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Toren Daen

I kept my back pressed to the rock, my mana signature utterly and completely masked as a squadron of blade wing riders soared overhead. The large mana beats flew in clear formation. Their stoney beaks clacked ominously and their metallic wing membranes reflected the setting sun.

The men atop the mana beasts were attentive. Far, far more attentive than I would have expected.

But I shouldn’t have underestimated Dicathen’s scouts. Especially not this close to their central base of operations. Each of them was at least a yellow core mage, and their spellwork was honed to a precision point.

Their focuses and spells rang clearly in their intent ambient mana like alarm bells as they swept over me. I huddled against the rock on the forest floor of the Beast Glades, keeping my heartbeat and manaflow even.

Finally, the triangular formation of mana beasts wheeled in the sky, returning to their patrol routes. I watched them go high above, calculating the speed and direction I’d need to fly to get closer to the Dicathians’ flying castle. Those patrols were infuriatingly common as I got closer, and they always made me halt in my progress for fear of being spotted.

I had the location of the flying castle burned into the back of my skull. Before I’d set out on this mission, I’d sent out a desperate plea to Cylrit’s soul. In it, I bound up all my care for Seris. The understanding that she—we—needed hope. That his life needed to be saved to prove to us all that things weren’t empty.

And, just like Tessia, he’d allowed me past his soul-wrought barriers. I hadn’t been able to heal the Retainer I called friend; that would be too risky for his position. But I’d narrowed down exactly where he was.

The flying castle always traveled over the Beast Glades, shrouded by illusory mist and covered with djinni aether weaves. Seris had made cursory attempts to locate the center of command for the Triunion Council, and while it was simple to narrow down its location to a radius of around fifty miles due to the constant aerial patrols, that was still a large section of ground to cover.

My hand drifted up to my neck, clutching at the pendant there. Seris’ cloaking artifact felt warm in my hands, the illusion stamped over my body filling me with paradoxical calmness. With the dark clothes I wore, I blended into the night like nothing else.

She’d granted me this as we worked out a haphazard, risky plan to infiltrate the castle. And with the pendant active, my intent and mana signature were forcefully suppressed, alongside my heartbeat. My physical features shifted, granting me an entirely new appearance. My hair—normally a vibrant, strawberry blonde—turned black as pitch with streaks of alluring navy. The structure of my face changed ever-so-slightly, and the scars and runes that singled me out were covered in a thin facade. My orange eyes turned to a dark, stormy gray.

In short, I looked like Renea Shorn’s brother.

And with this, I thought, resolve flowing through my veins like liquid fire, I can complete this plan.

I waited for a few minutes, making certain that the blade wing patrol was gone for the time being. Then I allowed mana to flow along my limbs, before blurring along the ground. It wasn’t uncommon to run into S-class mana beasts this deep in the Glades, but I was far too fast for them. In a streak of crystalline white, I wove like a serpent at speeds incomprehensible to most in a desperate surge north.

I didn’t have much time. I knew from that otherworld novel that Agrona was more than happy to condemn his Retainers to death if they proved to be a liability. Perhaps his end had changed in this timeline, but I knew Uto could have died from the High Sovereign activating a spell hidden deep in his core. And with the war reaching a crescendo, neither Seris nor I knew how much time her Retainer had left.

It took a painfully long amount of time to grow near. Or maybe not long enough. Several more times, I had to pause to avoid more aerial patrols as they drew closer to me. Stop and go. Stop and go. Stop and go.

I might have felt anxious about this, once. I might have felt nervous fear and anxiety clutching at my body as I approached that monolith of ancient djinni culture. But in the wake of the Breaking of Burim, the act of infiltrating and going undercover didn’t rattle my nerves like it used to.

Even the potential danger of Taci Thyestes was just another obstacle to overcome.

The sunset made part of my blood-red soul wither inward as the world reflected my inner Sea. The darkness provided the perfect cover as I continued to inch closer and closer with every hour. Like a wolf hunting a sheep, I slowly stalked closer and closer to the lingering call of Cylrit’s soul.

The moon was new, far beyond the glimmering constellations. I stared up at it as I finally reached my destination.

I remembered Seris’ shadowed soul in the depths of my Sea. I could almost imagine her cloaking that lunar sphere in darkness to give me this one chance. Her magic banished the light of the moon this one time, granting me a window of perfect opportunity.

I wouldn’t waste it.

The flying castle wasn’t immediately obvious. As high as it was, it was wrapped in a blanket of misty clouds that hid it from prying eyes. But I knew.

The late-night sounds of stalking mana beasts and quiet summer wind blew through the trees around me as I stared upward, mana enhancing my eyesight as I pierced every bit of gloom barring my way. I bent my knees, mana swirling around my feet as shrouded wings glimmered around me. Slowly, deliberately.

I needed to be fast. So fast that nobody could perceive me. There were certainly scouts and sentries placed to watch for incursions from the ground, but if I moved faster than the eye could even perceive?

A thin stream of telekinetic force slowly fuzzed into existence in front of me, pulsing like a beating heart. It lengthened and widened and adjusted itself nearly automatically as I ran all the necessary calculations in my head. The clouds high above tried to hide their secrets, but they would not stall me.

Fireflies danced in the forests around me as the world held its breath. Little living embers flickered in and out in tune with my heartbeat as I stared toward that castle.

Then I rose into the air.

The accel path laid in front of me might have echoed with a sonic boom once upon a time, but my sound magic greedily hoarded any and all noise that dared to try and escape. The air tried to burn as it seared past my face, but fire mana ripped away the heat as I ascended like a bullet fired from a railgun.

I pierced the clouds without a sound. In a fraction of a fraction of a second, water vapor streamed across me like impossible ribbons tearing across my flesh.

And then my feet hit stone. The stone cratered slightly from my impact, and my body ached a bit from the sudden stop.

I listened, clinging to the spire of stone that supported Dicathen’s flying castle. Any shouts of alarm? Any calls for reinforcements?

Nothing. No flex in the ambient mana or sign of alarm as the massive castle drifted through the mists, trailing them like tassels of steam.

It wouldn’t change my plans if I had been detected. They were intentionally crafted so that if I were, I could rescue Cylrit and get out safely so long as I reached him first. But still, I didn’t want to risk a frantic rush through the bowels of the castle with an asura nipping at my heels. Detection was nearly inevitable, but it could be delayed.

I let out a breath, brushing a lock of navy hair out of my face. Part one was successful.

I slowly crept my way up the cliff of stone, inching my way towards one of the courtyards. My fingers sunk into the stones as I gripped the rock, hauling myself up as I clung like a spider. I ascended at a pace that would put any mountain climber of my previous life to shame. I could feel my pulse in each of my fingers as the wind and mist buffeted me in the darkness.

I reached the edge of the courtyard. I struggled to catch mana signatures further in due to the sensing artifacts, but I could still hear the heartbeats of everyone near me.

There was something eerie about this castle. It almost felt dead to my senses, like a graveyard that was supernaturally still.

Back on the ground, I had to regularly compress my sense of lifeforce to avoid being overwhelmed by the billions of insects and bacteria and everything that had a note of aether inside, but even if I didn’t hear those heartbeats, I was still aware of them on a subconscious level.

But this djinni fortress of ancient times had nothing. It was devoid of small insects, birds, beasts, and everything else besides the people inside. It was like a floating corpse with ribs of towering stone and entrails of glass.

I shuddered lightly on the edge, waiting for a patrol of guards to pass by. Internally, I reviewed the layout of the castle that Seris had provided me. The warded balcony would get me onto the second floor, and I’d have to chart my way down to the dungeons on the lowest levels.

I kept Sonar Pulse at a very limited range, the sound spell giving me detailed feedback of the layout beyond my sight. A three-dimensional perspective of the walls and corridors imprinted itself into my head to the rhythm of my heartbeat, but it got fuzzier the further my sound mana traveled.

So far, Seris’ information checked out.

I heaved myself up onto the ledge, then darted for the nearest wall. I could sense a dozen wards trying to find purchase on me, but with Seris’ cloaking artifact and my own superb mana control, none found their mark.

The castle didn’t actually look like a castle. With its tall arches, looming windows, and powerful buttresses, it reminded me more of a gothic cathedral from my previous life, except without the religious symbolism. A ring of powerful stone walls blocked me from truly reaching the insides that I crouched behind, listening to the heartbeats and mana signatures of guards within.

The tall spires of the castle cast eerie shadows as they carved through the mist, the fog swirling and grasping for purchase as we streamed through the nighttime clouds. They reminded me of a canoe on a still lake in the dark, the fog slipping past the prow on a moonless night. A massive, floating ring of powerful arches floated around the castle like planetary rings rising and falling in tune.

I suppressed a shiver as I thought of the Central Cathedral. When I’d stepped into that hollow box so long ago, an asura had been waiting for me to tear their claws across my soul.

And in this one, too. In this empty box, another deity waited to taste my blood. The similarities were painful in my skull, the absence of my bond and the dark spot in my mind seeming even more apparent.

I exhaled through my nose, cementing my resolve. Then I peered over the stone walls towards one of the small courtyards below.

A stretch of grass separated me from a faraway door. Outside it, two guards stood resolutely. Their gauntleted hands gripped the hafts of their rune-inscribed spears, and if it weren’t for the steady and attentive beating of their hearts, I would have thought the full-plated men were statues.

Shit, I thought, narrowing my eyes. Both around solid yellow core stage. And from their intent, they aren’t pushovers either.

I felt an itch in my core as I resolved myself on what I needed to do next. The path to the dungeons wasn’t far from where I was about to enter, and if I put on the speed it would only take a few seconds to get there. If I incapacitated the guards, it would only give me a few minutes as a window to reach the cells before someone inevitably found their bodies.

Taci Thyestes is in this castle somewhere, I thought, my heartbeat rising as I remembered the last time I’d crossed blades with an asura. Would he–

The guards stood sharply with a suddenness that made my fists clench, turning their heads behind them to the door. The one on the left pulled out some sort of artifact that looked like a scroll, before exchanging a look with his companion.

“Should only take a minute,” Lefty said quietly, only audible due to my enhanced hearing. “But by the asura, it is annoying.”

The one on the right shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if it’s annoying or not,” he bit out. “I’ll do it this time.”

Righty nodded, then slipped inside the door. I could hear his heartbeat as he walked swiftly away. Not a normal guard rotation, I didn’t think.

I narrowed my eyes as I crouched on the wall. That simplified things greatly, especially since I’d heard their voices.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Concentrating on my core, I gathered energy for a sound spell. A little refracting singularity grew on my palm, before I threw it toward one edge of the courtyard.

The spell burst, and a sound echoed out. It was like a stone hitting a wall as it reverberated through the courtyard.

The remaining guard’s head turned to the side, his eyes widening in alarm behind his helmet, then narrowing in suspicion. I could sense his suspicion over his intent as he called on his mana. He slowly began to walk away from his post, his spear poised as he kept his senses ready.

Perfect.

I blurred forward at hypersonic speeds, suppressing the sound of my passing as I phased into existence in front of the doors. Like a ghost on the wind, I smoothly opened the door, then slipped inside.

I could sense the guard outside through his intent and heartbeat. He would return to the door soon, and I crossed my fingers that I hadn’t left any traces.

I scanned the corridor I’d found myself in. The carpet was a deep maroon as it stretched on into the distance, and I could sense guards on patrol a ways away. Doors lined the walls at set intervals, and from the heartbeats and mana signatures I could hear…

People slept behind those doors. It appeared I was in a residential wing of the castle, likely for the less important folks like cooks, maids, and soldiers. The restful pulses of their lifeforces and lack of mana signatures among most of them told me as much.

Not far from the dungeons, I thought to myself. I’m on the ground floor. Only a few twists and turns to reach the bottom floors.

I frowned, sensing the guard who had left returning down the hallway. My eyes darted to the many doors, mentally calculating my next step.

Sorry, nameless person, I thought as the guard’s clanking footsteps echoed in my head. I’m going to have to break and enter.

I walked quickly to one of the nearest doors. The inside was utterly empty of people according to my sense for lfieforce, which made it the obvious place to hide for a moment. I conjured a thin shrouded blade, then swiped it along the gap between the door handle and frame, cutting through the lock.

I pushed open the door, then closed it behind me. The room inside was utterly dark, which served my purposes just fine. But I was alone as the guard walked past–

“You could have knocked,” a raspy voice like crackling bark said. “Now I’ll have to get that… lock replaced, too.”

A shrouded dagger appeared in my hand as my mana thrummed. My eyes honed in immediately on a shriveled form sitting upright on the bed, just barely contrasted in the utter darkness.

Without a millisecond of delay, I enveloped the figure and me both in a barrier that blocked all sound from escaping. If I needed to silence this person, nobody would hear their struggles.

My muscles tensed as I prepared to move, but something stayed my hand. My grip tensed around my shrouded dagger, the reflective crystalline mana drinking in the darkness. Why couldn’t I sense their heartbeat or mana signature? That should have alerted me to their presence. Scratch that, why didn’t Sonar Pulse pick up their body?

I didn’t know what I was dealing with, and that made me cautious.

“You’ll need to get that lock fixed sometime later,” I said quietly, modulating the sound of my voice with my magic as I stared at the silhouette on the bed. “But I’ll need to put you to sleep for a time, stranger.”

“Stranger… No, that’s not who I am, Toren Daen,” they—she—replied. “You know me better than you should. And you have caused me… no end of trouble,” she pushed out wearily.

Something scratched at the edges of my mind as the old woman’s voice reached me. They knew who I was. But I was cloaked by Seris’ artifact. They shouldn’t know me.

Unless…

A single ember of fire fuzzed into existence under my command at the center of the room, banishing the darkness around us.

A living corpse of an elf stared at me with unseeing, blind eyes. Yet as those orange-green pupils reflected the firelight, I got the sense that they saw more than anyone else. She clutched a cane with white knuckles as the bed seemed to swallow her whole. The very act of tensing those muscles made me wonder if she’d fall apart like a child’s clay-made stick figure.

I felt my emotions dip painfully as I finally sensed what was left of her lifeforce, and I knew the identity of who spoke with me. No little horror suffused my mind as I heard what little was left.

“Rinia Darcassan,” I said quietly, uncertain if I should bow my head in respect or not.

“Avier did what he could to… pull away that guard for you,” she pushed out, like the wheezing bellows of a dying engine. “We really do need to talk.”

I ground my teeth, the horror at how low her heartfire burned clashing with a rising urgency to see my mission done. The entire endeavor relied on my speed, but I’d never factored this elf into my plans. Would she raise the alarm?

“I don’t have time to talk with you,” I said quietly, already questioning if this mission was doomed from the start. If Rinia had foreseen my involvement with her aevum arts and had Cylrit moved… “I have a mission here.”

“After all you’ve done to alter the future, I think I deserve a word with you,” the elf argued. “You probably want to know if what you’ve done in this world will lead to a positive end, don’t you?”

I clenched my fists, my mind grinding to a halt as thoughts of Cylrit momentarily evaporated.

It’s a trap of some sort, I told myself, grinding my teeth as I stared at the elf. This is some plan to stall for time, or keep me waiting.

But if Rinia had wanted me dead, then I wouldn’t be facing her in this room. I’d be facing Taci Thyestes.

And I was curious. I was so painfully, horribly desperate to know. After the Breaking of Burim, the question of if this world could be salvaged stung in my mind. And Rinia was a seer. Her path was aevum.

“Are you here to criticize me?” I said, hoping my words sounded strong. I knew they didn’t. They sounded defensive and scared.

In that moment, questions of how Rinia knew who I was and what she knew about me felt inconsequential. What she knew of The Beginning After the End, my previous life, and all of it didn’t matter anymore.

Rinia Darcassan had always cautioned Arthur about the dangers of altering the future. I’d read as much in that otherworld novel. And I’d seen as much in how Chul had attacked the people I cared for and how Arthur had crowned himself King.

Rinia’s face—like the scarred landscape of stone that had been weathered and battered for millennia—dipped into something somber and sad. “No, Spellsong,” she said weakly. “The Lost Prince is a hypocrite when it comes to altering the future, but I am not. You’ve done the best you could with what you had.”

The elf slowly, painfully pulled herself to her feet. She stumbled under her own weight for a moment, but I was already at her side. My strong arms supported her, not letting her aged form fall.

The elven seer reminded me of a collage of sticks barely held together with twine. She felt almost cold, so much of her heartfire burned away.

Rinia coughed, leaning into my touch for support. She trembled as she finally pushed herself to her feet. Those eyes couldn’t see anymore, but when she turned her head to look at me, I still felt painfully seen.

“You are still kind,” she said, exhaling a rickety breath. “That’s good.”

I worked my jaw, not knowing how to respond to the elven seer. Hell, part of me didn’t even know what to do at all.

“Lead me to the… wall over there,” the elf said. “There are hidden passages through this castle that will… take you where you need to go. You don’t have much time.”

I exhaled an uncertain breath, then helped the withered elf to the wall. She withdrew something from the folds of her dress: a silver medallion that glimmered with a purple sheen. Instantly, I knew it was an aetheric artifact, even though I couldn’t sense the fluctuations within.

The seer pressed it against the wall, and the stone rippled away like sand. Beyond, a passage I hadn’t been able to sense even with Sonar Pulse loomed darkly.

I stared into that long, twisting passageway like one might stare down the gullet of a snake. Goosebumps trailed along my skin as my reservations and fears made themselves known once more.

Rinia waited for me to come to my decision, but I suspected she already knew my choice.

I’d already taken so many risks stepping into this castle. What was one more?

I supported the old elf as I stepped into the passageway, keeping my mana close at hand. Yet no matter what I tried, I couldn’t sense anything past the walls as they slowed downward.

“I never got to meet Aurora Asclepius when I visited the Hearth,” Rinia said casually, the click-click-click of her cane on the stones sounding in time with my heartbeat. “It is sad that I do not get to meet her now, either. I have been told that she was a wonderful woman.”

There was no visible source of light within the hidden passageway as we walked, barely enough room for us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. I felt contained, my wings pressed deep into my back and restricted from flight.

But the words about Aurora served to lighten my mood somewhat, allowing my shoulders to untense. “She is not of the Asclepius anymore, Lady Darcassan,” I said quietly, keeping my attention on the path forward. “We were banished.”

Rinia snorted at my side, taking my words in stride. “Avier left the Hearth for how shortsighted the phoenixes could be, instead devoting himself to me. It is not a marker of failure, as… you seem to think.”

I didn’t know how much the elven seer could understand about me or my past simply from a glance, but thoughts of the Hearth made me deeply uncomfortable. My failure there had been a stake driven into everything I perceived myself as.

“Mordain and the rest view the future as something that we mortals can’t afford to alter,” she said quietly, slumping from exhaustion. We paused for a moment in the passageway as she caught her breath. “Too afraid to risk… failure, that they never try at all. But better to try and fail, than to never try at all.”

“Even if it results in the deaths of thousands?” I countered, wondering where this was going. “I don’t know how much you know about me, but Mordain tried a talk like this before, too.”

I’d learned that the best way to deal with mages who knew too much was to just pretend like it didn’t bother you. But it was very hard. I wondered if Rinia had undergone an existential crisis from her world being a part of some novel. Or was that hidden from her sight?

“My sister was a diviner, too,” the elf said, and for the first time, I tasted a mote of her weak intent. It ghosted across my senses like a dying fall breeze. “Better than me, actually. Far more talented and skilled. Too skilled.”

We stopped in the middle of a passageway as we reached a crossroads. Four paths before us, each with little lighting artifacts illuminating their rune-inscribed arches.

“It is better,” Rinia continued. “It is better to regret your actions than to have never acted at all. Because then you know where you can improve. If you never try, you never fail. There is no greater regret than… never acting at all.”

Her intent was like the last embers of autumn as they fizzled out into winter. It was deep and mournful as it drew up foreign thoughts and fears from my mind.

“The Indrath Clan decreed that my sister should die, and they used Virion as the murder weapon.”

I closed my eyes tight, my vision swimming at this revelation. I knew from my otherworld knowledge that Lania Darcassan, former Queen of Elenoir, had burned away all her lifeforce to constantly thwart assassination attempts on her husband’s life. But this…

“I didn’t intervene,” Rinia said, her words hollow in the darkness. “I took Mordain Asclepius’ teachings to heart. What right did we diviners have to truly mold the world to our whims? We… We might become Kezess Indrath. The regret you feel—the questions you have about what the future could be? Keep asking those, Toren Daen. But never stop… Trying.”

As if her words had no weight at all, the elf pulled on my arm. “Now come on. Take the leftmost path. My bones are starting to act up from standing still for so long.”

I tried to digest the elf’s advice. I only had one vision of the future, one path laid in front of me. And with that knowledge, I’d tried desperately to shift this world into one that could have hope.

I exhaled a deep, world-weary sigh, unsure if I should laugh or collapse. “You should be somewhere in Darv in your little sanctuary waiting for the end of this war,” I said bitterly. “Not jump scaring me in the middle of a fucking bedroom.”

Rinia chortled at that as we descended ever lower. From my mental map of the castle, we were inching towards the dungeons, at least. Cylrit’s soul beckoned. “The moment that your bond reincarnated you, Toren Daen, Fate broke.”

I halted in my steps abruptly, my body locking up. “Fate what?”

“It broke,” the elven seer said simply, as if she were discussing something as simple as the weather. “It pieced itself back together eventually, but what the future could be and couldn’t be was irrevocably altered the moment Aurora decided she’d had enough of Agrona’s dungeons. It took me a long time to make sense of it all again. Don’t let old Mordain fool you, either. I wonder if he can see anything at all these days.”

I looked down at the little elf, feeling like I was seeing her for the first time. “Then the reason you’re not in the desert…”

“King Arthur gives us a chance,” she said simply, prodding me and tapping her cane in an agitated way. “It’s very… arrogant. Self-centered of you, to think that every change in this timeline is because of you. And hurry. You’re still on a time limit.”

My head swirled, a headache slowly growing in the back of my skull as I mechanically put one foot in front of the other. We passed silently through a few branching pathways in this maze of tunnels, but Rinia subtly guided me along each one to the correct way forward.

“Why are you telling me this?” I finally asked, unable to keep the questions back. “Why are you even helping me?”

The more she spoke, the more I was certain this elf was trying to help in some way, even if it only sparked more questions. It reminded me irritatingly of Mordain himself, the way she spoke with a point obscured from me that she seemed to expect me to divine through insight and magical maturity.

“Your Scythe and Arthur can’t afford to hold animosity for each other,” the elf replied after a moment. “The asura already make everything so complicated, but we lessers need unity. And Agrona…”

Agrona. My blood chilled in my veins, the very name making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. This deep underground and near a dungeon, I was reminded painfully of the yawning echo of Taegrin Caelum’s vaults.

Aurora, I thought, exhaling a trembling breath, I need you.

We stood at the edge of the door. Rinia didn’t pull me forward this time, instead staying silent and still as she seemed to cave inward on herself. Dread rose from the depths of my heart as I waited for her to say her piece. The wall was solid in front of us, and I felt a painful urge to rush through it and be done with this all. On some instinctual level deep in my soul, I knew how close Cylrit was.

I could run, now. I could ignore whatever Rinia was about to say. I could cover my ears and cower, pretending that it didn’t exist.

But if there was one thing I refused to do, it was run.

“What about Agrona, Rinia?”

“He wants you to grow, Toren Daen,” she said. “I don’t see it all. I see less and less of what I want to. But this war is a smokescreen. You and Arthur… His eyes are on you both.”

“I know,” I ground out. “I’ve always known, ever since he set me free like a dog off its leash.”

It was true. I’d been able to ignore it and suppress that truth for so long, distant as I was from Alacrya. That ever-present eye didn’t feel ever-present like it did on my home continent. But it was here.

“Good,” Rinia said quietly. “Good.”

She divested herself of my arm, hobbling forward on her cane. She raised that same silver medallion, pressing it against the wall. It fell away, revealing a room beyond.

A cell. A nice, padded cell, with amenities of all sorts, but a cell nonetheless.

“I’m supposed to be trapped in this place,” she said wearily. “It’s as far as I can take you, Spellsong.”

I stared out past the cell, listening to the heartbeats as I felt the weight of my mission mantle my shoulders again. I could hear him now. Cylrit was so close. Just a ways deeper into the dungeons.

“Thank you, Rinia,” I said quietly, walking toward the bars of her cell. I clenched and unclenched my hands. “I won’t forget this debt.”

“Repay it by getting your ass out of here,” she muttered, sinking into the bed, looking like a withered old crone once again. “This world needs more people like you. Might make it less hellish.”

I chuckled at that, my mood feeling lighter than it had in a long time. Almost… hopeful. “I met a djinn, once,” I said leisurely, strangely wanting to keep on talking. “J’ntarion, his name was. The Last of the Watchers. He said that the path to peace was through understanding. Once upon a time, I was on my way there.”

Images of that long-gone meeting trickled through my thoughts like a warm balm. Back then, my mettle hadn’t yet been truly tested. I wondered if that old djinn had understood what I’d face as he lay dying in Aurora’s arms. Was I still on that path?

For all that the elven seer knew, it appeared this was not among them. “A djinn?” she said, her eyes widening behind scraggly hair. “Impossible. They’re all gone.”

“They are now,” I said sorrowfully.

Rinia’s face darkened in consideration for a long moment. Then she did something I hadn’t expected.

She flipped the djinni medallion in her hand, the silver reflecting the light as it danced through the air. I caught it, surprised by the action. The surface was etched with brilliant runes that glimmered with a light shade of purple, each curve and surface waltzing with the hidden power of aether.

“It’s been a long time since I made a true gamble,” Rinia said with clear amusement, smiling genuinely at me. “But I think you’re worth the risk, Toren Daen. Try not to trip on your way out.”