Page 127 of Wicked Sea and Sky

I reached for a pack lying near a pair of worn boots. The pockets were full of tools. The satchel brimming with old rations, canteens, gloves, two of everything.

A lump hardened in my throat.

Whoever they were, they hadn’t started alone. But they ended that way. A partnership broken. A dream lost. This place was where fools believed they were different. The best. That they’d be spared the truth:You don’t always make it back.

Exhaling a shaky breath, I searched through more of the artifacts, looking for anything that might give me an edge. A clue to the giant, until a strange feeling prickled across my skin. As if this room was more than just haunted, like it was studying me, waiting for me to discover its secret.

On the far wall, something loomed behind a drape of faded cloth. Unease tensed my muscles as I tugged the fabric away in a cloud of dust.

It was a mirror, framed in solid gold.

I peered into the glass, but my reflection didn’t peer back.

Brushing my fingers against the surface, I jerked back when the mirror glowed. Clouds swirled inside the frame, churning like a storm before clearing. At first, I didn’t recognize what I was seeing. But then, I saw the paths. The maze.

The labyrinth stretched out in eerie silence. Dark figures moved through the passages. Some were running. Others cowered against the stone. The creatures screeched, and the sound echoed through the glass, making me look over my shoulder to make sure they hadn’t found me here.

As I watched, I realized none of this was happening in real-time. These were visions of hunters who’d come before.

I reached out again, my finger touching the glass. The haze churned, shifting the vision, and blurring the maze to reveal an expanse of white clouds.

A hunter walked across, his steps methodical, his gaze fixed on the castle ahead. But a second hunter hesitated. He stood at the edge, battered and bleeding. His arm hung limply at his side, likely broken. Instead of crossing, he turned sharply toward an arched stone doorway carved into the cliffside.

The doorway didn’t lead back to the maze. Beyond it was sunlight and green grass. A path to safety for those willing to take it. Without another glance, the hunter stepped through and vanished.

A third man held a token in his hand. He stepped into the air, and a gust of wind sailed through him, knocking him off balance. The token slipped from his fingers. A second of silence. Then his mouth opened in a scream as he plummeted below the clouds.

My eyes snapped shut. I could still feel that weightlessness. The sheer terror of falling.

The haze churned once more. Now, a massive chamberappeared, with vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows. A rope bridge spanned a dark chasm that split the room into two. On the other side, an arched doorway. A wide stone platform stretched along the wall, and on it, a giant slept.

This was the entrance to the treasure room. The one that held the shard.

A man appeared at the bridge’s edge. He hesitated, hands gingerly gripping the ropes. A faint creak echoed, not just in the vision, but in the room around me. His boot touched the first board. Another creak.

The giant’s eyes snapped open.

A roar shook the bridge. The man swayed, terror contorting his features as the giant plucked him from the bridge and dropped him like a rock into the pit.

I wrapped my arms around my middle, my breath shallow as the mirror swirled and a different man appeared. He made it to the fourth board. The bridge creaked. The giant woke. Three more hunters tried the bridge. The first slipped, falling through a gap between the boards. The others were swatted from the ledge by the giant’s fist.

One after another, the scenes played. The tiniest creak. A warped board scraping. A breath of sound—

The giant woke.

Not one of them even reached the middle of the bridge, where the boards were pristine and untouched. You couldn’t cross without making noise. Many had tried. Some had even gotten clever, trying to swing over with ropes. Some tried to distract the giant first and then run.

Every single one of them learned the same truth: If you wake the giant, you die.

A cold shiver wrapped around my spine. I was going to dieon that bridge. It wasn’t fatalism. It was a fact. The bridge was a death sentence.

And I still had to try. Because I was dead either way. By curse or by giant. Suddenly, the bats didn’t sound like such a bad way to go. Better the devil you know than a giant’s fist. But at least trying the bridge meant I hadn’t given up. That I fought to the end.

A promise kept.

I draped the cloth back over the mirror, ready to get it over with and join the long line of deathly visions behind a pane of glass. Immortality in a way. A hunter’s dream.

And maybe that was the irony of this hunt: luring adventurers from far and wide with an impossible task, meant only to grant them their wish of lasting glory.