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A giant fissure pulled the ground apart, splitting between my unmortal legs, splicing through my shadows that cloaked me, devouring soil, seeds, and secrets.
A vortex spun toward me, full of glittering asteroids. It sucked me deep and blew around me, plucking me from the mortal realm and carrying me high, high, high into the heavens.
I had no control where the star-wind took me.
I spun and twisted, growing sick with speed and blur.
I no longer knew what was up or down.
Clouds whipped around me like frothing waterfalls, and black blood dripped from the spritz of shooting stars.
My blood.
My blood that was as dark as death and as endless as forever.
The winds suddenly stopped spinning.
I hovered there in absolute silence, gleaming with starshine and moonglow.
Weightless and speechless, I slowly descended through the thick, vast blackness until a lacy web appeared below me.
A web that cast from one corner of the galaxies to the other, slicing through the worlds and binding so many realms into one. Each thread was as fine as a wolf’s hair, gleaming a precious molten silver.
I hovered above it, studying the strands, noticing dewdrops that danced with life, clinging to the net. In each iridescent sphere, images danced and glimmered, giving glimpses into a mortal’s hopes and horrors, following their savages and successes.
So many dewdrops.
So many ways to watch from afar, peering into a spyglass of their existence. Occasionally, a droplet fell, raining from the frosted filigree that made up the cosmic web.
And I somehow knew that whoever existed in that drop was now dead. The sphere was no longer needed to grant sight as there was no longer a spirit to watch.
I didn’t question how I knew that.
I just did.
My fingertips burned to touch the gossamer web, drawn to its knowledge. Every string held deep, dark secrets far greater than any I could remember. Each cord contained past, present, and future, and I only had to pinch its lace to be given everything that I’d lost.
I tried to float onto the tapestry-web, looking toward the dark horizons where the lattice vanished into black.
But whatever held me hostage didn’t release me.
I remained aloft and adrift, bound by invisible ropes.
I struggled.
I kicked and fought with a body that wasn’t real.
But then, the moths arrived.
Their fluttering wings created an eerie drone, growing louder and louder as they thickened the everlasting sky. Their strumming echoed through the stars as they gathered as opaque as the darkness around me.
I gasped for breath.
I blinked for sight.
I couldn’t see past their torrenting tumble.
Every moth in the world cloaked me, some as large as birds and others as small as flies. Some as colourful as the peacocks I’d seen roaming in a valley, while others preferred to stay as monochrome and pure as the moon.
I flinched as their feathery feelers tickled my mind and spirit. Their legs treaded over my shoulders and down my spine. And their wing-dust coated my skin until I glowed like they did, powdered with luminous shades of emerald, ochre, and pewter.
They flew closer.
Their wings batted against me.
Their whir grew louder and louder until my ears throbbed with noise. They were in my hair and on my eyes. They pulsed on my arms and weaved around my ankles.
And then the cloud cleared just a little, the winged creatures parting for a single moth to flit toward my face.
I studied the beast.
Its wings were white as Runa’s hair, gently curved and fuzzy with incandescent powder. With every flutter, it shed colourless glitter, leaving a shimmery silver trail in its wake. Its black feelers were bushy and long, its twitching legs banded with black and white stripes, but its eyes were what froze me.
They glowed like the full moon with pinpricks of night and stars.
They were full of every memory I’d lost and every event yet to pass.
We stared at each other.
I smiled as recognition slowly warmed my forgetful emptiness.
I didn’t know this dark dynasty, but I did know this moth.
I knew him because I was him.
Something clicked into place within me.
Something finally slipped free.
A name.
Just a name.
Nothing more.
But it was more than I’d had in so very, very long.
I opened my lips to speak it.
Swelling with gratefulness and joy.
But the moth flew toward my mouth.
It fluttered onto my tongue, preventing me from speaking my true identity.
It slipped down my throat.
Gagging and cruel.
Its wings choked me.
Woke me.
I screamed—
Chapter Twenty-Seven
. Runa .
THE FIRE HAD SNUFFED OUT hours ago.
Its ashes were cold, and the sun slipped closer and closer to bed, yet the stranger still wouldn’t wake.
I hadn’t left his side.
Natim hadn’t left my side.
And the wolves had moved to lie next to their fallen pack member, lying stiff and afraid, their yellow eyes locked on the corpse-stillness of their friend.
Tears had dried into salty tracks on my cheeks, and I struggled to swallow back my sobs.
