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“This doesn’t make sense.” I’d said it before. Perhaps if I said it again it would make sense. But nothing changed. The truth was all around us—bright white and enriched with shades of gold, silver, copper, and bronze. I’d brought our crew to Purgatory, and I had no idea how.

Clearly opening shimmering portals wasn’t just about the actual splitting of space and stepping from one dimension to another. It was also about learning to choose where to go, and I had left that part out entirely. No one else had thought it would be an issue, either, but how could they have? We weren’t experts in shimmering portals. Hrista was, and she had taken over my island.

“It’s wonderfully weird,” the Time Master sighed, staring at our sparkling surroundings. The hilltop was covered in a soft layer of coppery grass. A tall forest of odd trees skirted the mound, their bark chalk white and their leaves crunchy and bright gold. Their rustling sounded metallic in the delicate wind. “The sky seems made of diamonds.” Aphis, his ghoul, was stunned, his big black eyes getting bigger as he tried to take it all in.

We looked up, breathless for a moment and stunned by the iridescence. A sun wasn’t needed here. The sky shone vividly enough to illuminate everything. Myst smiled broadly, a warm familiarity taking over her expression. “It’s always daytime in Purgatory,” she said. “There are dark places, of course—like where the Berserkers prefer to dwell—but it is always day…”

“I’m so confused. What did I do wrong?” I managed, tears glazing my eyes. As wonderful as this place was, and as much as I would’ve liked to explore and make the most of being in this unknown and technically forbidden realm, I couldn’t. This wasn’t The Shade, and every moment we spent away from home, Hrista had free reign to do terrible things. We didn’t even know if the rest of GASP had caught on, or if the clones had, in fact, managed to fully replace the true Shadians. Sure, the originals had been marked, but Hrista had The Shade’s resources now. How long before it would be too late to stop her? And what was her endgame? These were questions we desperately needed answers to, and I doubted we’d get them in Purgatory.

On the other hand, I did notice the effect this place had on Myst and Brandon. They seemed… different. The Valkyrie appeared brighter, her humanoid features dissolving into solid light. The Berserker grew darker, the black mist seeping through his pores and coming off him in jet-black wisps. These were their true forms.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Brandon said to me. Even his voice sounded a little different. Lower. Thicker. Raspier. I liked it, judging by the pricks that tickled the skin on my back. “You just need to tweak your destination next time.”

“How do I do that? I have no idea how I brought us here!” I replied, exasperated. “How do I take us home?”

Thayen placed a hand on my shoulder in a bid to comfort me. “This isn’t so bad, Astra. We’re in Purgatory. It’s the one place that not even Reapers are allowed to enter, yet here we are… Surely, this is better, right?” he asked, looking to Myst.

“Absolutely,” the Valkyrie said. “We’ve been accidentally fast-tracked. We can find Order. We can tell her what happened. I imagine she’ll be the first to want Hrista back here and in chains.”

Brandon nodded his agreement. “This could prove to be an excellent shortcut. Why bother fighting clones and other Berserkers, not to mention psycho-Hrista, when we can just tell ‘Mom’ and she can spank the daylights out of that petulant wraith? It sounds like a clear win in my book.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to agree. But I’d been dying to return to the real island for days now. I missed home and the realms that were most familiar. The normalcy and the good times. I missed the days when I’d just been a Daughter-Sentry and a bookworm, not the one creature whose shoulders carried the responsibilities of today. There was no way of actually returning to those times, but I could still take us to The Shade. Brandon and Myst did have a point, though.

“You saw Order once,” I told Thayen. “How did she seem?”

He wanted to reply, but the Time Master beat him to it. “As bored and teeming with self-importance as Death and the Word. My guess is she will not be easy to find.”

“It’s like you’ve always lived here,” Brandon chuckled.

Jericho and Dafne remained mostly speechless, unable to take their eyes off the peculiar nature around us. The golden sheen of leaves was enough to hypnotize anyone—myself included. Except I was too frustrated about the missed destination to be seduced by Purgatory’s extraordinary appearance. “Is this what it’s like? All of Purgatory, I mean?” Jericho asked after a heavy pause in which the rest of us tried to gather our thoughts.

“Where the Valkyries dwell, yes,” Myst said. “Illuminated and vibrant. Glowing and sparkling. It’s meant to fill one’s soul with warmth and light. Where the Berserkers dwell, it is dark and dangerous, yet just as beautiful. Some parts of this realm are truly breathtaking.” She paused and frowned slightly. “Your presence here is wrong on many levels. I mean, it’s good that we made it, but Order will not be pleased when she finds out there are living beings present in Purgatory. Granted, there’s a good reason for it.”

Brandon scoffed. “Don’t you see? Their presence is a gift from the universe. The living are responsible for our return. For our spiritual regeneration! Every single spell or affliction we might have suffered outside Purgatory is gone,” he reminded her. “It purges everything. It purifies the soul. It’s a fresh start for both of us.”

And for Hammer, I noticed. The dire wolf’s coat was blacker than ever and yet shimmering in the diamond-light. His eyes beamed with sapphire flames, pink tongue lolled on one side of his jaw as he looked around, smiling his wolfish smile. Hammer was enormous, as big as a horse, his back broad with hard muscles beneath the thick coat, his ears flicking at the sound of every movement around him.

“He’s doing great,” I said, nodding at Hammer. He looked my way, as if thinking about his next move. A moment later, he closed the distance between us and licked the side of my face, his tongue soft, wet, and bristly. It made me laugh.

“I think that’s his way of thanking you,” Brandon replied, arms crossed as a grin stretched across his face. I ran my fingers through the dire wolf’s coat. He didn’t seem to mind, so I stayed close to him, honored and pleased to have earned his affection. “I missed this place too. Up to a point, of course,” he added, exhaling sharply. “Reaching Order will not be easy. Time here was absolutely right to raise the issue. He was also right in stating that Order is as complicated and as difficult as Death and the Word and every other universal force out there. She will present her own challenges for us to work through. Plus, at least one of us—mainly me—is on Purgatory’s most wanted list after Hrista made me skip this place. I’m expecting a crap storm, I only hope it won’t affect the rest of you, too.”

I understood his concern, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it. We were already here, and I didn’t have the juice right away to get us out. Besides, we were right where we needed to be.

“What’s that?” Thayen asked, gazing out into the distance. A bright spot approached us, a white light that trembled as it got bigger, its outline suddenly clear as it jumped over a jutting bronze root. It was a horse, a beautiful horse with a long golden mane and blue eyes like Myst’s. She cried out with delight and relief when she saw the creature.

“My Aesir… White Cloud!”

The Valkyrie and her Aesir were reunited as Myst threw her arms around White Cloud’s strong neck and held her tight. He was a gorgeously muscular stallion with a pure white coat. His mane and tail were silky gold threads, and I knew there were wings hidden in his ribs.

“Oh, I’ve missed you, too,” she whispered in his twitching ear. The horse was overjoyed, nuzzling her face with his. Myst climbed onto his back, and he trotted around with beaming pride while she laughed.

Brandon knew exactly how she felt. “They fill your heart with joy,” he said, resting his hand on Hammer’s head.

Myst got off White Cloud but kept him close, occasionally kissing his rounded jaw. “You look well. I knew you’d be fine without me.”

“I’m glad you two are reunited,” Thayen replied, smiling.

“Me, too,” she replied, but her delight soon faded. “We have some things to figure out though, and I don’t think it’s safe for White Cloud to stick around for much longer.”

The statement intrigued me. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a feeling I have. A feeling I haven’t been able to shake since Hrista left Purgatory. If White Cloud stays with me in these current circumstances, he’ll be in danger. We know Berserkers are still slipping in and out of Purgatory, but we don’t know which of them, or where, or when. We only know it’s thanks to Hrista,” Myst explained. “She used Hammer against Brandon. And now, I wouldn’t be surprised if she found a way to use White Cloud against me. Or Axe, Regine’s falcon, against her.”

“That makes sense. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I’ve had to endure with Hammer,” Brandon replied, offering a faint and sympathetic smile.

Myst sighed and turned to look at her Aesir. “You’re not safe with me. Not for the time being.” The horse neighed, clearly upset by her words, but she caressed his head and scratched him behind the ears. “We’ll be together again, I promise. For now, however, I need you to go back to roaming through Purgatory. Stay away from the Berserkers. Stick to the light. And I’ll come find you when this is over.”

It took a while to convince the creature to leave, but in the end, we watched White Cloud give Myst a lick on the cheek and gallop away, his golden mane shimmering splendidly in the warm wind. I could only imagine how Myst felt about all this, but I knew she’d made the right choice. Brandon would certainly stop at nothing to keep Hammer now that he’d gotten his Aesir back. The dire wolf was more manageable though—White Cloud would’ve stood out, especially against enemy Berserkers from The Shade.

“That was so cool,” Jericho muttered, and I noted Aphis nodding his agreement too.

“Don’t worry, Valkyrie sister,” Brandon said after a long and emotional silence. “You told him the truth. You two will be together again.”

“I know.” She forced herself to smile, but it only worked when Thayen took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. The look they exchanged said more than they ever could in words, and I knew in that instant that she’d found comfort in Thayen, much like I had with Brandon. These were odd and complicated emotions we were dealing with, but ignoring how we felt would’ve only made everything much harder.

After a while, we all reached the same conclusion.

Finding Order was our best way forward. She could fix everything. Or so I hoped. I didn’t say it aloud, instead keeping my thoughts to myself for now. We’d expected Death to work out a few debacles for us before, and we’d been the ones to do all the cleaning up in the end—well, not me, specifically, but the previous generation. And if Time and Brandon were right, then we’d have to deal with Order’s fickle nature, too—whatever that might entail.

I knew the Word was more or less careless, intervening solely when he felt like it. I knew Death had secrets, and that she’d told the odd lie or two to save face, causing an abundance of trouble before making the world right again. I could only imagine what Order’s great flaw would be. Clearly being a force of the universe did not guarantee perfection of any kind. It didn’t even imply good reason.

The Time Master smiled, giving himself a moment to take it all in. “It’s strange. My realm isn’t really mine. It’s just a strip of space and time crammed between the world of the living and Purgatory here. This place is incredible. I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would ever wish to leave this place.”

“It’s Purgatory. It’s a sort of limbo,” Myst replied. The gold in her armor shone brighter, as did her hair, capturing the diamond shimmers from above. “Nothing ever stays the same. This hill will be gone in a few days. A lake of silver water might take its place, or a mountain. You never know, because things are constantly shifting.”

Thayen was the first to understand the symbolism behind this. “Because souls don’t normally linger here either. Purgatory is just a realm they’re passing through, right?”

“Passing through, yes, but it’s not that simple. A judgment occurs here. A person’s deeds are measured against the life they lived. Decisions are made,” she said. “Then, when the verdict is spoken, one of us escorts the soul into the beyond. We never go there ourselves.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Thayen replied. “I know how sacred the mystery is to you. I wouldn’t have asked about Purgatory, either, but… well, here we are. It’s not like we can help it.”

“No, I understand. It’s perfectly reasonable,” Myst sighed, looking to the north. There, stony mountains rose with sharp blue ridges covered with white powder. I wondered what it was, since it couldn’t be snow. This wasn’t the kind of place that produced such natural phenomena. Everything was different here, and even my lungs could tell that this wasn’t regular air. It was much richer in… something, though I wasn’t sure what, exactly. But it was making me feel slightly lightheaded. I liked the sensation. It made me come alive. “Over there is the last place I saw Berserkers dwelling. We call that place The Blue Mountains. I expect them to dissolve into sand dunes or something at some point. I’m not sure when, since there is no time here.”

“Oh, wow,” Time said. “That makes some of my skills woefully useless.”

Without the flow of time, the Reaper couldn’t do much. He had other death magic knowledge that might come in handy, but I wondered how Purgatory would tolerate the deeds of strangers trespassing. It was so quiet and eerily pretty, and it was meant to fill one’s soul with light and warmth, but I had a feeling that such sensations were mostly reserved for the dead who crossed over. We, of the living, were being made to feel unwelcome. It made sense. Technically speaking, we didn’t belong here.

“And over there,” Myst pointed to the south, where a mountain rose proudly and poked a cluster of white clouds. Bubbling water poured down into a narrow stream before tumbling off a cliff into an astonishing cascade. “That’s where Edda should be. It was our dwelling place the last time I was here. I assume it’s still there, since the mountain has yet to vanish.”

“Isn’t it… dizzying? For your world, your surroundings to just constantly shift like that?” Dafne asked, her brow furrowed as she tried to digest the concept. “I’m not sure I’d be able to even keep up. It’s definitely uncomfortable.”

Brandon smiled, and it was the warmest I’d seen him look since we’d met. Clearly he thrived in Purgatory, where his power was at full strength and his soul had been cleansed from whatever Hrista may have done to him. “When this is all you’ve ever known, it’s actually quite normal. Personally, I have yet to fully grasp the idea of time.” He paused to look at the Reaper. “Sorry, buddy. No hard feelings. I just don’t see the point. I’ve been dead for so long, I don’t remember ever experiencing the linear flow of time.”

“How does it work, exactly?” I asked, while Hammer stayed by my side. The dire wolf’s affection toward me was flattering, and part of me wanted to squeal with giddiness at how cool this felt. “The absence of time, I mean.”

“Oh, it’s not an absence per se,” Brandon explained. “We may have been using the wrong terms to describe what Purgatory is like. Here, there’s no future until it happens, and when it happens it becomes the past and the present combined. Everything I’m experiencing now is vivid. Everything I experienced years ago is still happening. In my mind, I’m everywhere and nowhere at once. I am standing here with you, and I’m the equivalent of thirty years ago, roaming the ruby hills with Hammer, taking advantage of a strange day when the diamond sky turned black for no apparent reason.”

Jericho raised an eyebrow. “That happens?”

“A lot happens here, and in no particular order,” Brandon said, slightly amused. “The colors change. The basic shapes. The positions of mountains and valleys. Right now, I’m here, observing this hilltop, and I’m also a very long time ago, in a strange era when there was nothing for a while. Not a single form of relief. Not a single stream flowing. Nothing. Just a vast and white emptiness, and all of us out in the open, wondering what happened.”

“The hiccup,” Myst replied with a smile. “Yes, I see it. We were so confused…”

With a better understanding of how the Valkyries and the Berserkers perceived their existence, I realized what Brandon had said earlier. It wasn’t that there was no passage of time in a literal sense. It was that time flowed fluidly, and they lived through the past and the present with equal intensity. There was no yesterday, but there was an internal omnipresence where Brandon was ten-years-ago conscious, and twenty and one-thousand-years-ago conscious, but he was also here now. What we perceived as memories did not exist in this place.

“I admit, I’m fascinated,” the Time Master replied. “The way you experience your existence is worthy of comprehensive study. Unfortunately, neither Death nor Order would ever allow us to fraternize. I expect we will be separated as soon as possible by the powers that be.”

Jericho cleared his throat. “As much as I’m liking this place, Dafne and I are wondering, what’s our next step? Do we find Order? If so, how? Where?”

“Naturally, we have questions,” the ice dragon added with a flat smile. She was well within her rights to be impatient. I’d been briefly distracted by the many oddities of this realm, but my focus quickly returned to our main issue. I kept glancing at Brandon, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was clearly enjoying himself here.

“Unlike the Reapers and their Death, we do not have a telepathic connection to Order that we might summon. But we can head for the White Hall of Truth,” Myst interjected. “Usually, she’s there, overseeing the judgment of souls. Once in a while, she might leave her seat for a little while, but she always returns. Otherwise, I am not sure where we could find her without summoning her, and that comes with troubles of its own. Order can be quite complicated and capricious, not always the friendly type.”

“We must go to this White Hall of Truth, then,” Thayen concluded. We were on the same page, but everything came to a sudden halt as a dozen Valkyries materialized around us. One second, we’d been on our own, figuring out where to go next, then everything shifted into something heavy and unknown. And none of these Valkyries looked friendly.

Hammer growled and bared his fangs, staying close to me. Brandon was frozen, eyes wide and apprehensive as he cautiously looked around, measuring each of the new figures from head to toe. Jericho and Dafne stayed put, following our usual protocol when it came to meeting new and unknown supernaturals. Thayen didn’t move, either, while the Time Master and Aphis, his eternally brooding ghoul, stood tall and proud but quiet before the Valkyries.

“Edda,” Myst gasped at the sight of the brightest among them.

Consider me impressed!Edda was over six feet tall, rivaling the likes of Thayen and the Time Master. Broad shouldered but elegant, she intimidated through the sheer force of her spiritual presence. “None of you move,” she warned, raising a magnificent trident with a silver handle and thousands of round diamonds encrusted into the hilt. Each spike was an alloy of gold and steel, the metal gleaming beneath the white sky. The tips were sharp, and the outer curves had been sharpened to serve as blades. This trident would inflict significant damage, I realized, and it was pointed right at my head. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Edda said upon a closer inspection of me.

“Do we know each other?” I managed, slightly confused.

“You wouldn’t remember,” she replied. “You were barely a babe when I first laid eyes on you.”

“Edda, what are you talking about?” Myst cut in, clearly baffled.

The leader of the Valkyries swung her trident around, shifting its focus to Myst’s throat. Edda was a spectacular sight to behold, clad in gold and steel armor, similar to Myst’s but bigger and richer in decorative details. Mother-of-pearl inlays in the form of stylized lilies adorned her breastplate, and emerald enamel filled the leaf patterns with a delicate sheen. White silk flowed from her shoulders, the cape weighted down by the plethora of diamonds and emeralds and tiny pearls embroidered into its soft fabric. Her golden wings stretched out behind her, each golden feather capturing the light in a peculiar fashion. Yes, Edda took my breath away. Myst was a stunning creature, aesthetically more beautiful than Edda, but the Valkyries’ leader compensated through her imposing frame and the craftsmanship that had gone into her armor.

“You’re to be taken to judgment,” Edda said, her tone clipped and her eyes burning white with anger when she beheld Myst. “You’ve betrayed your oaths and Order herself.”

“Whoa…” Myst murmured, momentarily speechless. Apparently, Edda wasn’t up to date with the unfortunate events that had led to our presence here. I tried to speak on Myst’s behalf, but one of the other Valkyries brought up her sword—its tip held close to my lips enough to silence me.

Hammer was dying to react, but Brandon kept giving him stern glances, as if to hold him back. The Berserker seemed… tame. “I think we should talk before we start passing sentences around, ladies.”

“We’ve come in peace,” Thayen chimed in, but another Valkyrie pointed a long golden spear at his throat, and the vampire lost his words altogether.

“You, Brandon, and you, Myst, are but two of those sought for treason,” Edda declared, unmoved by our attempt to explain ourselves. “You and more than a dozen other Berserkers, as well as two Valkyries who remain unaccounted for, are to stand trial before Order. Your existence within Purgatory hangs in the balance. You brought this upon yourselves the moment you left!”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Brandon tried to explain, his brow furrowed. “I was forced out. Hammer was taken from me and used as leverage. Hrista is up to some—”

“Silence!” Edda shouted, and her voice thundered across the entire realm, heavy and dripping with raw anger. “I will not lend my ear to a treacherous Berserker. Your kind has never had much good to offer, anyway. Perhaps this instance will convince Order that you and Baldur and the whole of your violent clan are worthless and more of a liability than anything else.”

Myst took a step forward, unwilling to let things end like this. “Sister, please, you must listen to what we have to say. Time is of the essence, and—”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Edda shot back, almost laughing. “Time? What time? This is Purgatory, Myst. Time does not affect us here. Time does not matter here. Whatever else you have to say, save it for your trials.”

She turned to leave while the other Valkyries closed in on us. Aphis let out a slight growl, but Time gripped his bony wrist and held him back. “Don’t,” the Reaper hissed. “Let’s play nice.” He raised his voice for Edda to hear him, while Aphis resigned himself to this apparent fate. I knew the ghoul was pretty much powerless in Purgatory. Most Reapers, too. This wasn’t their realm. This wasn’t our realm, either… which begged the question—what could any of us still do here, if push came to shove? “Excuse me, Edda. I presume you’re a leader among the Valkyries,” Time said, with a polite smile. He did have a certain charm about him, and Edda didn’t seem to be immune, though she did struggle to keep a straight face.

“And you’re a Reaper. Much like the breathers with whom you keep company, you don’t belong here,” Edda retorted.

“We must address the issue of Hrista and the missing Berserkers with your mistress, Order,” Time insisted. “I would appreciate it if we didn’t have to do it in the setting of a trial. Death sent me into the field as her envoy. I doubt she’d like to see me get judged for things I did not do.”

Edda measured him from head to toe. “Are you not standing here, right now, in Purgatory, before my eyes?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then you’re here, and you’re not supposed to be here. Therefore, you have broken a fundamental law of the universe, and you shall be judged and punished accordingly, regardless of who your master is,” Edda replied bluntly, then looked at her Valkyries. “Escort them to the White Hall of Truth. By force, if you must.”

She didn’t wait for any of us to contest her decision. She walked away, the trident glinting in the diamond light and the cape pouring down her shoulders like milk, the embroidered gems and pearls clinking and dancing in the breeze. What an astonishing sight to bring such danger to our very existence.

Myst was quick to pass a few instructions around as she surrendered her sword to one of the Valkyries. “Let them take us to Order,” she said, raising her hands slowly in a defensive manner. “It is the only way we’ll get to talk to her, I’m afraid, now that Edda has found us.”

“She’s as arrogant as always,” Brandon growled. “I’m not getting punished for something I didn’t choose to do, okay?”

“Tell that to Order,” Myst reminded him, then nodded at him. “Hand over your weapons. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Thayen and I exchanged brief glances. Clearly compliance was our best way forward. In the end, this was the outcome we’d desired, though the circumstances weren’t ideal. We’d stumbled into Purgatory, and now we had a chance to tell Order about what had happened. We would also be standing trial for the apparent crime of being here, but that was a whole other can of worms I didn’t even want to dig into for the time being.

I hadn’t heard anything about punishment handed to the living for trespassing in Purgatory, but my knowledge of this realm was still limited. As the Valkyries huddled us together with their weapons and took ours away before escorting us down the hill, I stayed close to Hammer and Brandon. “Are they serious?” I whispered. We were following Edda in an angry procession down a swirling beaten path that ended miles away with a massive white tower speckled with hundreds of tiny windows from top to bottom.

“About the trial?” Brandon replied, and I nodded once. “Oh, yeah. We’re a bit screwed.”

A “bit” felt like a major understatement.

Alas, the dice had been thrown. The odds had turned against us, at least for this long, uncomfortable moment. It wasn’t the end, however. No, we were going somewhere with this. We only had to make sure we all walked out of this place safely and with our souls intact. Hrista had to be stopped, and that was the only thing I could focus on. She was my objective, and Order was a means to that end.