I have become the Dark. This wasn’t something I set out to do. It wasn’t even something I wanted. But that’s what I am.
Pasea says we are all made from the stuff of the Dark—that we carry it within us and it is there for us to mold into whatever vision of reality we hold as truth. But most of us walk around not even knowing the Dark is there …afraid of it, afraid to look into it, to even acknowledge it.
But me and the girls I met the summer after I graduated from high school—we had all seen it. We knew about the Dark. We touched it, merged with it, molded it into our version of reality. I didn’t know how important my role was—rejected it, in fact—until much later.
This is the story of how I, a Traveler of the Dark, went back in time to give life to my ancestors. It is a story of how I consumed Dyal so that she became a part of me forever. And it is a story of how my ancestors ended up in the part of the world now known as the Indus Valley. We began in Zanum, far to the east of the Indus, where we had lived for many generations before the Conquest.
And that is where this story begins. In Zanum. But first you need to know who I was before, when I began Traveling. How everything started. And how I had to fight to hold on to my grip on the Dark.
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