Ben was disoriented, unable to distinguish up from down, right from left, or ahead from behind. There was only white light, an intense chasm of luminosity. Was he falling or was he rising? Was he moving at all or stuck motionless? All sense of coordination lacked meaning here. Seconds turned to minutes, and for all he knew, the minutes turned into hours. Time seemed to slip away unnoticed in his befuddled state.

Irrespective of how long it had been since he entered the Hengeway—or was pushed into it by Janus, to be more specific—the brightness finally subsided. A faint outline at first, Ben saw shimmering tendrils of light expand in every direction like a web. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. As the ubiquitous radiance became dimmer and dimmer, though, he realized where the familiarity came from.

And I thought the trees of Machen were big, Ben mused in awe. The lines coming into focus weren’t part of a web, but countless translucent branches all stemming from a single point. As soon as he became aware of this, all sense of orientation returned to Ben and hit him like a jackhammer. One moment he was floating topsy-turvy, the next falling rapidly into the void.

Ben flailed his arms and legs helplessly as gravity pulled him headfirst into one of the branches. He closed his eyes and covered his face with his arms, bracing for impact, but his fall stopped completely in the last second, just before the collision. Whatever unseen force had saved him turned him upright while midair and gently placed him on his feet over the branch with great delicacy.

I’m alive, he thought with incredulous relief. Not for the first time in the past couple of weeks. He took a few moments to gather his wits, with his hands on his knees and his torso slightly bent over. Once the panic had washed over him, Ben sorted out the environment he was in. Corin described it as a complex lattice of phantom roads, which, while accurate, didn’t fully capture the essence of the Hengeway.

To say there were tens of thousands of branches would have been an understatement, all originating from the colossal pillar of light that was the centerpiece of this spectral dimension. Ben returned his gaze to the one he stood on, trying to discern where it led. Opposite him, not half a mile away, a door-shaped portal swirled ceaselessly. It was the same width and height as the monolithic gate that Janus had been guarding back in the Blackwoods.

“Can’t muck it up, can I?” Ben muttered to himself, and he started walking toward it. Stepping on the colorless surface felt strange, as if he could pass straight through it at any given moment, his fall resumed. He tried to fend off such notions, focusing solely on the shining portal that lay before him.

And then the world scintillated. Ben stopped in his tracks as the singular path he tread forked in two. A crossroads, and one he had already seen before. I dreamed about this back in Dunport-Salem, Ben thought. Truly enough, it bore a striking resemblance to said nightmare, sans the silver-haired woman that had urged him to cross.

He knew what awaited on the path that extended to his right. He could hear the crashing of the waves, the mewing of the seagulls, and the hubbub of the port. An occasional bell tolled in the distance. That way led to Dunport-Salem. Ben shook his head, a vain attempt to dispel the déjà vu.

Longing wrenched his heart, taking Ben by surprise. Since when did he miss his old life? He scratched his chin, looking from one path to the other. He thought about his fellow orphans, still stuck in St. Dunsany’s. A little sneak peek never hurt anyone, did it? Having thus decided, instead of continuing straight, he veered into the newly sprung path.

And that was when Ben mucked it up. The Hengeway peeled away around him, its radiance replaced by a pitch-black screen. If his past dream was any indication, he knew what came next. He quickly turned tail and sprinted toward the original path, but it was too little, too late. The branch melted beneath his weight, and once again, he was trapped in a freefall.

It didn’t last long this time around. He landed face-first on a cobblestone alleyway with a painful thud. “Ouch,” Ben moaned, turning around and pressing his hands to his body, making sure everything was in its place. As he groaned to his feet, fear immediately paralyzed Ben. Not a stride away from him stood a trio of hooded figures, their alabaster masks tricornered with a beak-like chin. Sybil’s pursuers, Ben thought with grim awareness.

As close as he was, they hadn’t seemed to notice him yet. His eyes darted back and forth furiously, looking for a hiding place. There was nothing at all. One of them turned straight at him, and Ben became still as a statue.

One of his companions broke the silence. “I don’t know why we’re still patrolling this backwater. There’s nothing here anymore, ain’t it?”

A moment that felt like an eternity passed. The one that had looked at him turned to his associate, disregarding Ben altogether. Had he not seen him? Ben’s head swam with explanations, the most recent more implausible than the last.

“I bet the Blake girl is in Dool by now,” he replied with disdain, as he averted his gaze.

The third hooded man crossed his arms and chimed in. “Wastin’ our time is what we are, but orders are orders. Those Raven witches are keepin’ an eye on the place anyhow, aren’t they?”

“Much good that’s brought us,” the first one said sarcastically. “We wouldn’t be here if they’d done their jobs correctly.”

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Ben relaxed his shoulders, realizing he was inexplicably invisible to them. Imminent danger out of the way, he took a deep breath and processed the vicinity. He found himself surrounded by the familiar sights of Dunport-Salem: cobblestone floors, brick buildings, and slanted roofs, confirming his location.

A wave of dread washed over him, sinking into the depths of his chest. After all he had done and gone through, he couldn’t have returned to the starting line. He turned around slowly, determined not to risk being caught, whether invisible or not, and cautiously tiptoed away from their malevolent presence.

Just as he did, he heard one of them raise their voice in alarm. “Hey! Who’s there?”

Precaution be damned. Ben broke into a sprint, and he could hear the hooded ones doing the same behind him. The world peeled away again; the town was devoured by the dark; the last step he took went straight through the cobblestone; and for the third time that day, Ben fell into oblivion.

Ben did not flail or crash face-first on this occasion, making sure to land on his feet as soon as a setting materialized around him. The shock of the impact coursed from the sole of his boots all the way to his clenched teeth, and dizziness instantly assailed him. He took a step back, reaching instinctively for the trunk of a nearby tree for support.

A nearby tree? Ben looked around again, trying to make sense of where he was. The air was heavy with the fragrance of earth and moss, accompanied by an elusive presence that seemed to envelop everything around him. Magic. The Blackwoods.

The yellow moon loomed large in the night sky, casting an eerie glow over the surroundings. It elucidated a dreadful scene. If the sight of the hooded ones had instilled fear in Ben, what lay before him made his blood curdle.

A wicker effigy burned in the middle of the glade. Edging its perimeter were a score of ominous figures, hunched and frail. Their crooked noses and deep-set eyes seemed more akin to birds than people. They moved around the fire in circles, dancing wildly as they intoned guttural, unnatural ululations.

Ben heard the flapping of wings nearby. As his eyes adjusted to the night, he noticed there were hundreds upon hundreds of ravens perched in the canopy above. He crouched on his knees and hid behind a shrub before he could be discovered. It was his second time eavesdropping on witches, he thought with grim realization. Last time, it hadn’t worked quite so well for him.

Caw-caw-caw! The horde of black birds worked itself up into a frenzy to match the crones’, a cacophony of fluttering feathers. Ben pressed even further to the ground, his eyes wild with apprehension. The witches stopped the revelry abruptly and dropped to their knees in prayer, hands outstretched to the night sky. He followed their gaze and squinted his eyes—a mere mote contrasted against the moon at first. Something was fast approaching from above.

The mote became a spot, and the spot became a silhouette. Ben gawped in disbelief. A raven the size of a human adult landed in between the witches and the burning effigy. It enveloped itself with its enormous wings, and once it revealed itself again, there was a woman in its stead, its pinions retracting into a shadowy cloak that enveloped her.

Ben fell into a hypnotic trance. Where the witches were ugly and misshapen, this woman was beautiful and shapely. In fact, the longer he stared, the more alluring he found her to be; her eyes were the color of moonlight itself, her hair an ashen black that would put any princess’ to shame, and her dress masterfully treaded with gold, matching an exquisite necklace that choked her slender neck.

The forest fell silent, and the unholy prayer ceased as the woman stared at each witch with an intensity that even Ben, hidden far from them, felt to be soul-piercing. If he had found the bacchanal commotion from moments earlier to be unbearable, this sudden hush was almost painful.

“So, dear sisters,” she said, her voice mellifluous like honey, like the pluck of a harp. “You call upon me, and I answer thee. Imagine my surprise as I flew above these meager woods, and I could still feel the presence of that forsaken treant. Not dry and withered, but vibrant and full of life! As I felt out for our prized barghest and its seed, for my search to yield no fruit!”

Her tone changed as she went on. It now dripped with venom, like a vicious storm threatening to tear the trees upright from their roots. The witches hunched their shoulders and cowered before her, but her rebuke was far from done. “As I awaited the news of the Blakespawn’s capture from our collaborators, only to hear they went unassisted!”

The flames behind her roared and became livelier, matching her fury. The effigy crumbled into ashes under their intensity. “We are Raven Coven, are we not? If this child’s play is beyond your capabilities, what can I expect from you as our true mission approacheth? Befanna be my witness: I will smite you down and rebuild our sisterhood from the ground up if need be.”

A long silence. Sweat accumulated on Ben’s brow. His heart raced as it thumped up to his throat, wide-eyed with the implications. There was no doubt that they were behind the barghest, then. He couldn’t help but fear for his friends back in Machen. He felt the urge to run away from that god-forsaken place, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Finally, the woman spoke again. “Hmph. The long night has claimed Sister Wormwood; I can sense it. Sister Toadwart, do you care to explain why you didn’t receive the arachnicode sent to the orphanage?”

Sister Toadwart? Ben thought, anger welling up within him. He squinted and noticed a bent, crooked figure take a step forward from the witches’ circle. It was her, alright. He dug his hands into the grass and clenched his fists as his whole body trembled with fury.

Miss Toadwart bowed reverently and fell to her knees again, her forehead touching the ground. “D-Dear Mother, please forgive our failure. The spiders didn’t weave the message in Sister Wormwood’s office like they usually do, they didn’t. ‘Twas in the attic that they did their work, t-this time they did.” She spoke with a fear that Ben could never have imagined coming from her.

BIERCE SQUARE—SUNSET. Ben recalled the message that started it all. It was all starting to make sense now. The witches were supposed to be in the plaza when Sybil was spirited into Dunport-Salem, ready to capture her with the help of the hooded ones. The arachnicode, as they had called it, had somehow reached him instead of them.

The witch mother walked toward Miss Toadwart and lifted her chin with a gentle hand. She looked at her with a comforting expression on her face. “Oh, sister Toadwart. I have never forgiven failure, and I won’t begin today.”

She snapped a finger, and another witch instantly combusted into flames, a plump and stocky silhouette that contorted her body painfully. She wailed and howled as the fire consumed her, a terrible song echoing across the meadow. Ben recognized the sound—it was Miss Ratworth, the remaining caretaker. It wasn’t long before her shrieks died out and she had been reduced to a charred corpse.

Ben gasped out loud and immediately clasped his mouth shut. He cursed silently, desperately hoping he hadn’t been heard. A mad cackle ensued. It was the witch mother, slowly chorused by the rest of the witches.

Caw-caw-caw! The ravens joined the discordant din. “It seems we have company, my daughters!” came the witch mother’s voice. Ben peered from the bush one last time, and his gaze was met by Miss Toadwart’s resentful stare, one that blamed him for all her woes.

Staying there a second longer would have been tantamount to suicide. Ben jumped to his feet and ran, ran, and then ran some more. The clacking and squawking of the Raven Coven rose to a crescendo, and he was sure that they were shortening the distance between them.

His foot got stuck on a root as he fled, and Ben stumbled. Instead of crashing against the ground, Ben went through it one last time. With a sense of familiarity, he embraced the darkness and willingly descended into the void, ready for whatever awaited him.