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Her blood is on your hands.

Kato was a bastard, and he’d been poking for a reaction. But he’d also been right. Because Skye… he hadn’t been there when she needed him. Hadn’t listened when she’d tried to tell him something important. He’d pushed her aside, and now… now she was gone.

Into the enemy’s hands.

If she died, it really would be his fault.

Instinct guided him forward—cataloging sound and scent and sight. The caravan was safe, defended. But they needed to keep moving forward.

So, pushing even more aether into his legs, Skye savored the sting of the wind, the smell of the earth, as he flew through the forest, making his way to Crescent Canyon.

Chapter 5

-An excerpt from A Time Mage’s Field Guide to Dream Symbology

The Sight is a rare and coveted gift, and for those few that possess the ability to peer into the future, reality begins to take on a new shape through the simple act of dreaming. While the future can never be determined with complete accuracy, dreams allow the time mage to see possible eventualities months, sometimes even years, ahead of the event in question. Details, of course, change based on the accumulated effects of individual choice. A dream on the eve of battle may hint at victory, but a last-minute decision to go right instead of left, an accidental fall, or even a misfired shot can become pivotal, thereby skewing the expected outcome.

The future, by its very nature, is inherently malleable, and it is generally advised to take a timemage’s dreams as a prediction and guide for future actions rather than true divination.

The first thing Taly noticed was the quiet.

Neither gentle nor easy—it was oppressive, almost like a physical thing crawling across her skin. It was the kind of quiet, the kind of charged stillness that came from being in a place that was better left undisturbed.

Towering walls of gold surrounded her on all sides, and if she looked closely, she could see that instead of stone, each partition had been fabricated from countless threads weaving, tangling, and snarling together into a dense web.

She inhaled, somehow relieved when the rasp of her own shallow breathing reached her ears.

“Hello?” Her voice echoed, and Taly touched a finger to a nearby wall, watching as it rippled out into infinity. “Is anybody there?”

There was no answer.

Her thoughts scrambled, and her senses felt dulled. She knew she should probably feel panic. Especially when the walls began to realign themselves, moved by an unseen hand. But all she could muster was the faintest trace of confusion as she picked at her nightdress, her unbound hair. As she tried to remember where she had been, where she was going, and why she didn’t have shoes.

Sound and light began to bleed through the gossamer threads, and then, so abrupt that it left her staggering and gasping for air, the landscape snapped into focus.

Screams pierced the air, and the shuffling of thousands of feet shook the ground. A swarm ofpeople, covered in mud and blood, their skin slick with rain, writhed as they pressed together on what looked like a bridge.

Taly immediately recognized the woven net of branches and steel that formed a tunnel around the canyon bridge. Storm clouds painted the sky, and a dark chasm loomed below. Walls of red stone stretched to the east and west.

“The Riftway,” she said, her voice swallowed by the wailing din of the crowd. She was back on Tempris, standing in the middle of the bridge that spanned Crescent Canyon.

Which meant—a dream. She was dreaming. She knew that instinctively, even if the realization felt muddy and faraway.

Shields clanged in the distance, and she began to press her way forward, making her way to the south side of the bridge. The crowd frothed and writhed in their panic, and even though their bodies were little more than smoke, forming and reforming around her, it was like trying to swim through a wall of water.

“Shore up that line!”

Taly jolted at the familiar voice, so full of exhaustion and rage.

Skye.

She began to run, not caring about the ghosts that still streamed past as her feet hit solid ground. The bridge was behind her now. A rank of heavily armed mages pushed back the crowd, and just beyond, streaming through a break in the wards and swarming the road—

Shades.

They used no careful formation as they slashed and hacked at the retreating refugees,pushing their way through a rapidly crumbling defensive line of mages.

And there, in the middle, shoving the wounded out of the way of the oncoming horde, was Skye. There was a scrape on his neck that wasn’t healing—the blood so bright against the blackened gore that streaked his skin. And instead of a sword, he wielded a long staff. Men and women stumbled around him as the shades broke through their ranks, and he reached down, pulling a young black-haired boy to his feet and pushing him to the center of the sloppy formation.