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53
ANARIA
Where was I?
The bitter cold air smelled like nothing.
Every breath turned to frost; the bottoms of my feet burned where they touched icy stone, even though I kept dancing back and forth. Starry power filled the frigid air with a pale glow, spiraling higher and higher as if this place had no limits.
But I wassomewhere.
I sensed this place’s boundaries with that strange, nameless instinct people have for knowing whether you are inside.
Or outside.
I took one step and tripped over a stone, rubbing my aching shin with a low curse. I was in some kind of cave, my starry magic expanding out far enough to illuminate a flat, even floor scattered with rough, tumbled rocks.
They’d fallen from somewhere, but when I peered up, the ceiling was so high I only saw shadows.
A closer look revealed something else. I’d seen this stone before. In the Shadow King’s throne room, with its darker-than-night walls glittering with a million trapped stars.
For some reason, that revelation was more frightening than being here alone, or the empty vastness, or the fact I might freeze to death if I didn’t get somewhere warmer and fast, because the howling wind cut through my thin shirt and jacket with razor sharp precision.
I spent too long deciding if I was safer in the center of this vast space, with nothing to hide behind, or over by the tumbled-down wall, where some hidden threat could jump out and eat me, then decidedfuck it.
At least over there I’d be out of this godsdamned wind.
The pile of rocks had tumbled onto what had once been a polished floor, and as I got closer, I noticed something strange. Mixed among the rough, black rocks were shards of yellow bone. Enormous bones, the ends splintered like fingers jutting up out of the pile like sailors’ desperate hands from a churning sea.
Those were…Those were…
My mind slowed to a crawl, grappling with what I was seeing, so eerily similar to what we’d discovered in those tunnels. But I wasn’t in the tunnels. I was somewhere else.
Cold. High.Mountains.
These could be the Taranth Mountains, north of Tempeste. The only places further north were the Waste and the Gauntlet, and if I was there…I was as good as dead.
Oddly, the floor was polished to a jeweler’s sheen, perfect, except for this odd pile of rock and bone, as if they’d been left here on purpose.
Like some kind of…ancient shrine.
My teeth chattered, my exposed flesh frostbitten from the cold. Who had brought me here? Was this punishment for killing the Oracle’s beasts?
Or another one of her tests?
I ran my hand over the rough stone, stopping just short of the bones. I had no desire to touch them, no desire to get trapped in another vision while I unknowingly froze to death. A trap of the mind and the body, that’s what this place was, if I allowed myself to be caught.
“A terrible death.”
The male voice floated to me, raging and bitter and endless, like the howling wind.
“One that was not deserved, though none of us get what we deserve.”
“Who are you?” Magic poured out of me in a river of pure, undiluted light that spilled across the polished floor, devouring the shadows, revealing designs in the black stone. My magic left some of the designs faintly glowing, while others remained dark and inert.
Those were…Oh my gods, they were…My mind stopped processing what was etched into the floor as realization slammed into me.
“I decided we should meet, little thief. There is much to talk about. The future, for one thing. The cold will kill you in a matter of minutes, but my sister tells me you are quite resilient.”
