Melissa took one step after another, her limbs controlled by the void. With each step, her feet grew numb as the cold crept up from the ground. She shivered, a motion that even the worm slithering around in the back of her skull couldn’t suppress. It was dark around her and Mel didn’t know for how long she’d been walking.

At first, the direction had seemed to lead toward the north, but as she continued throughout the night, her direction changed. More to the east now, more toward where she thought the village had been when she’d left it. Maybe they’d already moved on, or maybe it was where the void wanted her to go.

She rounded a few rocks and felt a depression spreading out before her. Her eyes flicked up from her feet, coming to rest on a small valley in the middle of the wasteland. She’d never been here before and as she looked out over the place, she saw figures emerging from the darkness. Like little balls of smoke popping up from nowhere.

They soon grew into silhouettes of people and Mel dragged in a quick breath, startled by what looked like hundreds of shadows coming to life. She’d stopped just between a couple of rocks and didn’t notice at first her body's control coming back to her.

It wasn’t until her hand lifted to her mouth and brushed against her lips that she noticed that her arm had moved when she’d told it to. Immediately Mel took a step back, not understanding why she’d been dropped here by the void. Why hadn’t it walked her a few steps further, down into the valley among the shadows?

It wanted to show her something then. Show her its army, perhaps? As these thoughts streamed through her brain, she noticed more balls of smoke popping up further away. Mel crouched down, waiting, wondering what she should do next.

White eyes flickered to life a few feet from her and she worried they’d turn their gazes to her. Find her here crouching next to the rocks. She rubbed a hand over the numb skin on her toes and dragged in her bottom lip between her teeth. This must be the army Luthel had warned her about. The void was getting ready to attack Aldrion.

Mel struggled against the feelings to cut and run. To put her all into getting back to Aldrion by tomorrow. To warn Austin and Gabs about the army that was coming for them. But they already knew. They’d gone to Aldrion with this information to contact the king and get help to fight them. She hoped they’d succeeded by now. She hoped the troops from the valley would come to Aldrion in time.

Mel knew she couldn’t help them. Even if she made it to Aldrion before the army got there. She had nothing to offer them. She was useless really without her magical imbues, just like any elemental warrior and at least they had the training she hadn’t been given as a mage smith. All she could do in Aldrion was to sit around, staring at the empty dragon stones and wishing she could fix them. Alone, she wasn’t enough.

She turned, making her way back in the direction she’d arrived. She only snuck one last glance over her shoulder at the white eyes glowing in the darkness and a shiver ran down her spine, willing her to not forget why she was going to Krazaa.

Mel trudged back through the wet sand, almost as confused about where she was going as why she was here in the first place. The void was mysterious. But she knew now that it always had its own agenda, and it was willing to sacrifice its own monsters for it.

She didn’t doubt the void had wanted her to see its army. She didn’t doubt it had meant for her to stop just by the edge of the depression, able to look out at the vastness of the horror. It wanted her scared for some reason. Perhaps it wanted her to return to Aldrion.

Mel felt it was even more important now that she got to Krazaa. Like it was something there she needed to know. Something the void didn’t want her to get a hold of. With every step back toward the southwest, she felt her determination tie into a knot at the pit of her belly. The sun rose on the horizon and Mel’s lungs burned from the effort of keeping her pace up at an inhuman speed.

She needed to get back to camp before Hanon and Luthel left without her. But as the sun rose and shone its light on the landscape around her, Mel felt increasingly lost. The wet sand looked the same all around her. The shrubbery and the moss creeping over damp rocks reminded her of ones she’d just walked past. Mel stopped and sank to the ground in the middle of nowhere, lost completely in the endless wastes. A stray tear fell down her cheek, and her back arched into a sob.

Stolen novel; please report.

The wind had stopped howling hours ago, and there was a peaceful quiet spreading over the landscape. Everything was calm except for the storm brewing inside of her. She knew she needed to keep it together. She knew she needed to keep moving forward. But she just couldn’t.

The taint inside her veins that made the void have this control over her scared Mel to her very core. She needed to trust herself, her own body, but lately she found that the person she mistrusted the most was herself.

Her face lifted toward the sun and her mind played up the memory of her visit to the church of the sun in her head. How the warmth had spread inside of her from the spiced wine and how she’d connected with something there. How the wisps of light had risen from her blood the first time she was out in the wasteland. Strong and protected by the mother.

Could she still leave things in the hands of the mother? Could she accept her blessing here in the wasteland?

The smog kept the sun from piercing her eyes, but she could feel the rays brushing warm streaks along her face. A note rang out in the distance somewhere, and Mel’s head quickly turned to the sound. It was a vibration, like a heartbeat, snaking the swampy terrain and reaching her. Mel pressed her palm to the wet ground, and the sand shifted beneath her fingers. But there, along the lines of the earth, something connected to her. Reached out on a note that sounded like a whole orchestra.

It reminded Mel of the music nights in chapel where everyone had sounded just slightly off beat. Enough to frustrate her and make her grown in agony. Her mother had kicked her leg under the benches and Mel had suppressed her rejections, resorting to imagining a world where all the notes were pure.

This sound now. It was how she’d imagined it. It sounded just like her most coveted fantasies of instruments, playing the songs of life. She crawled toward the sound until the sand creeping into her pants annoyed her enough to forsake the loss of the vibrations. She stood on her own two feet, fully in control of her body, and ran toward the muffled notes still playing somewhere in the distance.

It wasn’t until she’d stopped running and resorted to walking quickly again that she saw the campsite rise in the distance. Mel stopped short and almost took a step back when she noticed the sound coming to a crescendo.

Hanon walked around the tent, stopping when he saw her and stared at her with wide eyes. The black edges of his irises made Mel’s stomach churn. It was the same eyes she’d thought nothing of as long as she’d known him. But now they seemed to shine with an unknown intensity.

It was the sound, she thought. Mel took a step toward him, but Hanon stood still. Mel kept walking slowly forward and when she reached Hanon. She circled him, her jaw slack and her mind seeming to recognize the vibration coming from his heart.

“How are you doing this?” Mel asked.

His eyes met hers again as she rounded his side, coming to a stop in front of him. “I thought you might hear it and find your way back. If you were lost out there. Were you?”

Mel nodded slowly. “How did you know I could hear it?”

The sound grew quieter until it was almost completely muffled by the flesh surrounding his heart. “You’re like me. You’re one of the chosen ones.” His eyes cast down toward the ground, not meeting hers anymore. “You belong to the void.”

Her jaw tightened, and her mouth set into a thin line. “I don’t belong to the enemy and neither do you. I don’t think we’re the same. Hearing your heart give off that strange sound isn’t the same as creating it, and I can’t do anything like that.”

“Not yet at least,” Hanon said. “You haven’t practiced. It’s not like I could use my powers from the start. I had to learn and experiment. But first, I needed to embrace them. To accept the inevitable. That I belong to the void. That my powers were given to me.”

“Then it’s settled, I guess. I’ll never accept that.”

Hanon looked up, his eyes narrow and his forehead creased. Mel met his gaze, feeling like they were in a standoff of sorts. He wanted her to back down, to accept powers she didn’t have. To give up her body to the void and she wouldn’t.

“You’re back,” Luthel said from somewhere behind them. “Where did you go?”

Mel angled her body away from Hanon and lifted her gaze to Luthel. She let her features relax into a neutral face. “The void took control of my body last night. I’ve been out walking through the wasteland.”

Luthel didn’t look surprised by this. “We guessed as much. I take it you failed in tricking the void, then.”

“Perhaps. I’m not sure. It somehow didn’t seem to be about me. The void took me to see its army of shadows. It wanted me to see it. I don’t know what it means.”

The tent snapped closed as Luthel pulled out the last pin. He dragged it out from the canvas and put it with the rest of the pins in a pile next to his feet. “Perhaps it’s planning something. Either way, we should get a move on. Can you still walk?”

Mel’s eyes drifted back to Hanon, who was staring at her. The black and bruised skin around his left eye taunted her and she turned back to Luthel, nodding. “I can leave whenever you’re ready.”