nothing sat right. I felt like I was out of the loop—kept in the dark because of some trick on my mind.

I needed answers.

“Is capturing mages common practice here?” I started. I tried to keep all indignation from my tone. Some still crept through.

And Kye heard it too, putting poison into her own voice. “Common practice? Not exactly. But groups of bandits like the ones we had the misfortune to interact with are more common than I’d like.”

“Why?” I asked, fighting my pride to the side.

“Usually to use them for work or sell them as slaves to whoever is depraved enough to buy.”

Bile rose up in my throat. My eye twitched. “How is that allowed to happen?”

“Allowed to happen…” Kye got a small chuckle out of that. “Not sure what you remember, but there’s not much ‘allowing’ here. It’s allowed to happen because people are able to do it. And with a group as large as the one we got tangled with, there isn’t some magical police force ready to put them in line. People are trying to survive, and getting themselves killed doesn’t really further that goal.”

I blinked, furrowing my brow. Yet again, Kye’s words weren’t making very much sense. In Credon, vigilante organizations got dealt with in quick time. I dealt with them in quick time. Maybe it made sense with everything I knew about Ruia already, but it was still hard to accept. My fist clenched at just the thought of the poor people getting stomped on and slaughtered, forced to meet the same beast I’d met. Here, it seemed, they barely had a chance.

“How did you get captured?” I asked.

Kye’s smirk rushed back onto her face and an eyebrow shot up. “I didn’t.”

Her arrogance grated against my mind. I had to keep myself from rolling my eyes. “Excuse me? I saw you in that cell.”

“Sure,” she said. “But I didn’t get captured. Captured implies that it wasn’t all planned.”

“So you wanted to get captured?”

“I did get captured. On purpose. Those bastards have been a thorn in our side for a while, but we’d heard that they had taken citizens of Sarin. And if there’s one thing that is alive and well in Ruia, its revenge. I was tasked with exacting just that.”

I chuckled—I actually chuckled at that. For the first time since I’d died, amusement flooded into my voice. “It doesn’t seem that you were very successful.”

Kye shot me a glare. “I didn’t see or hear of any of the rumored prisoners while in there. You weren’t very useful in that department, that was for sure. And I got out with a few more bandits dead. I see that as that a success.”

“What’s the point of going alone anyway if you’re just going to get captured?” As a knight, I barely ever went on missions alone. My fellow knights and I were the backbone of order.

“It’s not like we have an unlimited reserve of rangers.” She cracked her knuckles. “Especially not ones as competent as I am. Plus, I’m fully capable of handling myself. I wasn’t worried about staying there for very long.”

A comment rose to my lips, one that took a jab at her, but I bit it back. Getting too comfortable so quickly wasn’t something I was keen on doing. And neither was making any unneeded enemies.

Instead, I asked a different question. “Rangers?”

Kye shot be a sidelong glance. “The Rangers of Sarin. We’re as close as it gets to something organized outside of a town government.”

I squinted. The idea of a ranger was familiar—we’d had them back in Credon. But, as I was having to face over and over, things were different now. Further questions rose to my lips, but I swallowed them. Stashed them away for some other time.

“It really is a lawless wasteland outside a town, then?”

Kye grinned. When she looked at me again, her gaze was no longer sharp. The careful caution from before was gone. Or, at least it was slightly hidden away. Her hands still didn’t spend much time out of a clenched fist. “Yeah. That’s how it goes.” She watched as I bit my lip and worked through more of my thoughts. “You don’t seem to have a lot of experience around this place. A lot to learn, I reckon.” She chuckled. “I sense a rude awakening in your future.”

She looked down at me—she was almost a head taller than me, after all—and smiled. I sneered back, pushing back all thoughts reminiscent of my past life. I didn’t like being talked down to—I didn’t like being treated like some blundering child. But again, I held my tongue.

“I’m not used to it, is all,” I said. “I haven’t spent much time in the wastes of this—“ I stopped myself, reconsidering. “It’s a long story.”

Kye eyed me with one eyebrow raised. Her doubt crept back, but she didn’t push just like she’d said. “Well. You’ll have to tell me about it some day.” Then she started to walk faster and turned her gaze toward the front. I furrowed my brows but followed her lead, and for a moment, I could’ve sworn I saw the face of the world. Lying in front of us, only about a hundred paces down the path, was a town. Small wooden buildings and unpaved cobblestone roads, but a town all the same.

It was salvation. And at the moment, that was all that mattered.