Page 16

Chapter Eight

SACHA

“Some structures are not built to shelter. They are built to watch.”

Sayings of the Earthvein Sages

My first step out of the tower and onto the sand is a rebirth.

The desert heat slams into me, brutal and immediate after spending so many years in the tower’s cloistered shade.

My skin protests under the sun, eyes watering against the brutal light.

But I welcome each miracle—the tight pull of hot breath in lungs, the sting in my eyes, the burn where the light touches exposed flesh.

Each sensation lands like a brand. Undeniable proof that this moment is real and not another cruel dream of freedom.

Twenty-seven years of captivity, ending with one single step.

The sand gives beneath my feet, loose and unfamiliar after years of stone.

I shift my weight, dig my toes deeper, absorbing the texture of it—gritty, sunbaked, abrasive, and gloriously real.

A gentle breeze brushes across my face, carrying scents I’d half-forgotten—sun-baked earth, distant minerals, the smell of sunlight.

I breathe them in until my chest hurts, filling my lungs with air that hasn’t been recycled through magical filters for decades .

The vastness of the desert in front of me is almost overwhelming.

There are no walls or boundaries surrounding me.

Only an endless horizon in every direction, a sky so blue it seems unreal after years of violet-tinged twilight.

My senses, dulled by years of sameness, are drowning.

My vision swims, edges blurring as tears form unbidden.

Too much input at once. Too much freedom.

Too much everything .

I stagger. Just a step. Caught between elation and vertigo, my mind struggling to process the sheer enormity of open space after so long in confinement.

Despite the rational part of my mind that recognizes the need for provisions before going any further, I cannot bring myself to turn back. Not when freedom has just embraced me. What if I go back inside and the binding slams back into place? The thought sends a tremor of genuine fear through me.

I take another step forward, then another, each one carrying me further from my prison. Each footfall sends a shock of recognition through my body.

This is real. This is happening.

I am free .

The binding is broken. Not just weakened or altered— gone . The magical chains that suppressed my power have been shattered. Its absence vibrates through me like a void suddenly filled. A pressure that has defined my existence is simply … missing.

I’m ten steps away from the tower when it finds me.

My power?—

It rushes through me like water breaching a long-failed dam.

Shadows tear through pathways long closed, flooding spaces inside me that have stood empty for decades.

The impact as it returns is almost unbearable, like blood rushing back into a limb gone numb, a storm of pins and needles erupting beneath my skin.

I gasp, doubling over as the force of it pulses through me in waves, simultaneously familiar and foreign.

The shape of it is familiar. The scale is not.

Twenty-seven years without it has made me a stranger to my own strength.

Shadows call to me from everywhere, even in this blinding sunlight.

The hard line where a stone casts shade.

The blurred edge of my own silhouette on the sand.

The faint pocket of darkness beneath a desert scrub.

Each one recognizes me, responds to me, answers me.

They reach toward me like long-lost friends, like loyal soldiers awaiting commands, like parts of myself returning home after a long exile.

I spread my hands before me, power gathering in my palms—tentative at first, then with increasing confidence.

Tendrils swirl around my fingers like smoke, darkening and solidifying before dispersing again at my silent command.

The rush is intoxicating, power flowing freely after being dammed for so long.

My hands shake, unused to channeling such forces after years without.

The darkness wavers, then steadies as I regain control that once came as naturally as breathing.

For the first time since before the tower, maybe even before the war, I allow myself a genuine smile. Not the carefully controlled expressions I’ve offered Ellie, but something that feels real and terrible in its satisfaction .

I tip my head back, and close my eyes. The desert heat presses against me, and I embrace it. All of it. The discomfort, the harshness, the brutality of this environment.

All of it is freedom.

“Sacha.” Her voice breaks through my reverie, pulling me back from the precipice of complete surrender to my returning power. I turn to find her standing in the doorway, her expression a mixture of shock and unease as she watches me.

“If we’re going to leave, we need supplies. Water, at least. I nearly died out here before.”

Her practical concern cuts through the exultation rushing through my body.

For a moment, I resent this interruption …

this intrusion into my first taste of freedom.

Then I study her sun-flushed face, the wariness in her stance, and remember the way she stumbled into the tower—barely alive, sunburned, and dehydrated.

She’s right, of course. The desert almost killed her once. It won’t hesitate to do so again. And even I, with all my returning power, cannot conjure water from dry air.

The realization grounds me. Power without purpose is merely indulgence.

“Yes.” The word costs me effort. I’ve waited too long for this moment, and now I must delay it further. “Take what you can find in the tower. There should be a water skin. Fill it up. Bring whatever food will keep.” I look down. “And footwear. My boots are in the chest. Quickly.”

I remain at the threshold, unwilling to step even one foot back into the cool chamber that confined me.

The sand burns beneath me, the sun sears the back of my neck, but I make no move to shield myself.

I don’t seek out shadow. I don’t command protection.

I let the discomfort anchor me, branding each moment into memory.

This pain is proof that I’m no longer bound.

She turns and hurries up the spiral staircase, returning minutes later, breath slightly uneven, arms full.

The water skin sloshes with each step. Bread wrapped in cloth is cradled against her chest. My boots dangle from her fingers, alongside the small knife I stowed away so long ago it almost feels like it belonged to another life.

I take the boots and sit, fumbling with the laces.

The leather feels stiff, unfamiliar, and my fingers are clumsy and unpracticed.

The task is simple, but my hands don’t remember how to do it.

The laces knot. I have to start over. Irritation flares, then fades.

I finish by force of will, not muscle memory.

“It feels different out here,” she says, as I rise. “The air, the light.”

Different. The understatement borders on absurd. She doesn’t know what it means to feel the world again. The power coursing through me now would terrify her if she could sense even a fraction of it.

“Yes.” I adjust my stance and turn to face her, steadying myself against a wave of dizziness. Too much light. Too much space. “After so long inside, everything seems … heightened.”

I resist the urge to summon shadows, though my magic itches for release. Instead, I turn to the tower behind us. Once my prison. Now just a shape against the sky.

As I watch, the doorway Ellie created begins to close, edges smoothing over until the surface is whole again—flawless, seamless, unmarked.

She gasps, stumbling forward a step as if to try and stop it, eyes wide as she stares at it.

“Would I have been trapped inside, if I’d taken longer?”

“I don’t think so. I believe it would have stayed open until you left.”

Perhaps one day it will find another prisoner. Perhaps it will stand empty forever more. I don’t care.

Extending my senses, I reach for my power.

It answers instantly, and the whole world sharpens.

Shadows slide into focus, not as objects but as awareness—signals, invitations, memory.

Every subtle shift of light becomes a language I once spoke without thought.

Now, it floods me all at once, fast and unfiltered. Not my full strength. But enough.

I sway, breath catching, eyes narrowing as I fight to keep the horizon still. My balance returns with effort. I lock it down, not my power, but my current response to it.

“Which way do we go?” Her voice cuts through the maelstrom of sensation.

I scan the dunes. The same desert that watched me take my last breath of freedom, now witnesses the opposite. The same wind. The same silence. I orient myself by the sun, grateful that, at least, hasn’t changed.

“Sacha?”

I consider our options, though in reality, there is only one sensible choice .

“East. Toward Thornevale Ridge. The desert eventually gives way to more hospitable land. There’s a …” I hesitate, uncertainty washing over me for the first time. “There was an outreach town, Ravencross. We’ll go there first.”

Ravencross, if it still exists, will be our best chance of survival. It will provide us with water and shelter, and more importantly, it’s where I spent the final months before the betrayal. If any of my allies remain, they might be there … if any survived at all.

So much will have changed in my absence. There will have been alliances formed and broken. Powers risen and fallen. I need to understand the state of the world before revealing my return.

I start walking without checking to see if she follows. The sound of her breathing behind me tells me she does. She’s smart enough to know she cannot survive the desert alone.