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I stir to the sensation of moss and grass smushed against my cheek. The scent is strong, it burns my nose with its freshness—a fragrance of dewy earth I haven’t inhaled in what feels like forever.

It tickles.

My nose wrinkles against the brush of earth, of grass, of weeds, even an insect skittering over my face.

My lashes flutter open.

And all I see is darkness.

I squeeze my eyes, once, twice, then the slow contortion of a frown warps my entire face.

So much hits me at once.

Too much.

The searing cut on my head, the pulsations of a swollen brain thrumming against a skull, the raw coarseness of my throat, a deep ache in my chest that, though I can draw in breath, comes with sharp pains through me, like needles.

I roll onto my back.

A boulder is quick to press into my spine. At least, I think it’s a boulder, a rounded, smooth stone of some kind. It doesn’t dig, like a rock would do. It doesn’t cut into my flesh, tug at my ruined sweater, or ridge against the grooves of my spine. It moulds, a curve swelling outwards, and offers some relief in that it arches my back.

Something pops, and the relief there is instant.

A breathy sound escapes me.

I hear it. The full air from my lungs sighing out of me, undeterred. No pressure crushing my windpipe, no leg to silence me…

I am out of the rubble.

My heart jolts.

I scramble to sit upright, but I am slow, and the sudden movement swells nothing less than sheer agony through me.

I am dizzied for a beat, head spinning as I clench my eyes shut. I wait it out, then start, slow this time, to sit on the grass. Then I let time shift by me for a while, let the breaths ease in my sore chest.

Legs splayed, hands digging into the rich soil beneath me, I listen.

The sounds are different where I am now.

Crashing rubble and whooshing shadows and pummelling darkness and drumming bootsteps pounding on stone floors and screams and cries—it’s not gone. But it is fainter now, distant.

I must be near Comlar, but not in it, not anymore.

It takes my mind a moment to catch up, to understand… and my pained face tightens that bit more.

Samick spared me.

He dragged me out of the rubble, carried me away from the destruction of Comlar, then deposited me here…

Wherever here is, I don’t know.

My hands flatten on the dirt.

Grass is damp and rich against my palms. Small stones gloss beneath my fingertips.

I run my touch over the ground—and feel the shift from earth, from nature, to flat pieces of polished wood.

That frown digs further into my furrowed face.

I must look dizzy, stupid, on the brink of passing out.

But no one can see how I look, because not only has the darkness swallowed me whole, I hear no one around me, no one close by.

I roll my jaw, once, twice before my ears pop.

Like lifting my head out of water, sound is no longer distant, muffled. I find myself in the dark, Comlar’s thunderous chaos far to my left, the swell of panic to my right.

I turn my chin to my shoulder.

It’s faint, the little specs of light that flicker and dance from the shouts and the cries and drumming song of bootsteps. The folk who fled Comlar are down there, down in the streets of Kithe.

Which means I am on the path between them.

I understand now, the smooth polished wood beneath my palm. A gameboard.

I am in the place where the gambling tricks went on, where light and dark met before the second passage, and they played, and they gambled, and they laughed…

Ridge was one of them.

My throat thickens at the memory, of him and Luna huddled around a gameboard, and Eamon’s flushed cheeks, and my invite for them both to join us at the Gloaming.

Silly, little halfling. Getting herself into all sorts of trouble.

I have no time to feel sorry for myself or weep about the past. I can’t afford to let the resolve I have held throughout the Sacrament crumble now.

I clutch onto the scraps of that resolve and look down to those faint, tiny flickering lights in the distance, lights that were once much stronger, brighter against the black backdrop of the Midlands.

Those dim lights are where I should be focused.

Not to be dramatic, but I am in desperate need of a healer. And if Comlar is falling, then I imagine the medical tents and healers are down there in town.

I bite down on the anticipation, braced for the pain that is about to sing through every bit of me—and I move. My boots slide closer to my bottom before I lean my weight forward and start to rise.

My teeth bare, gritted down on a strangled groan.

That groan doesn’t let up. It is drawn out, eternal, and—as I stand, wobbly, uneasy—the groan hitches into a whimper.

The pain is shredding me, searing my thighs and punching from the inside of my skull.

Something is definitely broken in my shoulder. I can’t lift my left hand, not higher than above the elbow.

I let it dangle limp at my side as I stumble one boot forward.

My head spins.

The darkness somehow worsens it, dizzies me more, and I don’t know where my next step should be, which way I am facing. I land my boot on the grass, harsh, too harsh, and I mutter a garbled apology before I stumble into a tree.

My head knocks off the bark, and the scrape of flesh is fast followed by a warm sensation.

I rest for a moment.

One heartbeat; my lashes shut on the rugged bark pressing into my face, droplets of blood misting my forehead.

Two heartbeats; my knees creak under my sagging weight as I stumble back some steps from the tree.

Three heartbeats; I mutter a string of gravelly curses before I lift my good hand out in front of me and slide my steps forward.

That is easier.

No lift of the knee, then thud of the boot, impact reverberating through me. Instead, boots sliding, easing, my body gliding with it, that works.

That keeps the dizziness settled, somewhat.

I find the path, the shift beneath my boots from padded earth to stripped dirt.

I turn my chin and squint down at the faint gleams.

I follow them.

My soft, sliding steps are slow, boots scraping over the path, and I have the fleeting wonder why Samick left me there on the grass.

Mind, it’s a wonder he saved me at all.

And, really, dumping me on the grass served him better. Probably didn’t want to be responsible for an unconscious, injured me down in Kithe, assuming that is where he went, so he just hid me in the woods that line the sloped path, then ditched.

I’m grateful.

He saved me from certain death. A slow, painful one.

But I don’t yet feel the safety I perhaps should.

I don’t feel relief that I am alive.

Something about the Sacrament hasn’t left me yet, the shock of it maybe, the fight to survive, the horrors…

I am not rushed by the overwhelming relief that I am here, alive, survived. I am not brought to tears with sentiment.

I am still in the mode of mind I was in on the mountain.

Maybe I need a moment. Time with a healer, some phases spent in bed, meals to fill my belly… and then I will be flooded with all the gratitude and relief in the realm.

Until then, that frown has taken permanent residence on my face, and my steps draggggg , so slowly, down the sloped trail towards the light.

And there is reluctance kneading into my shoulders, stiffening them against the closing distance of Kithe.

Not just the light I inch closer to, or the sweet scent of fresh bread and the mouthwatering stink of charred meat on skewers, or the promise of folk to tend to my wounds, but towards the chaos of the fae.

That’s what it is.

Chaos .

Names shouted over heads, cries and snarls, the frantic calls of healers, the screeches of younglings.

The closer I stumble, the louder it is, and I can soon make out the distinction between fae snarls and the grumblings of kelpies disturbed on the roads.

And they are disturbed.

I see that as I hobble my deadweight down the lane, my good shoulder dragging over the course, damp wall.

Streams of fae.

More than there is space for, the fae from Comlar are a sudden plague rushing the streets, the roads, climbing onto carriages and pushing through doors at random to escape the tide of the crowd.

I stagger to a pause.

Leaning against the stone wall that smells faintly of mildew, I slump in the stagnant, dewy air of the lane—the very same one Taroh attacked me in, a lifetime ago, but just yesterday, too.

Time feels a foreign concept to me now.

Might be the searing, thumping gash on my head that, as I lift my hand to, brings the warmth of blood to my fingertips. I cup the wound at the back of my head for a moment, the faint, distant understanding of my dizziness passing through my sluggish mind.

I need a healer, now .

My chest wavers with my steadying breaths.

I scan the startled, stark faces flooding the road, all a blend of ashy pallor and greenish nausea. Most stare up at the hill I came from, up where Comlar is thundering to its death. Others are reaching up on their toes and scaling shopfronts to better search for their loved ones, probably separated by the force of the entire courtyard fleeing downhill.

A niggle in my mind comes slow, sluggish, and I squint against the intrusion, the sense that I too should be looking for someone, that there is a loved one out there I need to find.

Eamon …

His name strikes me.

I was clawing my way through the crowd to Eamon when the blast stole me, then buried me in rubble and bodies.

My mind is slow, too slow.

I need to find him.

But if I don’t get to a healer now, I’ll crumble right here in the lane. I might die. I might just pass out.

My teeth grit as I tug myself away from my support, the wall. Before my legs wobble a bit more and collapse beneath me, I push into step, my boots scraping over the stone pavers. My shoulder burns with each harsher stumble, the jolts searing through me.

The breaths ribbon out of me, grated, as I throw my gaze around the swamped street. Teeming with fae, but I don’t search their faces. I lock onto the wispy white tents. One over by the bakery, another down by the tavern, and two narrower ones parked up the lane opposite. There must have been more. Some even at Comlar. But the destruction has wiped them out.

The lane across the street is closest. But the rows of wounded fae spill out onto the street, queuing up for medical assistance. The tavern is too far, and the blur of my vision makes me doubt I’ll even reach it before I pass out.

I stumble into the rippling crowd, hooded gaze stuck on the front of the bakery, the sheets of a white tent parted at the doors—and I realise the medical centre has been set up inside the shop.

I advance on it.

Can’t help that my mouth floods. The scent of warm bread, freshly buttered, cakes and tarts…

No. Healer first. And if they feed me as they tend to my wounds, all the better.

That’s if I make it there.

The crowd swells and pulls and pushes and sways, like violent waves on a pebbled shore before a storm.

Bodies slam into bodies; the air is knocked out of me as I’m shoved around like nothing. It steals me back to the river, the strength of the currents sweeping me towards that waterfall, the waters controlling me, deciding where I go. Only this river is not of water, it’s of fae.

The only thing that stops me from crumpling is that each time I’m barged into, I stagger back into another fae. Keeps me upright.

My hooded eyes are aimed at bodies.

Obstacles.

I have no other way through this rush.

If I drop to the ground, I’ll be trampled.

I can’t climb anywhere, there’s nothing above me but the clotheslines that zigzag between the slanted homes of the town centre.

Every other step, I push up on the toes of my boots and frown over shoulders and heads. All I see are more shoulders, more heads, some panicked faces, all through a haze that’s settling in me.

A female backs into me, and I am knocked into a stumble. Her babe is swaddled firm in a wrap, and she holds it close to her chest as if to protect it from what holds her gaze.

Brow knitted, I stagger around and trace her stare to Comlar, to the storming spiral that powers from the stone courtyard up into the sky. Less volatile than before the second passage, it’s a steady stream that echoes with a thunderous rumble.

My mouth tightens as I search for the tower in the distance, my tower. But I don’t see so much as the outline, the silhouette…

It is gone.

Fallen, like the rest of Comlar.

All that’s left is the steady stream of darkness that floods the thick black of the sky, a darkness that presses down on us in Kithe, dims the streetlamps, the glowjars, the torches—and if more aren’t lit soon, I imagine we’ll all be plunged into utter blindness.

A burn of nausea singes my insides. It draws me back to the present, reminds me of the healer.

Halfway there.

Just need to keep going, a bit more.

But as I turn my back on Comlar, and my ears begin to ring, I find that my head feels heavy and it’s starting to loll.

I lean my weight forward—and push on.

Something knocks the back of my head.

There is not enough fight in me to even snarl as a youngling is passed from parent to parent, over my head, and its horrid, honeyed hands reach out too close to my face.

The stickiness of those chubby hands has my face twisting as I cringe away.

All that escapes me is a grumbled sound.

I shove past the parents and take pause at the rear of a carriage. I sag against it, my lashes consuming my vision.

I just need to rest a moment, only a moment.

“Nari!”

I frown.

My hooded gaze drags around the bodies entombing me.

“Nari!”

My sagging shoulders tense, my neck arches and I force a hand up into the air, but it does little more than raise, it doesn’t flap or wave. Whatever scraps of energy I have fought to hold onto, they are gone now, slipping between my fingers like water in a fisted grip.

But my voice manages a faint whisper, something that sounds so close to a beloved word, a name etched into my heart…

“ Eamon. ”

“I’m coming, Nari!” He sounds far, a thrum of noise between us. “Stay right there!”

I couldn’t disobey even if I wanted to.

My knees creak louder than the carriages that rattle all around the street. Beneath my weight, the fault of my muscles slowly sinks my legs downwards—and before I can hit the ground, arms come swooping around me.

I blink on the foggy dimness encasing me.

There is no Eamon to face me. He grabs me from behind, his arms hooked under my pits, and he hoists me into him.

The heels of my boots dig into the stone road. My arms are limp by my sides.

I blink, once.

My heart flutters. “ Bakery …”

That’s all I manage before my lashes shut on the mild light of Kithe, on the panic of it, and my spine crashes into the chest behind me… a chest far too strong, too carved from muscle to be Eamon’s.

A smooth voice follows me into the abyss: “Feeling peckish, heartbreaker?”