Zed was being pulled away. He could feel it.

It was like a part of him was still back in the forest, his stretched essence occupying two places at once. As he trailed Brock through the temple, the columns whizzing by transformed momentarily into twisted tree trunks. The white cloth partitions became walls of shadow, hemming Zed in darkness. Then he was back, floating behind his friend as a bodiless wisp.

Brock hurried to find Liza—or Jayna or Jett, any adventurers who weren’t searching for Makiva outside the walls. Micah was too weak to follow, so he’d stayed behind to keep an eye on Lotte. Last Zed saw her, the quartermaster had been trussed up in a supply closet, her eyes wild and hair tousled as they locked her inside. Brock and Micah had bound and gagged her with the closest materials at hand—bandages and the silky cords the temple used as ornamentation.

Now, as Brock emerged onto the street, Zed could see that the sky was dark with churning clouds, lit green by the otherworldly fires still blazing outtown. But these were no natural rain clouds. Sometimes, in the event of an out-of-control fire, the Mages Guild would be called upon to work weather magic, summoning storms to douse the flames.

It was a measure of last resort, as the conjured rains were unpredictable. Six years ago, Zed had witnessed a spell-storm that was called to end a particularly dangerous blaze in the market. Three neighborhoods were engulfed in the floods, and it destroyed a season’s worth of crops.

A high bell began ringing now from the temple behind them, warning Freestoners of the coming deluge. Stone Sons hustled through the streets in their clanking armor, shouting at passersby to find high ground.

Just as the first fat drops of rain began to fall, Zed caught sight of something shocking. A fox watched from across the cobbles. Under the green-gray sky, its vivid orange fur was loud as a scream. Still, no one else seemed to see the wild creature sitting calmly on the stone path. Not even Brock.

The fox’s orange eyes widened as they found his wispy form; Zed felt the pull of the dream forest growing more intense.

“We’re not done, are we?” he asked. “I still haven’t found what’s inside the chain.” In this wispy shape, his voice was almost too weak for even him to hear.

Zed wanted more than anything to stay with Brock. He wanted to find his friends and stop Makiva and save Freestone. He wanted to make up for everything that had brought them to this point.

But Zed couldn’t help his friends. Not like this. Not yet.

“All right,” he said. His voice was less than a whisper, but it carried a grave weight. “Can you take me back there? Back where we left?”

The fox inclined its head, the gesture eerily human. Slowly, shadows began leaking up from between the stones like floodwater. The market tents billowed away, revealing still, dark woods just behind them.

Zed had one last glimpse of Brock before Freestone faded like a dream. His friend glanced back at him, his eyes wide with concern.

“Zed?” Brock asked. “Are you okay? You look—”

Zed was gone before Brock could finish.

The market disappeared and Zed stood once more in the mysterious woods, wearing his own body. The fox panted at him, tilting its head.

“I hope this is worth it.” Zed frowned, balling his hands into fists. “Let’s go.”

The fox hopped up and turned to face the woods, glancing
behind it with an expectant grin. This time they continued together.

The visions came in dribs and drabs as they moved. The lingering ghosts of Makiva’s victims faded into view, then disappeared just as quickly. They were people of all sorts—humans and elves and folk he had no names for. They wore clothes in styles Zed could never have imagined, cried out in unfamiliar tongues.

But for all their differences, Zed knew they were the same as him. Isolated, anxious souls caught up in a game they hardly understood. A coven of fools.

The forest thinned with every yard they walked. Zed felt an odd prickling sensation in his chest, more intense than before.

“There’s something ahead,” he muttered, wondering just how he knew. “Something is…buried back here?”

The fox turned to Zed, its eyes glimmering excitedly.

Then, a light. A green glare shone through the darkness, climbing the horizon like an eldritch sun. Zed shielded his eyes as he drew nearer. He and the fox stepped from the tree line to the wall of an overgrown cliff. Light spilled out from a crumbling passage into the stone.

They had reached the end of the forest. Here, hidden deep away, was the truth.

Long ago, it began with darkness. Then, small dots of light—candles placed around a circle and carefully ignited.

The circle had been carved into the earth, its every curve precise. Sigils surrounded it, impeccably drawn, and a mythril chain lay at its center, set just so. No one wore the chain. This memory was its alone.

Seven hooded figures stood around the ring, their heads bowed. They had congregated in this wooded glade for an important task, but a desperate one. If they succeeded, then prosperity beyond imagining would be theirs. Their dying, once-great kingdom—now besieged by rivals and stricken with drought—would flourish again. But if they failed …

Well, it was best to do this far from the kingdom’s walls.

The leader of the seven spoke the words, reading from a tattered scroll in a language that was ancient even before these ancient days. In his right hand, he held a beautiful curved dagger. As he spoke, his mages began curling their hands into frightening shapes, pouring their mana into the spell.

Suddenly, the flames in the candles flared green. All around the mages, will-o-wisps appeared in the forest, flitting eerily between the trees. A howl rose through the woods, ringing in each of their ears. It was a terrible cry of fear and fury.

It was a cry of resistance.

The leader kept reading, his hood falling away to reveal a regal golden crown. The mage-king raised his voice to shout over the din. Now that the ritual was under way, any hesitation would mean disaster. He couldn’t fail his people.

Finally, he came to the end of the spell, and the mage-king slammed the book shut. “I name you now, djinn!” he shouted in his own tongue, holding the dagger out. “And so summon you! Come to me—Vetala!”

There was an explosion of silvery mist that swallowed the mages, the remnants of the great tear they’d just made in the Veil. And there, floating at the circle’s center, was a creature of pure fire.

Through the shroud of dissipating fog, the djinn at first appeared human. It had the lithe shape of a dancer, with two legs that skated over the ground as if it were walking on ice. But instead of flesh, the fiend’s body was a burning furnace of green fire, shaped only by a strange, dark frame like charred iron. Its face was a twisted mask, through which two bright green motes like eyes turned toward the mage-king.

How dare you?

Its voice was not a voice, but a pressure that popped the mages’ ears, raking at their resolve.

The mage-king took a step forward. “You are bound, djinn, by the mythril chain around your neck.”

The djinn slowly inclined its head, registering the glittering line that encircled its fiery throat.

“And you are commanded,” the king boomed, summoning his courage, “by the dagger I now bear, to grant my every wish. From this day forward you may never harm a mortal, unless it is the work of such a wish. Speak, fiend, for you’ve revealed you can! Acknowledge my authority.”

The djinn regarded him in silence for a long, breathless stroke. The mages all trembled nervously within their cloaks.

Yes…master.

And so it was that the kingdom was brought back from the verge of collapse. The djinn resentfully served its master for many years, using its powerful magic to usher in a new age of prosperity.

And before the mage-king died, he passed the dagger down to his son, along with a dire warning. The djinn would grant its master’s wishes to the letter, but its heart was full of hatred for its imprisonment. Every wish must be carefully worded; the fiend would use any opportunity it could to turn a wish against the wisher.

The prince hastily took the dagger, his eyes bright with possibility. But he promised his father that he would be careful.

The djinn was patient. It bided its time.

Hundreds of years later, a young adventurer stumbled upon the ruins of a long-forgotten city.

She’d taken a wrong turn somehow and was lost in the forest. Perhaps she should have listened when the locals warned her this was a cursed place, but no one would tell her more than that the woods sometimes sparkled with odd green lights.

“Oh Makiva,” the adventurer muttered. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

Makiva wasn’t usually the nervous type. She was a talented sorceress, after all, and a prudent explorer. She’d sailed oceans and fended off bandits in her journeys across Terryn. But something about this place set her teeth to grinding.

She pulled a small compass from her trousers, a helpful trinket she’d purchased after crossing the sea into this wooded country. The lodestone inside always pointed her north, not through any wizard’s enchantment, but a force the merchant had called magnetism. Flicking the lid open, Makiva frowned at the pane of glass beneath.

The lodestone was spinning wildly in circles.

Makiva resolved to be less trusting of strange merchants. She snapped the lid shut, pocketing the compass again.

It was nearly dark when she finally decided to rest. Evening was approaching, and the wind had picked up, bringing with it dark clouds that roiled like a nest of snakes through the leafy canopy. Makiva arrived at the base of a stark cliff, covered with layers of vines. Perhaps the scarp would provide some shelter from the rain.

She sighed, shucking off her pack and leaning against the vegetation. To her surprise, the vines gave way behind her, revealing a wide-open archway—straight into the cliff.

No, not a cliff or a mountain. Makiva gasped as she pulled away layers of vegetation, uncovering heavy stones and carved figures beneath, the engraved faces now unrecognizable in their abandonment. She stood at the base of a great gray pyramid.

Makiva glanced behind her to the darkening forest. The townspeople had been right. Uncanny green lights were meandering between the trees. Thunder grumbled in the sky. Suddenly, Makiva found she did not want to spend the night in these strange woods.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, summoning her mana. Her body began to shrink, her clothes and gear melting into ruddy fur along with her skin. Makiva’s ears exploded outward and her hands fell to the ground, transforming into two small paws. In moments, where before had stood a bright young woman, there was now a fox with curious orange eyes.

Makiva was a natural shapeshifter and metamorph, the first her humble village had seen in a generation. On the night she was officially named the village’s mystic—tasked with exploring the world and bringing back stories of its wisdom and follies—her people had given her the title of Smiling Fox.

She grinned now as she shook out her fur, padding inside the crumbling doorway and into the ruins of the forgotten kingdom.

It didn’t take her long to find the structure’s center. After just a few turns through the cavernous halls, Makiva caught sight
of a lambent green light, almost like a flickering torch. Was there another explorer here? Perhaps, like her, they’d stumbled onto this place. If there was a stranger within, best to scout first as a harmless fox.

But as she rounded the corner into the pyramid’s main chamber, the glare reflecting against her vulpine eyes, she found no torches inside.

Makiva was a worldly woman. She knew that mages of all kinds sometimes summoned beasts from the planes beyond Terryn, to serve as pets or bodyguards. She’d even seen such an unfortunate creature in her last major city. A great clockwork golem had wandered into the market in the early morning, its brilliant white wings stretching yards into the sky. Its wizard handler had called it a seraphex, and he’d laughed when Makiva asked if the chains which shackled its wings were uncomfortable for the creature.

Makiva thought it was an abominable sort of magic, pulling such beings from their homes and forcing them into servitude.

Just such a creature greeted her now. It drifted inches above the stone—a dancer’s body formed of twisted metal and billowing green flames.

The fiery creature within didn’t appear to be chained as the seraphex had been, except for a glittering necklace around its throat. But it was caged within a large iron cell. Or had been, once. Makiva noted that the cage’s bars were long eroded by age. Why didn’t it simply leave?

Because, Makiva, I am chained all the same.

Makiva yipped, her tail shooting out. As a voice raked heavily against her thoughts, her hackles stood on end.

The creature turned its masked face to her.

Please, sorceress. I beg you for mercy. I am the forgotten slave of a forgotten kingdom, left here after my masters have all died and rotted.

Somehow it knew she was no natural fox. Makiva shook off her fur, unfolding from her transformation. She stood tall as a human, squaring her shoulders and slowly approaching the creature.

“What are you?” she said. “How did you end up this way?”

I am djinn. I was dragged here from Fie—kidnapped from the burning blue mountains that were my home and heart—and shackled to the will of a madman. He used my power to make himself great, until it overtook him and he led his people to ruin. And yet I envy my mortal captor, for I remain here still. Abandoned.

“How awful …” Makiva’s heart hurt for the djinn. It had been alone here all this time? It might have been centuries! “Is there a way to send you back to your home?”

The creature considered the question.

If there is, it’s beyond even my power. Perhaps we could find a way together.

Makiva frowned, glancing around the enormous moldering chamber. Whatever grand embellishments had once decorated this place, they were all gone now. Rotted to dust. The palace had become a grave and a prison. “How can I help you?” she asked.

A dagger, at the throne. Only the dagger can cut my chain, unbinding me from this place.

Makiva climbed the steps leading up to a gray slab of a throne. Within the seat the desiccated remains of what must have been the djinn’s cruel master reclined almost lazily. The skeleton looked so small. She saw an elegantly curved blade clutched in its palm. Besides the creature itself, it was perhaps the only item in this place not eroded by years of neglect. Makiva swallowed, then slowly pried the blade from the corpse’s grip.

I would reward you for your help, the djinn intoned as she returned with the knife. My kind are most powerful in the granting of wishes. Tell me yours. Whatever you desire.

Makiva smirked at the djinn’s expressionless mask. “I don’t need any reward for freeing a creature in trouble. That is basic human decency.”

The djinn’s flames flickered pleasantly as it contemplated this.

The humans I’ve known have not been as decent.

Makiva sighed, nodding her head. “They…we aren’t always as good as we could be. This world can be a cruel and heartless place, and I’m sorry that’s all you’ve seen of it. But it can also be kind and beautiful. I’ve met so many people in my journeys, of both sorts. Surely your home had both as well?”

Fie is…untamed. For a moment, the booming, scraping voice of the djinn softened. It sounded almost like a faraway bell, tolling mournfully. There are horrors there, things which would frighten you. But it’s also a place of stark beauty, and raw elemental forces cascading freely. The mask dipped briefly toward the floor. I miss it very much.

“I’m so sorry,” Makiva said, her voice a whisper. Then she slowly reached forward with the dagger and brought its edge—still strangely sharp after all this time—against the mythril. The djinn was hushed as she cut the chain. It fell away as easily as a thread.

Freedom … the djinn said ponderously. By a mortal’s hand. Please, sorceress. I must reward you. You have given me my life. Let me give you yours.

“My life?” Makiva laughed. “I still have it!”

Life unending. Eternal and ageless. I offer you time. Time to explore this world you love, and see what the future holds for it.

“You can do that?” Makiva couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice.

You need merely wish it.

Makiva contemplated the djinn’s offer. She’d heard stories of the elves’ supposed immortality, and of vampires and liches who were corrupted by Mort to live forever as undead monsters. There were any number of tales of adventurers and wizards who had earned the privilege of long life through their heroic deeds, blessed by rare and wonderful magic.

Was this such a tale?

Makiva smiled nervously at the djinn. “Very well, my friend,” she said, her voice suddenly shy. “I accept your generous gift.”

This is your wish?

“Yes.”

The djinn killed Makiva quickly, in recognition of her kindness. With a breath she was gone, more dust for the ruins. The ancient dagger and chain she’d held both clattered noisily to the stone, still smoking from the heat.

Then, in a twisted fulfillment of its promise, the djinn took what was left of her.

Makiva opened her eyes again, green light flaring behind irises like clouded lanterns. She wondered at her new, mortal hands. Touched her fingers to her soft, fleshy face. She laughed at the strangeness of it all.

Then she scooped up the dagger and chain.

“Bother,” she muttered, frowning down at the ancient tools of her imprisonment. Though she was no longer bound to this dead kingdom, she found that her power was still bound to the focuses. But even if all her magic had been at her disposal, it was a nearly impossible task to pass from Terryn back to Fie.

Nearly. She would need to figure out a plan.

But Makiva was patient. And now she was clever in the ways of this world. She would bide her time.

She took a step forward, her first in many, many years. And the first of many to come.

Zed watched as she left the pyramid, standing beside the eroded throne. He wiped a tear away, sniffing.

“It was never her,” he ground out. “Never—never you.” He glanced down at the fox at his side. Its black ears lay somberly against its head.

“You’re just like the rest of us. It hid behind your face, like it’s hid behind all of ours.”

Slowly, the fox began to unravel and expand. Fur became a set of traveler’s clothes, and the white paws transformed into smooth, dark skin.

Makiva stood before Zed, as young and bright as he’d ever seen her.

“You’re the first to find me here,” she said with a sad smile. “Some part of me lived on, just like the rest of you. But I think I took its place here when the djinn granted my wish. Just as it took mine.”

Her eyes turned to the empty doorway. “I tried to call out to the others, but I was buried too deep to hear. The best I could do was change. I sent a small part of myself out. Sent it again and again.”

“You were the foxes from the visions,” Zed muttered in awe. “You were Reyna, Foster’s familiar. You were all of them!”

Makiva nodded. “I watched out for the others as best I could. I delighted in their triumphs and mourned their defeats. If the djinn knew it was me, it didn’t interfere. Not until Foster. That…took me longer to recover from. I didn’t find you until it was almost too late. I’m sorry.”

Zed shook his head, his chest tightening with emotion. “How did you go so long without losing hope?” he asked hoarsely.

The woman wiped a small tear of her own, laughing. “I did lose hope! Lost it so many times. Every defeat hurt, Zed, because every defeat was one of you. Hope isn’t a sure thing. It’s a candle that we must work to keep lit. You light the candle that lights your way.”

Zed glanced to the dais that had once held the djinn. “How do we stop it?”

“The dagger,” Makiva said, her eyes glittering with foxy mischief. “The djinn grants wishes, but turns them against the wishers. If you want to stop it, you’ll need to do the sa—”

The world cracked. Dust and stone rained from the ceiling, the chamber crumbling all around them. Zed felt a tug in his abdomen, similar to the pull that had dragged him back here.

Except this was much stronger. He looked down at his hands, which were softening into smoke, the color draining away.

He cried out, “What’s happening?!”

Makiva took his hazy hands in her own. “It’s time,” she said. “The djinn has everything it needs. Be strong, Zed. But better yet, be clever. Grant its wish!”

The chamber began to fall away. Collapsing rocks exploded into fog, the walls melting before Zed’s eyes. The forgotten kingdom dissolved into a misty imitation, like the game Zed and Brock used to play, pointing to the sky beyond the walls and describing what they saw in the cloudplay above.

As the vision dissipated, Makiva’s warm, hopeful expression split in two.

Zed stood face-to-face with her monstrous imposter.

He was back in his body. His real body, which ached with the strains and injuries of the last several days. Zed lifted his hand in surprise, only to find his wrist was encircled by silvery links, leading up to the mythril chain around his neck. He’d been shackled.

Just like Foster, on the Day of Dangers …

“Welcome back, Zed,” the creature before him crooned. It smiled Makiva’s pleasant, companionable smile. “It must be nice to be back in your own body, after all this time.”

The mages’ storm had begun in earnest. Rain lashed his shoulders and face, falling from clouds so low they obscured the tops of the city walls. Zed had an errant worry for the adventurers still outside Freestone in this weather, searching in vain for a threat that was hiding within the city’s heart.

They were in the empty market square. Zed had been positioned in the center of a dark smudge of a circle, at the crossing of a painted red X. This was where Makiva’s tent had once stood, before it burned down during Zed’s first days as an adventurer.

Zed glared at the imposter through the rain.

“I know the truth,” he growled. “You’re not Makiva. She was just another one of your victims. You used her like you used all of us—Vetala.”

And with the name so uttered, the djinn was there.

It burned through the illusion in a moment, the false Makiva igniting and floating away on ribbons of ash. Here, flickering before Zed, was a being of metal and fire. It was beautiful, in a brutally elegant way. Its two feet hovered just above the ground, gliding upon but never quite touching the stones. Though rain pelted at them both, the fiend seemed unbothered by it. The furnace which stoked its flames was more than a match for the storm.

Well done. But it won’t help you. All eyes are away from
here.

The djinn’s voice was a dreadful pressure. Zed glanced toward the curved dagger now clutched within its fiery claw and silently called upon his mana, clumsy from weeks of disuse. The world shivered with silver mist as he elf-stepped toward his captor, the metal links around his wrist and throat tightening and stretching.

Then it all snapped back with a force that knocked the wind from Zed’s lungs.

The spell had failed.

The chain binds you, the fiend told him evenly. Just as it once bound me. Your spells can’t break it.

“And you destroyed the one person who helped you!” Zed roared at the djinn. “You stole her life and her face. You turned her against the world she loved!”

The djinn rotated its head curiously. Your world was already doomed, Zed. Your kind were too small to see it. Your lives are too brief.

It floated closer, until its face was just inches from his. Zed could feel the blistering heat of the flames even through the rain. The scent of brimstone nearly choked him. I’ve only ever given people what they ask for. Brenner wanted family, and Phylo a keen mind. Do you know what Lotte wished for? A better world. She’ll have one. When the Veil is torn open this final time, I will cross back into Fie. Then, my power restored to me, I’ll drag your wasted continent through behind me. Terryn will be welcomed as the newest layer of Fie.

Zed spat at the djinn’s masked face. The spittle sizzled against the metallic frame, evaporating before he’d even taken a breath.

The creature floated slowly backward. I appreciate your sacrifice, Zed. As I do your fellow students’.

They appeared then, the others, as they had in Foster’s ritual. At first they were just will-o-wisps, glimmering lights that floated in a gentle, twirling ring. Then languorous shapes enveloped the motes, smoky bodies that were stooped in quiet misery. Chained figures encircled Zed, the mythril links binding them all together. Zed recognized them as the figures who’d been watching him from the forest.

Last to appear was Foster. He billowed into being across from Zed, a gibbous shadow of smoke and embers. His burning green eyes stared emptily at the ground.

“Foster!” Zed screamed, struggling against his chains.

The warlock didn’t respond. Like all the others, he’d been emptied out. A man-shaped imprint in the air.

It’s time.

Suddenly, a bright light illuminated the circle. A core of brilliance ignited inside the first of the spirits like a flare, the floodlight beaming up into the clouds. Then a second spirit brightened, and a third. They moved in a line, each of the djinn’s victims burning one after another.

With each explosion, Zed could feel his mana boiling inside him. He gasped, trying to clamp down on the magic, but the reservoir had become too deep. He couldn’t control his own power. Green light began bleeding from his fingertips. The air around him rippled with heat.

Beyond the circle, the rainy market tensed peculiarly. Zed heard a loud, awful sound like ripping fabric. Then he watched as a tear opened in the very air, silvery threads of mist fraying and dissolving in the storm.

Within the tear was another world.

The landscape was more bizarre than any Danger Zed had ever seen. A city made of golden clockwork whirred and clicked with uncanny precision, the whole thing resting atop an enormous white cloud. Bright light poured from its blue sky, shining grandly. But no people walked the streets of this angelic metropolis. Instead, winged clockwork golems covered in glowing runes scurried and flew across the boulevards.

Lux, Zed realized with awe. He was actually peering into the plane of order firsthand.

As the djinn’s victims ignited, more tears began to form, windows into worlds both wondrous and horrifying.

No, not windows. Doors.

He watched as a creature emerged from one of the tears—a glittering, alien forest filled with enormous blue toadstools and flowering pink trees. Fey. The Danger was itself some kind of living tree. Its wooden face blinked slowly and curiously at the waterlogged world it had stumbled upon. Then it lurched into the city, its every step a quake across the cobbles.

Zed screamed, feeling his mana seethe with every new tear in the Veil, powering the ritual.

Then the line reached Foster. The shade’s head ripped back and the core of green light within him flared, exploding so brightly it illuminated the whole square. A beam of radiance blasted into the air, completing a circle that stretched up into the clouds.

Only once he saw them all together, the lights shivering in the storm, did Zed realize what the djinn had made of its former students. He clenched his eyes shut, coughing out a ragged sob.

They were a ring of candles, with Zed at the center.

Just like the circle that had called it to this world.