The ground heaved as though a thousand legions marched to war. Alexia wanted to scream alongside Celegana. But no—the Great Wizard couldn’t falter. She had to bring peace, both to herself and to the world.

Alexia gritted her teeth, silencing the scream, clenching her staff until her knuckles turned white. She couldn’t let the pain of Maleon’s betrayal spill out, not yet. She struck the screaming earth with the foot of her staff, trying to bring stability within and without. Closing her eyes, shutting out the chaos, she forced her mind to still. Attuning with Celegana, her heartbeat slowed, syncing with her breath. She would keep everyone safe; she had to.

The quake’s roar subsided, soothed like a raging child caught in a gentle embrace. If only she could still her own mind enough to figure out what she should do.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. The earth stilled, but the rift inside of Alexia remained, like the two great chasms Maleon’s spell had formed between the town and the mine entry. She opened her sunrise eyes, searching for a way to close the gaping wound in her soul.

She could run. Abandon the mission. Leave Maleon behind to tear apart the town, to destroy everything and everyone in Ferrickton. She could vanish and never look back.

But then she thought of Allison and her father. Maleon wouldn’t stop until they were dead. She wouldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t.

In the moon’s blue light, she found Maleon descending into the dark maw of the mines. She ran after him, vengeance carving its way into her soul.

Then the clash of iron yanked her back. Sir Timmeck was surrounded, seven-to-one, battling the awakened sentries. His armor took blow after blow, the metal ringing with every impact.

Alexia couldn’t kill the Peacewatch defending their home, but neither could she let Timmeck die. Her emotions swirled like a maelstrom as she attuned to Zafrir’s wind, grasping for a solution.

“Vehementis!”

The wind roared to life. It swept the sentries into the sky, tossing them to the ground like puppets. She had precious moments to decide how to protect them all.

Frost and Fire were killers. Stone too imprecise. Wind was too ephemeral. Sky then. Alexia channeled Balbaraq, the vengeful protector as Theos called him. She would protect Timmeck and the Peacewatch from Maleon. Alexia raised her staff up above her, carefully channeling energy from the sky.

“Balbaro!”

Several concentrated bolts of lightning crashed down from the sky, striking five of the seven sentries. Alexia had charged her spell with just enough divine energy to incapacitate the Ferrickton guards for several days, but not kill them. She hoped.

Timmeck staggered to his feet, fending off the last two sentries. He held his ground, but the battle kept shifting. Any spell she cast now might strike him instead.

With a sickening crunch, Timmeck sliced through one of his opponents. The dying man’s scream was swallowed by the clanking of armor and the rage of voices in the night. Tears welled up in Alexia’s eyes as Zamael’s full moon cast its cold, indifferent light over the rest of the Ferrickton Peacewatch. There were dozens of them, all craving to carve her heart with their blades.

She couldn’t die here. Not when all Leveria counted on her to find the path to peace, not with Celegans poised to destroy them. Sickness swelled in her gut as she thought of what she must do, and why she must do it. She clenched her staff, rage flowing through her, pulling on Seraxa’s flames. The air became colder, Alexia’s teeth chattered, and her body wracked from something between a sob and a shiver. The heat overflowed the staff, filtering into the locket, and her focus formed in her mind’s eye, wishing it was destined for Maleon rather than people just trying to protect their homes.

Her fireball erupted in the heart of the guardsmen formation. Fire and flame spread across the land between the two chasms. Unarmored soldiers jumped into the chasms to end their suffering sooner. Iron armor melted with men inside. Screams echoed in the night air as knights were roasted like nacobon on a spit.

A monster watched as honest Leverians died before her crying eyes. Some of them continued their charge. Some of them were on fire, human torches with smoke rising from their bodies. Alexia stood immobilized by her own atrocity.

Timmeck slew the final sentry and placed himself between Alexia and the remnants of Ferrickton’s Peacewatch. Brave Sir Timmeck Eckhard was a rocky outcrop jutting out of the sea waiting to be swallowed by a tsunami. He limped toward her and unfastened his helmet. Taking in a heavy breath, Timmeck roared, “Run!”

Her throat was raw, her voice barely more than a croak. “Run with me!”

Timmeck shook his head, taking one limping step toward her before rooting himself. “Go!”

Two knights and four footmen emerged through the flames, raining blows upon Timmeck. They swarmed over him, like ants climbing on a morsel of food.

Her windstorm lashed out, wild and uncontrolled, scattering all seven. She attuned to the vengeful protector, clinging to the need to save Timmeck. “Balbaro!”

Lightning crashed down upon one of the knights. Two more bolts missed their target as she struggled to maintain her focus. Her emotions fueled the power of her spells yet rendered them harder to control with less calculated thoughts to guide them. Her spells were thrown wildly past her targets.

Timmeck didn’t stir. Barnett, the final knight, and the four remaining footmen charged toward her. She didn’t have time to form a focus. Alexia ran toward the mines as fast as her legs would allow. Unencumbered by armor, longer in the leg, and enhanced by years of intense physical training, Alexia gained separation from her pursuit.

Alexia murmured an incantation, and her staff emitted candescent light that illuminated a massive cavern that continued for several hundred feet at a steady downward slope. According to Maleon’s reports, this first cavern had been mined extensively and picked clean of ore centuries ago. Cold anger surged through her as she thought of Maleon, the betrayer. She felt sick, her mind pulsing with dark thoughts that felt alien to her. KILL HIM.

Alexia reached the terminus where the grand cavern split into five tunnels. The pursuit continued to close in. Frantically, she had to choose a spell that could stop them without triggering a collapse that would bury them all beneath thousands of tons of earth. Taking a breath, she let the frigid night and her cold anger toward Maleon guide her focus.

The air warmed as she drew away its icy chill. She pointed her staff at the ground and whispered, “Heim.” A layer of slick ice spread across the floor. Alexia bolted toward the furthest tunnel as the panicked shouts of her pursuers echoed behind her. Their iron-clad feet scrambled on the ice, bodies slamming into the walls as they slid down the slope like children sledding.

The first man crashed into the wall with a bone-shattering thud, like an arrow into a boulder. The second collided into the first at breakneck speed. Barnett and the two others managed to veer into the rightmost tunnel. Alexia disappeared into the leftmost tunnel. She kept her staff raised, her mind on high alert for signs of Maleon channeling.

“MALEON!” she bellowed, her voice reverberating through the tunnels. “MALEON, Maleon, Maleon...” Silence. KILL HIM, her thoughts hissed.

“Show yourself, traitor!” Still, no response. No villainous cackling. No snide derision or taunt. Not even a shifting pebble. She realized the depth of his betrayal. Not only did he sabotage her plan to execute the mission without killing, he hid, forcing her to slaughter the guards. Never in her life did she feel such immense hatred. The thoughts continued to pulse like a beating heart: KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!

The familiar clink of armor jolted her back to reality. She knew that sound all too well—the echo of mornings filled with men training in armor beneath her window. A wave of sorrow swept through her, knowing she was the monster they trained to fight. Sobbing, she inhaled sharply, the air warming around her as she drew on Qoryxa’s power. “Glacialis,” she whispered, her voice hollow.

An icicle shot through the tunnel like a frozen arrow, piercing a guard’s throat and exploding out the back of his head, shards of ice shattering against the ceiling.

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Alexia gasped in pain as fire shot through her arm. She crouched down. The second arrow whizzed past her, soaring just over her head. She ducked into a side chamber, yelping as she yanked the arrow from her shoulder. The sight of her own blood made her dizzy, and for a moment, she longed to collapse.

GIVE IN! the dark voice urged.

No, she thought, an image of Zander flashing in her mind. Leverith’s gentle spirit flowed from the locket, weaving a tapestry of calming blue light around her wound. The seething hatred dulled, leaving only sadness in its place.

Allison’s father and the remaining footman rounded the corner, entering her little cavern. Alexia backed into the cold stone wall, her heart sinking. This isn’t a cavern. It’s a tomb.

Barnett charged, sword raised. “Die, monster!” he snarled, swinging the blade. Alexia harnessed the chaos of panic and grief, summoning Zafrir’s power. She blasted Barnett with wind. The righteous knight staggered, but kept coming through her wind tunnel. Alexia frantically pulled more energy, the Ring of Peace glistening green on her finger, then sent a gust from the side, slamming him against the far wall.

“Disseptum!” she cried, harnessing one of her oldest and most reflexive focuses. She pulled the wind back to her, forming a shield wall around her body that redirected the footman’s arrow from her chest into the nearby wall.

She dispersed the wind shield, sending a blast that knocked the footman to the ground. Barnett howled as he struggled to rise. “I welcomed you into my home! We would have treated you like family!”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

Barnett’s face twisted in fury. “You don’t get to be sorry, monster.”

He charged again. Alexia hesitated, guilt freezing her in place. Her locket pulsed with Zafrir’s wind, her voice trembling as she cried, “Vehementis!”

The gale threw Barnett off his feet, slamming him into the wall again. Alexia didn’t wait—she sprinted toward the exit, deflecting an arrow with a wind barrier. She turned her staff on the footman guarding the chamber’s exit. “Sopora,” she muttered, through a storm of sobs. The man staggered, trying to fight off the sleep overtaking him, collapsing to his knees as he impotently reached for his quiver.

For the first time in her life, Alexia failed to summon Leverith’s power. She had strayed too far from love, sinking into the darkness of Zamael. The archer fought off the sleep and readied another arrow.

“Fulmine,” Alexia cried, feeling like a failure. Sparks crackled from her staff. Lightning streaked across the cavern hitting the archer. He convulsed, his body jerking as his eyes glazed over. The arrows spilled from his quiver as he slumped to the ground.

Barnett screamed, charging once more. Tears streamed down Alexia’s face as she raised her staff toward the cavern’s entrance. The focus she conjured was one meticulously memorized for this mission, but she never imagined using in this way. “Petrapessum!”

Barnett sprinted for the exit, hatred burning in his eyes, eyes that pierced her heart deeper than any blade ever could. His sword stretched out through the rubble as tons of stone crashed down, burying him beneath it.

Alexia slumped against the cold tunnel wall, her body sinking to the floor. Heavy sobs hurt her chest. She thought of sweet, innocent Allison. How could she repay a child’s love with the murder of her father? Only a monster would do such a thing.

Alexia wept with her face buried in her hands, her tears mingling with the dust on the cavern floor. She wasn’t a savior, nor a hero, nor the great wizard she once believed she could be. She was the evil monster she had sworn to fight. She had once dreamed of peace and love, of becoming something noble like Linus Peacemaker or Queen Alexia Leveria. But now, all she dreamed of was death—her own deserved end.

GIVE IN, the dark voice screeched in her mind. FIND PEACE IN DEATH.

Maleon had been right all along. He had known the truth she had been too blind to see: dreamers didn’t change the world; the world changed the dreamer. She wasn’t the Peacemaker or the Love Queen. She was an innocent dreamer who had failed to grasp reality. Peace was a lie, and Alexia was nothing more than a weapon of war, a harbinger of death, a servant of Zamael.

She closed her eyes, waiting for Maleon Stonebreaker to come and end her life. It was fitting that he would be the one to kill her. She was unwilling to live with what she had done. Sobbing, she punched the ground, her knuckles splitting open, but the pain wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to atone for what she had done.

But Maleon didn’t come. Death lingered around her, cold and suffocating, yet it didn’t claim her. Her sobbing ceased, and she curled up on the ground, too broken to even cry anymore. She lay there, numb and empty, as if the darkness of the cavern had swallowed her whole. This place, this grave beneath the earth, was where she belonged. How could she ever face the world again—a world where Allison no longer had a father because of her? How could she ever believe in herself, when she was the monster who had torn apart dozens of families that had welcomed her into their lives?

Alexia would have lain there forever had she not seen one final light. The locket pulsed against her chest, ethereal blue streams glowing in the void. She tried to ignore it, tried to shut it out, but Leverith’s spirit persisted, moving without her will. Alexia reached for it, and a vision bloomed before her eyes.

She was in Mirrevar, lying in a bed of flowers. Above her, Covademara flourished, its branches reaching toward the sky. Though she hurt, though blood and tears stained her robes, though her innocence was forever lost, blue light flowed around her. Zander took her hand. Together, they watched the sunrise together.

Look forward, a melodic voice whispered in her mind, more beautiful than anything she had ever heard.

“Leverith?” Alexia asked, clutching the locket.

The locket continued to emit blue light and Alexia decided to embrace it. She forced herself to stand. There was still a purpose for her in this life. She was a monster capable of terrible evil but as long as she could still feel love, she could still find her way back to Leverith’s path. A tiny drop of hope splashed down into the dark abyss that she had fallen into.

That fragile hope mingled with her other companions: remorse and self-loathing. She would have to nurture it, tend to it like a delicate seed, if she was ever to redeem herself. She couldn’t wash these bloodstains from her soul, but she could start by trying to save Timmeck.

Alexia emerged from the mineshaft into the moonlight. Bodies lay strewn across the killing grounds. The stench of burnt metal and charred flesh was a painful reminder of the evil she had sown. Whimpering, she fought to hold on to the tiny drop of hope in the abyss of self-hatred as she approached Timmeck’s limp form. Her heart pounded in her chest like a drum beating to Zamael’s tune.

“Alexia,” Timmeck wheezed.

His hand reached out weakly toward her, and she grasped it tightly. She stared at his broken body—his stomach torn open, his limbs slashed, and worst of all, the gaping hole in his skull.

Tears silently streamed down her face as she held him, gazing into his dying eye. She focused on the wound in his head, willing the healing light to flow from her staff. Timmeck coughed up blood, the dark liquid splattering onto her face. She didn’t flinch, didn’t wipe it away.

“Hold still!” she cried desperately, channeling her magic into him.

His eye wavered open and closed, a lone tear leaking out of it.

She whimpered as the spells failed to mend Timmeck’s skull. She needed to save him; she had done so many terrible things tonight. She needed to do something good.

Alexia cried harder as her spells failed to heal him despite the strength of their reciprocal bond. Darkness settled on her heart until it spread to her thoughts. LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH TO DEFEAT DEATH. GIVE IN.

Alexia went numb and Leverith’s spirit failed to flow through her, as if an invisible wall parted her from the most loving of the Divine Thirteen.

Timmeck coughed up more blood. “Remember this,” he rasped. His hand clasped hers. She knew that the strength of his grip was the only thing that fastened him to his fading life. “Remember Ferrickton.”

“Don’t go,” she whimpered.

He coughed again, his breath shallow. “Peace... you... restore.”

“I can’t.” Alexia sobbed. “I’m not Linus. I’m just a stupid dreamer who thought she could be the hero. I’m no great wizard. I’m a monster.” The bandage over her emotions gave way to the flood of self-hatred and she sobbed uncontrollably.

Timmeck’s trembling hand reached for her locket. “Not Linus… You,” he rasped, his finger brushing the silver. “You.”

Despite his agony, despite his impending death, and her failure to save him, he smiled at her. That smile, so full of warmth and love, broke her heart. His hand slipped from the locket as his strength gave out.

“You, Alexia,” he whispered one final time, before his eye closed for the last time.

She held his hand, trying to keep him with her for a few more moments. “Timmeck Eckhard, beloved friend, I swear I will do my best,” she choked through her sobs. “I promise to restore peace.”

His smile, his tears, and his final words would stay with her forever. “Until… next… time…” Timmeck’s voice faded, and with one last, weak wink from his blind eye, he was gone.

Alexia cradled his hand in hers, her body shaking with grief. She lowered his hand gently and stroked his face. “Until next time, my friend. Until next time.”

Summoning Celegana’s power, Alexia made a grave for Timmeck beside the edge of the Red Forest. She wished she were physically strong enough, but she needed to use magic to lower his body into the ground. It was less than Sir Timmeck Eckhard deserved, but she was the only one there to perform the guiding. “Father Meladon, guide his soul to your Paradise. Mighty Gidi, grant his body rest for his fights are past him. Arcane Yadeen, grant him peace of mind and wisdom in the next life. Mercantile Ovidon, allow him respite from his labors. Luminous Norali, shine your light so that he may always see. Bountiful Celegana, create soil for him so that he may always have firm footing. Tranquil Dalis, shower him with water so that he may be pure and never thirst. Brilliant Seraxa, ignite a fire so that he may always be warm. Cool Qoryxa, soothe him with your icy touch when he is hot. Changing Zafrir, send him a gentle breeze so that he may be comfortable. Mischievous Balbaraq, show him the clear sky of eternity. Dreaming Leverith, reunite him with all those he loved and lost. Dark Zamael, stay your wickedness, for you shall never touch him! Go with peace, Timmeck!”

Her tears finally ran dry, and she stood at the edge of his grave, staring into the night. The mineshaft loomed ahead, and within, Maleon Stonebreaker waited.