There’s a pressure in the air inside the Soul Sanctuary. It’s nothing harsh or really heavy, just… strange. It’s a faint phantom sensation of something like being underwater, if water only weighed a tiny bit more than air, and comes with the same muffled sound of blood flowing through my head.  Shona marches right on ahead, paying it no mind at all. Mide follows after a brief glance back at me. It takes a little longer to get used to the atmosphere enough to join them. 

Looking around the reception room only strengthens that feeling. The space is almost entirely colored in pale shades of blue — the white of the front desk is tinged faintly blue, and beyond that are speckled blue-grey floor tiles, a waiting room lined with plush blue chairs, walls decorated here and there with stained-glass windows backlit by soft blue light. The door at the end of the waiting room isn’t barred or gated or anything, not physically, but it’s bright like window glare to my new senses. I have a faint hunch that I might not want to touch it.

“…Yeah, if there’s any way you can swing it, just a minute to check up on them might really help us a lot!” By the time I’ve found my bearings, Shona has already approached the front desk and started pressing the older woman staffing it on the latest victims. I can’t hear her side of the conversation, but through the thick glasses that nearly obscure her eyes, she looks perfectly used to this. Groups of Keepers storming in and asking weird questions must just be a day’s work here. Eventually, they both go quiet, leaving the clacking of the receptionist’s keyboard as the only sound. While she does something on her cnidarian drive, Shona fidgets in place, rhythmically bouncing in tiny little hops on one single leg, then the other. Mide is off to the side looking at the windows, and at the moment, the lobby is eerily vacant except for us.

“Thank you so much! Yep yep, we’ll do our best, you take care too!” Shona gives the receptionist an appreciative two-finger salute before twirling around to face us. “Okay, everyone, I’ve got good news! Over here!” she calls out into the little room at her usual volume. “I mean, uh, it’s not good that any of this happened, but good news as far as us finding the… you know what, you know what I mean. The kids, ah… it sounds like they’re not corrupted in any way that’d make it bad to be around them, at least. They’ll have someone out to see us about them in just a bit.”

“Do we want to be around them?” Mide asks. “They’ve got to be having a hard time, and it’s not like we can help.”

“Um, probably not. Like we were saying, I don’t think we have to actually bother them. Just, y’know, get close enough to see what’s going on. If Eyna can get the thing’s scent, that’s all we need… no pressure, though,” Shona says. She shrugs apologetically, then strolls over to the big blue chairs and flops into one. “Oh wow, these seats are like the softest thing in the UNIVERSE! It’s wild! You gotta try them!”

Brushing aside the question of how she’s staying so upbeat in a place like this, on our way to hunt a screaming beast of nightmare, the chairs are in fact pretty comfy.

“So,” I say, a minute into the wait. Shona stops snuggling into her fluffy cushion and looks my way. Mide was already watching me with narrow eyes over tight lips, and her expression doesn’t change now. “Have you two done this much before? How does it go? Exactly how bad will it be in there?”

“Well, uh, strictly speaking, this may not quiiite be a field where we’ve got a ton of…” Shona says, trailing off into nothing mid-sentence.

“It’s our first time too. We’ve never really needed to deal with victims at all. Actually, you’ve probably come closer than we have,” Mide finishes. Shona looks over at her and frowns for a moment, then quickly shrugs it off.

“Have I?”

“Well, the report. You called in for that family. How were they doing?” Mide asks.

“Um, I was mostly focused on the Harbinger? But it was pretty bad. Not as bad as it could be, obviously.  I’m not sure what to compare it to… oh, don’t they still have that runaway from Commixture in here somewhere? Not that bad,” I say.

Uneasy silence hangs in the air as the two stare at me speechlessly.

“…For what it’s worth,” I add after a beat. 

“Urgh… I don’t know if we quite needed to go there, but, uh, yeah, guess you answered your own question! There’s probably not a lot of sunshine and puppies waiting for us inside!” Shona laughs nervously.

Mide, meanwhile, maintains a completely flat, stiff expression.

“Right. Stupid question,” I mumble. Why did I go there? There has to be some less extreme point on the scale I could’ve thought of. Maybe I only deal in worst-case scenarios.

Well, anyway, I started a conversation. I have now officially done my part to make friends and work together. If this doesn’t work out, it’s no longer on my shoulders. Good job, Liadain.

A few more minutes pass, mostly silent but filled here and there by Shona humming little songs. Honestly, this whole cheery front she’s very insistently maintaining is a little creepy. It feels like nothing but flat-out denial of what it is we’re doing could keep someone that peppy in a place like this. But then, what do I know about being happy?

“Shona Tiernan? The doctor says you’re clear to see those patients.”

Eventually, the waiting room door slides open, making an oddly sharp noise like a sword being drawn. A tired-looking man in blue nursing scrubs steps out with three clipboards stacked in one arm and nods in polite greeting. His gaze hovers on me for a little longer than the others, and even when it moves away, he’s watching me from the corner of his eye. Trying to figure out if I’m anyone he knows? “Before that, it looks like none of you have visited before, so if you could all just read these over and sign on the line at the end…” 

“…What’s all this?” I ask. Is Keeper paperwork really a thing?

“Ground rules. Once you’ve agreed to follow them, the protections here will accept you as a guest.”

“Accept us? Are you saying this medical release form is the key to some sort of magic lock?”

“It is,” he confirms flatly.

Mide immediately turns to the last page, signs, and hands her clipboard back.

“Ooh, is this an Arbiter thing?” Shona asks. “Or does the Sanctuary have kids from abroad who handle this stuff?” She runs her hand over the paper, flips through the pages fast enough that she couldn’t have picked up more than a few words from each one, and signs at the end.

The nurse shrugs. “Can’t comment on the details.”

“And it’s not like I can really go bug him about it… oh well,” Shona sighs. She sets her copy on the arm of her chair, leaving him to pick it back up.

For my part, I’m a little hesitant to put my name to a magically binding agreement without knowing what I’m agreeing to, so I take my time looking through it. It’s made up of huge blocks of small print, with some words I don’t know and others I don’t understand in context. Before long, my vision is blurring and my head is spinning, but I do manage to pick out a few key phrases:

INGRESS CONTRACT — BRIGHT HORIZON SOUL SANCTUARY (VISITATION VERSION)
This contract establishes a binding agreement between the active defenses of Bright Horizon Soul Sanctuary and an approved visitor, hereafter the Sanctuary and the Guest…
…the Guest agrees to avoid all physical, social, or mystical interaction with patients, except where expressly permitted by a staff member with at least Layer 3 security privileges…
…inform the nearest Sanctuary staff member of any suspected breach or contamination…
…allows the Guest to invoke the Sanctuary’s protection and cross Sanctuary thresholds unimpeded, with the following exceptions…
…willful violation of these conditions by the Guest shall be penalized by immediate exclusion…
…unless voided by free and voluntary agreement between the Guest and a Keeper with at least Layer 7 security privileges, all of the above clauses shall remain in effect for as long as there are lights in the night sky.

Not that I’m an expert, but that last bit doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the lawyer-speak at all. Why wouldn’t you just say forever? Because Keepers are weird, I guess.

In any case, I don’t see anything about giving away my soul or my right to breathe. Shona would’ve used my fake name if she named me at all while she was checking in, but it seems like a bad idea to sign a mystic contract as my dead grandmother. Instead, I make a complicated twirly line like the ones my doctors sign prescriptions with, but a little messier. If someone were to squint real hard and know exactly what they were looking for, they could read the little squiggle as L. Shiel. Probably. I’m sure it just cares about the symbolism of signing or something like that.

The moment I consider that might be an odd, dangerous assumption to make and start asking myself why I think that, I realize I can sense that intention behind the contract. The feelings invested in the words on these pages are, for the most part, those of total practicality, pristine and thorough… but they’re not completely impersonal, either. Not exactly. There’s a sense of solemn concern underlying it all, and beyond that, there’s not the slightest hint of malice. I can tell there isn’t a single thing in this document that could be considered deception, let alone an outright lie. As surely as I could sense the magic warding the door at the end of the waiting room, I just know.

“Here you go. Um, sorry that took a minute.” Signing it doesn’t feel very magical, in any case. There’s no sudden change in the atmosphere or feeling of anything new coming over me, but Shona and especially Mide are looking at me a little impatiently by the time I’m done. 

The nurse doesn’t seem surprised or bothered as he picks my clipboard up and looks it over — I guess I can’t be the only one who actually wants to read this thing. “It’s no trouble. Looks like everything is in order, so if you’ll follow me…” 

~~~

As soon as we’re all through, the door slides shut behind us with the same sharp noise. We’re in… it looks like a glass tunnel, a half-circle with windows for walls and only soft, featureless blue all around on the other side. That feeling of weightless water pressure is stronger here, and it’s getting stronger still as we head through the tunnel, but I’ve adjusted to it by now. A little more of the same sensation doesn’t change much. 

Here and there, sigils write themselves on the glass in silver light. They’re hard to read against the blue background, but look very much like the ones in Yurfaln’s Wound. For a moment it feels strange to see that same script here, but it tracks with what I’ve read. These sorts of symbols seem to work themselves unconsciously into most large-scale or long-lasting magic, acting almost like an artist’s signature. If they actually mean anything, no one has told me what, although I haven’t done any sort of deep research on the subject. 

At the end of the tunnel is a little square room, empty save for a two-panel mirror set directly into the far wall in a way that makes it look like the doors of an elevator. Rather than a button panel to the side, though, there’s only a smooth ceramic plate. The nurse traces an elaborate pattern onto the plate with one finger, then puts his palm to it and pushes. Nothing seems to have changed, but he looks back over his shoulder and nods. “Follow my lead. Just so you know going in, the first time can be, uh, a bit of a trip.” 

And without another word of explanation, he turns back and walks straight through the mirror. 

It doesn’t ripple like water, doesn’t move at all, but just for a second, our reflections are replaced by a swirling kaleidoscope of countless slightly different scenes in the glass, windows into different places all reflecting endlessly off each other like a vast, shifting hall of mirrors. Before I can look any closer, the images vanish, leaving just the three of us.

“Whoa,” Shona breathes. “Pretty cool, huh?”

I just nod. Of course I’ve always known that the world is full of wonders and miracles, but knowing something at a distance and diving right into it are completely different. This is my life now, and neither the expiration date looming over me or the horrors I’ll need to hunt over and over for a chance at living are enough to completely strip the simple awe from it.

I just hope zapping around with magic doesn’t make me as sick as most travel does.

“Well, someone has to go first,” Mide says, and nominates herself, strolling straight through the wall. Again, it explodes into a display of overlapping images.

“Hey, hold on! This isn’t like the other things, you don’t need to-” Shona reaches out a bit too late to stop her, then rushes through before the image has settled. 

Well, then. I take a deep breath, hold it, and step into the panel. 

I was somehow expecting a sudden lurch or feeling of being launched from a cannon, but it never comes — just the opposite. Going through is kind of like passing through a curtain over a doorway, but as soon as I cross into the mirror, it feels like I’ve frozen in mid-stride.  On the other side I’m standing in that same kaleidoscopic burst of sights, but less stable, like on top of everything else I’m seeing it through crossed eyes. Looking at anything ahead makes me dizzy, but closing my eyes somehow feels like a bad idea.

Suddenly, the world rearranges itself. The images settle, replacing all the shifting scenes with a single window, and that window expands to fill my vision until it overlaps with the room, forming a passage for me to step through the wall into. I start moving again, just like I’d never stopped, and take my first steps into another small room. The trip was a little disorienting, and that sense of water pressure is even stronger on this side, but physically the transition was just walking through an open door with a strange pause in the middle.

Just ahead, Shona is in the middle of yelling something at Mide. “…not going to war, we’re in a hospital! Like, kind of a weird hospital, but still!” 

“Well, it didn’t matter one bit and we’re all here now, right?” Mide says calmly. By her posture, she seems pretty used to these kinds of arguments.

The nurse, standing at a healthy distance from the two, clears his throat as I come through. “Yes, well, whenever you three are ready, we can—”

“Right right right. Sorry!” Shona interrupts. “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do that thing!”

Looking around, we’re in a thin hall that forks two ways just ahead. There’s a triage desk set between the two diverging hallways, the kind completely walled off by heavy glass windows, and another nurse is seated at a cnidarian drive on the other side. She looks up from the monitor, nods at our guide, and quickly types something in. To the left, a wide windowless door slides open with a faint buzz. There are no visible handles or locks on it, and it looks thick and heavy enough to be in a bank vault instead of a hospital.

“So,” our nurse says. “Most of this ought to be common-sense, but I have to make sure you all know anyway. The ward we’re heading into is a low-security admissions unit. Patients inside are confirmed non-infectious, awaiting a more complete diagnosis and placement. There shouldn’t be anyone else in the halls right now, but if any patients are being transported, step aside and keep to yourself until they’re gone. Stay close to me, don’t touch anything without asking, and do NOT use magic on anyone or anything inside.”

“Um, I’ll have to inspect these patients with magic to do what we’re here to do. Is that alright?” I ask. I don’t know if this is how it works for everyone, but the way my soul feels things is more like having a new sense that blurs together with the old ones in confusing ways than actively casting something. You can shift your attention to focus on one sense over another, but rules or no rules, I don’t think I could decide not to feel a Harbinger’s traces any more than I could decide not to smell fish in a fish market.

“Should be. You’re not using magic on them. You’ll need to ask the doctor to be sure, though. Rooms are usually insulated against that sort of thing. Otherwise, just… look, don’t touch. If an emergency serious enough that you might need to defend yourselves comes up, we’ll say so.”

Shona and Mide turn to look at each other at the exact same time, frowning. “Is, um, is that common enough we should be worried?” Mide asks.

There’s a pause just long enough to be telling before he answers “Probably not in this ward.”

“Cool! It’ll be fine!” Shona says. Mostly to herself, from the sound of it.

Well, here we go. The vault door closes itself as soon as we’re all through.

~~~

Something is wrong with the overhead lights on the other side. Mide and I pause to look up at almost the same time, but the other two don’t seem to care. It looks like there’s an invisible layer of water between us and the lights, scattering the bulbs into tiny shifting spotlights… actually, this is almost how my room looked when Vyuji was protecting it last week, only without the dark blue tint her barrier cast over everything. 

The way here splits in three, with slightly curved halls on either side and a straight corridor ahead. It’s long enough that I can just barely see the far wall, and lined on both sides with more curving passages. 

Our guide heads five halls down the central path, then makes a left. Here, the walls on either side regularly open into indented side areas. They’re all set up the same way, with a single window covering most of the wall, a small desk placed for someone to sit and look through the window, and a featureless door just like the one we took to get in here on one side. Bizarrely, the atmosphere makes me imagine them as exhibits in an aquarium, but they’re all the same display: a little room with a sink counter and some cups, a soft chair, and a portable hospital bed. A bed with thick restraining belts hanging on its frame.

Most of the rooms are empty, and from its layout it feels like the ward has more of these rooms than they could ever need. Quite a lot more. Sure, you can never be too prepared, but I don’t know how much of New Claris would be left after something awful enough to fill this place to capacity.

Maybe it isn’t just for our city? There have to be Soul Sanctuaries everywhere. They could be connected somehow, linked up by the same sort of magic they use to get around inside. 

We do pass some people, though. Shona strolls right along, keeping her gaze fixed on the back of the nurse’s head, and Mide lowers her eyes when we pass the first occupied room. I can’t help but look. Most of the people inside just seem… quiet, in the worst way. More vacant than tired, staring off at nothing. One is looking right at the window with bloodshot eyes, though none seem to actually watch us go by. Three patients are strapped tightly to their beds, and two of those have mouthguards poking out between their lips. 

Then there are the others.

The tear stains under one weeping man’s eyes are dark as ink. 

A woman scratches idly at a patch of skin that really shouldn’t be that shade of grey. 

A girl’s face is somehow cracked all along one side of her head, like dry ground or broken porcelain, and, and there’s a tiny hole in it that looks black and hollow— 

My vision blurs. I stumble over, choking back the urge to gag. 

“Uh, hey, Eyna? You okay back there?” Shona asks. She pointedly doesn’t turn around.

Why? Why is this any different from what I’ve already seen? I don’t know. I just know it shouldn’t be. None of it should happen and that doesn’t make it the slightest bit less real.

“Oh, yes, that’ll… sorry,” the nurse says. “I’d’ve warned you if I realized we were passing her.”

“Let’s just go,” I croak. Is he used to this? What else does he see here? No. Dangerous. Not going to wonder right now. I’ll just force myself to stare at the floor the rest of the way. Mide had it right.

After another minute’s walk, the nurse stops and gestures ahead. “…Alright, it’s these three patients. Don’t worry, they’re all safe to look at. Dr. Crain? The Keepers are here for you.”

I’m a little hesitant anyway, but he isn’t wrong. A boy and two girls in blue and green plaid school uniforms, each in a separate room. Two are sleeping or unconscious in their beds. One girl sits scrunched up on her chair, covering her eyes with her hands. A man at the desk in front of her, sharp-featured and young for a doctor, looks us over with the same quiet ease everyone here seems to share around Keepers.

“We aren’t bothering them like this, are we?” Mide asks.

The doctor shakes his head slightly. “One-way glass. How can I help you three?”

“Just some quick little stuff and we’ll be out of your hair,” Shona says. “Trying to catch a monster before it can do this again, and—” 

“Ah. You need to sense them?” Dr. Crain nods and returns to his paperwork.

Shona looks a little surprised. “Oh, yep, that’s exactly it! Could we?” 

“All of them are clear for it. I can take the wards down for a moment whenever you’re ready,” he says.

“Do you know anything about it? Have they said anything since they came in?” I ask.

“None of them are speaking, no, but they did find something she was writing on the scene. Have a look if you want. It’s not any kind of mental hazard, but… here, just see for yourself.” He pulls a little black notebook out, sets it on the desk already open to a page in the middle, and returns to his paperwork.

The book’s pages are damp in one corner. Where the ink hasn’t bled away, one sheet is covered in jagged, frenzied handwriting. It looks like a sleep journal kept by someone whose dreams are full of incredible stories, but their memories of them dissolve within a few seconds of waking, so all that remains by the time they’re frantically writing things out are a few jumbled scraps of scenes. I pick it up, squinting to read the scratches, and the other two crowd over my shoulders to read along. At first glance it seems illegible, but there are a few clear blocks of writing scattered across the page:

a long long long time ago, someone fell through the sky
and built a castle floating in the clouds
this castle has no doors and no windows
no light shines inside it
none 
not ever
not a single star or lamp or candle

if you or i were stuck in a place like that, where nothing comes in and nothing goes out, we’d starve 
or suffocate
or lose ourselves and never find us again
but the children who live in the castle are happy there!

those children spend lots of happy days crawling around in the dark
they need no light, for there is nothing their eyes can see
they touch each other with hands that have never felt anything
they’ve fo—

Past that point, the paper is damp, and the ink has smudged away into a big wet puddle.

Shona is first to break our silence. “Uh, okay, what the fuck am I reading?” 

“No idea,” I say.  “But……”

“But?” Mide presses.

Oh. I must’ve left that hanging for longer than I realized. I was turning the writing around and around in my head, trying to scrape it for any actual meaning. 

“Nothing yet,” I finally say. “But maybe try to keep it in mind. If you write this off as nonsense, you might miss something important later.”

Mide looks over the page again. After a moment she side-eyes me, her forehead scrunched up in confusion. “Are you sure?” she asks flatly.

“You might, that’s all I said. It’s helped me before.” 

“Yep yep, I’ll do that,” Shona says. She clearly doesn’t believe me either.

“I’m serious! Just try, okay?” I snap back. However bizarre this… poetry(?) feels right now, Yurfaln’s victims gave me clues I could use. I didn’t understand exactly what they meant until I saw the whole picture, but that doesn’t mean they were useless noise. On the other hand, I think Yurfaln wanted me to understand it, by the end. This thing may not be so easy to read. 

What could I pull from this, then? It’s hard to say. At this point, I’m not even sure who the speaker is meant to be. Did this girl write out her own scattered thoughts about something she experienced or did the Harbinger somehow put the words in her mouth, so to speak? Either way, what are the big ideas to keep in mind? Falling from one place to another. A place where nothing should be able to live, but someone or something does anyway. Darkness. Senses failing. Hallucinations, maybe?

“Anyway. Doctor? I think we’re ready.” I set the book back on his desk.

“Of course.” Without looking up from his papers, Dr. Crain touches a finger to the desk and starts tracing an elaborate pattern on its surface. At a closer look, there’s a ceramic panel like the one the nurse used earlier set into it. After a moment, he puts his palm to it, and…

Immediately, that sense of being observed is all over me, overpowering the Sanctuary’s water-pressure ambience. It’s stronger here. The source itself is probably much farther away, but these kids are closer to it in some mystical sense than the place where it happened to attack them. The miasma still isn’t active, not the way an actual soul is, but the feelings it carries are clearer. It’s just as foul as Yurfaln’s, in a completely different way. Dizzying, like spinning and spinning until you puke, or the sick feeling you get when you try to read in a car.

“I… that’s enough. Please turn it back on.” A moment later, the fog is gone without a trace. I lean against the wall and suck in a few deep breaths. 

“Did you find anything we can work with?” Mide asks.

“I’m not sure yet. Can’t feel anything through these walls. But if it’s still out there, if we come anywhere near it, I think I’ll know.”

~~~

As we make our way out of the Weald, then through the upscale neighborhoods just above it, the balance of trees and construction slowly tilts back in the city’s favor. The sun is well into setting, and a few faint stars are blinking into view in the now wide-open sky. 

Now that I’m leading the search by default, I decide to take us on a long path roughly heading toward the hospital — or, well, close enough. I’m not leading them back to my doorstep. I’m exhausted, having probably walked more tonight than I have since I checked into the seventh floor, but we’ve already come this far, and the other two are lively as ever. I’ll figure out a next step if I don’t catch the Harbinger’s trail on the way.

But I do. 

“Wait.” I pause. “There’s something… not here, but close.” A block out from the central district, eyes start prickling, very faintly, on the back of my neck. I know it well enough now to focus on it from a distance, and I stretch my senses out, trying to feel its movements. That’s definitely it. At the end of the trail, I touch the Harbinger, feeling its living essence for the first time— 

and it looks back. Touches back. A hundred invisible gazes bore into every part of my body as it traces my perception to its source, and then… somewhere in the distance, it bursts into a sudden blur of motion. Not toward us, but not running away… up? Yes. Climbing somewhere. Pushing down the sudden stabbing pain behind my eyes, I raise my head, doing my best to follow its path. 

At the top of one of the city’s great glass towers, where a huge observation deck juts out, a Wound tears itself into being.

“Well! It’s very very interesting that you should happen to call right this moment, becaaaaaause…” Shona says, then trails off into silence. “…as luck would have it, I’ve recently…” A longer pause. “Yes! Yes in fact I do! There’s a threat we were just on our way to investigate! It’s a little out of the way, but if you want to make this our first team venture, we can meet you at the scene whenever you’re ready!”

“That is very not what I said. We can see how it goes, your words. Did you just now start searching for a problem to throw us at?” 

“Eyna, there’s a monster out there RIGHT NOW that could strike again at any moment! The people need our protection and there’s not a second to waste on questions that won’t help them!” 

“…Right.” That’s a yes, then. I only asked because I wanted to know how she found one so quickly, so I’m not sure what the act is about. “Anyway, I’m ready now. What’s going on?”

“Oh, right this second?” She sounds a bit surprised.

“Like I said.”

“Yep, yep, of course. Okay, so, did you hear anything about… last week, the couple on a picnic in Kuri Park? They had those identical breakdowns at the exact same time. Some kind of corruption on them, but no one was sure exactly what happened or what did it.”

“I must’ve missed that.” Last week I wasn’t a Keeper, and I hadn’t thought to dig through old news for suspicious incidents that might already be over.

“Well, it was a thing, and it happened again about two hours ago. This time it was a group of three kids from our school, all found in just the same state as the first two. I think we can safely say now that it’s a Harbinger’s work, and it’s escalating.”

Five victims. Yurfaln had reached four, maybe closer to three and a half considering how well Dr. Hines managed. What does that say about the size of this monster? What’ll be left if we split it three ways? Is that even a thing we can do?

It’s probably pointless to think of it that way. There’s no reason to expect that a Harbinger’s growth will follow some sensible schedule. I won’t know anything about this new nightmare until I can sense it myself.

“Sounds like it, yes. Where was this? If it just happened, we might still be able to catch its trail,” I say.

“Uh, looks like the Shoals. They were hanging out on the coast. Right around…” She lists off an address across the street from the scene. 

“Alright. Unless you have a better place to start in mind, I’ll meet you there… soon.” I’m not sure exactly where it is, but getting there might be a bit of trouble. The sea is to the east, on the opposite side of the city from the hospital. 

“Nope, that’s just fine with me, we’ll be there in a blink! And remember, the prize is still up for grabs!” 

“Wait. Before you go, about that,” I say.

“Have you already got an idea? Save it, it’ll be cooler if—”

“No. About the prize. The actual prize. If this works, if we take something down together, what are we doing with the Harbinger’s heart?”

“Ooooooohhhhh. Oh. Okay, so, hm, you’re, hmhmhmhmhm… how’s this? We’ve been giving all of ours to Mide, so this time around, I’ll sit out completely. We split it fifty-fifty, you and her.”

“Is that actually possible?” I ask. Vyuji’s never brought it up, and I didn’t think I’d need to know.

“Course! We’ve never done it before, but Enne says you can, so I’m sure we can figure it out! All good with you?” 

“…Sure. That works.” It’ll have to do for now.

“Great! See you soon!”

There’s a little beep as she hangs up. Idly, I hope neither of those girls can fly or teleport or something.

As for me and my useless legs, I see a few ways of doing this. I didn’t bring my cane just to wander around my territory, since that side of my health has felt fairly stable with my stolen strength propping it up. Maybe I should go get it, but I’m managing well enough today, and I especially don’t want to use it if I’m about to meet up with two other Keepers. They’d notice. They’d ask the sorts of prying questions other kids have always asked me. I’ll manage. 

Anyway, if I walk, trusting my magic to hold me up for… just under two miles, checking my phone, I might be okay. I could also take a bus to the closest stop and hope there’s somewhere private enough to transform again in that part of the city. Do I have any money? Right, doesn’t matter, the buses are free. It’s been a while since I needed to get anywhere.

Or… 

There are people all around me. People in buildings, people bustling through the city, people on the sidewalk stepping aside and staring at me as I pass. So many points of life in easy reach that my soul-sense starts to blur them all together into one hazy mass. They feel like cool mist on a burning summer day, and any tiny pangs of ill-health among them are lost in the background like the smell of tea in a room full of coffee. I could probably spread the drain out, take the tiniest possible slivers of strength from a hundred people, then run wherever I need to go with no trouble.

No, I can’t really justify that. Not yet. I don’t know what I’m heading into. We may not find the Harbinger at all in the first place we look. Plus I still don’t know what taking health feels like for the people I take from, or how it looks to normal people. It could be an unexplained outbreak of mild sickness or it could be a very ugly public spectacle.

I’ll just have to take a little longer. And try not to think too hard about the last time, about what it was like to be doing well. I dismiss my magic in a quiet corner, and as my mystic senses dim, it gets a little easier to shove those thoughts to the back of my mind.

~~~

The trip takes a little more than half an hour, most of it spent waiting for a bus at the nearest stop, then another short jaunt to the address Shona gave me. The directions weren’t much more complicated than ‘find a direction and go east until you hit the water.’ 

I haven’t been to this part of the city in years, but the Shoals have the exact same wide, bright streets and spacious sidewalks lined with greenery as most of New Claris. During the rebuilding, they did their best to make sure that you can always see more sky than structure when you look up — well, maybe not in the Peaks, nothing to be done about that — and the paths occasionally wind and twist into each other, but only enough to keep the city from being a perfect grid of identical roads. They didn’t want it too orderly. Honestly, it’s a nice walk in a nice place, even with all the people. As long as I ignore where I’m heading.

There’s no actual landmark to look for when I reach the place, but sure enough, a small part of the neat line where the city gives way to the shore is surrounded by blue wooden barricades. They wall off the scenes of Harbinger attacks as a matter of course, at least until Keepers have a chance to declare the area clean. Two men in police uniforms are keeping an eye on the wall at a healthy distance, and then… 

Past the barriers, the rocky ground slopes downward, and a few thin stretches of land jut out into the water. It’s still light out, but the blue of the sky has just started to deepen, casting a shadow over the sea. Two slightly darkened figures are already on the outcrops, inspecting the scene of the attack: a tall girl in red and a gold-armored knight. Maybe they were nearby, but since I’m pretty sure Shona found out about this a few seconds before I did, it’s more likely that one of them has some cool way to zip around with magic after all. Good for them, I guess.

I step out, round a corner, and transform again. Before I got on the bus, I took off my mask — out of Keeper mode, when no one had any special reason to pay attention to me, I figured it would be a more memorable feature than my actual face — and interestingly, I don’t need to put it back on. It’s just there, appearing from the solid shadows with the rest of my attire. Once I started thinking of it as part of the outfit, I guess it became one. If it’s that simple, I’ll have to think if there’s anything else I want to change… but later. 

Right now, I should go see how those two are doing before I change my mind about this horrible idea. One of the policemen shoots me an expressionless glance as I cross between the barricades, then goes back to talking with his partner. “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” is more of a polite warning for Keepers.

But as I reach the coast, the eerie sense of being watched by someone else — something else — creeps over me. Inhuman eyes bore into my back, into my everything, like I’m in a dark place surrounded on all sides by observers I can sense, but not see. It’s a very different feeling from the last time, but I immediately know it for the stench of a Harbinger’s presence. 

“Oh, Eyna, there you are!” Shona shouts from out on the water, pulling me back to reality. She’s literally on the water — standing on the ocean’s surface, shifting slightly with the waves. Just as I spot her, she kicks into the sea and glides across it like she’s skating on a frozen lake. Mide just waves from the far end of an outcrop, and by the time she’s started making her way back to the shore, Shona is climbing the rocky slope in leaping strides, almost jumping from one smooth stone to the next. 

“Hope it wasn’t too annoying getting here. We’ve been looking around for a bit now. I’d have offered to pick you up, but, uh, my thing takes some getting used to,” Shona says as she climbs.

“Eh. I would’ve turned you down anyway. Have to keep up with my… you know. Image…?” My incognito loner thing. I almost said that outright, but it sounded ridiculous in my head. It still sounds a bit ridiculous.

At the top of the slope, Shona tenses and makes one last long jump back onto solid ground, landing a bit too close for comfort. “That’s the spirit! Can’t you just feel our Keeper scene getting cooler for every minute people have no idea who you are? Uh. Sorry, right, still sounds pretty stupid.” 

Is this some ironic joke? Am I being bullied? I still have no idea how to tell. But more importantly… “How can you be so cheery in a place like this?”

“How d’you mean?” Shona frowns, looking more puzzled than anything else. “Oh. I guess something pretty scary did happen here, huh? I mean, I hope they’ll all be okay, but that’s why they have us, right? Just gotta make sure it doesn’t keep happening. Getting all serious won’t catch the monster any faster.”

“No, whatever, not that, it’s just… it’s a bad place. You feel it too, right?” It’s not really painful, I can tune it mostly-out and focus on other things when I need to, but it feels impossible to be at ease here. 

Shona cups a hand around her ear and slowly turns in a half-circle. As she does, Mide ambles up the slope, casting a puzzled look between us.

After a few seconds of intense focus, Shona shakes her head. “Um, it is a bit creepy, sure. I did notice earlier, I could tell a Harbinger was here, but that’s all. You didn’t pick up anything more, did you, Mide?”

“Have I ever?” Mide asks tonelessly.

“Right,” Shona sighs. “Well, we figured the trail had gone cold by the time we got here. Were we wrong?”

Reluctantly, I close my eyes and turn my full attention to the miasma. Compared to last time, there’s very little weight to it — it doesn’t react, doesn’t push back the way Yurfaln’s presence did. It’s thinner, somehow less directed, but all the same the impression it carries is much clearer than the last Harbinger’s raw hostility. Watched isn’t the right word for the way it feels, on second thought. ‘Watched’ is a stranger staring at you through your window, and this is something much more. Inspected, that’s closer. Studied by unblinking eyes that stare right into my soul and judge me unworthy of existing. 

“Maybe. It still feels awful, but it’s weird, space-wise? Not a real solid trail, just fog all over the place. If I had to guess it went that way, but not sure if I could actually follow it. Probably not.” On instinct, I point somewhere to the northwest. 

The two glance back at each other skeptically. “I guess we’re stuck there, then,” Mide says. “Did you still want to look around in the water? I don’t think there’s much to see.”

“It definitely didn’t go there,” I say. “But do we have anything else to work with?”

“Of course it didn’t. Claiasya protects the sea. I, uh, hrmmh.” Shona growls out a faintly frustrated noise. “Maybe we could just head that way and see what we see?”

“Most of the city is that way from here,” Mide says, frowning. “Other than that, there’s maybe…” Her expression deepens into a pained grimace. “The kids it attacked. I don’t know how they’re doing, I don’t want to make it any harder for them, but maybe we don’t need to. Maybe its traces are still there.”

“That might be better, yes,” I say. Not that I really know, but Yurfaln’s aura had been all tangled up with its victims. If I’d needed to, I think I could have tracked it from that couple. “Whatever step two is, could we get away from here while we sort it out?”

“Oh. Uh, sure. Is it really that bad?” Shona asks.

“Can you really not tell?” 

“Nope, not a bit more than usual. Interesting! You’re probably just more keyed into this sort of thing than either of us. Everyone’s senses work differently, right? Like, they say the Stardust Seraph can sniff out a Harbinger from miles away!”

Of course he can. “That must be pretty nice. I guess even among us, some kids get all the luck.”

Mide rolls her eyes. “It sure seems that way, doesn’t it? Take it with a great big pile of salt. No actual living person could ever be as great as this one thinks Roland or Irida are.” 

“I mean, sure, there you’d THINK they couldn’t, but you’d be super wrong!” Shona insists. “You’re just—” Before she can say anything else, retreading what must be some well-worn argument, Shona glances back at me and clamps her mouth shut, a little visibly embarrassed. 

Mide grins, stifling a giggle. “The greatest, biggest pile of salt ever. She’s got it really bad for those two, ‘specially—”

“ANYWAY!” Shona yelps. “Eyna, go get some air and we’ll catch up with you in a second! Just gonna tell those guys we think it’s safe here, yep!” Shona indicates the two policemen with her head, then spins around and runs toward them. 

“Wait,” I call after her.

“Yeah?” She twirls on one leg in mid-step, coming to a perfect stop facing me.

“Tell them not to take the walls down. The Harbinger isn’t here, but I’m not certain it’s safe yet.” If the aura weren’t so still, I’d worry that its source was here with us right now, or spying on us at a distance through its lingering presence. It doesn’t feel like that’s happening, but it’s possible and I’ve only done this once before. I don’t want to let it hurt someone else based on a week-old Keeper’s best guess.

“Oh. Sure, will do.” Shona shrugs and takes off running again.

I start down the shore’s sidewalk, wandering nowhere in particular until the Harbinger’s atmosphere is distant enough to ignore.

Mide walks just behind me, leaving Shona to handle the reporting alone. “Are you sure you’re alright?” she asks. “I know it never feels good being in a place like this, but…”

“Probably. You heard her, I guess I just have, um, a sensitive nose for horror.”

She still looks concerned, but she nods. We’re quiet until Shona comes rushing back, not the least bit winded for having sprinted both ways.

“Good news!” Shona shouts. Immediately after she frowns and crosses her arms, reconsidering something. “Well, ah, that’s to say… I think it’s good news as far as finding the monster. I asked if they knew what was going on with those kids, the victims, and they do! Someone from Bright Horizon just picked them up. We should be fine to check on them as long as this isn’t a lockdown situation, which, mm, I didn’t think it was? How ‘bout you, Eyna?”

Just to be sure, I stretch my senses back out toward the scene of the attack. As soon as I feel the Harbinger’s gaze on me, I pull away. Nothing follows or clings to me, as far as I can tell. “…No, me neither. How far to the Sanctuary?”

“Just a little ways south from here,” Shona says. There’s a harsh buzzing in the air as her body starts to spark with tiny jolts of red light. “We’ll only be a second if—” 

Mide clears her throat pointedly.

“Oh, come on, I’m sure she can figure it out! It’s not crowded here at all, it’ll be easy!”

“Remember how long it took me to get used to that? How long it took you? Do you want to break both her legs before we even find the Harbinger?”

“……if we all take a niiice brisk walk through the woods,” Shona sighs. Her sparks slow and shrink, then fade, taking the low ambient noise with them. I make a note to stay far away from whatever method of zipping around with magic she has.

~~~

Nearly all of New Claris is full of plants, with rows of trees and mini-parks and tiny gardens all threaded through bright modern structures like green veins. The southmost district, the Weald, could apparently never decide if it wanted to be a city or a park, so they did their best to let it be both. 

Sparse streets wind through carefully tended woodlands, running alongside and occasionally tangling up with paved walking trails. Sometimes the roads stretch up into overpasses above the paths, sometimes the walkways rise into little bridges over the streets. Actual buildings are uncommon, scattered far enough through the woods that they can all feel like solitary homes in the wilderness. There’s a zoo somewhere down here, a lot of Church holdings and schools, some rich people’s houses, the Fianata estate. Bright Horizon Soul Sanctuary, where most Clarish survivors of Harbinger incidents spend at least some time, sits right on the city’s southern border.

“So,” Shona says after a long stretch of silence, “how about that prize? I mean, not that I’m in any way saying we have to make this a big official thing, but imagine if that was at all what we were doing. Just. You know. If.”

“Where would I even start?” I ask. “It’s not like we have some obvious theme to work with. I don’t know what you two are about at all. The most I can say about this group is that there’s three of us.”

“You could’ve looked us up. We haven’t been at this for long either, but we do have a bit of a profile!” she says.

“That’s true,” I admit. “But I didn’t.”

“Meh, I guess that’s for the best. Now I can fill you in myself, see if that gets any inspiration going. Plus I get to keep the priiize!” 

Suddenly, Shona runs ahead of us… wait, no, that isn’t right. She’s skating, gliding along the path just like she did on the sea’s surface earlier. At a distant corner where the trail curves sharply, she comes to a halt with a quick series of showy figure-skater twirls. Those red sparks start up again, forming a storm of light around her that crackles and builds until it’s almost too bright to look straight at. When it fades, she’s holding… it looks like a violin, but not quite. Around the thin neck, there’s just a single length of coral the same shade of blue as her bracelets, wound into an S shape that forms the rough hollow outline of a violin. She takes a playing position, reaches up with a long bow in her other hand, and draws it across the strings, producing a horrible buzzing wail that sets me shivering all over and makes my spine feel like teeth chattering in the cold. 

“Those were the first notes of the Screaming Hymn! I make music, and that makes magic — spreads it all over the place like static in the air. It builds up and up and up. I won’t let it get quite that far out here, buuuut…” She looks up and raises her bow to the sky… then freezes, biting her lip, and takes a few sidesteps into the center of the path where there’s no foliage overhead. “Yeah, there we go!”

The buzzing in my bones fades. A jagged bolt of red lightning arcs through her and up into the sky, immediately followed by a deafening explosion. Reflexively, I yelp and cover my ears through my hood. Someone else screams in the distance.

“Uh, sorry, sorry, nothing to worry about! Just Keepers over here doing Keeper stuff!” Shona yells back at them. “Yeah, guess I should’ve said something, but y’know… showmanship! Anyway, there you go! I spin up a big awesome storm, point it where I want it to go, and blast monsters with it!” 

“Does it do anything else?” I ask once my ears stop ringing. I wouldn’t have pressed the question if she’d told me this a week ago. It lines up perfectly with the way kids’ shows about Keepers present fighting with magic, all colorful laser battles against scary-but-not-too-scary monsters. Shona sounds like she’d be right at home in a colorful laser battle.

That’s not at all how my first actual Harbinger encounter went, though — things in Yurfaln’s Wound were a lot more abstract and complicated than those shows implied. At the time, I figured that was because they were dumb kids’ shows, not instructions for future Keepers, but maybe my magic is just weird and wants to be used in weird ways.

“Well, sure. I can charge it into other things too. Change how they work, make them faster, stronger. Usually her,” Shona finishes. She points to Mide with the bow, then throws it over her shoulder and hurls the instrument straight into the trees. Both dissolve into showers of tiny sparks, vanishing before they land. “Mide, wanna cover your side of things?”

“Well…” As we catch up to Shona and start down the path again, Mide raises her left arm. In a flash of light, that giant shield appears in her grip, followed shortly by her spear. “I can do this, and I’m pretty good with these. Our Promise came with a sense for how to use them, and how to fight in a group and protect people.”

“Sounds nice. Mine didn’t.” I nod and wait a beat for her to go on.

“I’m done. That’s all,” she sighs after a moment. “All I’ve found, anyway, and I think you’re just supposed to know what you can do, right?”

Wait, really? Sure, these girls seem pretty earnest, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re holding something back. Not that I can judge too harshly if they are.

“I mean, yeah, but what you can do does change sometimes, y’know?” Shona says. “Magic grows with you. Sometimes new stuff about it emerges as you Emerge. We’ll find the rest sooner or later.”

“Sometimes,” Mide echoes, obviously unconvinced.

We walk a while longer in silence, which would be fine if these two would stop glancing uncomfortably between me and each other.

“What about you, new girl?” Mide finally asks.

Oh. Um. Of course they’re not going to let me get away with that. I probably should’ve thought ahead of time about some way to describe what I do other than ‘I’m the dying Keeper who does sickness magic’.

“I, hm. It’s weird. I control… ill-fate, maybe? Curses, corruption. I can take those things and inflame them or move them around. I don’t really have a flashy demonstration, but here.” I raise a hand, palm up, and summon the card holding Yurfaln’s remnants, its muddy colors still writhing and churning. Mide flinches, and Shona makes a face like I’m offering her a pile of roadkill. 

I take the hint and put the card away. “Sorry. That’s what it is. I made it out of my first Harbinger’s… leftovers. I know it’s disgusting, but the idea is that at some point it’ll be disgusting for some other horrible creature.” What I just said isn’t all of my magic, of course, but it’s close enough that it’s not fake. I can’t think of a way to start on the life-draining aspect that doesn’t make me sound like a monster.

“That is,” Shona says, very slowly, “maybe the most Vyuji thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Um, sure. I’m not going to press her on what that means. “How did you find this Harbinger so quickly, anyway?” I ask, hastily changing the subject. 

“Wha?” Shona looks confused for a second, but then she shakes it off and grins a bit wider than usual. “Yeah, fine, you caught me. I did do that, huh? There’s easier ways to keep watch than actually wandering around looking for monsters. The police answer calls a lot more than they walk past a crime right as it’s happening, you know? The Silver King’s scouts make the hard way easy, but, well, we can’t all be as cool as her! If you don’t have any tricks like that, you’re probably better off just taking tips on Flow. People ask their favorite Keepers to go check out weird things all the time!”

“On what?” I ask.

“Ha ha. Yeah, I get it, you do strike me as one of those ‘too cool for that useless nightmare reef’ types, but at least for this one thing it really does help!” 

“Listen, I literally have no idea what you’re talking about. Some Coral Sea thing?” 

Shona stops in mid-stride and spins around, leaning down to level with my eyes and stare right at me. It’s a long way down. “Oh,” she says after several long, uncomfortable seconds. “Shit, wow, you, uh, you really… How?”

What? Is it really that weird? Sure, I vaguely know that there are parts of the Sea where people post real stuff about their real lives, and in context, that’s probably what she means. I’ve never once touched it. What life did I have to share? “Always seemed like more trouble than it’s worth? Besides, I’ll never be anyone’s favorite anything.”

“…you might be surprised if you just…” Shona mumbles, quieter than I’ve ever heard her. She sounds like she still can’t believe she’s actually having this conversation. 

Come to think of it, I do know for a fact that Tara was some people’s favorite Keeper. That’s different, though. I wouldn’t want her fans even if I could have them.

Why draw that line? I don’t want any fans.

“Er, to be fair, no method’s perfect,” Mide cuts in. “We have our misses, and some of them are just worried about nothing. Ask her about the bathroom ghost if you want a laugh sometime.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking abooout!” Shona chirps, suddenly cheerful as ever. 

I don’t think I’ll press her on that, either.

~~~

The walk goes on, although I have to stop and catch my breath a couple times to keep up with these two. Here and there, Shona brings up some idle chatter, but it doesn’t go anywhere and quietly fizzles out.

“Here we are,” Mide eventually says, pointing ahead. The path opens into a wide circular courtyard, and beyond that, Bright Horizon comes into view. The Soul Sanctuary is a smoothly curved circle of spotless ceramic white, with not the least bit of visible wear or dirt. Its strangest feature is that it’s got none of the clear crystal walls common to buildings here, especially to Church holdings. In fact, I don’t see any windows at all, no openings anywhere except the wide front doors. 

Its location this far out in the woods probably offers its residents some much-needed peace and privacy. Just as important, though, it means anything that leaks out will be further away from new victims.

“Sure enough,” Shona says. “Let’s see what there is to see, yeah? I’m, uh, I’m not too sure what’s next if this doesn’t work out!” She laughs, a bit nervously.

So in we go.

Sunlight is just starting to flood through the gauzy curtains when I wake up choking for air. Hot, sharp pangs burn through my chest. My head spins as I try to sit up. I’m breathing the wrong way, I know I am, but it’s a losing struggle to correct myself all the same. Even then, nothing changes. All I can do for relief is squeeze Pearl until the pangs start, very slowly, to fade. They never quite disappear.

This has never happened to me before. Was I dreaming of drowning? No. No, this is still the thing I took from Yurfaln. Its stolen pain is somehow separate from its heart, the core of its soul I’ve already claimed and… digested?

Suddenly, I’m certain there’s no point in using my call button. Medicine can’t help me. I may not even be actually feeling this. Not with my body’s senses, anyway.

What can I do, then? I took the Harbinger’s essence with magic. I should be able to get rid of it the same way. I’m not sure how yet, but Vyuji keeps saying I already know how to use my power. Time to feel about in the dark for knowledge I don’t know I have, however that works, and hope something turns up.

I take my first hesitant steps out of bed and quickly stumble, catching myself on the nightstand. I feel like I’m trying to walk on clouds, the first sign of a horrible health day. Of course my body would choose right now to fall apart.

Once I’ve fumbled for the cane at my bedside and found my footing with it, I crack the door open and pull out one of the tabs on my patient sign, the little blue one that says “Quiet, Please! Do Not Disturb!” Nurses tend to ignore that sign when they think it’s important enough, which is to say any time at all their schedule says they should, but it’s too early for morning checkups and I can’t think of any other reasons to bother me.

Here we go, then.

My room goes dark as I reach inside and transform. Emerald shadows swallow the world, only letting light back through the windows when they gather themselves up and take their solid form around me. My cards shimmer into view with another thought.  I raise my free hand and direct one to float out of its orbit, bringing it to rest just above my open palm.

These cards are ritual tools first, the way my magic expresses itself to the world, but also vessels I can fill with pain and power. I’ve done it by accident with my pain from my sickness, but they shouldn’t demand that specifically. Yurfaln’s disease wouldn’t let me vent it off into nowhere when I stole it. It probably still wouldn’t without causing some horrible backlash on its way out, but…

Drawing the Harbinger’s lingering pain to the surface is easy, since it was already almost there. Magic is keeping me standing, but the feeling itself hasn’t gone anywhere. Letting it loom over everything else in my mind, I take in a shallow, wheezing gulp of air and hold it, hold it, just a little longer until… like clearing gunk from the back of my throat, I push.

Out it comes, but what I’m exhaling isn’t air at all. A thick plume of ugly mud-and-rust colors leaves me with a tiny hissing scream. The cloud twitches and thrashes randomly, like a sack with something alive inside trying to kick its way out… but whatever those colors remind me of, Yurfaln is dead. This is mine now. A moment later, the card above my hand sucks it in, immediately repainting itself in the Harbinger’s shades.

It worked. Exactly like I thought it should. Yurfaln’s essence is gone from me, but it’s also still there. Quarantined. When I unsummon my cards, it’ll wait harmlessly in some corner of my soul until I decide to take it back out. I sit back on the bed and just breathe, making sure I can now. It takes a good few minutes, but eventually my head does stop swimming.

Could I do that again? I have plenty of pain to spare. I pluck a fresh card out of my ring, pull back the billowy sleeve over my right arm, and gingerly touch a corner to my skin. It draws blood with the slightest, briefest contact, and I flinch at the strangely sharp pricking sensation, but then it’s over. Like before, the card drinks up a few drops of blood and paints itself green, leaving behind only a tiny wound like a papercut that’s already nearly closed.

…I don’t feel any different, though. My legs are just as wobbly and useless as before. Apparently my own disease is part of my power, something I can call on and inflict on others, but it doesn’t actually go anywhere or get used up. There’s that thing Vyuji said about using your magic to erase the source of your magic, I guess. Maybe there are other things I can do with these cards, other reasons I’d want to infect them with myself, but I can’t think of them right now. It’s not like I need to charge them ahead of time — the curse I’ve carried my entire life will be there in an instant whenever I call for it.

Oh well. At least I’m back to my normal level of terrible. I end the transformation in a burst of disintegrating shadows and crow feathers, pick my actual tarot deck up off the nightstand, and pull my card of the day. The Moon — insight, imagination, the world of dreams and fears. On its own, a reminder to take stock of your emotions and how they might be affecting you, or to trust your intuition and instinctive hunches for answers you’re seeking.

The way Vyuji implied this should work, my understanding of my own magic definitely feels… lacking. All the instincts she said I’d have might be there, if I really look for them, but they’re coming in scattered bits and pieces, showing up at the last possible moments when I’m pushing myself to test them. Or, more dangerously, when I was in a Wound desperately looking for a way out.

Am I doing something wrong? If I am, I don’t know what to change.

~~~

The next few days were a tense sort of quiet.

The story broke that afternoon. We already knew it was coming by the time reports started. Well, of course I did, but the charge nurse announced that morning (in very broad terms) that yes, there was recently a Harbinger in the hospital, it took a patient from our floor, and it’s dead now — believed to be completely dead, though we should speak up if we felt anything strange or just needed someone to talk to. Someone probably called Dr. Hines’ workplace to say where he’d gone, and they didn’t want the older patients stumbling on the news at random.

That only did so much to help. Once they’d heard, people were suddenly quicker to jump at shadows. When the night nurses dimmed the lights in the main room, they left them a little bit brighter than they did before. This was too close a call for most people to brush off and be happy they’re safe. Fear for your life is nothing new here, but when Harbingers are involved, there are worse things than death. Even I can’t deny that, not when I’ve met one and seen its plans for the world.

I’m not worried about Harbingers in quite the same way, but I had enough of my own problems to keep me just a bit on edge. I’d already burned through the health I took by next morning. I’m used to living like this, I have to be, but when the numbing cold crept back through me, remembering that the pain was nearly gone yesterday somehow made it all the worse. If I need to do that again, I’ll have to see if I can bank wellness somehow, ration it out to keep things bearable for a bit longer.

As expected, no one was happy with me running off twice in one day, especially since the best explanation I had was “I’m tired, can’t talk about this right now.”  They gave me my space that night, but from then on I could feel more eyes on me than usual whenever I left my room. Not a constant shadowing, just enough to know that they were paying attention and they wouldn’t stand for another weird outing.

I really would have to tell at least one doctor what I was doing, then. It was that or literally fight the next aide who tried to stop me from leaving, which… it’d make the point, sure, but was a terrible idea in all sorts of ways. Dr. Hines was my first choice, but I wasn’t sure when he’d be back and I could only delay for so long. There were some ideas I wanted to test and things I wanted to study before my next outing, though, so we’d see how things look when I was done.

Until then, I tried to keep to my daily routine, more or less. Acting completely different all of a sudden would feel like a signal that something weird was going on, and I didn’t need any more of those.

~~~

My tarot corner hasn’t had many visitors lately. Maybe people are a little nervous thinking about what the future holds when they’ve just come so close to the worst-case scenario. For my part, I spend most of my time on my cnidarian drive, doing whatever Keeper research I can do on the Coral Sea. Honestly, none of it feels more useful than just asking Vyuji basic questions or experimenting with magic myself. I’m sure there is good information on the Sea, it’s just scattered across more pages than anyone could ever go through, and I’ve never become an expert at sorting through them. Maybe it’ll go better if I come up with some specific concept or field I want to know every possible thing about.

All around, things on the seventh floor feel… slow. Lethargic. The others are still doing their best to stay busy, but the conversations are softer and the crowd quietly watching the news on the communal TV is bigger. I’ve mostly avoided the reports myself, other than a quick search to make sure that I wasn’t somehow named in them. As long as they can’t trace whatever they’re imagining back to me, I don’t really care.

We have more visitors than usual, though, some staying around to keep residents company for pretty long stretches. Noirin has one today — her grandson Oscar, a weedy kid around my age with messy brown hair and thin-rimmed glasses. He’s visited a few times since I’ve been here, always by himself. They’re circling the main room together, watering the plants on the windowsills, and stop to greet me when they reach my table.

Oscar speaks first. “Morning, Lia. ‘S been a minute, how’re you holding up?”

“My name is Liadain,” I correct. Only Dad and the volunteer helpers who think of me as That Cute Little Dying Girl call me Lia. “And, ah, no worse than usual.” That’s true if you stretch it a bit.

“Right, sorry.” Oscar’s eyes flick to the side. I wonder if Noirin told him in advance not to say anything stupid about my hair. “Hey, do you still do those… the fortune-telling, with the cards?” he asks, filling the quiet just before it can turn too awkward. “Grandma mentioned it and I was wondering about something.”

“Not for you. They only ever predict horror and misery for normal people and I’d hate to accidentally curse someone.” Noirin shoots me a skeptical glance at that, one eyebrow raised, but carries on tending to a row of mint plants.

“Uh, yup, whatever you say. Playing Champions is safe though, right?” he asks.

“I hope so, since otherwise I already poisoned you last time. Sorry. Come by when you’re done if you want to play, I’ll go find my stuff.” Champions of the Goddess, the Church-sponsored Keeper card game, was a big thing when I was in school. I imagine it still is, but my old cards were gathering dust until Oscar mentioned playing a couple weeks ago. It’s been nice taking them out again. One of my rare strengths is that I’m kind of good at this game.

I already have my cards splayed out on the table when Oscar returns a few minutes later. “You’re still playing this deck? I regret asking already,” he says with a dramatic groan. “Just… think about how happy you could make some freak on the Sea if you sold it off.”

“But then I’d have to actually talk to those people! Yuck! Don’t lump me in with them. I like how she plays, that’s all.”

My prized deck stars Tara Mullane, the Flower’s Fangs. After the media panic surrounding her really took off last year, they stopped printing her cards and tournament-banned them. Bringing her up at all is still considered rather icky, and I think the main reason I get away with playing her is because no one wants to refuse a dying girl her small joys in life. These cards are collectibles now, worth a lot of money to the right sort of insane groupies, but what would I even do with money?

“What, this no-fun-allowed control pile? That’s actually worse! I’d be happy to lose every time if I could just play any of my damn cards on the way down!” Oscar fumes.

“Listen, Oscar, that’s just the way this game works. There’s only so much fun you can squeeze out of one match. When we start, we’re sharing it equally, and then you win by taking away all the other side’s fun. Hate the game, not me.”

“Sounds like a pretty terrible way to have fun with your friends when you put it like that.”

“I guess so. Do you still want to play?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” he sighs.

For all his whining, I do lose in the end. I drag it out as long as possible, but Oscar plays the Silver King and her cards are all way too good. When you’re that popular, you get to be overpowered.

I wonder for a second what my cards would be like. Then I remember how much I’d hate being famous and brush the thought away.

“Enjoy it while you can. I’ll crack this puzzle yet, no matter how rigged. Another round?”

“Mmm, with the way you play I might be trapped here forever, but sure. One more, then I should probably… huh. Hey, Grandma.” At some point, Noirin took a seat to our side. She waves once as we look up from our cards.

“Oh, you’re here!” I’m not sure how I didn’t notice her. Sure, I was trying pretty hard to win, but she does seem to have the lightest feet of anyone I’ve ever known. “You don’t play this stupid game, do you?”

“Not at all,” Noirin laughs. “I’ve got no idea what’s happening. I just like watching people’s faces while they play games. They tell quite the stories.”

That’s… really kind of embarrassing? My cheeks burn a little, and Oscar seems to feel the same way. He freezes for a second, then looks down and gathers his cards, completely flattening out his expression as we start the next game.

“Well now you’ve stopped making them! You kids aren’t any fun.”

~~~

It’s been four days when Dr. Hines comes back, which is good news for a couple of reasons. They must have found him before it got really bad, since that’s no time at all as far as treating Harbinger victims goes. More selfishly, any longer and I might’ve had to pick someone else to talk to.

“I’ve gone over the results of your screenings from Monday. All negative, it looks like your vitals have been stable ever since, and I’m afraid I’m not sure where to go from there.” We’re alone in the seventh floor exam room. True to the general aesthetic, it looks much more like a simple walk-in doctor’s office than part of a hospital.

“If anything like this were going to happen, it should’ve happened during the last transplant conditioning regimen. There are some autoimmune disorders that can cause premature whitening, but yours isn’t one of them. Even if it were, well, hair that’s already grown doesn’t just dye itself… ah, but you must’ve heard that a few times by now.”

“I sure have. But if nothing has actually changed healthwise, I’ll manage.”

The doctor smiles, very slightly, and scribbles something on a notepad. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but he looks about the same as always. Maybe his face is a little thinner, but he doesn’t seem too haggard. The balance of grey and black in his hair hasn’t changed at all. “Well, you seem to be in good enough spirits. We’ll keep an eye on your condition, but if it’s not upsetting you too much, we may just have to write this one off as a mystery.”

Maybe I should be a little more worried about going grey at thirteen, but… making my magic work for me. I’m doing my best not to get mad. I don’t like being angry. Anger is a pointless emotion that only ever makes things harder. “Alright. I’m fine with that. I do have another question, though.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Please tell me exactly how medical confidentiality works.” I’ve been in and out of this hospital enough that I basically know the rules, but if I’m going to spill this particular secret, I want to be certain there are no weird exceptions that might cause problems for me. I’ve already missed one obvious hole in my plans to keep a low profile, not that I could’ve done much differently there.

“…Pardon?”

“When are you allowed to tell people things about your patients without asking them? Do you ever have to?”

Dr. Hines looks a bit confused, but he does outline the common exceptions. If other doctors urgently need to know something to treat a patient. If something about a secret is dangerous to the patient or someone else, like if they have a very contagious disease. If you’re talking about treating a minor with their parents.

That last one sounds bad. “What if they don’t want their family to know?”

“Ah, well, if a patient is old enough to understand medical decisions, we try to respect their wishes. As long as that doesn’t run against their best interests.” His voice lowers. “Liadain, is something the matter?”

Way too vague for my liking, but fine. That’s the best I’m going to get, I can’t really use a specific example without giving myself away, and whether or not it’s strictly allowed to tell him, I can make a strong case for leaving Dad out of this. Keepers are supposed to get all sorts of special exceptions anyway.

I guess I just have to force it out before I lose my nerve. “Sort of. So, I already… I know what happened. I made the Promise on Monday. This is the first sign of my Emergence.”

Dr. Hines opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. “I see,” he finally croaks. “Are you sure that—”

I flare a bit of my magic, just enough for it to dim the lights and recolor my eyes, and the doctor draws back suddenly. Wide eyes stare straight at me, frozen in place.

“Um, sorry. I just didn’t want this to be about whether I’m delusional.” I let the aura fade.

“No, no, I… suppose some things just need to be seen. I was more worried about whether you came too close to it.” From his face, mentioning the Harbinger — maybe thinking of it at all — is a painful act of will. Remembering my first meeting with Yurfaln, I can’t blame him. “Wait,” he whispers. “On Monday. Were you…?”

I nod. He already knows enough that it’s the obvious answer.

He slowly sighs out the gathering tension. “In that case, I expect I may owe you quite a lot.”

What do you say to that? I probably wouldn’t have brought it up. Saving a life was still a strange feeling and I didn’t want to come off as somehow holding it over him. In the end I just raise a hand, palm out, and shake my head. There’s a long silence in the air.

“So, why tell me this?” he finally asks.

“Right. I needed help with a few things. First, I still live here. From now on I’ll probably be going out a lot. Doing Keeper things. The nurses don’t like me running off, and I guess from their perspective I’ve just lost my mind and started doing dangerous things for no reason. Please tell them… I don’t know what you tell them. Just make a floor memo saying not to bother me when I go on weird long walks. I don’t want to cause any scenes.”

“Yes, I think I see the issue. I’ll take care of it, but, well… as far as keeping it hidden from everyone here, consider your circumstances. There are really two things that could’ve caused this: either something medically impossible happened out of the blue to a severely ill patient, but we’ve all decided to ignore it and trust that it had nothing to do with our very recent Harbinger incident, or you’re a Keeper changing the way everyone knows Keepers do. I can’t stop people from drawing conclusions, so you may want to think about how to tell them on your own terms.”

“…Eventually,” he adds quietly. My face must be speaking for me.

“Um, eventually. Thanks.” I hate it, but he’s probably right. I can keep a low public profile, but my living situation just isn’t the best for me to do this beneath anyone’s notice. “This second one is a stretch, I can’t imagine the overlap of Keepers and terminal illness is a big field of study, but… do you have any idea how that works, what all this might mean for me healthwise? Or know someone who might?”

“Keeper medical issues are a specialty area, I’m afraid. Most of the experts are Church scholars.” He shakes his head apologetically. “They may have someone we could call in or refer you to, though. Would you like me to look into that?”

“Please do. It couldn’t hurt.”

We talk for a bit about the details of that search. I’d rather he check with me before he actually tells some potential specialist anything, but “I might know a Keeper” is probably necessary. I’m allowed to sign a medical release myself because Keepers in New Claris are automatically emancipated as soon as they make the Promise, which is the first I’ve heard of that. It’s kind of nice to know, not that Dad actually wants any say in my life.

“If that’s all… well, thank you again, Liadain. And, ah, congratulations…? Try to stay safe. Whatever else has changed, your health is still fragile.”

“I know. I’ll do my best.”

~~~

I give Dr. Hines a while to get the message out, however he decided to word it, and then it’s time to go. The sun is getting a bit low in the sky, but hasn’t started to set. It probably won’t for a few more hours. Today, the nurse at the front desk only watches with confused concern as I leave.

Hunting strategies are complicated, that’s the sum of what I’ve learned from reading about them. I really just stumbled across my first Harbinger, and I’m still not sure I have a good plan for when ‘find a horrible scent and chase it’ doesn’t work out. New Claris has a lot of Keepers — if the stuff on the Sea about other cities is true, it’s apparently downright crowded for our actual size — but it doesn’t seem like I’ll have much competition if I stake a claim around the hospital. The university just south of here might also be up for grabs.

Past that isn’t so clear. The urban centers are naturally pretty covered, the farmlands outside have specific kids looking after them on shifts, and there’s not much point in thinking about the Peaks. The Silver King somehow manages to do all of the magical celebrity stuff and keep an eye on the entire district at the same time, only breaking long enough to sleep… probably. I think Keepers still need to sleep. The Stardust Seraph lives somewhere to the south, but you see him all over the place, so pushing a bit farther that way might work. Apparently he runs around and jumps in to help with every problem he can, then refuses any share of the prize in exchange for… selfies with other Keepers to post on the Sea, which is a ridiculous fable if I’ve ever heard one.

Anyway, no point in getting too complicated until I see what I can find. I transform in the same secluded parklet as last time and head off into the city, stretching my senses out as far as I can.

But nothing’s turning up today. I make it across the university campus and back, taking a different long, looping route on the return trip, and all I encounter are people staring at me as I pass. Magic or no, it’s a lot more walking than I’m used to. I’m already kind of tired.

What’s the next move that doesn’t step on any toes? Unfortunately, there’s only one I can think of. With a heavy, heavy heart, I turn off my phone’s caller ID and type in a number I managed to remember after all.

“Hello? Shona? Yes, it’s me. Yes, I’m actually calling. Do you two have your eyes on anything?”

The floor’s charge nurse insists on all the poking and testing and measurements she can think of. They obviously won’t find anything, but I can’t really tell them that. I tried to think of any decent explanation I could use as an excuse, but every lie that popped into my head sounded shoddy.

Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, I just went out to get my hair streaked in public where I could die, thank you for noticing! Even if they were dumb enough to buy that, they’d probably end up locking me in sick little girl jail and throwing away the key. At the very least they’d keep a much closer eye on me, which is exactly what I don’t want.

Oh, I did my hair and I just couldn’t wait to show it off to the world! If only the Promise had granted me the power to summon hair care products from thin air so I could prove it. 

…Maybe I could pretend to look for whatever things you use to do this to yourself and act like they’re missing? Maybe someone stole it while I was out, hmm? No, that’s ridiculous, and if they somehow took it seriously it would cause a lot of trouble for everyone else on the seventh floor.

“And you’re certain that’s all?” she asks for the third time.

“I’m not sure what you want from me. Everything else is normal as it gets. I’m feeling fine. Well, relatively. It doesn’t look like I’m dying any faster, does it?”

“…No, nothing seems to have changed,” she admits, staring down at the clipboard she’s furiously scribbling on. “It’s a real puzzle.”

“Which it doesn’t look like we’re going to solve, at least not until whatever tests you’re sending off right now come back. Dr. Hines might have better ideas?” I try.

“That might be, but he’s still out today.” They haven’t heard anything more, then. The nurse frowns, the small wrinkles on her face deepening, and looks up at me over her clipboard. “This always feels like such a strange question, but is there any chance something, ah, unusual could have happened?”

“I’m… not sure what you mean?” 

“Well, you know… things do come up, sometimes. Have you felt anything you couldn’t explain lately, seen anything…” She waves a hand, like she’s reaching out for a word she can’t quite find. “Mystical?” 

She doesn’t sound used to dealing with magic issues, maybe she’s never done it at all, but I already know perfectly well what she’s talking about. There’s one explanation for something like this that everyone knows. It’s incredibly unlikely to happen to any given kid who wasn’t a Keeper yesterday, but, well, this time it really is the answer. 

“Liadain?” She’s still looking at me, visibly worried.

“Huh?” I must have gotten lost in my thoughts, and that’s the best I can come up with. “I mean, I spend all my time here, and nothing weird happened in the garden. Since you’ve already said this doesn’t make any medical sense, can we agree that we’ve gotten as far as we can for now with normal, sensible things? I’m really tired.”

The nurse looks up at me for a moment, narrows her eyes, then sighs and sets the clipboard down. “…Okay. Go get some rest and we’ll see how things are looking in the morning. Hopefully the doctor will be back then, too.”

“Hopefully.” Right now it’s one more thing to worry about, and I have no other way to check on him. Maybe when the news catches wind of the incident, but I’m still a bit afraid to see what they make of me.

One thing at a time. That’s a pretty distant worry, as they go, and I’ve shoved it away by the time I make it back to my room.

“Hi, Pearl. I hope you’ve been having a better time than me.” Pearl smiles up at me in quiet greeting, cozy as I left her in her nest. I force myself to change — no reason to punish this dress for the day I’ve had — then climb straight into my bed and quickly pass out.

~~~

Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep…

It’s just before sunset when my alarm goes off. It still doesn’t feel like enough, but I should do my best not to destroy my sleep schedule. I grab my personal deck from the nightstand, roll out of bed, and stagger over to my side-table chair. I’m about to pull a second card for the day when I have a better idea. Maybe.

“Vyuji, had this already happened when we last talked?” I groan into my empty room.

There’s a bit of a delay before she appears this time, but after maybe ten seconds, there she is. Suddenly, she’s perched on the windowsill, her face placid as ever. “Yes. I didn’t see it happen, but your first Emergence almost certainly came when you claimed the Harbinger. You knew it was coming, didn’t you? This is your first real progress toward your goal, however small a step it was. You should be celebrating.”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted to learn about it from the next random person to look at me!” 

“Apologies. I’ll remember that in the future.”

“In the future. Right. I’ll just go ahead and ask.” 

At the height of her power, Saint Kuri was apparently a human-shaped construct of wood and vines and foliage, with only her soul left over from her days as a flesh-and-blood person. As I understand it, the marks of Emergence aren’t something Keepers choose or design in any conscious way, and there doesn’t seem to be a hard limit to how strange things can get if you last long enough, but they do reflect your power and personality in some way.

I don’t like what that implies for my future at all.

“…Should I be worried about, I don’t know, turning into a horrible plague-beast? I somehow can’t imagine this ends anywhere good.”

“It would be best for you to expand your imagination, then. There is no sharp distinction between you and your magic. It doesn’t have a plan it’s following or goals separate from your own — it acts as your heart of hearts believes it should. Find ways to make it serve you and suit your desires. Share with it the best of yourself, and it will repay you in kind. Likewise, if you hate it and spurn it as a curse, that is what it may well become.” Vyuji says all this with no inflection in her strange voice, unmoving, unblinking. 

More and more of what I hear about magic makes me think I’m horribly, horribly unfit to handle it. “Okay. That… follows, I think. It’s part of me, it responds to the way I treat it sort of like exercising or ignoring any other part of me, only if my arms could decide I wasn’t treating them right and go do their own thing? Is that about right?”

“Perhaps they can.” She makes an actual sound for the third time since I met her, a little noise I can just barely make out as a tittering laugh.

“Um, excuse me? They definitely can’t.” 

Vyuji’s brow wrinkles, making her look almost puzzled. It’s the face a person might make if a stranger walked right up to them on the street and announced that water was dry. “No, nevermind, you’re probably right,” she finally says. “There’s just an old question you brought to my mind.”

“Right, well… wait, do you feel that?” I turn my chair to look out the window. Something in the distance is prickling at my senses.

“Feel what?” She tilts her head very slightly, her usual stillness returning. 

I turn my awareness outward, reaching as far as I can into the city around us. There’s someone on the streets below, moving toward the hospital. This is nothing like Yurfaln’s repulsive aura, though. It has a weight that clearly separates it from regular human souls, but no alien malice, just intense focus. A coiled spring ready to jump to life at a moment’s notice. 

Not a Harbinger, then? She said I’d recognize those instantly, and I believe her after Yurfaln. A Messenger wouldn’t make any sense — suddenly, I realize Vyuji gives off no impressions at all, but that’s not important right now — so is this what Keepers feel like?

“Underneath us. Outside. Another Keeper, I think, unless there’s some other category I don’t know about.”

“Hm. They’re not one of mine, then.”

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“Apologies. I’d know more if they were.”

“What would they be doing here?” I press my face to the window and look down at the streets, but I can’t see much. No bright flashes of magic, no fancy costume I can make out from this distance.

Vyuji’s gaze shifts slightly, following my movement more than turning toward the window. She just shrugs. “I couldn’t say. My best guess… when your work was done earlier, did you get help for the Harbinger’s victims?”

“Well, yes… I don’t think I gave them anything that’d point here, though.” Even if I did, what should it matter? The Harbinger is dead, and as far as they know it started out… “…oh. Um, do you know how the Soul Sanctuary works?”

“I know enough. Why?” She tilts her head, eyes wide. I’ve seen her do that a few times now. Always to the left, always moving the exact same way and settling at precisely the same angle. It’s a bit unsettling, like she has some dictionary of expressions she pulls from whenever it seems appropriate rather than actually… expressing anything.

“Well, while they’re taking care of people, do they have… I don’t know, some way to track magic, figure out when…” My voice trails off as I realize something very stupid. “…oh. Someone probably just asked him what he was doing when it got to him, didn’t they?” I did everything right, took all the steps I could think of to keep myself out of this, but it didn’t end up mattering. 

“Quite honestly, it sounds like you have a better handle on the situation than I do. I’ve got no idea who ‘he’ might be.” When I look back at her, Vyuji’s lips have quirked very slightly upward.

“My doctor was close to the scene of all this and missing today, so I asked them to check on him too.” He really was in trouble, then, but not too far gone to talk about it. Small mercies. “Anyway, I should probably go check on this before someone storms in here. If nothing too messy happens, I’ll check back in with you later about… all this, okay?” I gesture vaguely at the white strands of my hair, still visible in the corner of my eye.

“Whenever you wish.” And without so much as a nod, she’s gone.

~~~

Out in the halls, I find myself a new mask. I’ve already recast my cold protective haze — this time it’s just to hide my face, for all the good it’ll do. 

“Ah, Liadain? Where are you going?” The nurse at the front desk rushes over to me.

“Sorry, I think I forgot something outside. I’ll just be a minute.” I hope. I don’t have a good excuse in mind if I’m wrong.

“Now wait a minute, you really shouldn’t be moving around so much. Everyone’s already worried about you! Just tell me what you lost and someone can go get it for… Liadain? Liadain!” She stops short of grabbing me or standing in my way, but she’s still scolding me when the elevator door closes.

…I don’t like it, but if I plan to keep running off, I’ll probably have to tell at least the doctors something soon. Maybe they already know. It’s not like there’s another likely explanation for what just happened to me.

One thing at a time, though. What am I doing here? I don’t want a stranger digging around in the closest thing I’ve got to a home, where they might sense my magic and find out right away about the little dying Keeper. I don’t want them sticking around and hunting nearby, when I’m already not sure how hard it’ll be to find more monsters. If I can help it, I’d rather they not think I came from around the hospital at all, but that might be tough. There’s no time to arrange anything complicated, and this mask is a bit of a giveaway… oh well. 

Sunlight still filters through the glass window-walls downstairs, but at this hour it doesn’t do much more than cast long shadows across the floor, and the softly-lit hallways are mostly empty as I make my way to a side exit. Out on the streets, things are still bright and bustling with people making their ways home. That pleasant chill from earlier has turned bitter and sharp, but I don’t mind its sting. I’ve been cut off from the ordinary world for so long that it all somehow feels new and thrilling. At least for now, I’m seeing it through the eyes of a kid looking out at her first snowstorm in awe rather than the adult who has to shovel the driveway. 

We’ll see if that mood holds when this is over. The other Keeper is coming closer, still headed straight for the hospital. I’d rather not stomp right up to them on the road and have an audience, so first I’ll try to get their attention the way they got mine. The tile sidewalks are wide enough that even at their busiest, they almost never feel crammed, and I don’t need to awkwardly weave around passersby as I hurry down the street. 

A block away from the hospital, I duck into a tiny city park between two tall buildings. After a moment to catch my breath, and to make sure no one else is here watching me, I turn my focus inward, reaching for the heart of my magic. Its touch is cold and bitter as ever, like the protective haze I’m cloaked in has seeped into my bones. Wisps of pale green light shimmer into view as I will my power back into the world, sucking in the sunlight around me and plunging the park into a brief unnatural night. Bright threads dance around me, shaping themselves into my regalia, but still I push more of it outward. Whatever my soul is like to other people, I want them to sense it as strongly as possible. It feels a bit like trying to form a smoke signal with nothing but my breath on a winter day, but then a Keeper with the right magic could probably make that work.

Sure enough, as the sudden darkness around me lifts, the presence stops moving. Almost a minute passes before they start again, faster now, coming almost to the hospital. I release a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding when they turn and head straight toward me. This plan hadn’t been much more than a fair guess. All that’s left to do is peer out at the sidewalk, wait, and hope this doesn’t end up being a disaster.

There they are. At the end of the street, a few hushed people are hastily stepping aside to make way for… wait, there’s two of them? I hadn’t sensed the second at all, no matter how close they came. 

Before I feel anything clearer, they come dashing down the road. A girl in heavily-engraved golden armor leads the way. Blonde hair in a single long braid trails behind her, and she’s holding a long spear tipped with gold or brass and a shield that looks much too big for her at the ready. Following her is a much taller girl in red, a sleek dress with sleeves detached at the shoulder and a skirt lined with long, sharp triangle-pattern folds of black cloth. She wears a tiny blue coral formation in her dark hair like a flower, with matching bracelets on either arm. The second one looks unarmed, but both are tense, ready to fight at any moment. 

Why? Does my magic feel that awful or are they worried about something else? 

Hesitant, I step off the park pavilion and into their path. The two come to a sudden stop a few feet away, and the armored one takes a battle stance, her gaze quickly sweeping around us before settling on me. “Where is it?” she barks. 

I wince at the noise. At least ‘it’ probably isn’t me, but… “What are you talking about?”

“What? Whatever you were flaring for!” the tall girl says. Her voice is lower, but still tinged with nervous energy. For a few very long seconds, I’m not sure what to say to that. 

“…No, it’s not like that, there isn’t anything happening. I just wanted to talk.”

The armored girl casts a sideways glance at her companion. The girl in red just stares down at me, confused, not quite scowling. “Then why on earth did you… ah, wait! I’m sure I don’t recognize you, so…” In an instant she lights up, her entire attitude reversing. “You’re new too, aren’t you? Has nobody told you this? That trick is the standard Keeper way to say ‘hey, please help me!’ Don’t worry about it, now you know, it’s just that you were really… loud, I guess is the word I’d use! It actually hurt a little! I was worried we were running into something really horrible.”

…Oh. Any of us can probably do what I just did. New Claris is full of Keepers, and if one of them runs into something they can’t handle, this really would work well as an instant signal fire. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine, we’re over it! Right?” she replies, looking expectantly to the shorter armored girl.

“Oh, uh, yeah… I don’t see why not,” the other girl concurs, loosening her stance and the tenseness in her shoulders as she lowers her shield.

“See? There it goes, right under the bridge! Whoosh!” the taller girl says, charging on ahead, and steps forward to offer a handshake. Those coral bracelets aren’t actually attached to anything, they’re too loose to fit around her arms — they just float there, moving with her. The glow in her eyes matches her outfit exactly, and… something about her is oddly familiar. I don’t think I’ve seen either of them in any of the Keeper news, not that I ever followed it too closely, but I’m not sure what else it could be. 

“Screaming Hymn Shona, at your service! You’re, ah… Ill Wind, is it? Cool! What’s your name?”

“What?” I hiss. “Why would — where did you even get that?” I recognize those words, but they were just a feeling I had about my power when I studied it. I didn’t share them with anyone. I didn’t even say them. The only way I can see that coming out is if, what, Vyuji somehow read my mind and told a bunch of strangers who aren’t even her kids?

“Um…” Shona says, blinking rapidly. “Right, you’re new. They, uh, they come with the magic. They’re a sort of signature, part of what you feel when you sense a Keeper. Try it, you can see mine the same way.”

“No, I mean, I believe you, it’s just… urgh. That’s really terrible.” What’s worse is that even as I argue the point in my head, the title somehow feels true. It’s not wrong. I recognize it like my own face in the mirror and I hate it.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I like it! It’s… very distinctive, you know? Got a vibe we’re mostly missing in this city. Plus my strong, silent friend here hasn’t even found her name yet.”

“What do you mean she hasn’t found it?” How is that possible if any Keeper can just look at another and decide what they’re apparently supposed to be called? Bleh. I hate magic. I hate myself.

The other girl sighs, twirling her spear above her head as she returns it to a sheath on her back. “Hey, when did I become silent?” she huffs. “My NAME is Mide. I just haven’t gotten into this whole thing with the goofy titles.”

“They are not goofy! They’re the coolest!” Shona shouts back. 

“Think whatever you like about them. If I had one, I’m sure it’d be as goofy as this ridiculous armor,” Mide says, looking down at herself with a grimace. 

“What? Nooo! Your armor’s great!” Shona insists. “How many Keepers do you think look like that? It’s so you, it’s awesome!”

“It’s a gaudy mess. No mind paid to the weapons I’m using with it or what fighting Harbingers is actually like. All form, no function, and the form isn’t even that good!” Mide groans.

I mean, it is awfully shiny for my tastes, but I always thought Keeper regalia basically came from the Keepers themselves. Can you really be saddled with an outfit you hate the way I was with magic I hate?

Shona hrmphs and crosses her arms. “Well… you can always just take your sour grapes home if that’s how you want to be!”

“You know I can’t.” Mide returns the gesture, her shield dissolving into gold light in the process. “I don’t want to imagine the sort of trouble you’d dive into alone.”

This doesn’t seem like any of the worst-case scenarios I imagined, but whatever it is, it’s rapidly getting away from me. “Um…” I try.

“Yeah, I know, you’re out here because you didn’t wanna have to hear about all my amazing adventures secondhand! Lucky you’re a Keeper too, so you don’t have to act like this is all some dumb idea I dragged you into! We’re actual heroes chosen by the Goddess and from the way you talk sometimes you’d think this was just a repeat of the shogi thing!” Shona yells.

“Shona, bringing up the shogi thing will never be a good way to make your point. Never ever. Maybe just don’t,” Mide says flatly.

Shona shudders and groans like she’s just remembered something horribly embarrassing. “…Look. No one can possibly remember what all those little symbols on the pieces mean. Wasn’t my fault,” she grumbles a moment later.

“I did, somehow! Shogi people do! Irida obviously does, and if you were that set on impressing her, learning how to play the game before the tournament probably would’ve been a good start!”

“UMM,” I repeat, and stomp on the sidewalk for emphasis. I’m not going to start shouting at them. These two are already way too noisy.

“Huh?” Shona whirls to face me, a bit startled. “Right, right, sorry. We do have a third now.” 

Does she think this is a group? Is she already planning some adventure to drag me away on? Rather than ask, I point toward the pavilion. “Let’s head over here, alright? It’s quiet, we can sit.” More importantly, we still have a crowd staring at the three Keepers in the street. Shona looks back at Mide, who shrugs, and the two follow me into the tiny park.

“Oh, oh, who’d you make your Promise with? Enne’s ours,” Shona chirps as they find a seat. I settle in an empty bench across from them.

“Eh? Vyuji, why?” 

Shona scratches the back of her head. “No reason, I just thought it would be fun to collect friends from all…” She freezes in mid-thought. “Wait, for real?”

“Yes? That’s a bizarre question.” I’d never seen Vyuji before last night, just heard her name in passing once or twice, but a Messenger is a Messenger, right? They all do exactly the same thing. Why would I make that up?

“Well, it’s just that there’s not many of you, y’know? You’re the only local one I’ve heard of since… well, since Iona, and that was a pretty long time ago! Even the Cycles don’t mention the Moon Gardener as much as her siblings, so, uh… so people maaay go a little crazy filling in the blanks here and there. Er, sorry, I don’t mean to speak too ill of your Messenger! That’s all just talk that goes around. I’m sure it’s different if you know her personally!” 

I shrug. “Not really. She’s unbearable. Speak as ill as you like, I don’t mind.”

“U-uh,” Shona mutters, eyes suddenly wide. “Oh.” 

…Did I say something? 

Before I can figure it out, Mide steps in. “Hey, didn’t you have something you actually wanted to talk to us about?”

“Oh, right right right, I may have gone off on a few different garden paths there. Sorry!” Shona says, bouncing back in an instant.

Finally. Thank you, Mide. Your partner is impossible. “Were you here about the Harbinger incident in the Hills today?”

Mide nods. “We are, actually. I guess you’re the one who placed the call?”

“Yes. I figured they might send someone to check on its trail, but I’ve already done that. It’s gone. Completely gone.  And…” What next? How do the rest of them split the prizes? Are there rules of conduct for these things? Whatever. If this isn’t my territory, I don’t know what is. “And I live around here. I want to take care of it myself. Please tell whoever asked you to check that I’ll call for help if I need it.”

“Huh?” Mide says.

Shona, on the other hand, just points two finger guns at me and grins. “Ooh, cool! I always thought our Keeper scene didn’t feel quite complete without one of you incognito loner types!” 

Is she mocking me? I actually have no idea. Mide turns to stare at her, apparently shocked as I am that someone would just say something that embarrassing. She then looks to me with a knit brow, and it’s hard to tell whether she’s trying to evaluate me herself or sharing with me her bafflement out of sympathy, so I give her a dubious shrug in return.

Shona herself is glancing between us with a gawking smile, still keeping her finger guns trained on me. Eventually, Mide turns back to Shona as though questioning her soundness of mind, then back to me once more, and finally again back to Shona, who meets her gaze, their expressions unwavering… until they both burst into a shared fit of high-pitched laughter at the exact same time. 

…Whatever the joke, I guess I missed it. It must’ve been a really good one too, given how long they go on giggling between themselves.

“Ah, I’m… yeah, I’m sorry, when I put it like that it probably sounds really stupid, huh?” Shona says as she starts to catch her breath, wiping tears from her eyes on her sleeve. “Just, you know, too many Keeper stories in my diet growing up, I guess! Too many to shake now that I’m doing the actual damn thing!”

“…Anyway, I understand what you’re saying,” Mide finally goes on, “but doesn’t it feel kind of weird to divide things up quite that strictly? People need us to protect them, so if someone’s in trouble, isn’t the most important thing that whoever’s in the best position to help does it?”

“Schools usually have their own Keepers watching over them, right? Everyone leaves them to it. The Silver King seems to have the Peaks entirely covered most of the time. Then there’s the airship Keepers off in their own little world…” although I guess that’s mostly just a question of who can fly. “All I’m saying is that I can take care of my own yard. I don’t think that’s weird, no.”

“I… guess that’s true,” she says, not looking at all convinced. How did this girl end up as a Keeper? I shouldn’t need to say what I’m thinking, not when there was obviously something she made the Promise for.

Shona jumps back in before I can say anything else. “Sure, sure, I get it. I don’t think there’s any kind of, like, formal arrangement where they sit and map these things out, but I’ll pass that along.”

“Thank you.”

“I won’t go telling the world all about the new girl, either. I get the sense that’d be bad for this whole… image of yours. And favor for a favor, here’s something I’d like you to think about.” Her smile widens. “You fought your first Harbinger all by yourself. I bet it was pretty tough, right?”

Oh no. No no no no no. “I see where you’re going and I don’t think…”

“We could have a name and everything! It’d be so cool!” She hops to her feet and kneels in front of my bench, staring straight at me. I draw back a little, very pointedly saying nothing. Behind her, Mide just shakes her head and watches.

Shona waits a beat, then keeps right on going. “There aren’t any proper teams active in New Claris! The two of us are the closest thing, so we’d be the first! The first! Think about that!”

I’m already thinking about it, and I’ve already decided it’s an awful idea. I’m terrible with strangers, I don’t know these girls, and actual Keeper teams are complicated even in the best circumstances. Keepers tend to be… intense, in one way or another, and active ones all have something they want to change badly enough to go out and repeatedly risk their lives for. Who gets to keep the monsters you hunt as a group? Is it even possible to split a Harbinger down the middle and half-absorb it? I don’t see how I could’ve torn off a chunk of Yurfaln and shared it with someone else even if I’d wanted to. Which I really, really didn’t.

Eventually, Shona sighs, breaking eye contact. “Well, it makes sense for one of you types to be kinda shy, huh?” I’m not sure how long she was waiting on me — she’s so noisy that I must have pulled into myself a little. “Listen, just… give it some thought, okay? Hey, and you know, we can try it out before we make it a whole big thing if that’s better. The next time one of us finds something, we can fight it together, see how it goes. If you want, that is. How can we reach you?”

“Come by around here and do what I just did to get your attention, if you really need to.”

“That’s a little messy. What if someone else thinks it’s a false alarm? I’m sure you won’t give me your contact info, but here, why don’t I just… shit, I don’t have anything to write with, do you? No you don’t, who carries actual paper around?” She rattles off a phone number, then repeats it. “Just remember it, I guess. You can use it or not. And really think about it! There’ll be a prize for whoever comes up with the best name!”

“I’ll do that,” I lie. “Anyway, I’ve said all I wanted to say, if you’re done.”

“Sure, yeah, we’ll get out of your hair,” Shona shrugs. “Stay safe, uh, new girl… wait, I never did get your actual name!”

She sure didn’t. I’d been kind of hoping she forgot. “Oh, I’m… Eyna,” I say. My late grandma’s name. I don’t think I have the brainpower on hand to make up some complicated fake identity, but I’ll still take the steps I can.

“Right, right right right! Well then, Eyna, we’ll be seeing you soon! I hope!”

“Goodnight,” Mide adds. She mouths ‘sorry’ as Shona starts back toward the road, then stands and follows her away.

As soon as they round the corner, I lean over and sprawl out on my bench with a groan. It’s terribly uncomfortable, but I’m too tired to do anything else. I’ve forgotten how I ever used to handle people.

All of this probably took long enough that they’ve noticed back on the seventh floor, but they’ll just have to live with my silence for another night. Maybe I’ll figure it out in the morning.

It’s too dark to see inside, and the eerie green glow shifting over my tarot spread isn’t enough to illuminate anything. The air here is somehow too humid and too thin at the same time. It clings to me as I move, its damp warmth a sudden shift from the cold outside. My head swims and my lungs burn the way they sometimes do on bad health days, no matter how much swampy air I suck down. My eyes never seem to adjust to the gloom, and navigating by magic can only do so much. My soul has a sense of which way my power is flowing as the Wound gathers it up, but it’s not like I can actually see with it, and I don’t feel anything solid enough to be Yurfaln itself.

“Hey! If you want me, get out here! I’m not-” My voice quivers, instantly putting the lie to my poorly-faked confidence, and a dry cough tears through my throat. “…not done with you,” I croak.

Fluorescent yellow light from no clear source floods the ruins. The dim glow flickers like a dying lightbulb, but it’s at least enough to see by. The temple’s entrance hall is a round chamber held up by pillars just as caked in grime and corruption as the walls outside. Above is a high dome ceiling almost completely scrawled over with spiraling glyphs, though the white stone underneath does peek through in a few places. 

At the far end of the room, a dirty curtain hangs over a hall leading further inside. It swings open on its own — I brace myself, expecting the world to twist around me again, but the lurch never comes. Instead, Yurfaln’s distant voice echoes through the temple: Welcome welcome! Come. Join!

Do I have any other choice? Playing along with its plans feels wrong, but there’s only one way forward. I can change this world too, yes, but I’ve already struck at the Harbinger in the only way I can think of. As far as I can tell, it didn’t care at all. It liked it. 

No, that’s not quite right. I have no idea why Yurfaln would eat itself or make such a show of working my infection into its Wound, but it must be some sort of countermove. It didn’t just stand there and shrug my magic off — I definitely hurt it on some level. Bits of it were wasting away when I last saw it. It’s too much to hope that it’s still falling apart and I only need to catch it, but there has to be something I can do if I figure out what it’s doing with my power and why. 

Which I can only do by seeing more of it. No matter what that ends up looking like. 

So in I go. 

Past the curtain, the temple narrows into a long, dingy hall that slopes steadily down. It’s barely lit, as if by a single bulb floating somewhere far behind me, and I spend the descent reaching out with my soul for any signs of movement — an ambush, Yurfaln’s presence, anything. It never comes. There’s only distant wisps of my magic flowing inward and a sound that slowly fills the air, growing louder as I walk. Not medical equipment or insect noises, but a steady murmuring like whispered giggles. The weak laughter of dying children. The air gets simultaneously heavier and thinner as I come closer to the sound’s source, weakening my own breath. It never feels bad enough that the Wound is trying to strangle me, but it weighs me down all the same. That’s fine. My body failing me is nothing new.

Finally, a new, brighter source of unsteady yellow light comes into view. The end of the passage, and… yes, this feels like the central trunk of my tarot spread, the point Yurfaln is gathering my magic toward. The Harbinger’s slimy aura is thick here, and while I can’t tell if it’s nested somewhere in the miasma, waiting to catch me right at the bottom, I’m sure this place is… important to the Wound in some way. A deeper part of Yurfaln than those outside. If the answers I’m looking for are anywhere, they’re here. I gather my feeble strength and step into the light.

What’s waiting there steals the last of my breath.

The tunnel opens into a dank sickroom the size of a school auditorium. Withering bodies in ragged cloaks are packed into too-tight rows of rickety cots. The walls are coated in dirt and dust and Yurfaln’s mud, except where the dying are absorbed in scratching it away by hand. They work in very specific patterns, drawing those strange glyphs with the white stone beneath the grime. Some of the same figures are standing, limping through the rows even as bits of them fall out of their robes and melt into the corruption coating the surfaces. The wanderers study the writing on the wall with great interest, occasionally stopping to copy bits of it into smaller versions of Yurfaln’s great white tome. 

A space at the center has been sectioned off, its beds rearranged to form a rough wall around a small pool. The water in it is a vibrant swampy green, the single spot of color in the filthy grey room, and gives off fumes that look and feel exactly like my magic. Two of the creatures are swimming in it, fully clothed, and many more sit gathered around the water, laughing and chittering in voices fainter but somehow easier to hear than all the rest. All of them are falling apart, just like the rest, but rather than mud and filth they’re disintegrating into green mist and black feathers that litter the ground.

As one, the creatures turn to watch me enter. Some call out in greeting, some wave, and some are too weak to do more than look. I back away, still breathless, but bump into a wet, muddy wall after only a step. The passage behind me is gone.

Well. This is what I came for, isn’t it? If I wanted to run, I’ve had chances. What difference does it make if they’re gone now?

I take my first hesitant steps out into the room, pausing to look around every few feet. But much as I expect the ragged things to swarm me like hungry zombies, they never do. If this is a trap, it’s a stranger one than that. 

Right before I reach the cot barricade around the central pool, the sickening pressure of the Wound spikes, battering my soul as the foul air chokes my body. Just ahead, a spout of mud bubbles up from the floor, and when it sloughs away, the Harbinger is standing across from the water. Its hood is down, and its mouth grins wider than ever. Its lost legs and fangs have mostly grown back in, but they now have black feathers and tiny hollow shafts sticking out of them at random, uneven points, and they constantly writhe as if fighting it — three fangs have bent back and dug into its head. When I sense it this closely, its aura shares the rotten-fruit stench of seventh floor patients, but there are two distinct feelings wound together inside it: a burning ache spreading outward from its core and the cold, gnawing pain of my power winds through it, all tangling together into a single awful sensation.

The dying creatures fall silent as Yurfaln emerges, and its voice blares through the chamber. This time it speaks slowly, the way you would to a toddler who doesn’t quite understand words. The phrases are more complicated, harder to translate in that ethereal way, but they go something like: We feel so much. Burn so bright. Shine so much light! See, see!

Then it gestures with its head to one ragged thing seated alone at the edge of the circle. It’s hunched over a white book, writing on its pages at a frantic pace with an old-fashioned quill pen made from one of those black feathers. The cloth over one side of its body is pulled back to expose a human arm, which is steadily turning bright green as it rots, but it’s melting into liquid rather than dissolving into mist. A glass bottle at its side gathers the liquid up, and it uses that bottle as an inkwell for its pen.

The writer looks up at the Harbinger and beams proudly. The mandibles around its human mouth quirk up, like it’s trying to smile with them too. Yurfaln dips one of its legs into the bottle, opens its own book, and begins copying what it’s written, chirping excitedly all the while.

Once again, I find myself holding back vomit with all my strength. This is… none of it makes— 

No. No, there’s one way to make sense of all this. 

The Harbinger draws power from sickness. Sickness is where it began. It ate a man who was wasting away, then wandered off to curse other people with slow, miserable deaths. Pain like mine is probably its favorite food, and I went and served it the biggest meal I could. That’s why it would let me do this — no, do this to itself — and then welcome me into its world and celebrate. 

It’s all I can do to remind myself that it’s still hurting. I’m certain it is, and I’ve got some kind of hook in it, but… can I do anything with that? If I push myself further, would it collapse into nothing or feast on my suffering until it burst? I have no idea if that’s how it works. More importantly, I’d probably die before it did. This place is poisonous, and my barrier isn’t enough to keep it from seeping into me. Not while I still need to breathe.

Yurfaln slams its book shut and returns to watching me with its eyeless smile. It stays like that for a long, long moment. Then it scoops a clump of feathers into its mouth, gnashing eagerly, and starts toward the far end of the room. It moves much slower than it did before, with its whole body twitching wildly and throwing off its skittering steps, but eventually it vanishes through a curtain-covered door.

Leaving me with no choice but to chase it, stand here and waste away, or try and make my own way out… and I don’t see any way of blasting open a new path with my magic.

I look over my tarot spread once more. The upside-down tree’s trunk is made up of two cards. On the lower one, Yurfaln’s muddy greys and reds are gathered around a bright pulsing circle of my emerald green. The card above it is all Yurfaln’s shades, pulsing wildly, like a clay heart beating much too fast. There’s something more left of the Harbinger and its world, something deeper still.

It could still be dying. This could still work. And it’s the only chance I have.

Ragged creatures shuffle aside, clearing a path for me to follow their creator into its heart. 

On the other side of the curtain is only darkness, which swiftly expands and swallows the world.

~~~

What remains is a formless non-space like the void I fell through to enter the Wound, except I’m standing on solid ground instead of falling forever. Images float slowly past me, stone mosaics backlit by flickering yellow lights. They’re jagged, ugly things, sharp rocks all packed together rather than smooth, artistic designs, but they do form legible pictures.

The first shows a crowd of colorless human-shaped outlines rendered faintly yellow by the light, shambling around in the dark. The next panels narrow in on a single man, always brightly colored and lit against the bleak background. He’s alone in a crowd of featureless, colorless people, then in a bed, thin and haggard but glowing brighter than before. Finally, he’s moved into a place as warm and vivid as him, a garden room filled with other bright people, their light shining out into the world and entirely replacing the dreary backdrop of the last pictures.

The stones are smoother on the last mosaic. It shows the man seated in the garden-world in a giant plush chair, its gold trim as ornate as a king’s throne. In front of him, a creature shrouded in rags bows down like a student sitting at the feet of a great teacher. 

Is this supposed to be Yurfaln and Mr. Enfield? Did the Harbinger kill and eat the man and then build a shrine for him?

The last scene fades with that thought, and bright lights blink on, replacing the void with a new, smaller chamber. Bizarrely, the center of the Wound is much cleaner than the sickroom. Its white stone walls are mostly pristine, except in the corner where Yurfaln stands. There, black feathers litter the ground, and several of its legs have sloughed to the floor around it, along with little chunks of clay where they once attached to its body. They’re dissolving into green mist, but slowly, like they’ll disintegrate over hours rather than minutes. If I am killing it, I don’t think it’s fast enough.

Look, look! it chirps, gesturing with all the legs on one side of its body. On the far wall is a sacrificial altar straight from a horror story — a raised stone slab, tilted down toward the floor, decorated all over with twisting glyphs. A scalpel is balanced on the top edge of the slab. A round gutter set into the floor circles it, and viewed from the side, there’s a channel that flows straight into the wall behind the altar.

The wall itself features another mosaic. It begins as a drab cityscape, but the image is alive — a mixture of Yurfaln’s colors and mine spread through it like dye mingling in a glass of water, and where those twisting shades pass, things change. By the time it reaches the mosaic’s borders, the city is an extension of the Wound. Its surfaces crawl with living clay and its streets are filled with deathly ill people, all smiling serenely as they expire in the streets.

Yurfaln speaks again, in the same slow, cheerful voice it used outside. Yours! I made it. For you! Die together? it asks.

…Together? What? That’s… before, I thought it was eating the pain of dying of an illness and didn’t care if it hurt going down. If I’m understanding it at all — and maybe I’m not, but that’s all I have to go on right now — it’s not just that it doesn’t care if it hurts or if it dies, but dying is actually the point.

I remember Mr. Enfield’s last words to me, all that about things working out for the best and death spurring you on to make the most of your last days. Those are obviously lies people tell themselves to feel a bit better when there’s nothing else they can do, but I have no reason to think Harbingers understand human self-deception. Maybe Yurfaln pulled those feelings from his dying thoughts, took them completely seriously, and decided it liked the idea. I open my mouth, but whatever words I wanted to say a moment ago have fled me. What could I possibly say to something that thinks like that, if it would even understand me?

FOR YOU, Yurfaln repeats. Its voice has been shrill and painful since I first heard it, but the impatience, the anger it’s tinged with now, that’s new. It draws itself to its full height and crawls closer, towering over me between unsteady steps.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Vyuji said she could only teach me so much, and she talked like I was ready for this, but I should’ve made her tell me every possible thing she knew about the enemy. And experimented more, figured out everything I could do and thought about how best to use it. Instead I ran off to die rather than risk the Harbinger’s trail going cold.

No, no, it’s not over yet. I’m not going to die like this. I’m not going to die. Inflaming the wisps of my power inside Yurfaln wouldn’t kill it fast enough to save me, but that’s not the only thing I can do. Magic isn’t just a weapon that you swing harder and hope for the best, and all this isn’t just a meal or a source of strength to Yurfaln. It is Yurfaln. It celebrates our misery, loves it enough to make its world a temple to slow, painful death. ‘Truth Is Written In Scars.’ That’s what it named itself. Sickness is its identity. 

And as much as I hate it, sickness belongs to me.

“Okay. Okay, calm down,” I half-whisper. “Die together, fine. That sounds wonderful. Let’s do it.” I sidestep toward the altar, afraid to take my eyes off Yurfaln. “B-but this isn’t quite right. It’s not what you want. Can… can I make it a little better first?”

Yurfaln just tilts its head, shifting its posture slightly. I don’t know how I’m translating its words, but the understanding doesn’t seem to work both ways.

“Better. Like this. More of this.” I push out slightly with my will, feeding a little more power into my barrier. A little more of the same pain and fear and bitterness I used to infect the Wound. I should be able to warp this place in other ways, too. Honestly, what I’m planning is a simpler way, just one that doesn’t come quite as naturally.

The Harbinger is still for a moment, save for the wild twitching of its diseased limbs. Then it trills wordless agreement. There’s a lightening of the ever-present pall of its corruption surrounding my soul — its grip on the world loosens slightly, making space for me to add my own touch to the dreamscape. Maybe I could’ve done it anyway, but I really don’t want to push my limits. Not yet.

I close my eyes and push a bit harder, trying to infuse more than raw emotion into my magic. Ideas, memories, fears more complex than the raw, primal kind. One image in particular. Cold mist drifts through the room on a faint breeze. Once it passes, I look back at the wall and inspect my work.

The altar’s been replaced by… it takes a moment to register what it’s supposed to be, and I imagined it. It’s a set of two matching altars, now, one raised slightly higher off the ground than the other. But they’re partially tilted like examination tables, and instead of cuffs or a place to fasten a bound victim’s limbs, each has a single cushioned armrest, one on the left and one on the right. 

Between them is something like an oversized dialysis machine, but the body of the machine is set into the floor, carved from a single slab of white stone. Its monitoring instruments have no numbers, just sigils like the ones written on the temple walls and little smiley faces. The main assembly of tubes that would normally be in the center is replicated on each side of the device, and instead of a filter to run the blood through, the lines simply wind together in the middle into a big tangled maze of clear plastic. Each side has six lines ending in too-long, too-thick needles, more than any imaginable procedure could ever need. It’s not a medical machine, it’s a mad science nightmare contraption designed to steal all the blood from two people at once and then do something inexplicable but certainly deadly with it.

Why does it look so awful? I didn’t make it like that, did I? It must just be the clay I’m working with — I made this, but I made it of Yurfaln’s Wound. It’s still part of this world.

Anyway, I don’t care what it looks like. It’s more or less what I wanted, it’ll do what I needed to do, and Yurfaln will probably like it more this way. The statement to it should be clear — if you want to share my pain, my blood, my cursed, broken blood that’s doing its very best to eat me alive, you can have it.

Yurfaln looks the machine over, crawls in a few looping circles around and between the new sacrificial setup. I hold my breath until it giggles, cheers, and scuttles over to the taller table. Its legs grab at the tubes on its side — or its original, undamaged legs do, while the twitchy feathered ones flail and fight them — but eventually, it takes all six needles and sinks them through the holes in its shroud, letting out a sharp wail as each punctures something beneath the cloth. It sits on the table, sets its book down beside it, and opens it to a fresh page.

I approach the device in a few more small steps. I lean my cane against the altar and pick out a single needle-tipped tube. Yurfaln whistles and chirps meaninglessly as I roll back the sleeve over my injured right arm. My teeth clench so hard it hurts, which I know won’t help. I know it’ll do the opposite, a lifetime of injections and infusions and drawn blood has seen to that, but I can’t help myself.

Just a little pain. Just a little more pain. What’s that to save my life?

I’ve never done this myself before. I position the needle over one of the veins in the center of my arm, look away, and do my best to slip it in. Its cold bite is much sharper than usual, and I let out a whimper of pain, but can’t let myself stop to really feel it. No time. My soul’s image of Yurfaln sharpens — we’re connected like this, we’d have to be for whatever it was planning to work, and I sense it on some new level. It tried to make my disease, my magic, into part of itself. My power is wound all through its essence, but it’s still mine. 

And it answers when I reach for it, seize it, and pull with all my might. It’s tangled up with Yurfaln’s strain of corruption, so it’s easier to rip them both free from its body together.

The Harbinger makes a confused whining sound. It twists its body into a coil, tightening its entire being around its stolen suffering, and a strange sense of phantom pressure grows in the air as I pull against it. Through that pressure, through the sharp pain in my arm and the dizzying ache of breathing in this place and the numbing weight of my own failing body, I keep pulling until I feel my power tearing loose shreds of Yurfaln’s soul and dragging them along with it.

Finally, colors start to flow out through Yurfaln’s tubes. The assembly fills up with an insane, ever-shifting muddy soup of ink-blacks and reds and greys and shimmering greens that never truly meld together. Yurfaln’s whine rises to a panicked howl as the chaotic mix of our magic floats there, waiting for its new purpose.

For this to work, I have to give it one. Magic wants to express itself. It wants to be used. I can’t just wish it away, which leaves two places it can go. This surprised the Harbinger, but if I give it a chance, it could still find a way to fight back.

I look at the rusty scraps of filth mixed through the green of my miasma and shiver. Yurfaln may have stolen the other disease, but by now it’s steeped in its essence, repulsive to my senses on a level that goes far beyond the sickly-sweet stenches of death I felt earlier. It feels like looking down on a plate of food and seeing something still living, still perfectly awake, glaring up at me with eyes full of intelligent malice. Something that knows what’s coming, but needs me to understand in its last moments that it hates me and wants me to suffer.

Tensing my entire body, I will the mass back into myself. The corruption, mine and Yurfaln’s both, rushes through the machine and sinks into my veins. 

As one, my nerves explode. My legs buckle. I collapse to my knees, screaming and screaming and screaming until I’m sure I’m clawing out my own throat. Yurfaln’s earsplitting wails drown out my own, and the tearing muscles in my neck are the only way I know that I’m still making sound. Sharp, gnawing agony rushes through me, and the stolen affliction burns in my chest. I feel like I’m drowning on dry land, like my body has forgotten what to do with air.

But through my tears, I can see Yurfaln shriveling, shrinking underneath its robes. Dozens of little legs stretch out from beneath the cloth as it stands and staggers forward, grasping for me, but its body gives out in mid-motion, crashing to a heap on the ground. Its hood falls away as it looks up at me with its eyeless face, twitching and shivering and grimacing in impossible pain with both of its mouths, and its clay flesh rapidly starts to dry and crack. It doesn’t fall away and spread filth through the room, it doesn’t dissolve into green mist, it simply crumbles to dust.

Yurfaln lowers its head. Its voice gives out, fading to a faint, quivering cry. Its remaining legs rise once more, then plunge as one into its chest. With only a low, dry croak of pain, it rips something out of itself — a pulsing orb of blackness, with thin lines of rust-red light running through it like veins. The Harbinger’s heart. The trophy I’m here for. My first step toward saving myself. 

And it’s holding it up with the last of its strength.

…Offering it to me?

Wilt. Wilt and… fill this world… wilt. Drink it all. Become true. Together, it rasps with its final breath. Pleading, not for mercy but for…

I pull the needle loose from my arm and snatch the heart, and the last of Yurfaln’s body disintegrates into scraps of shredded cloth and a cloud of dead grey dust. Its core is warm and slick to the touch, sending a revolted shudder through me, but I cling to it all the same, somehow afraid that it might vanish like a dream in the harsh morning sun if I let go. 

I squeeze the heart to my chest and reach out with my power to swallow it, biting my tongue to shove the awful feeling of the act down, but… after the first nauseating sip, something starts to change. That air of malice I’ve felt since I first started tracking the Harbinger slowly fades. Absorbing the essence beneath it doesn’t translate to any physical sense, the way reading magic often seems to — this is a deeper feeling, more abstract, something new and wonderful. Like the heady haze of finishing a book good enough that you forgot everything else while you read it, didn’t even realize you were reading, but free from the part where you have to snap out of it and find yourself back in your hospital bed. It’s just how the world is now.

While I drink its creator dry, the Wound collapses around me, ruined walls and many-armed effigies and sandy beaches all crumbling into the void, everything twisting and shrinking until the dark light in my hands is the only thing left in sight. That light expands to fill my vision as it seeps into me, a dark field spotted with distant stars painting over the Wounds. Formless ideas and images flash through the dark.

Now I understand. Soon, everything Yurfaln was will be mine, and I know the truth of it in some soul-deep sense. I don’t know where it came from or how it came into being, but beginning from the moment it invaded our world and stole its first life, I understand what it was trying to do. It saw us on the seventh floor, suffering, slowly dying, snatching any bits of life and meaning we could from our unlivable situations, and it decided that was so wonderful it would share the experience with everyone it could. In its world, to be destroyed by your own misery was to be enlightened. 

But its highest ideal was only ever a dying man’s comforting delusion. I’ve carried more weight than Yurfaln for a longer life, even added its pain to my own, and at the end of all this I’m more sure of that than ever. That’s how I broke it and its world. Its dream. Did it understand that? How did it feel, spending its last moments being rejected by someone like me? Was it hoping I’d carry on some legacy for it?

It doesn’t matter. It’s gone, and all I want to take from its failure is the strength to survive.

~~~

When the world comes back into view, there’s no sense of moving from one place to another. It’s like the Wound was only ever a stage set placed in front of the living room. I’m still shaking all over, but there are no other sounds, no movement that I can make out through my blurred vision. Dimly, I see that I’m in front of the fireplace, right where the hole in the ground once was. Now there’s only a plush white rug, spotted with dirt where my hands are clawing into it. I lean back into a seated position and curl into myself, crying tears of relief as pain starts to give way to crushing fatigue.

Eventually, I start to move again. I turn myself around, fumble for my cane with my one good hand, and stand on shaky legs. Yurfaln’s two victims lay unconscious in their seats, alive and breathing, but tossing fitfully like they’re trying to force themselves awake from within a nightmare. They probably are.

The only thing I can do for them now is call in the specialists. What’s the procedure for things like this? If there’s a special number for Keepers to report magical hazards, no one’s told me yet. 112 will do, hopefully. I limp through the house, dimly surprised that I’m not bleeding all over the place, until I find a cordless phone on a little side table.

“Hello? I just killed a Harbinger. Two of its victims are still alive.” My voice comes out dry and scratchy, and using it is a little like coughing up sand. “It should be safe here and they look stable, but they’re going to need Sanctuary help.”

The line is quiet for a second. “Understood. Where are you?” 

Well, that was easy. I’m glad the police know how this goes, because I definitely don’t. I have no idea where we are, though. I navigated by Yurfaln’s scent on the way here. “In the Hills. Ummm…” I limp outside as fast as my battered body can carry me. It’s easy enough to find a street sign and the little number by the door. “12 Cope Street.”

“Okay. I have some officers on the way now, and we’ll send for someone from Bright Horizon. That may take a little longer. You said the victims weren’t in critical condition?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Something else occurs to me, though. On his way out last night, Dr. Hines hadn’t looked at all well, and he was missing this morning. He may have just been shaken, but he was very close to Yurfaln’s origin point. A Harbinger’s curse can begin as a subtle seed of dormant corruption, then burst into something horrible once it takes root.

“Ah, there’s someone else I think you should check on, too.” …Wait. What am I going to say about how I know him? I’m already dreading the thought of the news running wild with a Mystery Keeper Incident. I have to do something for him, and I can’t very well go check on him myself, but anything I give out could narrow the suspects down. “I think the name was… Ralph Hines? That sounds right. I don’t know where he lives or what he might be doing, just that he had some contact with it.” 

I cringe. They’ll definitely swallow that. Never in my life heard of the man, a Harbinger just name-dropped him, that’s it! 

Actually, why am I even panicking about this? 112 calls have to be confidential. Right?

“One moment, please.” There’s another pause, several seconds longer than the first. “There are two men with that name in our records. Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”

“Sorry. Try whichever one lives closest to this address first. It didn’t cover much ground before I caught it.” He is local. I think. I hope I didn’t just make that up.

“…Alright. We’ll do that.”

“Thank you. I’ll be going, then.” I hang up before they can object, leaving the phone on a patio table. Waiting around to give a statement would bring all kinds of attention I don’t want. 

On that note, was this entire thing noisy? Was I still screaming when I dropped back into the world? I don’t think so. I hope I don’t have an audience now. There’s no one right there on the street, at least, but I can’t see through the windows across the way. 

Taking whatever extra privacy I can get, I rifle through a concealed pocket on my Keeper dress — of course it has pockets, what good would any fancy outfit be if it didn’t? Just like I instinctively knew they were there, I know these pockets will connect to the ones on my actual clothes. Sure enough, the mask I’d taken earlier is inside. Once I put it on, I hobble away from the burrow-house and down the street. At the first road that ends in undeveloped woods, I duck into the trees and fall down in the dirt, leaning back on an old trunk.

“Hey, Vyuji, I’m safe now. Please get over here.”

A few seconds pass before the Messenger pops into being, seated on her knees across from me. She looks over in the house’s direction, then nods. “Congratulations, Liadain. I’m glad to see you… as well as can be expected after your first hunt. How are you feeling, now that it’s over?”

“I mean… terrible, but eating the thing helped, I think? I don’t feel like I could die at any moment anymore. Even if the only reason I got off this easy was because Harbingers are too mad to play for keeps. It… I don’t know how this works, why they are what they are or how much they control their power, but it was just broken on some basic level. If I didn’t get to it first, its own magic would have eaten it alive sooner or later.”

“Interesting. You shouldn’t rely on it happening again, though. I wouldn’t want you learning the wrong lessons so soon.”

“Ugh. Of course not. Thanks, for the warning, I guess. So, umm… I’m not immortal yet, am I? How do I know how far along this whole nightmare got me?” I ask.

“That’s for you to find out. How do you feel? Not your injuries, not that body, you. The heart of you. What has changed inside you?”

I turn my sight inward. The Harbinger’s mass is still there, but the feeling of it as something separate from me is slowly fading. All that remains is a faint change in the way my soul expresses itself to my senses, a new or slightly altered note to the confusing impression. Some trace of the power Yurfaln drew from its own decay. I can turn my wounds into fuel, now, use them to make my magic stronger — the closer to death’s door, the better.

Which is… okay, that feels horrible, and I don’t want to rely on it if I can at all help it, but if what I just went through is a typical Harbinger experience, it might be incredibly useful. My first thought was that enough horrible bodily harm to matter would just kill a girl like me, but things don’t seem to be so simple with Harbingers. I could’ve been on the brink of death at any point in there.

“Okay,” I sigh. “I found it and what I found seems good, but is that everything? Is there normally more to it, some harder-to-find thing below the surface?”

“Possible, but not terribly common. Don’t expect an instant revolution — your growth is just beginning,” Vyuji says.

“I’ve got a few months to live. Maybe a year,” I hiss. “How much of this am I possibly supposed to do? Do I have to kill a Harbinger what, every week? Every day?” 

“Ah.” She sits there, still as ever, for several very long seconds. “I see your concern… but you don’t, not necessarily. There are considerations. As I’ve said, Emergence is a process, not a single distant threshold to be crossed. There will be more and greater changes than this, and those will offer you ways to extend your life until you are satisfied. Until then, you only need to hunt enough to stay a few steps ahead of death. 

“To continue, when we met last night, I said that this Harbinger was most likely a newborn. You’ve seen more of it than I have. Would you agree?”

I think on Yurfaln’s last moments, and the thoughts it wanted to share with me before that. Mr. Enfield seemed to be its first contact with humans. If it was older than a day or two, it spent its time before last night doing nothing worth noting. “If they start killing as soon as they turn up? Yes.”

“They usually do,” she says. 

I don’t like where this is going.

Vyuji looks away from me and gestures widely out at the city. “Harbingers grow as they feed. In becoming more than they are, they have more to leave behind when they fall, and so their remnants grow with them. You can do this again and again, or you can find more dangerous quarries. That’s your choice to make, but I do expect one would reach your goal quicker than the other.”

That newborn — that defective runt of a newborn, if I took her at her word — had been an unholy terror. It took everything I had and then some to barely survive it, and I’m no healthier or closer to immortality than I was this morning.

“Vyuji, about how many Keepers actually last long enough to get what they want?”

“It’s dangerous work. Some do. Some don’t. I’m happy to tell you that my children have better odds than most.”

“Well thank the fucking Goddess for you.”

“Indeed.” She smiles faintly. There’s not a trace of irony in her voice.

All I can do is push back the urge to cry. I’ve used up my tears for a while. “Great. Leave me alone, then.”

“As you like.” Vyuji inclines her head and vanishes.

Home, safety, life, all of them suddenly feel very far away.

I’m so tired. Can I even make it back to the hospital like this? My right arm is still useless, and there’s an unpleasant numbness in my limbs, an early sign of my sickness flaring up. I still feel echoes of Yurfaln’s disease, leaving me constantly dizzy and breathless.

Just on the edge of my awareness, I can faintly feel points of life, normal people going about their days. Sensing them isn’t new, but something is different. In the hospital, healthy souls didn’t feel like much of anything. Now they share a scent of their own. Maybe I just didn’t notice it before, or the slow deaths all around me drowned it out. It’s nothing like those stenches. It doesn’t tell me anything about them except that they’re well, but it is… soothing, a balmy wind on my wounds. Like fresh rain. I draw a little closer to the neighborhood and the gentle sensation, finding a tree I can hide behind and peek around. 

My first sense of it wasn’t quite complete. It’s more like water in a desert. An oasis through the eyes of someone who’s never seen water in their life. As long as I sit here and fill my world with this sensation, things don’t seem so bad. I’ll stay like this for just a little longer, just a little taste…

Taste? What?

Some part of me instinctively reaches out and… inhales? Three thin plumes of shimmering green fog, the color of new leaves, spiral out through the walls of the houses across the road and sink into me. A warm, gentle current rolls through my body, softening my many aches and allowing clean air back into my lungs. I’m still a bit tired, the pain in my arm and the cold, stinging numbness remain, but in an instant I feel much better.

Only after I stretch experimentally, feeling the wear in my muscles fade even as I move, do I realize what I’ve just done. My stomach churns as I jolt myself away from the warm auras.

After a moment to calm my sharp, shallow breaths, I turn my awareness back toward the souls I’ve drawn from. It was like I’d covered my eyes at the scene of some awful accident, then slowly cracked open a peephole between two fingers when I couldn’t help but look. What I see is… not nearly as bad as I expected. Their souls are a little less clean, like they’ve taken on a faintly sour note, but they haven’t caught anything horrible from me. My magic tells me that to them, the effect is a vague, sourceless malaise, close to the feeling of having slept very poorly.

None of them are terribly hurt, but did they feel my touch as something cold and invasive? Could a normal person have seen the wisp of essence I stole from them leaving their body? That would’ve given them quite a scare, I’m sure, but it’s the worst case I can imagine. I wait for a minute. Nobody starts screaming or rushing outside.

Just what have I done, in the balance? Those three people are probably going to have a few bad days. In exchange, I put down a monster that was nesting a few blocks away from them. Neither they nor any of their friends are going to waste away in their homes, celebrating their own miserable deaths all the while. Thanks to the health I took from them, I can keep hunting as soon as I rest up. New Claris will be better and safer for my work. Maybe that isn’t exactly why I’m doing it, but what difference does that make?

…Ignoring the faint guilty twinges in my chest, I can probably still live with myself. Sorry, everyone. I’m certain you’d rather it be me than Yurfaln. 

I close my eyes and scan my body as the breaths of stolen life settle. By the time the last has done its work, the sharp pain in my arm is nearly gone. All that remains is a stiff sprain in my right wrist. That’s fine. I’m not going to trouble someone else just for my off hand. Hesitantly, I dismiss my transformation, hoping this strength will hold without my magic propping me up. I don’t exactly feel great, but it still might be my best health day since before the second transplant.

So I step out from my hiding spot and head back toward the hospital. I might have appreciated the sudden lightness in my steps, but it’s too tied up with the memory of where my new vigor came from, the moment when I was terrified I had killed someone. My magical senses are still jumping at shadows, and I have to stop myself from tensing whenever some new presence appears. All of them are humans bearing no horrible corruption, and I can easily just look at them and see an ordinary person doing ordinary things, but that isn’t enough to completely calm the sense of unease or unreality lingering in my heart.

Things are quiet all through the walk back, and I do my feeble best to give my racing mind a rest. The air is still pleasantly crisp in the sidewalk trees’ shade, and there are no Harbinger traces I can feel. Some mad part of me almost wants to find another target, knowing how far I still have to go, but there’s no chance I’d survive doing that again today. 

For now, I just really need a nap. As the hospital comes into view, I take a moment to quiet my soul-sense as completely as I can. I don’t want a tower full of other sick people weighing on me.

“Lia! What happened? Are you hurt?” Almost as soon as I step out of the elevator on the seventh floor, an aide rushes over to me, her face creased with concern that doesn’t seem at all called for. It’s still midday — I haven’t even been gone for that long.

“…I’m fine? I just went for a walk in the garden. I know, I know, medical advice and all that, but I’m not hurt. I wore the mask and everything. What made you think there’s a problem?” 

Um. Maybe that last bit was a little too defensive.

“I see, it’s just… your hair…”

“What about it? It was mostly behaving this morning.”

“…Oh.” Her frown deepens.

“Seriously, what is it?” I push past her and into the nearest bathroom, inspecting myself in the mirror.

Just to the left of my bangs, a thin tress has bleached itself a completely colorless white.

My vision twists in on itself, giving way to the sight of nothing at all. I’m hurtling downward through an endless, lightless black void — falling, but with no air rushing past me. My nerves prickle with the sense of being watched from afar, or just barely spotting movement in the corner of my eye, but there’s nothing to see. No sights beyond myself, no sounds or smells or temperature, only the vague sense of ‘down.’ 

In their place, the Harbinger’s miasma surrounds me, thick as water. Its currents rage against my body as if trying to force me back outside, but still I fall. All I can do is brace for impact and hope I’m not crushed like a falling star smashing into the earth.

Suddenly, a dim, rust-red light cuts through the haze. I notice a shape sculpted in the darkness. A glowing rectangular sign. It’s emblazoned with nine white letters which spell out a word I can’t quite make out, but which I feel is all too familiar to me. I think it’s trying to say “EMERGENCY,” but each character looks distorted, crooked, or just plain wrong, as if carelessly drawn from the memories of a mind more concerned with the sign’s appearance than its actual function.

Just as soon as I think that, I sense a surge of hostility from all around me, prickling in my very bones. It’s telling me that if I insist on staying, then I must prove that I belong, or be made to belong. In the distance, I hear the faint, faraway howl of an ambulance siren. With each passing second, it grows louder, closer. Emerging from the darkness beneath me, I see the sterile, simply-patterned tiles of a hospital floor stretching out endlessly in every direction. As the sound of the ambulance siren intensifies in my ears with each passing second, the surface rushes towards me, filling my vision.

The moment I think to curl my legs into myself, the crash rattles up my body. A dull, heavy pain lashes my soles and shoots up my legs. My knees buckle and I spill forward, slamming against a slope on my right arm. I tumble down the incline, the contrast of the stark white floor stretching out into the pitch black abyss swirling wildly in my vision. All of a sudden, the ground rights itself beneath me. My body rolls to a halt, my back flat against the chill surface, and my cane clatters to the ground just out of reach. Even my cards fall and flutter through the air, forming a scattered circle around me.

I rush to push myself upright, but my right arm screams out in pain. My eyes clench shut and hot tears spill down my cheeks. I suck in air through my teeth and force my legs to raise me. Once I’ve resolved myself to stand, the dull ache in my joints doesn’t seem as bad, easing as I wipe my tears on my sleeve. My right arm is tender with a nasty purple bruise and closing my fingers stings, but I can ignore it. I have practice ignoring the parts of me that hurt.

Slowly, I wobble to my feet and retrieve my cane. My cards pick themselves up, gathering back into a steady orbit around me. I pan my gaze over the stillness of the Wound, the white plane vanishing into endless blackness. Then, in a rush of motion so sudden it makes me flinch, the floor folds upward like the faces of a cardboard box assembling itself, walling me in. When the rearrangement ends, I’m standing in a sterile white hallway lined with doors — they had been on the ground to start with, I realize, before it bent upward and those patches of floor became the side walls. There’s a thin window in the middle of each, but I can only see fog through them. Each is marked with a different illegible word in glowing white text, which brightens as I stumble upright, and the soft ping of an elevator opening rings through the hall.

Just as the space settles, something like thick mud starts to leak from its corners and crevices. It crawls with living hues of grey and red, staining the clean white surfaces the colors of dried blood. Patches of it tear themselves open, forming dozens of messy black holes — roughly circular fanged maws. 

Last night, I glimpsed this world at its edges, watched a horror that shouldn’t exist storm into my life. I’d seen its creator’s horrid handiwork just a moment ago. I thought those things might steel me for the full picture. 

They didn’t. Nothing could have prepared me to see the world completely replaced by this. The scene of the Wound creating itself before my eyes stifles my breath.

Ahead, the hallway stretches on and on, ending after perhaps 40 feet in gaping black emptiness. A whole stretch of the world just isn’t finished yet, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s dream while their mind is still building it. I have no idea how much of this is under construction, for lack of a better term, what would happen if I stepped into the nothingness, or how much direct control the Harbinger has over shaping this place. Is this a dream it’s having or a stage it planned and constructed? The hollow darkness draws farther and farther away, the hall creating itself even as I stare into its depths. Do I really know anything about what I’ve gotten into?

What is a Harbinger? What do they look like? What exactly can they do, and what can I do to them that will matter? For some reason, I think back to the safety lessons everyone sits through in primary school. The lectures and the cutesy videos accompanying them didn’t answer any of those questions. Bits of their useless advice chirp in my head:

“Harbingers feed on pain and sadness, so if you or someone you know is having a hard time, try to talk it out and find a way to make things better!”

“If you see something scary you can’t explain, run away and call for a Keeper! Only Keepers can protect the world from monsters!”

It was all a lot of weirdly cheery mottos like that, stressing the importance of Good Mental Hygiene. When I got older, I started thinking about what they hadn’t said. If you’re cornered by a Harbinger and no cute little spirit shows up to offer you the Promise, what do you do? They must have left it out because there’s only one answer to that question: pray for rescue. All the rest was probably just a way to make kids feel like there’s something they can actually do to protect themselves.

Still, those videos, Vyuji’s words, and what I’ve just seen myself are the only information I have. There are never any photos or videos of battles with Harbingers, and by now the many reasons for that are obvious to me. I know that every Harbinger is different, that only Keepers can hurt them, and not much else.

At least a few of those answers are waiting further down. I’ll need them if I plan to do this and keep doing it. I shudder at that thought, but… no, I can’t distract myself like this now.

Before I can plan my next step, a patch of muck on the floor squirms and bubbles to life, and something rises from the mire. It looks for a moment like a formless spout of living slime, featureless save for the holes where wall-mouths rose with it, but then the substance starts to slough away like thin, swampy mud, mouths and all. 

The shape that remains when the sludge is mostly gone is vaguely human, but much too tall and spindly, shrouded in layers of ragged grey cloth. Torn as it is, the cloth still almost completely conceals its wearer — the holes in the fabric never quite align enough to expose the creature beneath. Near the bottom, shredded rags give way to a tangle of black insect legs, and several more are wrapped around a huge white tome the thing keeps clutched to its chest. A hood obscures most of its head, but as it leans down to regard me, a thin, flat arrowhead of an eyeless face emerges, split in half by a maw lined on the outside with black fangs that twitch like limbs.

And behind those fangs are a too-long, too-wide grinning row of shiny white human teeth, set into swollen red gums.

The thing that can only be the Harbinger speaks, and though its maw opens wider, the sound comes from everywhere at once. Its voice is the painful whining noise of a flatlined heart monitor, but that awful droning is definitely forming words. I don’t recognize them and certainly couldn’t repeat them, but somehow I know that they are words in a language, and that language means something to my magical senses. Its speech has a strange stilted meter, almost like it’s trying to perform a poem. I can just barely make out the core of what it expresses:

<Truth Is Written In Scars>
<Yurfaln>

Taking in everything its screaming voice tells me at once is overwhelming, and no part of it can be disentangled from any other. It’s simultaneously a name and a proclamation that makes no sense and maybe more, layers I feel but can’t understand. It’s a lot like when I tried to read my own soul, if every part of it were something twisted and hostile and alien.

Then the piercing song stops abruptly, taking its message with it.

Something crashes into the wall behind me. I whirl around with a yelp. At the finished end of the hall, a door has slammed itself open, exposing a switchback staircase leading up. A path further into this mad world? No, that doesn’t feel right. Up is the way I just came from, so by the dream-logic magic seems to use, this is probably a passage out of the Wound. 

As if in emphasis, a high-pitched chorus of whining nonsense rises from the mouths on the walls. I still don’t understand the language they’re speaking, but the message is clear: You must be lost, they say, echoing the victims outside. We don’t take your kind. Go on, get out of here before I change my mind. 

For its part, the Harbinger — Yurfaln, that was its name — simply waits and watches. Its body bends in strange places when it moves, and it constantly tilts its entire upper half back and forth. Like an animal trying to get a better look at some strange new thing.

Maybe it’s a mistake to read any kind of real-world logic into what Harbingers do, but something about that… 

Predatory animals are hardly the biggest danger in the wilderness, but I’ve read that if you ever run into one, the best thing to do is hold your ground and act fearless. Don’t pick a fight, but don’t back down or run away. Present yourself as a fellow hunter to be politely avoided rather than an easy meal. I’m not a beast on the prowl, but the Harbinger is, and it’s acting very much like it doesn’t want to hunt me after I jumped right into its lair.

If it doesn’t want to fight, if it sees me as a threat, maybe it’s not prepared for this. Maybe, if I dare to hope a little, we’re both scared of whatever comes next. Either way, I know what I’m here to do. To my surprise, I even feel like I know how to do it. Vyuji told me I could warp the world inside a Wound, fight the Harbinger for control of its own stage. When she said so, I had no idea how I’d do something like that, but now that I’m here, it’s just something I know I can do. An instinct coming up for the first time. It’s not that the inner flow of my magic is stronger here, so what’s changed? 

Doesn’t matter. No time to stand here and wonder. What I do know is that my power wants to be used. The sea in my soul is a churning storm of fear and disgust. It wants to spill out beyond me, to spread, to consume this place as fuel for itself like a wildfire. No, like a virus, I realize with a shiver that only makes it more eager.

Fine. Do it. Infect this nightmare. Rot it from the inside out.

That thought is all it takes to send my magic surging to life. Cards rise from my orbit and begin arranging themselves in front of me. It doesn’t feel like I’m directing them — magic simply translates my intent into action. Hurting and ruining something with a power like mine must be its simplest possible use, and I barely need to think about how once I’ve resolved to do it. As Vyuji promised, some part of me already knows. 

Within seconds, the cards form an elaborate asymmetrical pattern that looks nothing like any real spread I’ve ever seen. It’s shaped roughly like the branches of a tree, but upside-down, joining into a trunk at the top. The unfamiliar abstract scenes on the cards have all been dyed in new colors, Yurfaln’s muddy grey-brown shades… no, all but one. At the end of one branch is the poison-green card I pricked my finger on earlier, now bright with cold emerald light. Death inverted.

Wisps of hungry shadow reach out from my card, crawling over the nearest one on the branch. As they do, the yellowed ceiling lights flicker wildly, and pained cries cut through the shrill voices screaming out from inside the walls. Scattered across Yurfaln’s carpet of corruption, mouths on the wall begin coughing up emerald fog twined with threads of inky blackness. The growing clouds of it are eerily bright, casting the hall in the sickly glow of my power, and sparkle in a way that makes me think more of icy mist than toxic gas. 

There’s no mistaking what it feels like, though — if I imagine this world as a sea like the one in my own soul, a polluted, swampy expanse teeming with alien vermin, my magic is a bitter numbness spreading through the water. It begins as a film of frost on the swamp’s surface, but the cold pushes steadily further down until it touches the things crawling beneath. It seeps into them, and while it feels at first like I’m touching dozens of greasy, revolting creatures myself, they quickly freeze over and sink, carrying my power into Yurfaln’s depths with them. Spreading it. Vectors for me, just like Vyuji said.

Maybe twenty seconds into this process, the tiny mouths start melting off the floor and walls into icy green clouds, like they weren’t exhaling my mist but throwing up insides they never had until there’s nothing left of them. 

It makes me want to puke myself, watching my power creep into this living nightmare in a way that makes them both so much worse, but I can’t look away. Not only would it not even help, since I sense the magic working as much as I see it, but the monster standing right in front of me could strike back at any second. I still don’t know what I’ll do when it does — I just hope the same instincts that guided me through this awful invasion will have more to offer. 

Yurfaln doesn’t lash out at me or my magic, though. It just looks around at the walls, chittering and whistling to itself as it studies the spreading blight. The mist gathers into a slowly sinking bank of fog, filling more and more of the thin hall, and the Harbinger makes no effort to resist it. Once the fog has blanketed the floor around it, green tendrils start to grasp at its shredded robes, squirming through the holes in the fabric, but still Yurfaln does nothing I can see or feel to push back against me. 

Until a shudder wracks Yurfaln’s body. One of its lower legs snaps off with a sound far too much like cracking bones, dissolving into mist as it falls. Its voice stutters, then rises into a wordless howling siren, a wail of some unnameable emotion. It hunches down, bends and stretches itself into a shape more centipede than human, and launches into a writhing, twitching blur of motion. I throw my free hand up — stupid, useless reflex, as if that’d stop anything — but it’s still not coming for me. Instead, it… it’s slithering up the walls, darting between infected mouths. 

By the gnawing, slurping sounds it makes without ever interrupting its howl and the rough patches torn out of the muddy carpet in its passing, it’s eating them. 

Bile rises in the back of my throat. I choke it down. What? Why? Am I not hurting it? It’s lost two more legs now — does it not care? I don’t know. Do I want to know, to understand why this thing does anything it does? No, but I’ve got to— 

Yurfaln’s upper body bends back, twisting to face me upside-down. Some of its fangs shimmer green, slowly dissolving into death-mist, as it chirrups something in its language. It sounds almost excited. The words aren’t as clear as before, but the same part of me feels them. Yes, okay, come! Share! it seems to be saying. Then it turns away and scuttles down the hall, crawling over and around the halls in a spiral pattern, but rather than moving away it just seems to stretch on and on and on. 

Heavy curtains like theater drapes made of hospital privacy screens fall over the hallway ahead from nowhere, and the whole world starts to shift around me at a terrifying pace. It sends me careening down the hall without actually moving, and with each layer of curtains that rushes by, another spiral, another endless coil of Yurfaln creeps over the walls. Just past the point where nothing else remains, the final curtain slides open and flings me into a new world.

Blinding light stings my eyes. Cold air seeps into my skin. The ground ripples just enough to be disorienting. My eyes take a moment to adjust, and when they do… it’s not ground at all. My tarot spread still floats beside me, but the world has completely changed. I’m on a beach, standing on the ocean’s surface just off the shore. The water beneath my feet is completely solid, like glass, save for the slight rippling of tiny waves over its surface. Snowflakes dance through the air in a faint breeze — it’s a bright winter day, but with no visible sun, and the light is tinged a fluorescent yellow that makes all the fresh falling snow look dirty. 

Yurfaln is nowhere in sight, but I’m not alone. Two human-sized figures stand where the sea meets the shore, dressed in the same all-concealing ragged shrouds the Harbinger wears. They’re clearly struggling to move, even to stand. They breathe so heavily that each exhalation sounds like a groan of pain, and they shiver in the cold with each wave of frigid water that laps over their legs. Nevertheless, they’re having what sounds like a happy conversation, held entirely in insectoid chirps.

All around us, the ocean’s surface is littered with strands of dark, stringy seaweed. They drift in with the tide in clumps, gathering into a great wet mass on the dunes of the beach that smells of rotten eggs. Slowly, tiny maws like the ones that grew on Yurfaln’s corruption emerge from the pile, but they aren’t the only thing — patches of it also sprout shiny black feathers.

And as they do, the things on the beach lean down, scoop up heaps of fanged, feathered seaweed with trembling hands, and raise them to their mouths. 

I tear my gaze away, but that does nothing for the sounds. The eager, desperate gnashing. I don’t bother trying to cover my ears, not to spare my injured hand but because I’m already sure it wouldn’t help. I just wrench my eyes shut until the noise fades, replaced by another one. Short, quiet wails, much softer than Yurfaln’s voice, like bird calls voiced by sirens. 

When I peek back at the shore, the shrouded things wave at me, as if they’d been trying to get my attention. They turn around and stagger away, chittering cheerfully all the while. A path at the far end of the beach trails up a steep hill, and the figures climb it together, leaning against each other through their halting steps until they fade from sight.

This place… it’s not at all like the unfinished hospital-hall world I first stepped into, but what is it? What was the plan in taking me here? Yurfaln’s presence feels thicker now, but I don’t see or sense the Harbinger itself anywhere. The beach itself is featureless, save for the massive pile of seaweed covering its shore, and the ocean looks like it stretches out forever, flat and clear save for the dark ribbons drifting by. I step over those when they come near me — whatever they are, I want nothing to do with them.

Once I’m satisfied that nothing in my immediate surroundings is coming to kill me, I look over my spread again. The colors on the cards are still shifting — green and black veins have spread over most of the inverted tree’s branches. Yurfaln’s clay-and-gore shades bend around my colors, oozing over them like an amoeba trying to absorb its prey. A few tendrils of poison-green have been cut off from their origin point, so they now writhe alone in the mud, but they aren’t erased or absorbed. It looks almost like they’re being carried upward, dragged slowly toward the trunk of the diagram.

What does that mean? What does any of it mean, and why does this feel less like fighting a monster than sharing a horrible dream with one? Keepers hunt and kill Harbingers, that’s all I really knew about this going in. I came here to kill Yurfaln, I’ve already taken a swing at it, and still it hasn’t shown the least interest in fighting back. I barely understand any of what it’s doing, to say nothing of why. But I’m still here to kill it, and it’s waiting somewhere further inside. There’s only one way to go.

So I head for the shore, stopping when the water ceases to hold me up and my boots touch wet sand. Even at its thinnest point, the seaweed is piled too wide to simply hop over. I find a stretch relatively free of strange growths and jab it with my cane. Nothing happens, so I step back, hold my breath, and do my best to leap through it with a running start. My best isn’t very good — I touch down in the middle of the mass with a sickening damp squelch and plod clumsily through the rest, more afraid of what might happen if I rush and stumble face-first into it than what it’ll do if I take too long. 

I only stop to kick the sludge off my boots once I’m well onto the dry sand, but it’s strangely clingy — no, it’s clinging, moving, holding tight to me, crawling slowly upward as a single mass. My mouth goes dry as it climbs to the top of my boots. Shapeless strands reach for my legs. Cold, slimy moisture seeps through my shoes and into my thick stockings. 

get it off get it off get it OFF—

My whole body shudders at its first touch, and magic seethes to the surface, rushing to my defense. With no clear thought, no conscious act of will, just raw disgust given form by some strange new instinct, power flows out into the barrier I cast before I left home, turning it from a thin layer of cold hostility into a cloak of noxious spite where only I can survive. The grasping stalks of seaweed don’t waste away to nothing or disintegrate like the infected mouths did before, but they do lose their strength, wilting and withering and falling away into dried husks at my feet. Still squirming as I stumble away, hissing something in a hoarse voice that sounds uncannily like “whyyyyyyyy?”

I turn and run up the hill, as fast as my feeble legs can carry me.

The end of the path opens into a narrow rocky valley, where the ground quickly levels out. At the far end is… it looks like it may have been an old stone temple once, before it was left to molder for centuries. Bright moss mingles with the twisting shades of Yurfaln’s corruption all along the walls, and wherever the surface isn’t overgrown, it’s defaced with swirling sigils that somehow recall the ones on the back of my tarot cards. They’re nothing like the scribbled, illegible signs that marked the Wound’s entrance — these are symbols in another language entirely, one nothing like Clarish or any other language I’m aware of. A set of three half-crumbled stone arches serve as an entryway, and beyond that is only darkness. The weak laughter of dying children echoes out through the valley.

A small group of shrouded figures is gathered near the ruins. Two I recognize by their happy chittering and constant shivering as the ones from the beach, and they turn to me and wave again as I approach, but they’re seated very near to a third. The new one is standing in front of a large canvas on a display stand — painting a picture, absorbed entirely in its work. The painting is unfinished and simple, but to my surprise, not so crude that I can’t tell what it is. It’s a ragged thing in a hospital bed, hooked up through its shroud to an uncountable forest of instruments and tubes filled with strange colors. A circle of the creatures is gathered around it, clapping and cheering.

As I come closer, the painter murmurs something to itself, wipes its brush roughly clean on its robes, and then… stabs it into one of the shivering creatures, straight through its ragged cloak. It groans or sighs as the artist pulls the brush loose, tearing away what looks like a wet lump of many-colored clay from its body, then carries right on calmly talking to its partner. The painter drops the clay onto a board attached to the front of its canvas stand and begins working it, separating it into colors. Brown. Grey. Many shades of red. And… black, glittering with specks of green. I don’t know what that means, but I hate it. I hate all of this.

The laughter in the temple grows louder. The three shrouded creatures pause as one to listen. The painter quickly returns to its work, but the freshly injured one turns to me and raises its hood, exposing the lower half of its face. It has a human head with human skin, but no features except a mouth between a set of insect mandibles. It smiles, and the expression is not the gaping grin of a monster. It’s a smile I recognize too well from the seventh floor, the soft, sad kind patients force for their families to tell them “I’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt too much.” 

I choke down another wave of nausea. For a long moment, all I can do is stare and wonder if smashing this painting would help in some way. I don’t think it would.

With its trembling free hand, the smiling thing points to the archways and nods, once. Then it lowers its head, almost bowing to me, and lets its hood hang over its head again. 

The moment I look through the arches, Yurfaln’s voice blares out from somewhere in the darkness. Share. Holy! Teach me, give me, be me! it says.

“I’m going to kill you,” I rasp back. Even as the words pass my lips, they feel pathetic. Far too petty and tiny to match what’s happening in this place, whatever that even is. But they’re all I have.

As I step past them and cross into the temple, the paired creatures clap and weakly whistle goodbye.

“That was… does everyone have the dreams?”

“Mostly. All of my children do.”

I look down at myself. No time seems to have passed at all during my dream, but it’s followed me back into the waking world. The regalia my shadow wore there is mine. Its fabric is impossibly light and strangely, soothingly cool to the touch. Thin black gloves wrap around my hands like a second skin. I take a few hesitant steps around my bed, ending in a short hop. Nothing about the outfit’s complicated lower layers gets in the way of moving, and my steps in the heavy leather boots aren’t exactly silent, but they don’t thud against the hard floor the way I expected them to. The only sounds they make come from friction rather than impact.

I do feel different now, changed in more ways than I can easily count. Taking in everything new is dizzying, like trying to see with once-blind eyes while also learning to walk. 

New senses tug at the corners of my awareness. I breathe, shut my eyes, and try to tune out everything else. The first thing I notice is the intangible force coursing through me. It feels almost like flowing blood—if I were perfectly aware of my blood’s currents—and is as much a part of me. Maybe more. It surges up from a reservoir deep within myself, resounding within me; a torrent that will never run dry, raging and alive, pumped endlessly by my soul’s heart. It prickles my nerves, aching to be released, to be expressed. If I let it loose, would I be washed away in its currents? The thought makes my teeth chatter.

I can feel other, much fainter points of essence with that sense, scattered all through the rooms around me. Scattered needles of emotion prick against my mind, piercing gently into me from every angle like pins into a pincushion. Other people? That feels right, but incomplete. I’m not looking into anyone’s souls. I can’t recognize them by how they feel, can’t really glean anything about who they are or what they’re doing.

There’s something else, though. I only start to notice it as I focus closely on one point, trying to see if anything distinguishes it from the others. My first impression is of rotting fruit, but pushing past that, I feel it for what it is — a knot of pain, coiled around and through a person. I can know it and describe it without feeling it myself. This one’s heart is slowly giving out. That one’s breath is being stolen away. The soul a few rooms down can no longer eat on their own power. Cores of inner corruption are all around me, the only way I have to tell one person from another. Their stench grows stronger the more attention I pay to them, and I pull my focus back to my room as it starts to overwhelm me. 

Vyuji is still standing right there, smiling that weirdly serene smile. “…Are you just going to stay here?” I ask. Stupid, I realize after a dazed moment. Of course she’s still here. My sense of time is completely shot, but I probably haven’t been a Keeper for more than a minute.

“For as long as you need me to. At the moment, the only thing I have to do is guide you through these first steps. I know that they’re… disorienting, for most of you. Do you need anything from me right now?”

I can’t decide where to start, so I settle on an all-purpose question. “Okay, I… sure. Tell me something I need to know. Something I might not be thinking of right away.”

“Good choice. All the instincts you need come with the Promise, but you do have to know the questions to see that you have the answers to them.” She nods and raises one arm, a single petal opening as if she were counting on fingers. 

“First. No Keeper experiences things in exactly the same way, so I can’t teach you much about how your perception works or how best to use it, but I can tell you one thing: that unseen sense is the strongest tool you have to find and to track Harbingers. The miasma that forms around their victims and places of power is… uniquely foul. You’ll understand as soon as you’ve felt it. It doesn’t last, but if you hurry, you may still be able to pursue the one you met earlier.”

“Which I might. Ah, but would it be a terrible idea to run right into that?” She and my dream both said I’d know everything I need to, but that isn’t the same as having actual experience. I have no idea if there’s Keeper basic training, if I need to practice and get a feel for myself before I can do anything serious and not expect to die in an instant.

“That depends on you. I’ll teach you as much as I am able, but I am not a Keeper. I can only tell you what all of you can do and what those abilities are for. The Church could find you a more suitable mentor, if you want one.”

“No. Not unless I absolutely have to. I’m not in this for fame.” The public idol thing isn’t for me. I don’t have time for it and I wouldn’t want it even if I did. I don’t want whatever support the Church or the Fianatas or whoever have to offer enough to put up with idiots barging in here and knocking on my door to ask for interviews. 

“As you like. Plenty of my children feel similarly. If you wish to keep your privacy, I won’t mention you to anyone else without your leave.”

“Thanks. If I want to go talk to someone, I’ll find them myself. Anything else?”

Another petal opens. “Yes. Second, whatever form your magic takes, you have an implement forged of it, empowered by it, a weapon fit to close the Wounds in the world. Call yours. You know how.”

And I do. I raise a hand, palm open, and will it into being, waiting to catch whatever appears. 

No blade falls into my grip. Instead, a ring of bright green specks forms in orbit around me. They grow from tiny lights into tall, flat rectangles, and then the glow dims, each becoming a tarot-sized card. The exact pictures and scenes aren’t ones I recognize — honestly, they’re so abstract that it’s hard to tell what they’re meant to be at all — but the basic art style is familiar, all stark black lines and sparse splashes of color with no human figures anywhere. Their back design is strange, though: two complicated white sigils spiraling and winding together on a dark background. It looks almost like expert calligraphy, but in a script I’ve never seen from a language I’ve never heard of.

“Vyuji,” I say, my voice as measured and even as I can keep it, “please tell me how I’m supposed to fight monsters with cards.”

“I don’t know, but you do,” she answers. “It’s your magic. Your wishes gave it form, not mine.”

“I… okay. You called them implements before you called them weapons. Is it wrong to think of these as something I should just throw or hit things with?” 

“Most likely. If your will would be best expressed through a simpler tool, a sword to strike or a shield to guard, that’s what you would have.”

That’s something. It can’t be that they’re just useless, can it? They don’t look at all sharp or dangerous, but that means very little with magic. Silver King Irida, the current star of the local Keeper idol scene, fights with a squad of warriors she summons out of nothing and moves with an actual shogi board. How much weirder can weaponized tarot be?

Well, what can I actually do with them? I can change, quicken, or slow the cards’ orbit with a thought, as easily as I can twitch my finger. With a little more effort, I take control of a single card from the ring and fly it around. I don’t need to touch it or throw it, nor steer it with sweeping gestures and wiggly fingers the way stories depict using magic sometimes. Once I have a handle on how it works, I pull another out from the ring, then another, and another, doing my best to move them all at once until the sheer unfamiliar stimulation of it all makes me faintly dizzy. I let them slip from my control and flutter to the floor as I sit on the bed, idly petting Pearl until my head stops spinning. A few seconds in, the fallen cards float up to rejoin the ring on their own.

“I don’t think I believe you about these,” I grumble, trying and failing not to read mockery or suppressed laughter into Vyuji’s expression. It all seems… cool, sure, but not helpful. They’re still just cards. With no new inner knowledge riding to my rescue, I think about what else I could try. I could play with these some more, see if controlling them feels less overwhelming once I’ve done it for a bit, but it doesn’t matter how well I can handle them when I still have no idea what they’re supposed to do. 

On a whim, I pull my right glove off and run a card across the tip of my finger. I flinch back with a hiss when a light sting nips me. Then things turn… strange. It’s nothing more than a small paper cut, but a globlet of blood pools over the card all the same, trickling from the mouth of the tiny wound and staining it. The card drinks in the droplet like thirsty soil in the rain, and the mostly black and white image tinges itself a new color; not red, but the emerald color of my magic, slowly seeping into and replacing the white background. Its abstract art shifts as well, resolving into the familiar thin bones and stray feathers of Death.

And as I watch this happen, I start to feel that card with the same new sense that feels the inner pain and corruption of the people around me. Suddenly, I’m sure that it’s carrying something very bad, and I can’t say what that thing is or what it means. Very carefully, I return it to the orbit.

“Hey, Vyuji…” I hesitate, then force the question out before I can decide I don’t want the answer. “I probably should’ve asked sooner, but how do I tell what this actually does?” Every Keeper has a sort of sphere of influence, a form their magic takes and a range of things it can do. As for how they know what it is and how much of a say they get in shaping it, I don’t know much more than that.

The Messenger tilts her head, studying me with what looks like genuine curiosity. “Interesting. Try turning your awareness inward. Study your soul and it will tell you what you need to know.”

“Um, sure. I think I can do that.” Where feeling the power flowing through me is as simple as willing my body to move, inspecting my own soul in detail is more than a little disorienting, like trying to project my vision out of my eyes and watch myself move around from an outside observer’s viewpoint. After a moment of confused perspective-shifting, I do start to make some sense of it — beneath the sickly-sweet odor of my own disease, somewhere deep inside the infinite well my magic surges up from, there’s… something much more than the scents of corruption all around me. Rather than a single sense-impression, it’s an image and a set of abstract thoughts and a poem in words-that-are-not-words, all at the same time, every element dizzyingly tangled up with every other.

Ill wind. Cruel and capricious fate.

Corrupted blood. Afflicted arcana.

Green veins inside a shadowy outline of my body, twisting and snaking out beyond its borders with tiny mouths like leeches.

There’s more to it than that, layers I can’t quite grasp yet, but it’s easier to see the whole picture at a distance than it is to inspect every little detail at once, and what that picture seems to be telling me is…

“…Vyuji, if I designed all this somehow, if the Keeper makes the magic, then why is mine built around the last possible thing I’d choose?” Curses, afflictions, ill-fate. Sickness, to cut to the heart of it.

“Tell me, what else should it have been?” she asks. She already knows what I’m talking about — she must have her own magic senses to study me with. She probably knew what I’d see before I even asked how to find out. “You made the Promise to survive your disease, so your soul’s power reflects that desire. All that it is comes from within you. I didn’t choose it or bestow it upon you from on high. I only opened the door.” She sighs, the second real sound I’ve heard her make. “Some of my children begin with… conflicted relationships with their magic. You’ll have to trust me when I say, speaking from quite a lot of experience, that every Keeper gets what they need. Unfortunately, our needs and wants aren’t always in perfect alignment, are they? You’ll understand someday why you are the way you are. You always do.”

That doesn’t help at all. Unless… “That doesn’t mean I can just fix myself and be done with it, does it?”

Vyuji is silent for a moment. Her face falls. Finally, she shakes her head slowly. “Think about it: can you use your magic to erase the origin of your magic? Can a snake eat itself whole? I don’t know if it’s impossible, but… I doubt it. I’m sorry, Liadain.”

Obviously. Why do I bother?

“Alright. Fine. Nothing for it, I guess. If it works and it can get me what I need, I’ll get used to it.” And if I don’t, nothing she says is going to change that. “Speaking of, is there anything else I need to know right this moment? If not, I want to go kill that Harbinger. Maybe that’ll make me feel better.”

Vyuji instantly lights up at that. “By all means. The rest can only come with time, experience, exploration… although, one more thing. Teaching Keepers through anything other than experience is difficult in part because things are different in Harbingers’ Wounds. Different in ways difficult to predict or explain.”

Right… she’s mentioned Wounds a few times now. Where Harbingers put down roots, they do something to the world around them. They open a doorway to somewhere else, or drag their victims into their minds, or start carving a pocket of existence into something more suited to their needs. To take the fight to them, a Keeper needs to enter that place. I don’t understand the details beyond that. I don’t know if anyone does.

“Different how?” I ask.

“A Wound is a space whose shape and rules are… not fully decided. Unstable. Mutable. Responsive first to the wishes of its creator, but also to the will and magic of intruding Keepers. What that looks like depends very much on the Keeper. Put simply, the Harbinger will twist the world around you into a weapon, but you will be able to twist it back. To act on the fabric of reality in ways that you could not here, make the Wound itself into… a new vector for yourself. Yes, that seems like a productive way for you to think of it,” Vyuji says. 

“…Okay. Wonderful. All I’ve ever wanted to do is share the Liadain Plague with the world.”

Her eager smile becomes a smirk. “If it helps, don’t think of it as sharing or spreading. You’ll be taking your burdens and shifting them to monsters that will destroy many human lives if you don’t. Better them than you, no?”

“Thank you for that insight. I hate you.”

“I do what I can. And I’ll always love you, however you feel.”

“Now that you’ve said that, I’m going to hold you to it, and I’m going to make it as hard as possible. I won’t rest until you spend every moment away from me dreading to learn what sort of horrible, horrible mess I’m making that day.” 

Vyuji blinks — the first time I’ve seen her do that — then just lowers her arm and shrugs agreeably. “Promises are sacred. We never say anything we don’t plan to uphold. All that said, if anything else you need or need to know occurs to you, call for me. It doesn’t matter when, or for what. So long as you are within my reach, I’ll be there for you, as I am for all of my children.”

“Great. That thing about watching me sleep still stands. If that’s all, then… bye.”

“Good hunting, Liadain.” Again, she disappears in an instant.

I hop off the bed with a groan, facing the window. Before I can look out at the city or think about my next step, I see something in my faint daytime reflection: two unnaturally bright green eyes staring back at me.

“Um, is that permanent?” I ask, then remember I’m talking to myself. Okay, how do you put your magic away when you’re done with it?

As soon as I form the intent to do so, the costume vanishes in a flash of shadow and pale light, replacing itself with the clothes I’d been wearing before. The power within me fades, but doesn’t completely disappear, and my sense of the unseen falls to a less intense level. In the mirror over my dresser, my eyes are the same slate-grey they’ve always been. “Okay. Whew.” Strange eyes are the sort of thing Emergence will make permanent soon enough — the very smallest sort of thing — but I’ll worry about those awkward questions when I get there. 

For now, my first hunt should be more than enough trouble to keep me busy. I say goodbye to Pearl, make her a little blanket nest, and head back toward Mr. Enfield’s room.

~~~

I feel the room before I see it, even dulled as my new senses are right now. A distant, ambient unease, the way ancient humans might have felt when they looked out into the night and wondered what was looking back at them. 

The door is still just a door when I get there, but that’s less comforting than it had been last night. The Harbinger’s impression is clearer, now, if far from perfectly so. It’s not a stench like I felt around the knots of corruption inside the other patients, but whatever it is… Vyuji was right. I already know that I could never mistake this for anything else.

Nobody else is in the hall. I can faintly sense a few people in their rooms or around the corners, but right now I’m alone. I hold my breath, open the door, and step halfway through when nothing horrible comes pouring out. 

At first glance, nothing is lurking inside, either, but a different sort of greeting awaits me. The dread that fills the room has an almost physical weight, a pressure like walking against strong wind. I scan what I can see from the entrance, using the half-open door as a shield. Nothing unusual. Slowly, I crack it open a little wider and peek around the corner. Still nothing. Finally, I slip through, the door clicking shut behind me.

However being here makes me feel, I can’t find any sign that the Harbinger is still around. Other than the lingering aura, there’s no evidence that it was ever here at all. The room is just a room, and its ominous air has no source that I can find, no spot where it’s stronger than another. I check under the bed, throw the closet doors open, even start peeking into the drawers, searching for any bizarre patches of color or sudden spikes in the tense ambiance. No such luck, for a certain definition of ‘luck.’

Nothing is even suspiciously misplaced. Mr. Enfield’s things are still here. His family hasn’t come to take them yet, and for now, the room is probably just how he left it. Framed photos, printed reviews of his restaurant, a pair of binoculars on the nightstand. The desk has been moved to the wall across from the bed. On it sits a small TV and, a bit oddly, some sort of video game console. 

Looking around for clues like a normal detective seems to be a dead end. Maybe his body would tell me more, if I’d seen it. On his way out, Dr. Hines looked disturbed in a way that went beyond yet another death in a place for the dying, and Vyuji did say Harbingers’ trails are strongest around their victims and nests. She’d thought this one was ‘newborn,’ whatever that means for a Harbinger, so it either came into being somewhere nearby and left shortly after or was just passing through when I found it. It probably has no special connection to this room, but it would to someone it had killed.

Is going and checking on him even an option? He might still be in the hospital basement, but they obviously keep the morgue locked. I can’t just walk in and have a look, even if I want to. Unless… Keepers have a lot of room to jump into investigations and inspect crime scenes, if they have any reason to think magic and monsters might be involved. I’d have to out myself to play that card, though, or at least let the city know there’s a new kid active in or around this hospital. 

The wilting field of flowers outside my window jumps to mind. I really don’t want to start studying corpses, if I can help it.

Putting that away for now, what else do I have? The Harbinger isn’t here anymore, so where did it go? If it went somewhere else in the hospital, I doubt I’d be the only one who ran into it. It would’ve found someone else and the place would be on emergency lockdown by now. Unless it’s disguising its attacks as natural deaths believable enough to fool an audience of doctors and coroners, which sounds insane even as I think it. 

But is it really? Victims often lose their minds in ways that are impossible to miss, but some do just die. To pull that off, it would have to kill very quietly and understand what we were looking out for. Granted, Harbingers usually aren’t mindless rampaging monsters. They can be viciously clever, but they aren’t smart in the same way as a smart human… right? School safety lectures said a lot about what they aren’t and don’t do, but nothing about what they actually are, and the more I think about it, the less confident I feel in ruling that idea out. Who knows what’s possible or not with Harbingers? 

Still, it seems at least more likely that it’s left the building. 

Mr. Enfield’s windows overlook the northern half of the Hills, New Claris’ westmost district. Other than the hospital and the nearby university, most of it is a loose spread of houses. The ground at the city’s edges slopes up into the tree-covered hills that line most of our northwestern borders, and our side hasn’t been completely developed over. Several dark green veins still creep through the bright cityscape. They keep them from growing in any further, but most aren’t even kept up like proper parks. People wanted to keep at least a bit of untrimmed wilderness that’s safe to wander in.

I crack a window open as far as it will go, about six inches out. Cold air wafts over me, and the unnatural pressure grows a little stronger. I’m sure enough, now. Somewhere in the city beneath me, the Harbinger is searching for a new haunt. There are no tracks to follow, no foul-smelling trail running straight down the side of the building, but I feel like if I go outside and find its general direction, I can follow it to its new nest by its scent.

Outside. Right. I’m still not supposed to leave the hospital grounds, but I can’t really follow that rule anymore, can I? Sorry, Dr. Hines. Sorry, whoever gets stuck giving me the stern lecture about doing stupid things Against Medical Advice.

Come to think of it, do I still have to worry about that? The lethargy that always weighed me down hadn’t gone anywhere even when I transformed. That cold, stinging numbness still creeps all through my joints, and I’m still faintly feverish. It would be quite the cosmic prank, making the Promise just to be put down by someone’s flu the first time I went out.

In the end, Keepers are still more or less human kids. Some can pull off impossible athletic feats that make them seem otherwise, but only if they have the right magic for it. Mine… is very much not the right magic. I’ll never be lifting cars or jumping between rooftops, I don’t think, but…

I close the window and observe the hallway outside with my soul-sense. Once the coast seems to be clear, I head back to my room and pull out the little red tab on my patient sign that says “Please Do Not Disturb!” I want my privacy while I try to actually use this power for the first time.

If I can’t fix myself, maybe I can at least keep from catching anything new.

Cautiously, I reach for the power running through me, now more a steady stream than an endless surge. I don’t know exactly how much I can do without opening the floodgates, but if the heart of my magic is controlling sickness, what I want right now shouldn’t be too complicated. It’ll be good to figure out how far I can go in this state, in any case.

Trying to control the flow is unlike anything I’ve ever done before, but some new part of me does know how to do it, if not well. It’s like my soul is a many-colored sea where my thoughts and feelings toss about, abstract and unformed. It mirrors my frame of mind, so with some effort I can direct its currents, stir the sentiments I want to the surface, then call them forth and paint over the world in their colors. The entire act feels vaguely unreal, like having a dream while I’m wide awake.

I don’t need to say any special nonsense words, don’t need to do anything at all — that would distract from what really matters. I just silently seethe at the thought of being trapped in this cage, hiding from the outside so that the wrong breath can’t kill me, and let that idea echo and churn in my heart. 

When it feels like there’s no more room for my bitterness, I push it outward, and my power follows. It seeps up from its inner source and settles into a thin, hazy mist wrapped around me, still carrying the cold resentment I used to create it. That’s not to say that the emotion has gone anywhere. It’s strong as ever, just like ‘blowing off steam’ by shouting and hitting things only keeps you angry for longer. 

But as it dwindles, the magic stays, and I know that I’ve succeeded. This fog will swallow any ordinary infections before they can reach me, and I’m fairly sure I can hold it there as long as I want. I just have to remember to do it, keep it up with a tiny mental effort. 

How many things was I banned from doing after my first transplant? Going anywhere public and crowded, ever. Petting animals. Walking in the woods. Eating raw fish and raw honey, or picking apples and eating them on the spot. All things that are suddenly open to me again. For the first time in years, in this one tiny way, I’ve won.

…I still need to get out of the hospital, though. 

Probably shouldn’t overthink it. Much as I want to avoid any suspicious attention I can, nurses aren’t patrolling the seventh floor for escapees. Nobody is actually locked in here. Given my age, they’re expected to find me and drag me back if I run off, but I’ve never done anything like this before. They shouldn’t be on high alert. Best to act like I’m not up to anything unusual. 

Back in my room, the walking cane I have for bad days sits on the wall by my bed. I don’t like to use it — it feels like admitting that I belong here and I always will — but it’s better than sitting in bed all day or tripping over my feet and breaking something, and if I’m going off to risk my life hunting a monster, I’d really rather have it on hand. I layer on a warm cardigan that does nothing for the chill mist surrounding me, wave to Noirin as I pass the art room, and take a seat in the lounge near the elevator hallway rather than my usual corner. The first time a visiting family calls the elevator, I quietly join them. There’s a box of white face masks for visitors on the front desk, since plenty of us need to be careful about catching anything, and I stuff one into my pocket on the way out. I shouldn’t need it anymore, but if anyone notices me missing later, I’ll tell them I just went to go sit in the hospital garden. They’ll hassle me less if I can at least say I took the precautions.

~~~

It’s a short jaunt from the first floor to the northern exit. That direction is my best lead — Mr. Enfield’s window faced north, and the Harbinger left in a way that didn’t send it rushing through the entire hospital. It might be wrong to think of it moving through space in some way I can follow, but that’s all I’ve got.

Apparently, its trail does follow some kind of path. Before long, I catch the miasma’s scent again. Not noticeably stronger than it had been upstairs, but it’s definitely there, pushing against me from somewhere to the north.

So I leave the grounds for the first time in nearly a month, following wherever this trail leads. I’ve barely even stepped off the seventh floor since I checked in, and walking under the open sky might feel strange on its own if this last day hadn’t been so much stranger. It’s a clear, dry spring day, still cold enough that the air feels slightly sharp as I breathe. It’s nice, though. Just chilly enough to be comfortable under a couple light layers has always been my favorite sort of weather. Now that I can safely leave my room, I have a while to enjoy it before summer ruins everything — if my magic keeps pollen away, spring may even become pretty nice! 

That thought is enough to distract me from what I’m out here to do, for about a minute. There’ll be plenty of time to appreciate the weather after.

Despite the chilly air, the sun is bright and strong, and I’m glad for the greenery that covers the city. Massive and modern as it is, New Claris is split almost evenly between construction and carefully-tended plants, and the trees leaning over the sidewalks form a thick enough canopy that I can mostly hide underneath it. The stretches of forest still snaking over the western borders mean that sometimes the road takes sudden long, winding turns, circling around the trees. The Harbinger’s path seems to cut straight through the forest, though at no point does it become a physical trail. There’s no path of broken branches and trampled foliage leading the way.

But I’m not here to play in the woods. I can’t forget that, not with the unnatural pressure mounting as I walk. I almost want to do it anyway just to spite my sickness, but that can wait. I follow the looping sidewalks rather than trace the Harbinger’s steps exactly, and the sensation strengthens so long as I move in its general direction. So does the fatigue, the dull ache in my legs, though I don’t think I’ve gone that far at all. It isn’t my worst health day, but that’s a very low standard to beat.

Eventually, the wooded road opens into a neighborhood of upscale houses. The way from the hospital has been mostly quiet, but this place is alive, cheerfully going about its business with no mind paid to the horrible ambiance only I can feel. Not nearly as hectic as the central districts, but cars and bikes come and go, and I pass a few people on foot as I make my way further in. One slows his steps, maybe trying to decide if he recognizes me or what I’m doing here, but in the end he just keeps walking.

As the source draws closer, the impressions behind it become more clear. It isn’t actually pressure, I realize now. It’s a distinct feeling of intrusion, like standing in a crowd full of people who are all pointedly ignoring me, backs turned, refusing to so much as admit that I exist. Where the shroud of power I’d wrapped around myself was my bitterness given magical weight, the Harbinger’s scent makes me feel like I’ve fallen into another world, one where I don’t belong and am not welcome.

Finally, the stench leads me to the hills at the edge of the neighborhood. I’m standing in front of some sort of earth house, built into the side of a large hill such that all I can see of it is a bright white oval facade with a glass door and several wide windows. It’s tall enough that there are two second-floor windows just over the main entrance.

And the Harbinger is somewhere inside. I’m certain of that. I just hope no one is home.

I look back at the street. No one else is around, so I transform in that same show of pale light and dancing darkness I saw from the outside in my dream. It comes a little easier this time, and while I still don’t feel good, there is a certain lightness that comes with the power, lifting the weight of pain and exhaustion so that I can keep moving in spite of it. With another simple thought, I call my cards into being, noting that one is still tinged green, and start toward the house. The front door is unlocked when I try it, so…

…Oh. Oh no.

As soon as the door slides open, I hear voices somewhere near, and the monster’s presence spikes wildly. It looks dark inside, despite the wide windows all along the front walls. I swallow, my throat dry.

Through the gloom in the front hall, I can faintly see hardwood floors beneath smooth white ceramic walls. The voices are coming from just ahead, where the hall opens into a wide, brightly-lit living room. The Harbinger’s colors are nowhere in sight, but I can see two people from behind, a man and a woman seated in front of a fireplace. They don’t seem to notice me. I don’t know what I expected, weeping or pained moans or mad laughter, but they’re having a slow, quiet conversation, too quiet for me to make out from here.

I duck around a corner, heart pounding wildly. What do I do here? The Harbinger is inside. Its weight still bears down on me. Since these people haven’t fled screaming, I have every reason to think they’ve suffered its curse, which makes them either bystanders in terrible danger, victims dying right this moment, or… enemies who will fight to protect it. 

I went into this knowing that it would be a trial by fire, my first time in anything like a battle and first time using most of my power. I can hurt the Harbinger as much as I want, but do I have any way to handle a regular person that won’t kill them or worse?

That’s only the worst-case scenario. I can still do this. I have to. I want to live and this thing’s heart holds the only medicine that can save me. I’ll find a way.

“Liadain.”

As I think on my approach, a face jumps into view from nowhere, cold and still and white as a marble statue. I clamp a hand over my mouth, smothering a shocked yelp, before I see it in full — it’s Vyuji’s face looking up at me, framed by her hair-tendrils and oversized hood.

“Oh, it’s just you,” I sigh. “Was that entrance really necessary?”

“I’m afraid so. Apologies,” she says. Her mental voice comes through in a hushed stage-whisper, and her flat expression does nothing to sell her remorse. “There’s one more thing I have to say before you go any further. When you left, I told you I would come whenever you called, so long as you were within my reach. This is as far as my reach goes. The Wound’s mouth is very near, and I can’t follow you through it. Once you cross into a Harbinger’s world, you’ll be lost to me until you emerge. Past that point, you’re on your own.”

“Then you’ll be there for me whenever I need you, except when I’m in the worst possible place? Typical,” I whisper back.

“It would be very, very bad if any Harbinger’s curse touched a Messenger. Bad for us, for you, for the world. There’s nothing I can do about that, but you deserved to know before it came up.”

That… makes sense, sure, but it doesn’t make my situation any better. “Any actually helpful final words?”

“I shouldn’t stay for long, and I can’t tell what it will be like from outside. Just…”

A noise from further inside interrupts us: the soft, wet sounds of something crawling through a swamp, just like I heard outside Mr. Enfield’s door last night. Vyuji grimaces and shakes her head. “Just be careful,” she says, and vanishes.

Well, that doesn’t change much, in the end. I expected to do this alone, actively turned down help and mentorship. If I want this to work, I’ll just have to make it work.

So into the monster’s den I go. I don’t charge in, announce myself, and proclaim the day saved — I just walk into the living room before I can lose the resolve to do it. I’ll figure out what comes next once I know how bad it is.

Inside, the conversation has paused for a moment. In its place is another sound, a faint cracking or crunching. As that noise stops, the woman leans back and sighs. “Disgusting,” she says, her voice weak and muffled.

“It really is,” the man agrees in a hoarse mutter. “Unbearable. Exactly what we needed.”

My footsteps are surprisingly light, but not so light that he can’t hear them. As I approach, the man looks over his shoulder at me. He’s dark-haired, perhaps in his thirties, but… he looks like he hasn’t eaten in weeks, as close to death as anyone on the seventh floor. His features are drawn, his eyes red, and his mouth is rimmed with grey dirt, dried and dusty. Both of them reek to my soul’s senses, the rotten-fruit stench that seems to represent diseased people mingling with the Harbinger’s overpowering aura.

“Ah, I didn’t realize we had a visitor!” The man greets me with more energy than he can handle in his state, doubling over coughing as soon as he pushes the words out. Each wheeze expels a tiny puff of dust. “A Keeper, too? What an honor. There’s nothing for you to worry about here, though.” 

“I… What happened to you?” I ask weakly.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. We’re just fine. We’ll be better than ever soon. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?” He tries to grin, the expression thin and weak beneath those dull eyes, and I’m struck by the sense that he’s looking through rather than at me. 

What has it done to them? What are they doing now? 

I clench my teeth and circle around the couch. There’s something in the man’s lap. A lump of clay, slightly wet. Several large chunks of it have been carved off by what look like teeth marks. On a coffee table in front of them is a massive shapeless pile of the same clay. It moves as if alive, squirming aimlessly about and… giggling to itself, laughing like a child at play. There are no mouths, no features, nothing at all that could be making the sound.

“We aren’t being rude, are we, miss?” the woman rasps. She’s in the same awful state, struggling to speak between bites of her own mound of clay. “We’d have offered you some, but…” She looks me up and down, and in those hollow eyes is… not a normal person’s pity for the tragic little dying girl, the expression I’ve seen on a hundred different people. Almost the opposite. She’s smiling, but I’m somehow sure that it’s envy on her face. “Well, I don’t think you need anything it can offer. You’re already almost perfect! So… why don’t—” She gags on something, making a sound like she’s gotten water in her windpipe. The choking fit hasn’t quite faded when she starts talking again. “Why don’t you just run along?”

…Are they saying I’m too sick for a Harbinger to eat? How much of it is in them? Can it express itself through its victims or is this all just insane babble? It doesn’t really matter. Fists clenched, I start to search the rest of the room. Have to kill the thing before I can do anything for these two.

There it is. On the floor before the fireplace is a wide, dark hole in the world. Hot air seeps out from it like breath, and floating in the blackness are bright sigils very much like the ones on the back of my cards. The floor around it swims with the Harbinger’s colors and textures, and more of that living clay is slowly pulling itself out from the chaos and crawling toward the greater mass on the table.

This is a Wound, then. A tear in the world, a place where a monster has clashed with reality to produce something uniquely horrible, where even my own power will take on strange new shapes I won’t know how to use until I try.

And I know what I have to do here — what I’ll have to keep doing, if I want to live. Before the victims say anything else, before I can talk myself out of it, I take a running start and leap into the hole.

White. I look up at a blindingly white world. A medical monitor beeps, softly and steadily, from no source I can place. For a moment, I think I’m alone in a completely featureless place, but I’m not floating or falling — there is a surface beneath me, smooth and cold to the touch. Looking around, I’m in a small room of some sort. There are shadows in the corners, though I don’t see any light sources to cast them, a bed covered in ratty sheets next to a tall IV pole, and a round white table with simple chairs on either side.

Someone is already seated at the far side of the table. She leans over it, chin resting on folded hands, and…

And she’s me.

Pale, sallow skin. A thin face beneath a fall of feathery black hair stopping just at the shoulders. The same white ribbon I wear as a hairband, tied in the same way. Other than her eyes, which are changed from my dull grey to a shade of poisonous green so bright they nearly shine, she’s my exact double. Her dress is more antique than anything I’d be comfortable in, a formal mourning gown so black and lusterless it seems immune to light.

The doppelganger glowers up at me — that’s how it feels, anyway, but then my face could twist even the mildest expression into something sour. Her gaze moves to the seat across from her.

When Vyuji warned me about what came after the Promise, I think I imagined those ‘first steps’ as soul-shredding agony, maybe even hoped it would be that simple. It was a silly thing to hope for, she obviously could have explained ‘this is going to hurt,’ but I know pain. I’ve learned to live with pain, and I could handle a little more.

This, on the other hand, I have no idea what to do with. I assume for now that it’s not a dying dream, but that doesn’t tell me what it is. Is this how magic works, or a push to figure out how it works? I don’t feel any new senses, no power at my fingertips.

All there is to do is play along and see where this goes, then. I take the free seat, returning my double’s glare. “Alright. You know who I am, you’ve decorated with me in mind, so… who are you? What exactly are we doing here?”

She doesn’t speak. Her expression doesn’t change. She just sits up in her chair, raises a hand, and suddenly she’s holding my tarot deck. She didn’t pick it up or pull it from her sleeve. It wasn’t there, then it was. After last night, though, a trick like that barely feels worth noting. The top card of the deck faces me, displaying the Fool.

I could take that as an insult, but metaphors are the first lesson of tarot. The Fool isn’t stupidity, Death isn’t the physical end of life, the Undreaming doesn’t predict literal Harbinger attacks. Whether I’m talking to some kind of reflection of myself or something else that knows me well enough to stage this scene, she should know that too. The meaning is clear enough.

“The beginning of what?” I ask flatly.

In answer, she scatters the deck across the table, swirling it around into a giant messy heap. Expectantly, she pushes the pile over to my side.

“Right. Now I understand everything. If we can’t just talk to each other, I guess I know this way as well as any,” I sigh, putting the deck back together and setting it on my left. “The usual spread?” 

She gestures permissively.

With a flourish, I draw and flip my first card. A jagged circle of twigs bound together into a dreamcatcher by a messy web of many-colored ribbons, their colors dimming into darker shades until eventually becoming pitch black on the bottom, where I find a whale and a dolphin eyeing me, their heads peaking up from the right and left corners of the illustration. Perched on the right side of the dreamcatcher is a cat, while on the left side is an owl. Entangled in the dreamcatcher’s net are various astrological symbols. Right now, the bottom half is pointed up. The Wheel of Fortune inverted. A sudden turn for the worse. Things falling apart in ways you can’t expect and certainly can’t control. “Well, I could’ve told you that,” I mutter. “Is this supposed to be–”

Without any warning or transition, the world changes.

~~~

It smells almost like a garden, but not like fresh rain and tilled soil. Dead earth baking in the summer sun. My head throbs in dull pain, and my ears feel like they’re plugged or filled with water.

I can’t move. Something warm and heavy pushes down on me, a pressure like the weight of the sea, but solid and grainy.

I can’t see. Everything is dark — no, that’s not right, my eyes are just closed. I try to open them. Immediately, they start to sting, something black and dusty filling my vision. I slam them shut, but there it stays, lodged underneath my eyelids.

I’m buried. Buried alive, or am I really dead after all? I start to scream, but dirt fills my mouth and smothers my voice. Unthinking, I flail and grasp and push against the weight of the earth, feebly trying to make space to breathe. I try to move as if swimming, but it doesn’t work at all. I try to push up with my legs without knowing which way is up or if there even is an up here. Just as I shove any dirt out of the way, more shifts and falls into its place. I really am dead. I’ll drown here, I’ll—

Light leaks through the cracks in the earth. In one place, then another, the dirt gives way as my hands claw up into the air. My head surfaces a moment later, choking and crying and coughing up soil I’ve desperately tried not to swallow. I pull myself free and collapse on the ground. Terror slowly gives way to exhaustion. And to pain, the burning in my lungs as I breathe slow, heavy breaths, the sharp aches in my fingers where my nails have cracked. Pain is good. I know pain, I can use pain. It means I’m really still here.

“Dead on arrival,” says a flat, lifeless voice. “What a pity.”

I’m in another hospital room, but the entire floor is made of loosely-packed soil, and everything in sight is worn and dirty. The blaring lights of an overhead medical lamp, a circle of sun-bright eyes, bear down on me almost like a spotlight. My battered hands clench into fists, and I drag myself to my feet, searching for the speaker.

Nobody is here, not that I can see, but in a circle all around the room are rows and rows of auditorium seats stretching up as far as I can see, like an old-fashioned operating theater if it were built to seat hundreds. All the room’s lighting is centered on me, and looking up at them is like looking out a window at night.

“Yes, what a shame.” A different voice, sourceless or coming from every possible direction.

“Such a waste.”

It isn’t an operating suite, I see now, but a delivery room. Next to the reclining central bed is a plush chair and a small wheeled cradle covered in monitoring equipment. On each sits a framed photograph lined with black ribbon. I don’t look any closer. I don’t need to.

“The whole family with her, too. One little twist and they’re already dead, all of them. These two just don’t know it yet. Fate can be so cruel, can’t it?” The first speaker laughs drily, and—

~~~

And the scene abruptly vanishes, shifting back to the first white room. It’s different now, though, more…  decrepit. A jagged fracture runs across the table, the whites are blotched with greys in places, and the sheet on the bed is now little more than a rag. Although my heart is quaking in my chest and I’m left trying to steady my panicking breath, my fingers, at least, are intact, and I don’t see any dirt – it’s just like the last scene never happened. All that remains is the echoes of my terror.

“What was that supposed to be? Why would you do that? I know all this. You obviously know all this. What’s any of it got to do with the Promise? The whole point was…” I trail off. I agreed to it, I must have known what I wanted out of it, but right now I can’t find the words. To live, yes, but that doesn’t finish the thought at all. To be rid of the weight I’d carried all my life? To not be the me who carried it? Is that what it comes down to?

“You know why. What was. Your context. What brought you here,” the double says, using my voice for the first time. Her tone is cold and even. “That’s the way we always start. The past is never past, and without it, none of this could be at all. You don’t need to thank the life you’ve led for bringing you here, you don’t need to embrace it, but you do need to know it. Curse the world all you like once you understand.”

Her eyes move, glancing down at the table, and she reaches out to trace the Wheel of Fortune with one gloved finger. “The spread tells one story, not three. It isn’t finished yet. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Is this going to keep happening?”

The girl grimaces and lowers her gaze, breaking eye contact. Tears well in the corners of her eyes, but don’t quite fall. “Why do you think we’re here?”

“Right. I guess that was a stupid question.” The room is still sealed, with not so much as a tightly-shut doorway anywhere in sight. If I was going to wake up, I’d have done it by now. Only one way out, then. I reach for the cards, but… my hand stops halfway across the table, trembling. Whatever waits at the end of this nightmare, the thought of diving back into it makes pulling another card feel like trying to willfully shove my arm into a fire.

“You do it,” I finally say, pushing the deck back to her side of the table. “It’s not my usual method, but that’s allowed, right?”

Her head shoots up to glare directly at me, though her eyes are still faintly bleary. “Wait, then. Sit alone and pray for change that will never come. Wait until the world leaves you behind. Even now, I wonder if there’s any hope for us.”

“What did you expect me to do?” I snap back. “Go off on an adventure like my life is some stupid movie about a cute little dying girl? Sure! I’ve always wanted to visit the Freezing Sea, should I have taken a trip up that way? I’d die the first time I caught a cold, probably before I managed to leave the city, but I could smile and tell myself it wasn’t worthless after all because at least I tried! Do you think that would do anything? Do you think it would have gotten me the Promise sooner?”

The double shakes her head slowly. “No. Not really. I’m you. What could I do that you couldn’t? What could I expect that you didn’t? All I’m here to do is remind you of the paths forward that weren’t there a day ago, more of them than most people ever see. You still need to walk them for that to mean anything.” The frigid sharpness of her speech fades as she speaks, softens into something quiet and sad. “I could finish the reading. There are no rules here that you didn’t make. But I won’t. This is only a dream, and soon there will only be you to take those steps.” Gently, she pushes the deck back to me.

I won’t give her the satisfaction of saying so, but she is right. Nobody ever said that Keepers had it easy. Not the Church, not the Keepers themselves, not even Vyuji, whose reason for being is to sell me on the Promise. This is a dream, and even if it can actually torture me, it can’t be much next to what’s expected of me now. The thought of it makes me sicker than usual, but when this nightmare is over and I have my magic, I still plan to go find that Harbinger as quickly as possible.

“Well, if I can’t do this…”

Quickly, like I’m handling something hot, I draw the next card and set it at the center of the table. The Nine of Swords. That’s what the frame reads, but the art isn’t anything I recognize. It shows me splayed out against a wall, surrounded but not yet pierced by nine huge hollow needles, like a butterfly waiting to be pinned. The background is in the same awful riot of mud-and-gore colors that marked the Harbinger’s presence last night, and just like then, those colors are swirling, alive.

The next shifting of the world comes before I can say or think anything clear.

~~~

I  bolt upright on a hard bench, feeling like I’ve just been startled awake. Rubbing my eyes and looking around, I’m in something like a hospital waiting room, but…the walls, the floors, the counters, everything is covered in wounds, like they’re all made of skin, gaping and bleeding. Thick, pulsing veins crisscross the windows like overgrown vines. In several places, bulging eyeballs poke through the surfaces, all staring directly at me. The sounds of my own heartbeats and rushing blood play in my head as if through a megaphone.

Something wet stirs beneath me. Frantically, I roll off the bench, stumbling to the floor and to the first unmarred spot of white I can see. Thin lines tear or crack themselves open all around the room. Veins steadily grow out along the walls, but don’t crawl closer to me. Nothing is coming for me or following me — other than the steady tracking of the eyes, it feels almost like this place wasn’t really meant for me, wasn’t paying much attention to me at all. Somehow, disgust wins over panic. I curl up on the little island still made of hard tile, retching as the world twists and tears.

What is this? Why is this? The last scene… that was made of things I knew, things that had happened, just ran through the filter of nightmare logic. This thing, this cage of flesh growing around me, it’s just an awful directionless spectacle. I study it from my tiny perch, looking for as long as I can bear, but… nothing. No sudden shift comes. The room is only so large, and eventually I’ll be completely encased in its growth, but… it seems like the only thing to do with it is wait and see if it has a point.

Wait and see. Nightmare logic.

The Nine of Swords is the card of nightmares, fear, trauma. Not sickness or death, but the despair those things carry with them. In my favorite deck, its picture is a horrible mass of bone and maggots and socketless eyes still trailing nerves. All are skewered on nine swords in a neat row, and once you process the initial shock, it’s easy enough to see what you’re looking at. I think of it as a warning against becoming a prisoner in your own thoughts, even when the fear that created them is completely justified.

What am I lost in? What brought me here, kept me here?

I used to think of life as a long, long stay in a waiting room. I knew I was very sick, but there were things they could do to make me better. I still thought that the first time they took me out of school. I just had to sit through this and then I would be better. My real life hadn’t started yet, and it was taking a little longer than it did for most people, but it would. Someday.

It took me longer than it should have to realize it was hopeless. I think it was after the first transplant failed, after my few friends started to pull away and the time I spent in the hospital was simply devoted to keeping the rejected marrow from killing me outright. I can’t remember a single moment when I decided that real life was never coming, but I did. I was dying, nobody else would care when it happened, and nothing I could do would make any difference. The only thing left was to detach from my botched life, read my books, look out the window at the world I was no longer part of, and wait.

And all the while, death was coming for me. It could be the sickness, the medicine, the Harbinger, some freak accident that had nothing to do with any of it, but it had been at my shoulder all my life. It wouldn’t be much longer.

And whatever I say, whatever I do to cope with the life I was stuck with, I don’t want to die. I don’t ever want to die, if I can help it. Why else had I not climbed the fence on the roof and thrown myself off?

“Enough of this. I’m leaving.” I can’t wait anymore. For once in my life, I don’t have to stay helpless.

The world doesn’t hear my words and vanish. It doesn’t change at all. Of course not.

Taking long, careful steps over holes and tears in the floor, I make my way to the front doors. They’re already thick with flesh-vines, but not completely sealed off. Hesitantly, I push on one of them, maybe hoping the whole tangle will dissolve into smoke as soon as I challenge it. It does not. It just pulses a little faster under my hand, hot and faintly sweaty to the touch. I draw back, feebly trying to pull it with me, but it quickly slips my grip and snaps back into place. I don’t think I can pull them loose, I certainly can’t rip them, and I still don’t feel any magic at my call.

The only way out is through, then. After another glance, I spot a hole in the web that seems… not like a clean exit, but enough of a gap that someone my size could squeeze through it with only emotional trouble. I shudder at the thought, but take a long, heavy breath, hold it, and crawl in, desperately hoping that the vines won’t close around me or drag me back in. It’s like pushing through a path blocked by warm, sticky, stretchy branches, and as disgusting as it sounds, but the barrier makes no active moves to hold me back.

Finally, I tumble headfirst through the gap, barely thinking to look at whatever waits on the other side, and roll out onto the weathered white-and-grey floor of the first room, just beside the table. No trace of the flesh-cage remains. To an observer, I must have dropped out of open air. My doppelganger still sits at the central table, watching impassively.

I don’t resent this process any less, but I’m starting to see its point, and the shape of my still-unfinished reading.

“Okay.” I take my seat again. “I won’t waste time asking who dreamed that up. I guess I did, and I don’t need to add self-hatred to my list of problems. Let’s… let’s just finish this, alright? Still whenever I’m ready?”

She blinks, looking almost surprised, but nods. “Go right ahead.”

I grit my teeth, close my eyes, and draw the last card. What will be.

A bull’s eyeless corpse pierced by a forest of blades. The Ten of Swords, the direct and natural end of the last card’s events. Failure. Ruin. Disaster. Being shattered by a power entirely beyond your control, with only the fact that things couldn’t get any worse for comfort.

Nothing changes. No new vision swallows me up. This time, the dream just left me alone with my thoughts. Those thoughts are bad enough.

“…That’s it? That’s where this is going? That’s why we went through all this?” My voice breaks. “What am I supposed to take from that? Even the Promise can’t offer someone like me a life? Is that the message? Was this all just one last laugh at my expense before I get myself killed?”

“It was, yes. A day ago, that was the end we were hurtling toward.” The dream-double narrows her eyes and smiles for the first time, a wide, triumphant grin. “You’re forgetting something, though. That was then. The future, our future, has changed. And we constantly cheat at tarot. Repeat a reading we don’t like here, exile a card there…”

She puts a finger to the table, and the venomous light in her eyes flares. The card starts to glow in that same color, brightening until nothing of it is visible through the light. Slowly, the color fades, and when it does, the card is a different one entirely. A black and white image of a crow’s skeleton, the skull facing me. Death inverted.

“See?” She nods, satisfied.

“This one isn’t a challenge or a lesson, is it?” I whisper. “Not for us. It’s a promise.” Traditionally, Death reversed means being trapped in or haunted by the past, resisting a necessary change, fighting something that can’t be avoided or that you need to accept to move forward. In another context, it might have been just as terrible an end to this reading, a statement that I really should just heed the world’s wisdom and make peace with my doom.

Death is endings and beginnings, though, and right now, I read it as an awakening after a long, long winter. Rejection of the end, and with it, rebirth.

“Oh, it’s still a sort of lesson,” the double says. “Start thinking with power. If you can’t accept your fate, then make another.”

There’s something a bit ghastly in her features as she says that.

The scene shifts again. Now we both stand on an invisible surface in a pale grey void, infinite and empty.

“But you’re right. And with that, we’ve done all we can here,” she continues. “It’s almost time we moved on.”

“Are you sure? For all this… I still don’t feel any different. I don’t know any more than I did when we started about how I’m different or what I can do.”

“You will. There’s just one more thing.”

She starts to lose her definition, somehow, like a figure in a picture drawn with no outlines. In the next instant, she becomes a silhouette, a solid shadow ran through with veins and serpentine spirals of sickly green radiance. The color separates itself from her, slithering outward into a halo of baleful light that clings tightly to the shadow’s edges.

The aura begins to gather itself into shapes, now around rather than within her, then slowly darkens and solidifies into an outfit too elaborate and impractical to be mistaken for anything but a Keeper’s regalia. A black bell-skirted dress, adorned at the bottom and sleeves with ruffled white lace. Tall flat-heeled boots. At the top, a heavy hooded capelet with a deep green bow placed over the chest, the only color anywhere on the ensemble. Finally, the shadow’s eyes appear from the gloom as she resolves back into my body.

I stare, silent, until she strides forward and hugs me tightly. As I stiffen at the contact, she dissolves again into shadow and green light, this time melding into me rather than taking a new shape, and the world around me rapidly fades.

“I guess all I have left to say is… live. Because you’ve never asked for much and you deserve better. Because when the world has given you nothing, it’s not wrong to take what you need from it. Because you can.”

~~~

…And I’m back in my room, just where I started.

“Welcome back, Liadain. My children always do have a certain… flair to them,” Vyuji says. She hasn’t moved an inch. “I’m glad to see you’ve kept that tradition up.”

The lectures only ever said that Harbingers were terrifying monsters and we’d know them when we saw them. That didn’t do them the least bit of justice. The thing in the halls was unforgettable and too awful to remember at the same time. Thinking about it feels like picking shards of glass out of my brain. I do my best to shove it from my mind, but every single line of thought ends with wondering where it is now and what it might be doing. 

“Are you sure it’s safe here? Really really sure?” Reluctantly, I look back at the door, trying to keep the girl in the corner of my eye. Nothing is crawling through the cracks. 

Her gaze circles the room. Her nostrils crinkle like she’s trying to place a smell. “No. It’s very hard to be certain of anything about Harbingers, even newborns.” She closes her eyes, opens her mouth slightly, and lets out a wordless song in a whale’s low, howling voice. The lightbulbs above take on a very faint moon-colored glow which scatters into bright flecks dancing along the walls, like sunbeams beneath the sea. After a moment, the song stops, but the tint remains. 

“There,” the girl says, again speaking directly into my head. “I’ve warded this room against Wound intrusion. That and my presence are the closest things to safety I can offer you right now. Save, that is, for the power to protect yourself.”

“The power. That’s… you’re…” I know the answer, but I can’t make myself say it. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m wrong. If she’s gotten me to hope for something just to dash it a few seconds later… I just stare at her and squeeze Pearl a little tighter.

The girl raises her arm to her chest, as if to place a palm to her heart, but there’s no hand at the end of it. Instead, the limb opens into something like an undersea flower, seven pale petals around thin blue stalks. “My name is Vyuji. I’m a Messenger of Claiasya, and your yearning has called me here.” She spreads her arms from her hips and bows her head, taking an almost prayerful position. “Your soul rejects its foundations. You stand at the boundary of the world, and with one more step, you can move beyond it. You can be a Keeper, if you but choose.”

Exactly what I thought, then. The whiplash of it all leaves me paralyzed. This is happening right now, when I was staring at pure horror certain I’d die not a minute ago – when I’m still fearing for my life. For her part, Vyuji just waits, silent and still. 

“Why me? If you wanted to choose me, why only now? Can you tell me? Do you even know or is this just how it’s done?” My vision blurs as the words tear out of my throat. My nails dig into my arms. 

Vyuji tilts her head curiously. “This is the first time I’ve felt your call. The only choice I made was to answer it.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything about why.” Not many Keepers talk about the mystery of what earns them their blessing, but the ones who do say their Messengers don’t even seem to understand the question. This is what they mean, then.

“Because I know you, Liadain. I knew you and loved you from the moment I felt your will. Nothing I can do will change the past, and nothing I say will apologize for the life you have led before now. All I can give you is my word that what comes next may be different. That it will be different, if you accept what is yours.”

“Don’t talk about knowing me. Whoever you are, whatever you’ve seen or haven’t about me, you waited…  what, were you sitting and waiting to tell me this until I gave up? On everything? What I know, what you would know if you meant that, is that I have nothing! No life! No future! Just the years I’ve spent making my peace, and now, now you won’t even let me keep that!”

What am I doing? Has it been so long since anything good happened that I’ve forgotten how to act when it does? 

I break down into choked, ugly sobs.

Vyuji’s face falls, heavy with some unplaceable emotion. “I am sorry that it couldn’t be sooner. Truly, I am. It is a monstrous thing that the world has refused you a place in it, simply for being born. I will not try to justify it, because it cannot be done.” Her gaze meets mine. What is that in her eyes? Pain? Remorse? Yet more pity? “But I can still help you carve a place for yourself.”

“Please… please go away.” I don’t care what she’s promising. I can’t bear to have her standing there staring at me anymore.

The Messenger frowns. She watches me, still unblinking, for another silent moment. “I can’t choose for you and won’t judge your decision, but are you certain?”

“Yes. No. I mean, that’s not to say no, get out of here and never come back, I just — I need to think. Alone. Do I have to decide right now?”

Vyuji finally looks away from me, a very small mercy. She puts a flower-hand to her chin and stares up at the ceiling pensively. There’s a pause just long enough that I worry I’ve ruined everything, but then… 

“No. Sometimes these things are more sensitive, but in your case this is an open offer. I’ll note that you don’t even need to make the Promise to protect yourself or these people, if you don’t want to. If you call emergency services and tell them you’ve just spotted a Harbinger, someone will be here to handle it soon enough. This doesn’t appear to be an urgent crisis just yet. That said, if it is left alone, it will feed and grow until it becomes one. I have no way to predict how long that will take, so I do suggest that you make your choice quickly.”

“Fine. I don’t think it’ll take long, I’m… I’m just really tired. Will the Harbinger be back as soon as you leave?” 

“I believe it will look for somewhere more secluded, but it’s not impossible. Given that, I would like to keep a distant watch on this floor. If you need time to make your choice, you have my word that unless I have to intervene to protect you from something, I’ll leave you alone until you invite me back in. Is that acceptable?”

My stomach scrunches up at the thought of that filth seeping beneath the crack of my room’s door while I sleep and rising up to spill over me. My nose and eyes and tongue burn at the memory of its scent. It’d probably burn my skin just to touch it. My throat lurches as an image forces itself into my brain against my will; that sludge swallowing me whole, dissolving my flesh away until I’m nothing but rotting bones and drain-clogging hair carried away on a current of sewage alongside Pearl’s soiled remains.

It feels like my heart is dangling right above a pit that’s been dug into my chest, and the moment Vyuji leaves, it’ll be snipped right off my aorta like grapes from a tree and plummet down into the void, taking the whole rest of the night with it in a spiral of shuddering dread as I cower beneath my covers praying the monster won’t get me before morning comes.

Wait, that’s wrong.

Grapes don’t grow on trees. They grow on vines, right?

But I could have sworn I saw a grape tree once, on a school field trip I was well enough to take. So maybe they do exist. I just… don’t really know.

And I realize how weird it is that I know more for sure about the blood vessels connected to my heart than I do about grapes.

And the way things are now, it’ll always be that way.

And I hate that more than anything.

I hate the fact that I’m almost too exhausted to be afraid at this point, because if I’m going to die anyway with nothing to show for it, why should it matter if a Harbinger kills me tonight or my own worthless blood kills me next week? The truth is, I’m here on the seventh floor exactly because it’s already over for me.

I hate it.

I hate it so much that my jaw clenches shut and my nails dig into my palms hard enough to sting and, without even thinking about it, I raise one of my balled up fists, pour all the strength in my tiny body into it, and hammer it into the door I’m leaning on again and again and again while the Messenger across from me just looks on without saying a word. With just those three knocks, my pointless tantrum is already over, because that’s all it took to get me panting hard enough that it’s hard to talk. That’s really all I had in me.

“……Fine, do it,” I finally say after I’m done catching my breath. “I’d rather not have that chance on my mind. Just don’t sit right in here and watch me sleep or anything.” Part of me expects that this is one last cruel joke, that I’ll be eaten or die in bed as soon as this meeting ends. If she wants to cut off at least one of those possibilities, I’ll take it.

“Thank you. Sleep well, Liadain… ah, as well as you can in these circumstances. I hope I’ll see you soon.” She raises an arm, opens the petals at the end of it, and waves farewell once. Then she’s gone — just gone, blinked out of existence without a trace. The room brightens in the same instant, losing that strange bluish tint.

I tuck Pearl in, but don’t join her just yet. My room’s windows face east, toward the city. I prefer it to the flower fields on the other side, but not by enough that I spend much time enjoying the view. After tonight, though, I do want to look out over the world beyond the seventh floor, the world I just might still have a future in.

At this hour, most of New Claris is lit only by the moon and stars. The night lighting is sparse and carefully targeted — I think that’s true almost everywhere by now, but our city was rebuilt with the specific goal of being kind to the planet more recently than most. A few scattered rooms in skyscrapers are still bright, a few homes still active. The main roads are outlined in thin trails of ecoluminance, narrow lights cast over rows of reflective trees and shrubs, and the sidewalks and back streets blink with smaller motion-sensing lanterns. 

I can’t clearly see anyone from here, but I can trace their steps by the lights that brighten their paths and vanish as they move on. As I watch them go on their ways, I think about the people who still belong to that world. Mostly I think of the Keepers patrolling the city, and what it would mean to be one of them.

I’ve dreamed that dream now and then. Of course I have. Everyone spent their youth hoping at least a little for the day they’d meet a Messenger, but while other kids were sketching what they wanted their costumes to look like, I did my research. I learned how rare it was for that day to come. Only a very few children would be chosen, and there was no way to plan or practice to be a Keeper, since nobody knew what the Messengers were looking for. 

Whatever the conditions, I’d doubted I’d ever meet them. I wasn’t a hero or an innocent or the greatest person in any sense. More important than any of the facts and patterns, I knew how painful hope could be when you mistook it for something else, so I learned not to hope. I buried my dreams, quietly hated the world that wouldn’t let me have even the smallest of them. I lived with the promise that so long as I expected nothing, nothing could disappoint me. 

I guess I was very wrong. Life has always looked for ways to upend my plans.

Oh, Vyuji promised the world in return for the bitter peace she stole, but it isn’t that easy. Keepers never visibly age another day after they make the Promise, but the ways they change beyond that are… not predictable. Some can make themselves enormously stronger and tougher than any ordinary person, but they can’t stay like that forever, not unless that’s where their Emergence takes them. You need more power than the Promise offers on its own to really, fully rewrite yourself with magic, and that power can only be taken from Harbingers.

Thinking about those nightmares and the heroes who hunt them, I wonder if the Harbinger that nearly killed me is out in the night, stalking someone else or looking for a new home. 

Right. The Harbinger. 

I pull the curtains closed and crack my door open, peeking out into the hallway. No signs of the thing I’d seen waiting for me outside. Slowly, I creep along the wall and glance past the corner at the door to Mr. Enfield’s old room. At least for the moment, it’s just a door, and I sigh with relief at the sight of it. Satisfied, or as satisfied as I can be, I find one of the currently-empty public rooms with a phone installed. The police can’t do anything to a Harbinger, but they’ll pass it on to someone who can.

As I pick up the phone, though, Vyuji’s last words come back to mind. I’m too dead to think, I don’t really know what I want to do, but I haven’t decided not to make the Promise. If I do, calling for help right now would cause some problems. There’d be someone else chasing the only lead I have, hunting in my backyard where they might run into the new Keeper and trace me to the hospital, altogether making my life a lot more complicated.

There’s also the matter of Keepers patrolling certain sections of the city they’ve claimed or been assigned to, but frankly I just… don’t want to deal with other people, if I can at all help it.

When I think of it like that, it sounds really ungrateful to the chosen children who’ve probably kept me safe from any number of disasters I never learned about, but it is what it is.

I’ll call tomorrow morning if I decide to turn Vyuji down, but right now I really am too tired for all this. I stalk back to my room, fall into the bed, and do my best to sleep through my whirling thoughts.

~~~

I wake, as I usually do, to the sun glaring down at me through gauzy sky-blue curtains. Shortly after I moved in here, I asked if they’d replace them with blackout shades. They would not. Something about sunlight being good for you in all sorts of ways, as if that was going to save me.

I roll over and gather as much quilt as I can around my head without suffocating myself. I can never actually get back to sleep when this happens, but I try anyway. Eventually, someone knocks on my door, then cracks it open when I don’t answer. One of the nurses, here to take my vitals after yesterday’s infusion. I drag myself out of my nest, keeping my protests to myself for the moment.

“Is Dr. Hines around yet?” I ask as she pokes a thermometer into my ear.

“Hm? Oh, I think he’s out today. Did you need anything?”

“No, I just had a weird question. It can wait, don’t worry about it.” I don’t think the Promise on its own would cure me, but I don’t know that it definitely wouldn’t, and it still might help in some way. Oh well. I haven’t decided how to broach it yet, anyway… is treating Keeper-specific issues even something normal doctors do? I have no idea. There’s probably never been a Keeper with exactly what I have, so even the experts might not know where to start.

She’s finished before too long. I sit in bed a little longer after she leaves. Why did I even want to know? If the cold comfort of misery is a scab over my wounds, it’s just picking at it to entertain an idea like that at all, isn’t it?

I lay Pearl on the pillow and push myself out of bed, into my morning routine. After I dress, take my small mountain of pills, and brush a forest of tangles out of my hair, I pull my first card of the day from my tarot deck, a simple single-card reading. The Six of Pentacles from my personal deck is still in exile, where it will remain until I no longer hate it. It may be a while.

The Sun. The dawn on a dark night. Enlightenment, if you like, or an omen of a recovery to come. 

For all I used to look down on other kids’ childish hopes, I did try to sketch my costume once, a long time ago. I’m no artist, so it didn’t end up looking like anything at all, but I tried.

I break down again, this time in wild, uncontrollable laughter. Maybe someone outside is hearing and thinking I’ve lost my mind, but I don’t really care. It starts to let up just as it gets painful, but then another thought strikes me — I hate the sun. None of the meanings in the tarot books are things I see in it, and there’s no real reason for me to take it as a good omen. Rather than spoil my mood, that only brings forth a renewed burst of cackling.

Once the ache in my sides fades, I wipe my eyes on my sleeve, stand, and speak to the window: 

“I didn’t dream you, did I, Vyuji? If you’re still there, I’m ready to talk.” 

“I’m happy to confirm that you did not.” Just as I hear the words, the Messenger appears next to me with no warning or fanfare. “How are you faring today, Liadain?”

“You don’t really look like a Messenger, do you?” I ask. I vaguely recognized Vyuji’s name when she first gave it, so I must have picked it up somewhere, but I don’t recall anything specific about her. Stores are full of Messenger merchandise, cuddly toys and mascot charms said to be made in their images. Enne, the most popular of the six, is apparently some kind of fluffy pink cloud-animal. Art by Keepers or sourced from their descriptions shows him as a round tuft of wispy fur with big dark puppy-eyes, two front seal flippers but no back limbs, and no visible mouth under his shiny black nose. There are never any little stuffed fish-girls on the shelves next to him.

Vyuji looks down at herself wryly. “Would you prefer it if I did?”

Honestly, something about her does feel more genuine than speaking to the Goddess through a stuffed animal. “…No, I guess not.”

“I didn’t think so. Otherwise, you’d have met one of my siblings. We are what our children need us to be.”

“Does everyone you come calling for see a different Vyuji?” And if they do, what does her… well, her say about me?

“My children need me to be sincere.”

“…Right. Anyway, I’m better, I think. More or less. I’m… sorry I-”

“Don’t apologize to me. Ever.” She waves an arm dismissively. “I came here for you. I exist for you, and for children like you. You needed to say something to me, so you did. I hope it helped you organize your thoughts, but either way, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

“Uh, if you say so, sure. I’ll remember that. I might have something you’ll like better, anyway.” I take a heavy, steadying breath. “The Promise. If, and that’s if I wanted to make it, how does that work?”

“There is a way to these things, but it’s quite simple. Once a potential Keeper understands the conditions of the Promise, all they need to do is accept them of their own free will.” There’s a sudden warmth to her mental voice. It’s subdued, but definitely sounds something like happiness.

“Those terms are also simple. On Claiasya’s behalf, I pledge to foster your growth as a Keeper and guide you through your new life with whatever knowledge I can offer. You pledge to embrace and nurture the magic sleeping in your soul. Should you accept it, you are free to do with it what you will.”

“Really? Keepers just take all this power and use it for…  whatever?”

“Anything you want. A Keeper’s magic is theirs and it is them. All we do is open the door, and all we ask is that you use what comes surging through.”

“Right then. In that case, tell me about Emergence.”

“Ah. Of course.” Vyuji smiles, very slightly.

Keepers stop aging from the moment they make the Promise, but they don’t stop changing. The religious types say magic “shapes a Keeper’s vessel to best express the inner truths of their soul,” and whether or not that’s really what happens, it does mark its users. It starts small, maybe your hair recolors itself or your eyes start glowing with power, but can get very strange if you last long enough. Frozen Sun Iona Fianata, the city’s eldest Keeper and founding hero, has ice-sculpture eyes and a bubble of endless winter following her wherever she goes.

I don’t really care about any of that. What matters happens beneath the surface. 

“A Keeper’s role in the world is to protect it from Harbingers. Nothing obligates them to do that, but most find their own reasons. Seeking Emergence is often among them. A fallen Harbinger is not completely destroyed — something remains of its heart, and it is not good for such a thing to linger and float freely in the world. A Keeper can claim that essence, purify it within themselves and fold its power into their own.

“Emergence is the soul’s maturation, the process through which a Keeper grows with their power. Like all magic, its wielder’s emotions and wishes give it shape. When it’s handled properly, a Keeper can direct their own evolution. Rewrite themselves to better suit their needs.”

“So… if I want, say, perfect health or complete immortality, eating enough Harbingers will give it to me?”

“I can’t predict exactly what your path might look like, but if that is your dearest desire, then your magic will create a way for you to sustain yourself forever,” she says without hesitation.  

I glance over her shoulder at the pill bottles covering my nightstand. Whatever I said going into this, it’s honestly a little hard not to throw myself right into the deal. “…Okay. Great. About how many Harbingers does this take?”

Vyuji gives a tiny shake of her head. She barely moves as she speaks, not the slightest gesture or twitch or visible breath, so any motion at all stands out. “Magic is not so neat and predictable. Harbingers come in all sizes, and the metamorphosis is a path you walk rather than a single boundary you eventually cross. Every step will bring you closer, but there is no reliable way to say how long the road to your goal will be. Apologies.

“Ah, and sometimes a Keeper desires something… too wide to be accomplished purely through Emergence. In those cases, there are special arrangements we can make. This doesn’t happen often, but it’s important that you know the option exists.”

“Will I need to use it for what I want?” I’ve heard of something like this. I don’t know how it works or anything, but miracles that change the whole world are rare enough that the Church calendar uses them to mark eras. The current year is Kuri 74. 

“No,” Vyuji says simply.

“Then I won’t worry about it for now. What else?”

“That’s all. Those are the conditions in full of the Promise between Claiasya and her children. You, Liadain Shiel, are now a party to it. Ah, this isn’t part of the terms, but one last thing…” Her silent speech lowers, darkens. I brace myself for whatever catch is coming.

“A Keeper’s first steps are always… difficult. They’re different for everyone, so I’m afraid there’s no way to tell you how to prepare yourself, but I, at least, believe you deserve to know before it happens. If you choose for it to happen, of course.

“Knowing all you know, do you accept this Promise?”

I grimace. Of course nothing could ever be easy, but it didn’t change anything, in the end. Thinking about it, there was probably never any chance I’d turn her down. 

Maybe that’s part of whatever makes a Keeper. 

“Yes.”

Vyuji’s expression softens into something very warm — almost maternal, or so I imagine. “Then welcome to the world, Liadain.”

It isn’t pain that shoots through me as she speaks my name. It isn’t a feeling at all, or maybe I just don’t have the senses to process it, but I know it’s there. I have just enough time to be disoriented before it shatters me, bursts from within like a bird cracking its shell or a star being born or like there’s never been any other ‘me’ holding it in at all—

Next Chapter

phase 1: what grows in the seedbed of sorrow

~~~

Nothing that makes us human is physical. Everyone knows that, but it’s very little comfort to my soul in its crumbling shell.

A glass elevator carries us to the top floor of the New Claris Regional Hospital. Its view as it rises looks out at the city’s western limits, where a field of wildflowers blooms between us and the untouched forests. From this height and distance, their shapes and hues blur together into a carpet of colorful foam on a green sea, faintly shifting in the wind.

I don’t really like flowers. Oh, they’re quite the sight right now, but in no time at all they’ll wilt, die, and linger as rotten brown husks. Flowers are beautiful because they fade. People who want to sound wise say things like that sometimes, but it’s all garbage. They’re beautiful right now. They’d be beautiful if they stayed like this forever.

If those people were wilting, they’d agree with me. 

Before long, the elevator comes to a stop with a soft ping, and its doors slide open into a wide hallway. Dad steps out, two bags of my luggage in tow, and I follow. 

I’ve never been to the seventh floor before. To their credit, they’ve done a good job of making it look like a real place. The hall is bright with soft ambient light, and it opens into a large space that feels more like an upscale living room than a hospital, with earth-tone walls, a high wood-panel ceiling, round tables surrounded by plush seats. Planters line the tall, wide windows, and the air smells strongly of mint. The only immediate sign of where we are is the square desk in one corner serving as a nurse’s station.

Some of the people seated around the room, a rough split of residents and nurses, look up to watch as we enter. 

At her age? What a shame…

None of them say that, not with words, but I can feel it in their eyes. I’ve felt it quite enough to know it by now.

“Ah, is that Liadain? We just heard you’d be here soon.” One of the nurses approaches to greet us. “And you must be…?”

“Her father, yes,” Dad confirms. “Alban Shiel. Nice to meet you.” The nurse briefly glances up at him and down at me as he reaches out to shake her hand. We look nothing alike. Apparently I take after my mother’s side. 

After a moment’s uncomfortable small talk, she ushers us down the hall to my new room.

“Well! This is a nice place, eh, Lia?” Dad says, his tone artificially light and casual. 

Like the lounge outside, its decor is quiet and cozy, with just one thing out of place. The bed is covered with a soft blue quilt in a simple diamond pattern rather than sterile white sheets, but laid over the same thin wheeled frame as those on the lower floors, with a tray table, steel IV pole, and remote control attached to one side. At least it’s the only bed here. Every room on this floor houses a single patient, a small relief compared to some of my last stays. 

“Do you need any help getting things in order?” Dad asks.

“No, that’s fine. Just put everything here in the corner. I’ll bother one of the nurses if anything comes up.”

“Ah. I’ll let you get to it, then.” He nods, expressionless, drops his share of bags, and steps back to stand in the doorway. He silently looks over the room again as I start to root through my things. Atop a tightly folded pile of my dresses, the round pink face of Pearl, my stuffed axolotl, smiles up at me. At least one friend is still standing by me through all this.

“I’ll come by after work tomorrow to see how you’re settling in,” Dad lies. “You take care, alright?” 

I have nothing to say to that. He’s been doing his best to act like I was going on a fun trip somewhere, and I can’t be bothered asking him to quit it. He’ll be gone again before too long.

“Right. I’ll show myself out.” His brisk footsteps quickly fade from earshot.

“Just buzz if you need anything, okay? We’ll show you around later, whenever you’re feeling up to it.” The nurse slips out after him, gently closing the door behind her.

I’ve waited to cry, swallowed my pain for as long as I could, and I lose my hold on it as soon as I’m alone again. I set Pearl down beside the bag, out of the way of my tears.

Eight months since I last left this place. Modern medicine’s best efforts granted me eight months to live in the world, for all the good it did. Just enough time to have my thirteenth birthday forgotten by my once-friends. Maybe they didn’t forget. Maybe they all just decided to imagine that they lived in a world where things like this, things like me, simply didn’t happen. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, really. They’ll live their lives. They’ll find other and better friends until I’m nothing but a sad little memory.

I, on the other hand? I’m not sure if I’ve had a life at all. I spent most of those years in and out of this hospital, pushing through the pain while doctors worked to keep my blood from eating me for just a little bit longer. Now, at last, they’ve given up. Two failed transplants was already more than my body could handle.

Now the only thing left for me to do is die. 

~~~

The first thing the doctors here asked, when my old treatment team handed me off to palliative care, was where I stood on serving as a test subject for any experimental medicine they came up with. They didn’t say it in those words, but that’s what they said. There’s only one cure for what I have, and that one just failed me for the second time. All that remained were the salvage drugs, the last resorts. They might make what’s left of my life more livable, they might kill me sooner, they might even work. Miracles happen, just not to me. 

The seventh floor is only for the dying, but nothing says I have to promise to die to stay here. Most residents choose the lightest medical plan possible, whatever will keep them moving and getting the most out of their last days. I have nothing to lose and nothing I want to do but live, so I told them to try what they could. 

I very often regret it. The best they came up with was something to slow my symptoms down and keep me from suddenly getting worse. Three days a week, for the first two hours of the morning, I wait while a clear solution with a name I can’t pronounce drips into my veins. By the time it finishes, I’m dizzy and shaking and sick to my stomach, as I will be for most of the day. 

I wonder why I bother on these mornings. Why put myself through this for the sake of a body that’s hindered and hurt me every day of my life, when it doesn’t seem to help at all? When in the moment it actually feels like it’s making me worse?

It’s one of those mornings now. I sit by the windows opposite the sun in the central lounge and idly shuffle one of my tarot decks with shivering hands. Mostly, though, I just watch life on the seventh floor go by. Pearl sits to my right on the table, looking out over the room with quiet interest.

When I first heard of the seventh floor, I imagined it as a tomb. A cold white place even more bleak than the rest of the hospital, where people laid down and withered away when they lost their last shreds of hope. I’ve just spent a week here, and I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to be.

It’s not just the decor, the bright windows with their nice views of the city, the fragrant plants in every room hiding the faint but distinct smell of death. If you ignore all the nurses and helpers, the wheelchair-bound residents with their oxygen tanks and IV bags, it seems like they’re doing their best to make this place anything but a hospital. Aside from the nurse’s station and a small examining room, most of the floor is set up for social gatherings, hobby groups, even occasional exercise classes for the ones who can still stand. 

More than that, visiting hours here never end. The ward is hardly bustling, but the comings and goings of faces I don’t recognize are common enough that it’s almost never just patients and their helpers gathered here. There are technically lists of approved visitors somewhere, but they only ever question guests about whether they have anything communicable.

It all reminds me that I’m the only person here younger than forty. The others have lives to leave behind, people who will weep when they die and remember them well. Even if I could find someone who cared, would I want them at this point? We’d have a few months together, maybe a year, and then what? What could I do in that time that would make any of it worth the grief? 

My old friends were probably right to cut their ties early.

A man boards the elevator, helped along by his family. I’m not even allowed to leave. In my current state, catching anything contagious would be very bad for me, and I’m not ready to write myself off and let whatever happens happen. 

I turn away, pull a card from my deck, and flip it over on the table. The Six of Pentacles. Gifts, sharing, generosity and gratitude. In my case, the promise that I can care for myself and get better if I just ask for help with it. I sort through implications, alternate readings, other ideas I might reflect on through this card’s lens, and they all bring me back to one point: 

Thanks. I don’t need you lying to me, too.

I banish the Six of Pentacles to its deck box and set to shuffling the rest. Some of my books contain strongly-worded warnings about how you obviously can’t remove anything. You would “unbalance the deck” and nothing would work the way it should anymore. Well, cards, life has never been balanced, and if you don’t want me to cheat you should stop mocking me.

“Do you read often?”

“Eh?” Someone is standing by my table. A woman in comfy clothes you might still call stylish, old but not quite elderly. Her grey hair is kept in a neat tapered bob, and her attention is still on the cards splayed across the table rather than me, the lines around her eyes creasing as she narrows them in focus. I’m not sure when she’d appeared there, but then I wasn’t paying the closest attention. I’ve seen her around at a distance, I think she leads the pottery classes in one of the art rooms, but she’s the first patient to actually start a conversation with me. “Not really… well, yes, it’s just been a while since I did for anyone but myself.”

“I see. My son used to love all this old folk magic, but he hasn’t touched it since he aged out of Promise range. May I impose?”

Not “if you’ve got it in you, if you’re feeling up to doing anything at all today.” She just asks. 

“Fine, but I can’t promise anything exciting.” I straighten my personal deck, tuck it away, and fish out the one I use for other people, scattering it into a messy pile. “Finish shuffling these, if you would.” I nod to the seat across the table, and she’s quick to join me.

“I’ve never caught your name, have I? Only that you’re one of us who still bothers to wear clothes in here. I don’t know how some of them manage, shuffling around in pajamas and gowns all day.” She groans theatrically. “No reason you should have to act sick. I do love that dress, by the way.”

“Oh, I… thank you.” I hadn’t thought of it like that. I just like that I can still have a say in at least one part of my mornings. The dress is one of my standards, black and white and just a bit frilly, with big roomy pockets on either side. “I’m Liadain.”

“Noirin Hearne. Just Noirin is fine.” She finishes stacking the deck and pushes it across the table, a spotty patch of rash peeking out from her knit sleeve as she does. “All set?”

“No, keep it. It’s better if you draw your own cards.”

Noirin shrugs. “If you say so. Everyone’s got their own routine with these things, don’t they? Where do we start?”

“For now, the same way I do when I don’t want to get too fancy. Three cards: what was, what is, what will be. Is there any one thing you’re asking yourself about, or did you only want to keep me busy?”

She shakes her head. “Oh, just an old woman getting a bit nostalgic, mostly. Let’s start from scratch and see where we end up.”

“Suit yourself. Pull your first card from anywhere that feels right to you, then. The deck order doesn’t really mean anything.”

Noirin flips the top card and sets it in the center of the table, displaying a picture in muted oil-paint colors of two riders in a canoe, paddling from a dark sea into a sunlit horizon. Six blades carve through the ripples left in its wake, each thrust from beyond the bottom edge of the picture and meeting at a point just under the boat, forming a triangle.

“The Six of Swords,” I announce. “The storm and the calm that follows. Loss, maybe, and change, but change leading into something gentler than what you’ve left. Is this calling anything to mind?”

“Hm, hm.” Noirin’s foot taps steadily under the table. She’s quiet for what feels like a long time, her eyes lingering on the boat in the center of the image. “Well, when I think of it like… would you mind if I prattled about my problems for a bit?”

“Go ahead. That kind of comes with the territory.”

“Thank you.” Noirin looks up from the card, out through the window with its cityscape view. “I’ve been living here for about three months. My family all took it rather hard when I checked in, and it hasn’t been any easier for them since. I know, I’m sure that’s nothing out of the ordinary, but there’s a little more to it. They don’t… no, nevermind about that.” She sighs, shaking her head. “The short of it is that we’re having trouble agreeing on how to spend this time.”

“That’s where you’re coming from. Your context. From what it sounds like… for now, I’ll just note that this card can also mean learning from things you can’t erase.” I gesture to the deck. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Out comes the second card, a man scaling a mountain on bars of light jutting out from it like the footholds of a ladder, adding the top rungs by hand even as he climbs. This picture faces me rather than Noirin. She frowns, reaching out to turn it over. 

“Wait, that’s supposed to happen!” I set two fingers to the card, holding it down. “The Nine of Wands inverted. See?” 

“Hm, is that right? My son never used to turn them over like that.” She cranes forward, trying to get a better look at the upside-down image.

“Everyone’s got their own routine, like you said.” Her son’s probably made him one of those love-and-light types who thought reversals were “too gloomy,” but no need to stress that point. “An inverted card is usually something out of place somehow, missing or incomplete or overpowering everything else. Right now, this one is a line where persistence turns into stubbornness, or where it falls just short of what it needs to be. This disagreement. It’s something you can’t compromise on, or don’t think you can afford to give up?”

“Well, yes, actually. That’s about the shape of it. I’m sure I know what we need, but I expect they feel just as strongly, and as it happens there’s no way to do both or take turns.”

I nod, indicating the deck. “To where it’s leading, then.” Noirin picks up the top card. Before she flips it though, she pauses, considering something, and puts it back, cutting the deck and taking a new one from the middle. 

The one she sets down is a misty expanse around a small circle, like a little eyehole in the fog, through which a girl can be seen handing a gold bowl filled with flowers to a boy. Five more empty bowls are arranged beneath them. “The Six of Cups. Nostalgia. Memories of simpler, happier times. Before I say anything, what are you thinking?”

“That it’s odd to see something like that here. This one is meant to be the future?”

I nod.

“Hm.” A pause, then “I’m still not really sure. Fill me in?”

“What I think is that there’s a journey here. Across the boundless sea, up a mountain that can’t quite be climbed, back to how things were before this entire misadventure started. Maybe not exactly how they were, but the past is never really past, and it sounds like what was important about it is still there for you. Maybe there’s a wall that can’t be crossed around one thing, but you’ve still got everything else. If your argument can’t be won on either side, and it’s not doing anybody any good, maybe you should talk to them about just… accepting that, putting it aside, and doing as much as you can of whatever’s always made you happy together.” 

I can’t be certain about that without knowing the exact nature of the problem, it might be something so huge or awful that there’s just no way to work around it, but it’s the best I can do. It sounds good enough.

Noirin purses her lips and cups her chin as she studies the now-complete row of images. She’s quiet for a long time. Finally, she looks up at me, grinning warm and wide. “I just might do that. Thank you, Liadain. You’ve helped clear at least a few things up.”

“Oh, I haven’t done anything. People see what they need to see, that’s all.” I’m not going to give the entire show away, but that much is true.

“Well, if it works, it works.” She waves the point off, still smiling. “You should do this more often. We old bats appreciate candor, and sometimes we can use a hand being frank with ourselves.”

~~~

So I do.

Tarot is only a game I play with decks full of pretty pictures, of course. No energy or will moves these cards. They don’t know a thing about you, and certainly not about things to come. As far as I know, prophecies don’t exist. Even Keepers have never been able to tell the future, not really. 

So the only force working through the cards is simple psychology, but I still think they’re an interesting reflective tool. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting in hospital beds with nothing better to do than read or browse the Coral Sea, and I learned a lot from sorting through the roughly even mix of genuine insight and weird faux-mystic nonsense in my tarot books. The ideas you pull from a bunch of vaguely symbolic art say something about what you’re thinking, sometimes before you’ve found the words to think it properly. Their value is in what those thoughts teach you rather than glimpses of a future nobody really knows anything about. 

Plus once I started regularly setting up shop in my corner, the nurses let up a bit on trying to drag me to activities. I guess telling pretend fortunes is social enough to count.

Mr. Enfield owned a seaside restaurant, which he’d managed for most of his life and stayed involved in until he was too sick to possibly work. It looked very likely that the business would leave the family after him. The new generation had all found different callings, and the head chef, his protege, was offering to buy the place. I’ve never seen the man visibly worried about anything, bizarre as that is in a place like this, but he’d come to ask about whether his life’s work was in good hands. 

The smiling old man sets his final card on the table with an unsteady hand. The Page of Pentacles. My first reading today has been so straightforward that I almost wonder if the cards really are taking a hand in this one. Almost. 

“This is a stable, successful future in the hands of a rising star. You’ve built your foundations as well as you can, and they’re set to hold strong.” 

“Ah… that’s a relief. I’m very proud of what we had, but I really ought to have taken my hands off it by now. I want my family to remember me as well as my customers, and nobody looks back over their life and wishes they’d clocked more hours at work, do they?” Mr. Enfield lets out a soft, wheezing chuckle. “You know, miss… sometimes I wonder if this all wasn’t for the best.”

If what comes next is any variant on “everything happens for a reason,” I’ll vomit.

He keeps on. He wears oxygen tubes, and the words are clearly an effort to push out. “I’m sure I’ve leaned on my kids more than I meant to. About the business, probably plenty of other things too. Goddess knows what I’d give for more time with them, but… they’ve gone their own ways, and that’s alright. I have to be alright with that to get the most out of what we’ve got left. We’re together now, we’ll be happy for however long I’ve got, and I don’t need to worry about any of that. Things, they find a way to work themselves out in the end. That’s what I think, anyway.”

“Sure. Happy to help.” I gather the cards, pick up Pearl, and leave without another word.

~~~

Her eyes open to a dream of children frolicking in their sanctuary. 

Though her thoughts are as grains of sand passing through a sieve, trickling piecemeal into the vessel apportioned to her, she knows her purpose perfectly well. She looks up to the vast quilt of stars swaddling this world, glimmering wisps twined together by threads of emptiness. Their neverending dances are of no concern to the her who has awoken here. She thinks only of her goal. Her reason for being.

She turns her gaze to the city, a teeming garden of life. Spires in all shapes and sizes are spread out before her in clusters at once chaotic and calculated, sprouting from the earth like flowers of glass and stone. She looks, and she listens. Deeply, subtly, gently beyond comparison. Thousands of hearts beat to the selfsame rhythm no matter how viciously their spirits conflict. A few of these heartbeats rise above the refrain, guiding its melody, and two in particular resound in her above all others. It is beautiful, in its way, but not what she is here for.

No, what she seeks is the one new heart beating in dissonance with its own murmur. 

The song of a soul crying out for release.

~~~

Mr. Enfield died a few hours later. I don’t know exactly what happened except that Dr. Hines, the director of palliative care, was pale and grimacing on his way out.

It’s just past midnight. I can’t sleep, so I’ve gone wandering for a bit. The lights in the lounge are dimmed nearly to the point of being off, but there’s no actual curfew, and at least a few residents always end up falling asleep on the couches after they turn off the TV for the night. The nurses still seem a bit tense, and they don’t even give me the usual disapproving looks I get on my late night walks. 

For the moment, I sit in my usual corner, looking out at the city. Pearl perches on my shoulder, where she can see over the plants on the windowsill. 

I wonder if Mr. Enfield still felt the same way when it happened, or if he felt anything at all. Plenty of people his age take naps and never wake up.

I wonder about his legacy, too. I’d obviously never met his successor and never plan to. Who knows if anything I told him was true? 

What will happen to Pearl when I die?

Somehow, of all the thoughts and fears swirling around in my mind, that’s among the most persistent. Dad won’t want to keep any of my things around. I have no friends left, no family I’m close with, no little cousins I could will her to. Maybe Noirin has grandchildren who would like her, but then I’d have to spill my guts about something this stupid to a woman I’ve known for a few weeks, and she must have her own things to sort out. Plus, how would I trust some kid I’d never met to take good care of her?

This isn’t helping. I start back toward my room. 

Splish.

“…Eh?”

A puzzling noise echoes from just beyond the door to Mr. Enfield’s room, like the sudden plunk of a rock being dropped into a lake. Bizarre… these walls are soundproofed well enough. More than that, there shouldn’t be anyone in there at all, and what would make a noise like that even if there were? Something in the pipes?

Plunk. There it is again, pattering numbingly along in intervals with no pattern I can place. For a moment, I figure it’s just the steady dripping of water from a faucet somebody failed to turn completely off, but then it goes silent without the faintest trace of movement otherwise. If I could hear liquid trickling from beyond that door, shouldn’t I have heard the faucet’s handle being turned to shut it off? Or the steps of whoever turned that handle?

Then it starts again. A surge of rapid little taps like heavy rain against a window. My knees tense and my spine stiffens. This doesn’t feel right at all.

I rap my knuckles meekly against the door and wait a moment. Nothing. Then, after a longer gap than the last, it starts again, and this time, rather than fade, it… stretches out, becoming the sound of swishing your hand around in a bathtub, or maybe dragging something through a swamp.

I try the handle beneath the electric card reader and find it unlocked. 

Wait wait wait! Just before I crack the door open, my hand shoots back almost on its own, like I’d touched a burning stove. Stop. This is wrong, this is dangerous, these are all the kinds of warning signs they talk about when…

It happens. A nauseating riot of color surges out from underneath the door, like a second skin festering over it, crawling up its length and spilling out across the floor. It spreads just slowly enough for me to jump back as blotchy ooze swallows the tile I’d been standing on an instant ago. It’s hard to focus my eyes on — its presence makes it hard to see anything at all, hard to endure my own senses. The brown of dried blood swirls with living, twisting shades of grey, and parts of the growth bubble like a pool of hot mud.

The rainshower in my ears becomes a howling torrent. Like a drum pounding loud and fast enough to split my head open, mingled with the rhythmic slamming of my heart against my chest. I can smell sour air and I want to puke. Just seeing it makes my eyes burn, but I can’t look away. Even as the muck rises out of itself, slowly pulling itself upwards, rising above my height, I can’t look away. It won’t let me.

The thing looms over me, a thin shrouded figure sculpted out of wet, oozing clay. It has no face, no features at all. Its body splits down the middle, opening like a mouth into nothing. A dozen thin black limbs like insect legs reach up through the tear, dig into the shredded clay, and start to push. A dark shape crawls up and out of the muck, like something inside is molting—

“Liadain! Get away from there!”

A girl’s low, even words call out to me, tinged with faint urgency. There’s no clear source of the sound. I actually don’t think I even heard it at all, just… thought it in someone else’s inner voice? Whatever it was, it’s enough to briefly cut through the haze of panic choking the air. I turn and bolt down the hallway, clutching Pearl as I run. The pounding water rapidly dims, and if the thing is following me, I can’t tell.

A moment later I stumble through my door, slamming it behind me. I squeeze the doorknob so hard it hurts and lean back, pushing my entire weight into the door. This lasts a few seconds before my legs give out and my socks slide forward, leaving me in a crumpled heap on the ground. It’s all I can do to turn my head and press my ear to the door, shivering and choking all the while. This isn’t the slightest bit safer, it’s still here, still right outside, still coming to… 

But that doesn’t happen. Nothing does. The soft, wet sounds are completely gone. 

“Good. Stay in here and I should be able to protect you. For the moment.”

…I’m still not alone. At those voiceless words, I turn around and look up at another strange visitor. She stands beside my bed, studying my tarot cards where I’d left them on the nightstand. A child? The rough shape is of a little girl in a heavy blue-grey cloak, the color of the sea on a cloudy day. 

When I see her face, I realize that the girl is very clearly something else. Her skin is marble white, but slick and shining like a dolphin’s, with the tips of the thin tendrils that trail down from her head like hair tinged a faint blue. In place of a nose, she just has two nostrils set directly into her skin. She watches me with sapphire eyes that have no pupils, only the thinnest rims of white around solid colored circles.

What is she? Not a Keeper — maybe one very deep into Emergence could end up like this, but she looks too young for the Promise range, and more than that, there’s something deeply inhuman about how she carries herself. When her gaze lowers to meet mine, she moves in an eerily fluid, precise way — her head takes the clearest possible path to exactly where it needs to be, and there it stays, never shifting or blinking. Harbingers aren’t supposed to speak, at least not in ways that make any sense, and a Harbinger would have eaten me or worse by now.

That only leaves…

She starts to speak again, and her mouth doesn’t move at all. The words come from that same strange place somewhere inside me.

“There’s nothing you can do about what you just saw, not as you are.

“But you can be more, if you wish.”

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