Priscilla.

  The name struck his mind like kindled fire, burning all other thoughts beneath its flame.

  Memory surged with it: Khal-Drathir, smoke, sweat, blood, her face torn between hatred and survival.

  And a question pierced the luminous veil: Where is she now?

  “Priscilla? Who is that, my son?”

  The Emperor’s voice carried through the brilliance, curious yet untroubled.

  Alric blinked, throat tightening.

  “Did I speak her name out loud, your Majesty?”

  “You did. And I wonder who she must be, for her name to find your tongue in a place such as this.”

  Alric felt lost, droning gnawing at his ears, heat scalding his skin.

  The Porches pressed closer with their dazzling oppressiveness, his calloused fingers and feet sinking deeper into the shifting masonry.

  Still, the words came plain.

  “A woman I spared in Khal-Drathir. Early twenties with auburn hair, and forest green eyes. She was with me when we rode into the Hollow Crag, but I cannot say if she made it through. My memory ends there.”

  The Emperor laid a hand on his shoulder once more and spoke.

  “You arrived alone Alric. None but you and your legions returned.”

  His voice was grave, yet strangely muted and soft, like a man with a torn throat whispering a scream.

  “Impossible.” Alric’s denial came hard and final.

  “It is simply impossible, your Majesty. Something must’ve happened to me in the Crag. Otherwise I would remember her death. Or her missing. But I do not. Nor do I recall how I left the Crag. Nor how I came to stand in this place. How can I remain calm when my memory is full of fissures?”

  He took in the white-lit Porches and held the Emperor’s gaze.

  “Either I’ve gone mad, or you are false, and this place with you, and I am caught in some perverse vision.”

  “Alric,” the Emperor began, patient as stone. “You are fatigued and on edge. Give the people their final remarks, then retire to your chambers. Let the night soothe your mind before you burn yourself to cinders.”

  The words coiled around him like shackles. Every syllable reeked of convenience.

  Something in him demanded rebellion.

  And so, he turned to the masses, their forms swelling and folding like quicksilver.

  “PRISCILLA! CAN YOU HEAR ME?! I AM HERE! ANSWER ME IF YOU CAN!”

  His screams reverberated through the stone.

  The hall shuddered as if struck by an earthquake, and the masses fell silent.

  Heat relinquished its rule. Marble loosened into ripples.

  Below, the shapes turned to him as one. A thousand round, glass-black eyes staring.

  A crack sounded, then they changed.

  Faces surfaced and stretched, skin tearing at the seams, sloughing like a wax figure under flame.

  It peeled back in wet sheets, slipping from muscle, exposing rot-ridden bone.

  Hooked beaks pressed through their human masks.

  Mouths split into avian maws, half-feathered, half-fleshed, gnashing as though supper had been called.

  Above them, the sky-white gold guttered. Light spilled wrong, like wine flung to corpses.

  Alric turned back to the Emperor, blood drained from his face.

  The sovereign stood unbroken. His robes still glowed with gold, his hand heavy upon Alric’s shoulder.

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  Yet his eyes no longer shone with warmth; they gleamed like a bird’s, round and unblinking, pupils drowned in darkness.

  His smile remained fixed, the skin at the corners straining as though nailed in place.

  When he spoke, his voice was doubled, one thread soft and fatherly, the other thin and shrill, a crow’s caw shaped into human shape.

  “Alric, my son. You are among friends. Do not dishonour them with madness.”

  The beaks below began to clack a dry, relentless chittering.

  The hand on his shoulder tightened. Warm at first, then colder.

  Beneath the skin something stirred, as if feathers sought to grow.

  “Look,” the thing murmured. “They love you. Speak to them, and the world will steady.”

  Alric set his jaw and tore himself free. The hand left a pale dust-print on his cloak that vanished when he blinked.

  “I am not your son.”

  The crow-king stilled. Its smile cracked. Skin split at the corners, revealing something wet and dark peering out.

  The crowd erupted in a cacophony of shrieking laughter. Beaks snapped open, black tongues lolling to the side.

  Dark ichor oozed from their every pore, drenching the ground with a foul stench.

  Feathers ripped through, and all pretense was cut short.

  The marble beneath Alric’s feet rippled again, the Porches of Glory buckled, their golden pillars folding in on themselves.

  The crow-king’s eyes went fully black, its voice only a shrill caw mimicking human speech.

  “Then die here, little king.”

  The false sky split open, and grey water revealed itself pressing down with the weight of a burial shroud.

  The golden hall collapsed inward, walls crumpling like wet paper. The shrieks turned to drowning.

  Alric held his breath as the whirlpool dragged him deeper into the pit. Valekyr shattered and darkness swallowed him.

  Death’s sound gave way to deathly silence.

  He thrashed, seeking purchase, but his body couldn’t tell which way was up.

  And when his lungs screamed for sustenance, instinct forced him.

  He gasped, and met air.

  He sensed the stone rim across his chest, legs still submerged beneath shifting water.

  He retched, spitting the pond’s poison, each cough a scorch.

  When his breath caught up, he lifted his head.

  She stood three paces away, watching him.

  Her eyes still burned gold. Her smile still stretched too wide across her face, too beautiful and wrong. Her hands free from the leather binding.

  He hauled himself from the mirror, arms shaking, strength returning as he crawled onto solid ground.

  He rolled to his back and drew his breath.

  For a moment, he fixed his gaze on his arm, where the forearm still bore the self-inflicted cut. Flesh swollen, edges scabbed and raw amidst the grime.

  With a trembling hand, he struck it.

  Pain flared hot and real, his vision blurring for an instant.

  Good.

  The sensation steadied him more than the air in his lungs did.

  Only then did he turn his eyes to her.

  She leaned just close enough for his face to lie below hers.

  “Did you enjoy your homecoming, Lord Commander?”

  “Priscilla…” He sputtered her name between coughs.

  “Was my hate so sweet you sought it over crown and gold?” she chuckled.

  “Or was my smile too enchanting to forget?”

  Alric drew one last breath and forced himself upright.

  She watched him rise from the ground, smile still carved across her face.

  As he came to stand before her, he held her gaze, then reached for his blade, steel hissing as he set it to her throat in one swift movement.

  “Whoever you are, answer me this. Why? Why throw me in from behind? Why not strike me as I came up from the water? Would’ve been easy enough to kill me.”

  She raised her hands and clasped his in hers.

  “I love you so dearly, my Great King. Do not be afraid of me, nor doubt me. I’m here to help, not harm. Believe me, I speak true. And If I lie, test it. Do you feel the same confusion you did before the vision?”

  Her words rested on him like balm.

  Against his will, he found himself measuring them.

  He searched his mind for alienation, for that same fog that had smothered him before.

  It wasn’t there. His thoughts were clear as day, his breath even after catching it. The air no longer reeked of visions and dreams.

  When he lifted his gaze, the crows still hung inverted above, and the trees still loomed vast as walls.

  Yet something had shifted. The dark-feathered beasts no longer seemed alive, their forms sagged like waxen effigies, hollow of flesh and bone.

  The white crow had vanished. In its place lay a broken shard, the same he had seen his ruined self cast aside.

  The hush about it pressed heavier than silence, and her voice stirred against his ear.

  “Claim it, my Lord.”

  He turned and caught her lips wavering, her face uncertain for the briefest of breaths.

  “It will aid you in freeing your men.”

  Alric’s eyes fell to the shard. Its fractured edge glimmered with a pull that felt almost reasonable, almost… right.

  Better to claim power than to leave it for the Crag to twist against him. After all, his mirrored self had been mighty enough to command the pond itself to still, and if the weapon was his, why should he not reclaim it?

  As his thoughts sifted through temptation, the glimmer he half-imagined became almost audible.

  They spoke of strength restored, of men delivered, of footing made sure.

  The longer he looked, the sweeter it became.

  His hand twitched at his side, as though the weight of the hilt no longer steadied him. The shard’s glint ached like thirst in his throat.

  Yet sweetness hardened into memory. That of Khal-Drathir’s blackened doors and their false promise of liberation.

  “How?” he asked.

  She remained silent, unblinking.

  He clenched his jaw and tore his gaze from the relic. He would not be fooled by the same feeling. Not when the lure wore the same weary mask he had already seen once before.

  “As you do not answer, I do not accept.”

  Her smile faltered for a second time, then reformed, gold burning brighter.

  “Why, my King?” her hands rose to his face, cupping his cheeks with warmth as though his skin could not decide whether it burned or froze.

  “I am here to help. To see you and your men through unscathed. I did what I did to aid you, to give you clarity of mind, not confusion. Do you not see?”

  He caught her wrists and drew her hands gently from his skin.

  “I see. But if you would prove loyalty, then show it in another way. One that cannot be claimed as mere obeisance”.

  Her smile deepened.

  “Here I am.”

  He held her gaze, silver into gold, before speaking.

  “Tell me your name.”