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My heart plummets faster than a stone in a well. I forget everything about the trial and why I am here!

Daevas. The sorcerous kind. Hundreds of them.

In the east of Jamshah, not far from here, the very heart of the continent.

It sounds like a fever dream cooked up by a madman.

Impossible. It is a bedrock fact, taught to children alongside their first nursery rhymes: Daevas are ancient history, and if some exist, they are mainly behind the Doozak Mountains, a distant threat, not loitering on our mainland.

I mean, once they did, in ages long past. In the olden days, the Asyrion continent was solely Daeva territory. These ancient Daevas, despite their horned, tailed, and tusked forms, were peaceful and intelligent, living harmoniously with nature, if the fragmented lore can be believed.

Millennia ago, a mass migration of men from the Wildlands to the Asyrion continent led to invasion, colonization, and civilization, displacing the Daevas and forcing them to retreat behind the remote Doozak Mountains—a harsh, elevated region on the southeast coast of the continent.

A region that Daevas could traverse but remained impenetrable to men, as no man has ever reportedly entered and returned from those peaks.

For ages, men’s civilization flourished, believing Daevas were mythical or extinct behind those mountains.

That illusion shattered three hundred years ago when a massive army of Daevas—far different from the peaceful Daevas of the lore, now savage, cave-dwelling monsters burning with hatred, especially for men—ambushed the continent in what history refers to as the Great War.

Most disturbingly, they were led by a small, more cunning set of leaders who could cast very powerful sorcery—a chilling development, given that no recorded history had ever credited Daevas with sorcerous abilities.

These sorcerous Daevas, although few in number, were more powerful than an average sorcerer in their abilities.

Izadeon, near the Doozak, suffered first and catastrophically, as a third of its population perished in the initial ambush. Soon after, nearly half the continent fell, with millions killed or enslaved.

The turning point came when King Zaccarya Zareen of the old Aramis Kingdom allied with previously persecuted sorcerers who had lived in isolation from men, promising them land in exchange for their help in defeating the Daeva army.

The combined strength of men and sorcerers pushed the Daevas back into the Doozak Mountains, with Izadeon being the last region freed.

Wary of potential dangers and against the Eastern province’s vehement opposition, the Western armies refrained from crossing the Doozak Mountains and called the Great War won and over.

True to his word, King Zaccarya Zareen gifted a piece of Aramis to the sorcerers, a region that became known as the Firelands, and the Treaty of the Nine established the Asyrion Union with nine independent provinces.

Martysh was established with bases in the Doozak Mountains and across the continent to guard men against any future Daeva threats.

And now, the head of Martysh is ordering troops to be dispatched in secret because hundreds of sorcerous Daevas are in the east of Jamshah, far from the Doozak Mountains, looking for a fraction of the Star , whatever that is!

A wave of disbelief, dawning horror, and a chilling sense of doom slam into me, momentarily making me forget my true purpose here – the trials.

Darian, who has finally disengaged from his intense study of the maps, notices the shock on my face. He strides over instantly, and his hand reaches for the parchment I clutch.

As I watch him read, the man I recognize seems to recede.

The lines of mirth around his eyes fade, and his lighthearted expression is completely absent.

The letter’s content doesn’t seem to provoke any surprise in him, only an unwavering focus.

His entire bearing has shifted, not to grimness, but to an arresting, almost regal aura of command that, interestingly, only intensifies his handsome features.

When he finally looks up, the depth of his blue gaze sends an instinctual warning through me, almost urging me to step back.

“Do you know of something called the Star ?” His voice is devoid of its usual lilt. “In your Firelands teachings?”

I can only manage a numb shake of my head. “I… I can’t believe there are hundreds of sorcerous Daevas in one place.”

Darian’s expression hardens, and I receive the first truly unkind look he’s ever directed at me. It is intimidating, and a silent judgment of my ignorance is loud in their depths. “Of course, you would say that, having lived your entire life on the western side of the continent…”

At the widening of my eyes and probably the mortified look on my face, he stops himself, nibbles on his lip, bites the inside of his left cheek and pushes a single harsh breath out.

When he speaks again, his voice is marginally softer. “It’s simply that most Westerners are sheltered from the realities of the Far East. In our lands, encounters with Daevas are not so uncommon.”

“I’m sorry if I offended.” My voice is low. “I thought most of them had perished or lived behind the mountains.”

“They generally are. But when they choose to venture out, you wouldn’t know of their presence until an ambush strikes a village or the march of a caravan is silenced.”

The grimness in his voice makes me strangely sad. “Do they just… come out to kill people?”

“We don’t know their ultimate aims. What is certain is that they try to twist as many creatures they cross paths with into monstrous abominations on these frequent visits of theirs. ”

The alteration sorcery. It’s a kind that has been strictly forbidden in Firelands. It’s the sorcery that the Daevas used to warp innocent animals into horrific demons to supply additional forces for their armies. To think that they do such evil acts, even to this day…

“Why would they need to create monsters lurking in Izadeon?” I breathe.

“You want me to divine the workings of a Daeva’s mind?

” Darian retorts with a touch of grimness in his voice.

“What delights them more than pain and suffering? Fortunately, Izadeon contains the worst of their blight, preventing its spread to the heartlands.” He pauses, and his expression hardens even further.

“Though even I concede that hundreds of them, especially the sorcerous kind, this far west… It is deeply bizarre.”

“And this Star , they might be looking for in Jamshah? What is that ?” The name, even though it’s common in other contexts, feels foreign on my tongue.

“ That ,” Darian breathes, “is the most important question.”

He lays the parchment on the table and returns to one of the larger maps on the wall, which is marked all over.

His profound seriousness, on top of the terrifying revelation about Daevas, draws me towards him, almost pushing me to read the maps and try to find any other information about this Star and Daevas’s dealings with it.

But I stop myself. I am not here to unravel Martysh’s secrets; that knowledge will come after I join their ranks, right? My current mission is to learn about the trials, the very key to joining and accessing those secrets.

“Darian, dawn will break soon. The Martyshyars will be arriving for their duties. There is nothing more about the trials that we can find here. Let’s try somewhere else.”

But he doesn’t seem to hear me, his gaze still riveted to one of the maps.

I stride towards him, curious about what on the map has his attention so fiercely.

But a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision stops me in my tracks.

My head whips to the door, where a sliver of shadow under the gap betrays someone’s approach.

My heart hammers as I lunge toward Darian, simultaneously whispering the words for an invisibility spell.

I feel a dizzying sense of weightlessness just as the door creaks open.

And there, framed in the doorway, stands the ONE person I have yearned to see throughout my childhood and all my adult years, Martyshbod Lirael!

Not like this. Gods. Not while I can get caught in the act of invading her privacy…

Darian, to his credit, stays as motionless as a statue despite my sudden ambush to grab him and extend the invisibility spell to him.

Gods. Why is she here? In the dead of the night? This keep is where Martyshyars work, not where they live. And her residence is far away, in the main keep.

Every ragged gasp I fight to suppress feels like a roar in the sudden stillness of the room.

Can she hear it? Can she hear the wild beating of my heart?

In the desperate lunge for Darian, I didn’t have time to cast the sound-dampening spell.

I feel my blood running ice-cold. We are trapped, exposed by the very air we breathe.

Lirael moves with slow, graceful movements that suggest she might not have seen us before we vanished. She glides towards the desk, the one I’d just defiled with my thieving hands. Her eyes sweep the small space before landing directly on her own letter.

My gaze shoots to the parchment Darian placed on the desk earlier. Did he put it exactly where it was? My stomach twists into a knot of pure dread. The head of Martysh, a nine-starred Martyshyar, the most secretive intelligence order on the continent, surely misses nothing . This is it. My end.

My mind begins to paint all possible ways for my upcoming disgrace.

Disqualification, that is a given. My dream of joining Martysh, of proving myself, would be ash.

Even if I try to join the army despite my promise to Emmengar, they will never accept me if they catch me cheating and stealing their secrets.

But the most terrifying thought is her disappointment—the woman I’ve idolized my entire life—when she discovers the girl she once kindly helped is nothing but a cheat, a common thief.

I’ve relied on tricks, not my true strength, to win.

A tremor begins deep inside me, a physical herald of my coming shame and disgrace.

Lirael just stands there, and the silence stretches, each second feeling like an eternity.

The very air in the room seems to have thickened with her mere presence, an almost heavenly aura surrounding her that transcends the normal presence of any mortal woman.

It is as if the room itself holds its breath in her presence.

The waiting is an exquisite form of torture, stripping my nerves raw while she keeps staring at her own desk, deep in contemplation.

Then, she moves… Not with the sudden fury toward us as my panicked mind screams, but with a languid motion, she leans against the table.

Her hand reaches out to her seal. The dry rasp of the parchment being rolled, a decisive click as she presses her seal into the wax, and then, as suddenly as she dominated the space, she simply turns and walks out, leaving the door wide open.

For a long moment, I can’t move. My mind is numb. I can’t process that we’re not caught. Darian, however, edges towards the doorway, pulling me behind him.

Peeking around the heavy wood, I see her reaching the end of the hallway and ascending the distant stone staircase toward the rooftop, likely going to the aviary to send the letter.

Darian nudges me. Now . It has to be now. Before she returns. I nod at him, and we rush through the corridors and down the stairs.