Kirs scanned the documents before her. While her work on tether-awakening was important, it was more long term than her immediate concern. Ranvir had shown up only a couple hours ago, wind-whipped and agitated.

Saleema was gathering herself. The countdown had begun.

A new light had joined the lesser purples of the portals in the sky and the greater glow of the knot, Ranvir’s own form. Her incipient soul-sight couldn’t comprehend his actions at all.

The building, no longer a school, held little of what made it recognizable. Only the bottom floor remained, one set of rough stairs to Korfyi and Belnavir, another set leading to the door. The once-basement had been segmented with rough sheets to give little measure of privacy, yet even now she could hear others working.

Esmund sat toward the back of her curtained ‘office,’ scratching at a stone. Little grains of dust raining onto the ground. Each scrape of his thumbnail, like a file against the rock’s surface. A little pile of dust detailed the transition from hand-sized to palm-sized and its eventual fate.

She leafed through a few of her older works, looking for inspiration. She paused on one of their first rituals. A simple circle to sustain a pocket-space without Ranvir’s intervention. She’d long since moved past these fundamentals to more complex working, but… there was something to the basics.

“Yes,” she whispered, pulling the paper free and comparing with her current effort. The ritual to halt, or at least slow, Saleema made this ritual look like a child’s drawing, yet…

“I’m not sure I should be here,” Es said. She glanced up to see him turning the stone in his hand. She returned her focus to the paper. This could be the difference between life or death. Hopefully, it wouldn’t, but she couldn’t afford to lose her concentration right now.

Es had been struggling with his strength since the fight. She’d tried to talk with him while he was recovering, but the stubborn man had been uninterested. Now, when she’d struck inspiration.

She shook her head and focused on her work. Tuning out Esmund’s mumbling, along with the rest of the background noise. A thrill shook through her as the work finally came together. It would still take many, many hours to refine, but she had the base form.

The desk was ripped away, and she nearly fell out of her seat. Blinking the burn from her eyes, she looked up to see Ranvir looking down at her… pityingly. Anger furrowed her brow. “What?”

“Look around you, Kirs.”

She rolled her eyes and scooted her chair up to the desk. She noted the curtains had been withdrawn to one side and Pashar was peering from her own office. “I’m working, Ranvir. I’m getting close to having something actually usable. Even against her.” She rubbed her eyes, the effort causing a satisfying ache behind her lids.

“I appreciate that, but take a moment to look around, Kirs.”

She sighed and looked up. The light coming through the door had dimmed. Not unexpectedly, from the ache in her fingers and the exhaustion in the eyes, she would guess at least a couple hours had passed. Except for the two of them, the room was empty.

She blinked. “Where’s Es?”

Ranvir glanced at the pile of rock dust. “He left.”

“Where to?” a hollow feeling, like ice and venom, was seeping from her stomach. She hid her suddenly shaking hands beneath the desk.

“The city.”

She looked down at her work. So close. Could she? Perhaps Ranvir could finish it? But the time… she laid her hands over the papers, riffling through her work. A stray breeze toppled the pile of rock dust, causing a slide which took the peak of the mound. “Can you take me?”

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Purple engulfed them. Never before had Ranvir ever traveled so slow. Never had it taken so long, yet when the space dissolved and they stood on the street outside her home, it happened all too quickly. She licked her lips and stepped forward, toward the door. She stretched her meager sense, but she couldn’t even scan the entire house.

She glanced over her shoulder, but Ranvir had already disappeared. Or perhaps he’d never come with her. Heart in her throat, hands chill with nerves, she opened the door. Their home was cleaner than she’d expected. Neither had been there for months, yet the floor was freshly swept, the counters washed.

Her office was cleaned as well. Everything returned to where she usually left it. The bath was the same. The bedroom was chill and frozen, the window open to air out, then left too long. Floorboards creaked as she stepped inside. Closing the rough glass window, she noted the snow drifting by outside.

The room was like everything else. The bed had been made, except for a depression over the covers on his side. She reached a shaking hand out. The cold blankets passed roughly beneath her fingers.

She looked through the doorway into the last room in their house. Her chin quivered in realization, her eyes burning with a new sort of pain. If he would be anywhere. She didn’t stretch out her soul-sight. Instead, she knelt by the bed, crouched against Es’ bedside, not so different from where’d she’d been a week ago.

Except that hadn’t felt nearly this bad. Just go. The words came unbidden to her mind. You don’t have to see inside. You already know what’s there. We’ve never been able to follow him, not where his mind goes.

Her head pounded with the beat of her heart as she rose. Walking around the bed, each thump of her boots sounded like a thundering slam of a war drum, each creaking plank of wood like the give of gallows. She hurt with the pain of her heartbeat, like a headache all of her own creation.

Then she stood outside, looking at the door. Words still raced in her mind. Leave. Run. Flee. Scream. Cry. Fight. Anything to not touch the door. Her heart seemed to beat down the walls of her skull as pressed the handle down. The cold bite of copper, the slight creak of hinges, a hint of unevenness in the door’s swing.

Es promised he would get that fixed before…

She shut her eyes before the room could come into view. That wasn’t important anyway, in a way he still had time. In a way, he had all the time he needed. Open your eyes! Open your eyes, you damned coward. Fear’s path. Always fear’s path. Cowardice haunts you even in the daylight.

She turned away and went down the stairs. Pausing in the living room, she hunched over the table. She couldn’t breathe, the air was being torn out of the room, out of her house, out of her home and through that infernal door. A direct passage to the Downway. An eternal descent into nothing but the worn nubs of endless travel, a never finishing pilgrimage. There was no goal. There couldn’t be because all purpose had been lost. Torn away from the living.

Tears splashed the tabletop. Her head spun as she collapsed over the table, sobs wracking her body. Ever and ever and ever. I didn’t want it. I am relieved that I am free. Now, I can focus on my work. I can become who I was supposed to be. It is freedom. True liberation.

“Please,” she gasped, between convulsions that shook her entire body. It felt like she was coming apart at the seams. There was nothing upstairs. There was nothing and there’d never been. “I can’t do it.”

But time passed. Eventually, her tears dried. Her body stilled, and she slid off the table, her limbs stiff and exhausted. Night had fallen. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. Devouring her from the inside, just as the room had devoured her home.

Still, he didn’t come.

Esmund didn’t come.

Turning, she gazed up the stairs, the opened door’s copper handle gleaming at her mockingly in the dim light of night.

Eventually, she stared at it. Eyes frozen to it. To her left, the room loomed large and indomitable. She turned.

Carpet, dull in the night’s glow, covered the center of the room. Plush and thick, soft on the knees. A suggestion from her dad. She clutched her stomach as she stepped inside. The space was unfinished, half a wall painted, the distinction slight. The colors had faded to gray with the loss of the sun.

The place was empty, as she knew it would be. As it always had been. A small table sat in a corner. She could see the wear of carpet fibers next to it. Esmund had spent many nights sitting at that table, mind wandering.

I couldn’t follow where you went. He’d grown up in a big family, they both had. She’d grown up with brothers, he with sisters. She’d wanted two kids. He’d wanted as many as he could get. A good compromise leaves neither party happy, she thought bitterly.

Two items had been laid on the little table. A folded piece of paper and Es’ ring.

‘It seems I can go no further with you. At least for a while. I’m sorry, my love.

I didn’t want this to end, but it seems as always that I cannot escape from it and you cannot but run from it.

Perhaps our paths were always meant to part. Perhaps this is the will of the Goddess. It seems we’ve grown apart these last few years.

I reach out and you cannot but turn away.

It seems to me that life repeats itself and perhaps I will follow in Master Svenar’s footsteps. I know he eventually found happiness and perhaps I will be so lucky as that.’