This poor girl needed help. Kallia couldn’t imagine how someone came to be in such a state, in a place such as this. “Hello?” She reached out to her gently. “Are you all—”
A blood-curdling scream tore from the girl. She lurched back hard, her eyes almost completely white from how wide they’d gone, searching all around. “Wh-where did it g-go?”
Her broken cries flooded the air, cracked dry as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in days.
“Where did what go?”
The wails ceased, and the stranger’s stare cut straight to Kallia with animal hatred. “You ruined it.”
At the prick of fear, Kallia faltered back. Not far enough. Not fast enough. Everything went black as her jaw suddenly slammed hard to the ground. The girl would not get off no matter how Kallia thrashed, unable to do more than keep her arms up to shield her face as best as she could.
“They brought me home—why did you take me back here?” Between hoarse sobs came a clawed swipe. “Why would you do that?”
Kallia couldn’t breathe. With one last push, muscles screaming, she shoved off the girl and gulped in a deep breath, staggering back to her feet.
Run. It was all Kallia could think.
She tried. But every step forward soon felt like sinking. Kallia froze as she looked down at the dirt submerging her feet to her ankles, packed hard as cement. Every time she pulled, she sank a few inches lower.
“You ruined the garden.”
The girl stood before her now, an odd doll-like tilt of her head, the slight glow of her outstretched hand.
A magician.
Kallia’s pulse thrummed hard. Her fingers curled into her scratched palms, trying to concentrate as the girl’s off-kilter laughter rang around all her.
Please, Kallia begged whatever power lingered inside. There had to be something. Anything.
Please come.
“How about I make a new garden, then?”
At the girl’s proposal, Kallia sank deeper. She wriggled and thrashed to break from the ground, but nothing gave way. And nothing was coming.
Without her power, she was powerless.
Her heart stopped cold at the abrupt cry, forcing her to look back up. The girl was nowhere in sight, as if carried off by the wind.
Kallia tensed the moment the ground loosened.
And hands grasped at her from behind.
“Now do you see why you can’t go off alone?” Jack whispered hoarsely, vanishing hunks of packed dirt piece by piece as he pulled her out.
In a daze, Kallia didn’t even fight him off. Her thoughts swam so violently, she wasn’t sure what was real anymore. “What … what’s wrong with her?” She inhaled shakily. “Did you kill her?”
Once Jack fully pulled Kallia free, he sighed. “Of course not. Though it would’ve been a mercy. There’s not much that can be done for lost magicians like her.”
“Lost?”
A faraway giggle trilled in the air, ominous as a wolf’s howl. Kallia squinted through the darkness, locating a figure moving through as if nothing had happened. “Oh, marvelous—the sun!” Her form twirled in place once again, farther and farther away. “Such a bright, beautiful day…”
Like the strange melody of her words, she faded, chasing sunshine where there was only darkness.
“What do you mean lost?” An uneasy knot formed in Kallia’s stomach. “We can’t just let someone wander out by themselves like that.”
“So concerned about someone who would’ve gleefully drowned you in dirt just now?”
Kallia’s glare cut through him. “She needs help.”
“There’s no helping her. Or anyone else who happens to be stumbling around all starry-eyed like that.” Jack glanced about them cautiously. “Any magician is beyond help if they lose themselves to the devils.”
Kallia swore she’d heard him wrong and waited for the laugh to come. After a tense breath, it never arrived. “What tales are you trying to serve me now?”
“If they’ve only ever been tales for you, you’re lucky.”
“They’re not real.” He had to be testing her, seeing how much of a naive fool she could be to believe any word of this.
Devils.
The last time Kallia had heard the term, it came from a scolding tutor—one of many who loved to wave it around like a weapon, as if that would make her sit still. It sounded just as absurd to her ears now as it had then. Children must behave, lest the devils find them. Those beings who were tempted by trickery and danced below the surface, where magic thrived and Zarose himself journeyed to close the gate.
Those were the stories from the legend. Not the truth.
“Then if you’re so sure, try strutting out there and proving me wrong. The only thing easier than gullible prey is skeptical prey.” Jack brushed off the dirt from his pants. “You’ve been far too close already. Without me, you would’ve been bowing like some wind-up doll until you starved on that stage.”
Kallia swallowed hard. The stage had felt so real beneath her feet, just like the Court of Mirrors. That desire to fall back into those moments, those familiar sensations, nearly devoured her.
“In this world, illusions are not just for show,” Jack went on, his jaw clenched. “The traps the devils lay out are particularly tricky. The more you believe in these illusions, the more powerful it becomes. Like walking into the jaws of some beast, masquerading as a glorious feast.”
Kallia let out a noise too strained to be a laugh.
In this world.
The distinction set ice to her nerves. Wherever she and Jack were held nothing of where they’d come from.
Wherever this was, this felt somewhere else off the map entirely.
“In this world.” The cold shook her voice. “Are we…”
Jack’s face shifted from calm to shadow. It made the dark circles beneath his eyes all the more apparent, the slightly disheveled nature of his hair as though he’d raked his fingers through it one too many times. Nervousness hardly ever befell Jack, she almost thought it never touched him at all.
Somehow, this world brought it out in him.
“… are we dead?” Kallia finished, half-dazed, startled by Jack’s bark of laughter. A strange sound, it went on, chasing the shadows from his face as quickly as light.
She glowered. “It was a genuine question.”
“I know.” There was a smile to his words, something warm beneath them. “But alas, no. At the very least, we’re not that.”
There was nothing assuring in the way he said it as he turned and walked on. No glance behind. No need, with no other choice but to follow like a fool.
An even bigger fool would simply stay put.
The bleak thought pushed her forward, following the man who walked through the darkness as though he knew exactly where it would take him.
3
The last time Daron had seen his aunt, it had been at Eva’s funeral.
It was a dreadful day filled with shaky sobs and sniffles into handkerchiefs, eyes glistening all across the room. Daron’s remained completely dry as he stared at the mountain of flowers atop the closed casket. A symbolic memorial, as no body had been recovered.
No one questioned where that body had gone once it passed through the mirror—where it was now or what her true name had been. As if it wasn’t bloody obvious enough that this funeral was no more than a party for Soltair’s latest tragedy.