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My vantage changed.

I was a child.

Around me stared a thousand pairs of similarly empty eyes. Devoid of life. Devoid of expression.

There were no colors here. All was a sickly gray. I stumbled through the dark, my senses dulled, cold and alone.

I had been something else once. More than this. There had been warmth. A bed. A life. There had been love.

Now I dwelled underground, huddling for hours in an insensate trance. At times, I swarmed with the others. Tasting sour blood and rank flesh when a poor traveler fell into our cursed lair.

I had to get away. I pushed upwards and out.

I saw my aunt. I saw Draven. They were fleeing across a bridge inside a vast black mountain. A creature of darkness was flinging its wrath upon them.

Behind them, on the bridge, two pieces of charred metal lay forgotten. A broken cup, caked with dried blood.

I swooped downwards, my sharp beak tearing into the creature’s face, ripping apart pieces of dark tendrils that fell like rotting flesh into the chasm below.

I watched my aunt and uncle pass through a heavy iron door and felt a rush of relief. They were safe.

But my eyes looked beyond the doors, as a true bird’s never could. I watched them as they fell. Saw them carried away to a place of great danger.

I pushed my mind further, looked higher. Above the mountain, to where a palace floated in the clouds.

Inside the palace, a dead man sat upon a throne.

Careful now, a voice inside me warned. Go back. Turn back.

But I ignored it. I pushed on.

The man on the throne was bored. His head rested on one hand.

I flew closer, curious, heedless and bold.

The man’s head turned towards me, and his gaze sharpened. He smiled, then reached out a hand.

I screamed.

My eyes opened.

My uncle was sitting up in bed.

“Kaye?”

Light brown hair tumbled around a pale young face.

He was older than me, I reminded myself. Or was I older than him?

It didn’t matter now.

I picked myself off the floor where somehow I’d fallen and went over to the bed.

“I know you,” he said, looking up at me with wide, brown eyes. “You were in my dreams.”

My mouth felt dry. “I’m Medra.”

“Medra?” he said. “But you’re the spear.”