AIDAN
Black stone steps burrowed deep into the earth. Lamps glimmered along the walls—not magical, but fuel-burning, and the sight felt like an anachronism. Despite the lanterns, shadows lay deep and heavy farther in. He didn’t want to go down there. And yet, that was where the sparks flickered.
He could have ended them. He knew this. He could snap his fingers and extinguish all those sparks without ever seeing them. But something drew him forward. Curiosity, or something stronger.
He was a monster, yes. But he was still, in some ways, human. He descended.
The air grew colder and wetter with every step, and with every step he pulled deeper through Fire to try to fend it off. He wasn’t successful.
There was no door at the end. Only a stone archway and a mist lying heavy on the ground, illuminated faintly by lights farther in. He stepped through.
Fog coiled against black rock columns, sconces carved within them and flickering candles dripping forth. Stone formations littered the floor, small heaps he could barely make out through the roiling mist. The light was too dim, the fog too heavy. And everywhere, echoing through the fog, was a sound. Murmuring. Mumbling. He’d thought it was water at first, but as he stood there, he realized it was a voice. Voices. Human. So where—
“What are you doing here?”
Aidan jumped back, nearly lashing out with flame at the voice.
It was a young man, wearing not the white robes he’d seen on the beach, but dark gray.
“I’m—”
Murdering an entire island? How had you not noticed?
Then the fog parted, just barely, and he realized it wasn’t stones resting between the columns, but people. Huddled, mumbling people, wearing the same gray robes as the man by the door. The fog curled back in, obscuring them from view.
“Who are these people?” he asked.
The young man considered Aidan. He wasn’t open to any magic; Aidan couldn’t understand why the guy didn’t attack, or raise an alarm, or seem to even be aware that anything bad was happening in the world outside. Maybe he wasn’t attuned to a Sphere? If so, what was he doing here?
“These are the Prophets,” the man said, his voice curled as if to ask, How did you not know?
“What?”
Aidan took a step toward the figures, as if in a daze. Fog curled around his ankles as he walked toward the nearest Prophet. It was a girl, maybe the same age as he, robed in gray and curled in on herself, mumbling constantly. These were the all-knowing figures that guided the motions of men?
They weren’t prophets. They were madmen.
“These are the souls that Maya cast aside,” the young man said behind him. “Although they are not deemed worthy enough to wield the Sphere, they remain...attached to it. As though a part of them is always open to Maya, in tune with a frequency the rest of us cannot hear. A sort of cosmic radio. Most of the time they mutter only nonsense. Gibberish. But occasionally, they speak in riddles we can understand. That is my job. To watch, to translate and to relay.”
Aidan barely heard him. To think, he’d almost offered himself up to Maya. What would have happened? Would he have become like this?
“It is strange,” the boy said. “I have watched over them for years. This sounds different. They almost sound afraid.”
Yeah, Aidan wanted to say. They’re afraid of me.
He couldn’t believe that this was how armies moved and humanity was influenced. A group of madmen in a cave in the middle of nowhere. Despite his doubts regarding their wisdom, a part of him wanted to shake one of them, to demand some sort of answer: How do I get out of this? How do I get my mother back?
“Who are you, anyway?” the boy asked. “A guest of the Violet Sage?”
“You could say that.”
Aidan walked back toward the entrance.
He expected one of them to reach out and grab him, to utter some dark prophecy. To tell him he’d damned the world, that only he could undo it.
He’d read enough books in his lifetime to know how it was supposed to go.
But he walked straight to the archway without any nonsense. There was no need for prophecy, not anymore.
He knew he’d damned the world. Just as he knew there wasn’t a way to undo it, not really. There wasn’t any secret, there. The Dark Lady was free. The Dark Lady had Maya and the Violet Sage. All he could do was follow her orders and hope she kept her promise.
The tide had turned on him.
Even with all the might of Fire, there was no way he could kill her.
He could only obey, and obey he would.
Behind him, flames lashed through the lungs of the Prophets, instantaneous and relatively painless. No pyrotechnics. No intimidating blaze.
There was no victory in this kill. No glory.
He didn’t even feel like a murderer. He just felt like a butcher, harvesting his meat.
The only sign that the work was done was the silence that cut through the hall. Suddenly, the cavern echoed with emptiness.
The boy at the archway gasped.
Aidan looked to him, his expression grim.
“What have you done?” He ran forward, knelt by the woman Aidan had just passed. Checking for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find. He looked back at Aidan, eyes tight and angry. “Murderer.”
Aidan shrugged.
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Are you going to kill me then, too?”
Aidan considered it. The Dark Lady had ordered him to kill everyone on the island. But this boy? He wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t even attuned to magic—if he was, he would have felt the power Aidan had used to wipe out the acolytes. He would have attacked Aidan by now. Instead, he just knelt at the dead Prophet’s side, tears welling in his eyes.
“No,” Aidan said. He began walking up the stairs. “This way, you can tell your friends that Aidan Belmont is merciful.”
There was no conviction in his voice, no emotion. Aidan felt hollowed out. Not even fire could burn the sensation away.
Without the doubt or the drive or the pleasure, there was nothing. Not even a spark. Just a shell guided by a fading light, walking through the cold dark.
The boy called out something. Maybe a curse or threat. Maybe some lingering prophecy.
Aidan didn’t hear it. Whatever he said meant nothing, just as the Prophets had meant nothing.
Everything meant nothing.
He drew the runes of travel in the air before him, flames flickering off the cave walls.
When he wrapped the power around him and felt the world melt away, he realized he had in fact killed the boy.
He had no magic, no way to escape, and the island was deserted, filled only with the dead. It was only a matter of time before the unnamed boy joined them.