Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Nicostratus stares at me, hands flexing open and closed. “The pigs were getting better.”
His voice is quiet, like he’s trying to convince himself of something too terrifying to say aloud. “Why did you put them back in with the infected? What if they get sick again?”
I exhale sharply and heave the oars into place. “For the people of this kingdom, pray they don’t.”
Sweating, I pull water as hard as I can, and soon Nicostratus’s watching figure is a slash of red at the river’s bend. Shivers I’ve been holding back unleash and my teeth chatter as I force myself to row, to race against the now-tangerine skies.
In mere minutes, tangerine becomes burned orange.
Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. Breathe.
Faster.
The sky is rust now. There’s no darker shade before night.
Please wait. Wait, wait, I plead in time with the pounding throb in my head. At first glimpse of the luminarium, I scrabble out of the boat and claw my way across the field, calling hoarsely.
I plough forward—
Ahead, Olyn screams and my body seizes with the sound. I glimpse trussed up crosses and two figures tied to them, a farmer raising his scythe over his head as he approaches one.
“No!” My voice breaks with barely any sound.
Olyn thrusts needles at the farmer about to execute a frightened, wide-eyed innocent, and the farmer staggers and turns menacingly to her. I try to run, to cross the dozen-yard divide, but my legs are heavy. I’m not going to make it.
I spy a rock, lunge for it and hurl it with all my remaining energy. It thunks the farmer’s back and he whirls round, startled.
He lowers his scythe and I drop to my knees. “Release them,” I say. “Give us our things.”
I sway on my knees until the hostages are released and another sickly farmer hurls my things to me, my money. My dromveske.
I clutch the dromveske to my chest as I’m wracked with shivers, as the world spins; the figures, the luminarium.
No. Not yet.
Olyn is running, her voice a distant cry.
Not yet. Just one more breath—
The world turns black.
Blackness fractures. A rush of violet light engulfs me, blinding, weightless—then the world yanks me downward. Leaves whip past, large and luminous, the sacred wood twisting around me in a dizzying spiral until—crack.
Pain lances through my ribs. My breath stutters. I hang, hooked over a low branch, the sacred bark pressing into my stomach.
I groan, pressing a shaking hand to the wood. The violet oak.
The knowledge settles deep.
I’m inside Quin’s dromveske.
A shudder wracks me, my spirit-form trembling at the edges, too light, too unsteady. How did I fall in here? Is this truly the dromveske or is it some dying dream?
If I am dying, at least I’ll pass surrounded by his moments. At least Quin will be here. At least I won’t die alone.
The thought presses against me, heavier than my own body, heavier than the sacred air around me.
I reach for the branch, but my grip slips through it as if my hands aren’t entirely solid. A sharp inhale, then—I plummet.
The ground rushes up to meet me.
I brace for impact, but when my back slams against the violet roots, I feel nothing.
That’s when I know.
The words. The words I need to say.
I push upright, shaking. If my spirit form is this weak, does that mean I’m dying? Is the body I left behind only hanging on by a thread?
I can’t die yet.
I push to my feet, swallowing against the ache in my limbs. The dromveske glows under moonlight, a vast spiral of runed arches curling around the oak, each one a door into Quin’s past.
I’ve stepped through all of them.
All but one: the arch that has always remained just beyond reach, the one that hums with something more than memory, something alive, something waiting. The one that shivers against my touch whenever I try—and fail—to open it.
I stumble forwards, my breath tight in my throat.
The shimmer of river-pearl catches my eye—finally, there it is.
I surge forward—only to lurch to a stop.
Something is wrong.
The glow is cracked.
A door that has been impossible for me to open.
Broken. Smashed.
A place I vowed to enter—is now laid bare before me.
I reach for the broken wood, my fingers brushing the splintered edge. The weight of understanding sinks deep into my chest. Nicostratus did this.
He is the only other person who has ever stepped into this dromveske.
Had he smashed the door to enter? Or on his way out—after seeing what lay inside?
A lump rises in my throat, thick and heavy. My pulse hammers against my ribs as I take a trembling step forward.
The glittering mist parts. The memory unfolds around me.
The courtyard at the ruined fortress.
The night is thick with battle cries. Spear-wielding crusaders swarm the stone, purple cloaks whipping, their blades and the nails around them glinting in the moonlight.
Across the courtyard, Quin is struggling, an exhausted figure barely holding on. One arm is braced around his weakened brother, the other locked around me—my past self, Chaos-me.