They showed no hurry on their way toward Castle Astarda, and what little progress they made halted come the thunderstorm. The road turned to mud, and the nearby forest, a mixture of trees Cataloger insisted were pines and oaks, was blanketed with near impenetrable darkness. Surrendering to the storm, they found the tallest tree with the biggest branches to camp under for the night. Nick did his best to ignore how the “pine” needles were forked at the end, their tips a bloody red, and instead relax amid the miserable weather.

  The rain will only last another two hours and forty-seven minutes

  So Cataloger had informed Nick when he complained about the weather. That knowledge did not comfort like she thought it might.

  “I guess I shouldn’t complain,” Violette said, huddled against the bark with her arms pulled inside her coat for warmth. She’d built a fire between the three of them, fueled by her magic so the rain could not defeat it. “If it weren’t spring, we might be dealing with hail or snow instead of rain.”

  “Snow can be pretty, though,” Frost said, doing her best to protect her armor with her cloak. “This rain just leaves me cold and wet.”

  Nick shook drops out of his hair, as if they wouldn’t be replaced in just a few minutes. The downpour was fierce, and though the branches helped, they did little to protect against the gusts of wind that brought the rain slanting in to smack them.

  “You can also play in the snow,” Nick said. “Snowball fights and forts and snowmen. I guess you can play in the mud, too, but that’s not quite my idea of fun.”

  Really? I would think rutting about in filth would be your preferred play style, pillager.

  And here I was thinking we were becoming friends.

  Nick could practically feel Sorrow smirking at him.

  Think less, pillager.

  “So you both have seen snow?” Violette asked, her eyes lighting up. “Where? From…wherever it is you come from?”

  “Actually, growing up on—”

  “We have,” Frost interrupted, and she shot Nick a glare. “But it’s not something we should talk about. Demon secrets. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh.” She leaned closer to the fire, disappointment etched on her face. “I suppose you have your reasons.”

  Nick immediately felt bad, and he glared at Frost. She kept insisting it was too dangerous to share information about the real world, but he had no idea why. Could it lead to cognitive dissonance with people who lived their entire lives within Yensere?

  Hey, Cataloger, is there some sort of rule or safety reason to not talk about the outside world when in Yensere? he asked, figuring he might as well get it from the source.

  There are no restrictions upon visitors sharing such info—though potential confusion should be expected

  The silence stretched on awkwardly, and Nick squirmed, hating it. He waited for a distant rumble of thunder to pass, then tried restarting the conversation.

  “I don’t know about Frost, but I’m pretty ignorant about…well, most everything on Yensere.”

  Surprise, surprise.

  Quiet, you.

  “But maybe you could help me out,” Nick continued. “But no talk about gods or history or forgotten kingdoms. Tell me about you, Violette.”

  “Me?” She rocked backward as if accused of a crime.

  “Yes, you,” he said, and smiled. “Like, you said you were a scholar. What does that even mean? Where are you from, and why are you so far out here in the west?”

  The fire dimmed from the rain, and Violette flicked her fingers to restrengthen it. Nick suspected the act was a way for her to stall.

  “There’s not really much to tell,” she said. “I was orphaned at the Silversong Academy. And before you tell me how sorry you are, or how sad that is, that’s how almost everyone joins the academy. My headmaster had a plaque on his desk that read ‘A solitary life is a life most easily dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.’”

  “So I’m guessing boyfriends and girlfriends are out of the question,” Nick said, which earned a grin.

  “Why, are you interested?” she asked, and when Nick’s neck blushed a fierce red, she laughed. “Dating a demon. That has to be a first on Yensere, right?”

  “A first and a quick last,” Frost said. “But let’s not torment poor Nick further. What is Silversong like? I must admit, I’m curious myself.”

  Violette shifted closer to the fire, and her arms emerged from her sleeves. She seemed a bit more comfortable now the topic of conversation had shifted away from herself.

  “It’s considered the jewel of Averdeen,” she said. “Have you ever seen the Carthus River?”

  Suddenly it was Frost’s turn to look a little embarrassed.

  “Actually, I’ve never been beyond Vestor,” she admitted. “I know of Yensere about as much as Nick does.”

  Nick’s eyebrows shot to the top of his head. “Really?”

  “No, definitely more than you do,” she shot back. “But when it comes to other places, I—” She caught herself, stopped. “Anyway, what about the Carthus?”

  “The city of Malarus and its people are an amazing lot, and they shaped the river. It took decades, but they did it, taking a straight line and winding it like a serpent. They built homes around it, with tall walls of thick stone, and then, in the very heart of the river, reachable only by drawbridge, they built the Silversong Academy. The river straightens beyond it, but until then, it breaks upon the great walls of the enormous spire and splits to either side.”

  She made a show of sitting up straight and deepening her voice.

  “‘Knowledge breaks the world,’” she said. “It’s written in the stone above the entrance of the academy. Hubris, some might say, but when you see the Carthus cowed and broken, you find yourself wanting to believe.”

  It reminded Nick of the attitude of the earliest OPC explorers, when world gates were terribly unstable and the conditions on the other side not thoroughly explored before a manned scout ship was sent. Radiation? Pressure? Gate collapse? It didn’t matter. All the dangers and trials of space would not hold them back. He smiled and found himself wishing he had more of that explorer spirit in his own heart. He might have acclimated faster to the strangeness that was Yensere.

  “Sounds like a fascinating place,” he said. “Do you miss your scholar friends?”

  Violette looked to the fire, and a wistful expression softened her face.

  “I don’t regret being here, doing what I have to,” she said. “But yes, I miss them. It’s hard to explain, but I was…part of something larger than myself. Even if our actions were different, we were working toward the same goal, the same purpose. Now I’m alone, and the absence leaves an ache.”

  “Hey,” Nick said, gently reaching over to touch her elbow. “You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

  She bobbed her head and turned away, so her hair hid her face.

  “No, I suppose not.” She turned back, forcing a smile. “What of you, Nick? Is there anyone you miss, wherever you’re truly from? A piece of you that makes you whole?”

  A single memory struck Nick hard enough that he was shocked by the tightness it created in his chest. It was of Simon lifting the picture of their mother and father that Nick kept at his bedside. Of the hidden sorrow, the familial love, and the obvious care his older brother felt for him, too. He’d thought nothing of it at the time, but now he saw and felt so much, it hurt.

  “I do,” he said, and was surprised how his melancholy was mixed with a subdued warmth. A dozen memories with his parents flashed through him: lunches on Station 68, a trip to the Rebek Mountains on Taneth, cold mornings at a hotel on their brief trip to Eden, where the two were giving a joint presentation on a new strain of fungus meant to speed up the terraforming process. The memories did not hurt like they used to, and he found himself eager to share stories of them with an attentive Violette. “My brother, he—”

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  “Enough,” Frost snapped. “Don’t share anything more.”

  “Why?” Nick asked, his temper rising.

  “Because it isn’t safe.”

  “And again I ask, why?” He stood, feeling suffocated and robbed of the moment. “Over and over, you give me orders, and not once do you explain a thing. What am I to be so afraid of?”

  In answer, Frost glanced deliberately at Violette. Nick flung his hands into the air. The idea was absurd, and he was so tired of playing along.

  “No,” he said. “I want an actual answer. Why do we hide everything about where we are from and the lives we live outside of Yensere?”

  “Please, just trust me.”

  “Trust you? I don’t even know your name, and you want me to trust you?” When she did not answer, his mood soured further. “Or am I not to be trusted, either?”

  Frost looked beyond frustrated as she clenched her fists and glared. Rain dripped down her brow, rivulets framing her face as they ran down her jawline to fall from her chin.

  “It’s not that,” she said.

  “Then what is it?”

  Before she could answer, Violette interrupted.

  “If it’s me, if it’s something I did, please, just tell me,” she said. “I don’t want to be the cause of a fight between you two. You seem like such good friends, and I’d hate to—”

  “Yeah, such good friends,” Nick said, and he sighed. He grabbed Sorrow, tightened its belt around his waist, and then trudged off.

  “Where are you going?” Violette called after him.

  “For some fresh air,” he said, knowing the excuse was ridiculous on its face and not caring. He needed to get away from them, at least until he calmed down. The last thing he wanted was to say something he’d regret.

  He walked through the sparse trees, barely seeing their swaying branches amid the darkness and the rain. He couldn’t shake the anger bubbling inside him. It felt like there’d been something special there by that rain-soaked fire, something personal about to blossom. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his mother and father to anyone in years, or at least not to anyone other than Simon. To have that moment broken, and for such poor, unexplained reasons…

  Nick stopped some distance away, realizing if he traveled any farther he might lose sight of the camp and not find his way back. Frustrated, he slumped against one of the pines and stared into the dimly lit forest, ignoring how the bark was strangely fuzzy to the touch. No, it was more than just the stolen moment. Frost didn’t trust him. All their time training, traveling, fighting, even dying together still wasn’t enough to get her to open up. Instead he got cryptic comments and a stubborn refusal to reveal the slightest bit of information about her real life.

  And of course, here he was, throwing a fit about it. Nick groaned and thumped the back of his head against the bark. Some hardened explorer he was. In what was essentially an alien world, no matter how familiar its environs, here he was throwing a tantrum about a girl.

  “Whatever the reason, mysterious alien artifact, it’s hard not to feel like you chose wrong.” He laughed amid the rumbling thunder. “Simon would have been infinitely better at handling all this. He’d have kept his head on straight throughout, I bet.”

  Again you reference this Simon person—is he important to you?

  “My older brother,” Nick said, accepting that even his private moments would occasionally involve Cataloger’s chiming in. “I suspect you’d have gotten along well with him. He’d ask you all sorts of questions, way more than I do. Lots of sharing of knowledge.”

  And you wish your brother were here in your place as visitor?

  “I don’t know. Sometimes. It’s not because I’m miserable or anything, just that I sometimes feel like I’m not doing enough. I’m not learning anything. Not accomplishing anything.”

  Such negative analysis is unnecessary—and I am glad it is you and not Simon for me to guide

  “Even if he’d be better at it?’

  Even if

  Nick smiled and thumped his head against the bark of the tree a second time.

  “Fine. Maybe one day he can join me in here, how about that? The both of us, exploring Yensere together? That’d be fun.”

  Such a situation would be acceptable

  He’d never considered the possibility, but Nick found himself aching to have Simon with him. For once, he’d be the experienced one, able to guide Simon and explain all the weirdness and introduce Cataloger and maybe even teach him to use magic. Nick’s amusement at the idea was tempered by a somber note as he imagined his father joining them as well. Lucien would have been over the moon with excitement at exploring Yensere. His father had helped spearhead a rapid increase in building new world gates, all born of a constant hope of finding evidence of life. The Artifact would have been everything he could ever dream of. If only he had lived, if the space station’s core had not gone catastrophic and…

  And…

  The sound of footsteps and moving branches spun Nick about, his hand falling to Sorrow strapped to his waist. His fingers touched the obsidian hilt but did not draw it. His jaw dropped. The entire world froze, because what he saw could not be real, could never be real.

  “Hello, son,” his father said, striding through the rain-soaked brush. He ducked underneath a tree branch, whose leaves brushed across his brown hair, mussing a few strands out of place.

  “What are you?” Nick asked. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. His head buzzed. Every part of him screamed this couldn’t be real, his father couldn’t be before him. He’d died. Nick had watched the space station explode, claiming his father’s life. Yet his every sense said this was real. He saw a perfect visage, hardly aged a day. Watched branches sway from him when pushed out of his path. Heard the sound of his voice, firm and commanding.

  Lucien: Level 13 Human

  Archetype: Administrator

  Special Classification: Reflection

  The mirror had been a reflection from the past, but this? This was so much more real, and somehow so much worse.

  “I am your father,” Lucien said, as if it were obvious. “Who else could I be?”

  It was true he wore his standard uniform, albeit not as prim and proper as Nick was used to seeing because of the rain. His face was the same, as were his hands, the fingernails trimmed, palms soft, the first knuckle sporting the same scar he got when winning a game of handball at university, a story he so often loved to tell.

  “I don’t know what you are,” Nick said, retreating a step. “And I don’t know what Yensere is capable of, nor the Artifact that houses it, but I know this. You died. You’re gone. Whatever you are, it isn’t…it isn’t you.”

  Lucien crossed his arms and shook his head.

  “So closed-minded,” he said. “I had hoped you would feel the same elation in meeting me as I feel looking upon you.”

  Behind this perfect re-creation of his father, tree branches rustled, and a spike of alarm shot through Nick.

  “How did you find me?” he asked.

  “We’re connected, you and I,” Lucien said. His eyes flashed a momentary black. “Always have been, and forever will be.”

  More movement in the trees. They weren’t alone.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, taking another step back.

  “Don’t run,” Lucien commanded. Nick froze in place, his heart skipping a beat. He recognized that tone, that authority. He wanted to obey. He wanted to collapse and cry. All of it, so real, and yet all of it false.

  All of it a lie.

  Nick sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him, caring not for the scrapes of the brush or the cuts from branches hanging too low. He screamed at the top of his lungs, determined to be heard over the rain and thunder.

  “Frost, Violette, run! Hide! We’re under—”

  Something heavy cracked against his legs. He stumbled, tripped, and then landed in a roll, caking his body in mud. He pushed to his knees to see the approach of familiar OPC boots.

  “Is it cowardice that drives you, or misplaced heroism?” his father asked, sword in hand. It was so strange seeing the medieval weapon in a grip that Nick had seen holding only delicate instruments and, most often, an old-fashioned ink pen.

  “It’s called caring for my friends,” he said, and swung Sorrow. The sword struck Lucien’s hip, but though it sank into his flesh, it shed no blood. Instead, cloth and skin warped and cracked, becoming something shiny and crystalline in the dim light. Lucien kicked immediately, his boot striking Nick’s hand with enough force that he screamed, knew bones of his fingers had broken.

  Refusing to go down without a fight, Nick scrambled to his feet, forgoing Sorrow to instead plow straight into his father with his shoulder leading. It struck as if colliding with a stone wall. He screamed at the pain, his vision momentarily flashing red. Stubbornness kept him fighting, and he slammed his unbroken fist into his father’s kidney. Though it should have been soft flesh, his knuckles came back scraped and bleeding.

  “Such foolishness,” said his father, and backhanded him across the face. “You have so much yet to learn.”

  Nick staggered, spat blood, and lifted Sorrow in his off hand.

  This does not appear winnable, Sorrow said as soldiers approached from the trees, more than a dozen, to slowly form a surrounding wall. Another dozen rushed past, chasing Frost and Violette. He could only hope they’d heard his warning and escaped.

  Maybe we can’t win, Nick thought. But I have every intention to die trying.

  He dashed in, but with his sword wielded in his left hand, he felt awkward and clumsy. His slash for his father’s waist was easily batted aside. A retaliatory smack with the hilt of the sword struck Nick’s forehead, and he staggered. Little hits, little scrapes, not enough to kill but enough to humiliate. He flailed, missed, and then charged the soldier line. To his surprise, they did not strike with their weapons but instead closed ranks and shoved him back toward Lucien.

  They know what you are, Sorrow warned. They want you alive.

  An orb of shadow flew over Lucien’s shoulder to slam into Nick’s chest. He gasped at the life it took from him, ribs cracking, innards crushed, making it hard to breathe. He collapsed to one knee, struggling to force air into his lungs, as Sir Gareth strode through the ring of soldiers.

  “Seems your nose is as good as a bloodhound’s,” he said to Lucien, his shield strapped to his back and his enormous sword held in a relaxed grip atop his right shoulder. He glared down at Nick. “And so here hides the demon.”

  Nick flung himself at the knight, wounds and weak lungs be damned. Sorrow thrust straight for the giant man’s throat, but it never reached. His father latched on to his arm and held him fast. A squeeze, and Nick screamed, feeling like his elbow was going to snap in half and turn in the entirely wrong direction. Sorrow fell from his grasp. Another twist, and Nick dropped to his knees.

  “Beat him,” Gareth ordered the soldiers when Lucien released his grip. “But do not kill him. I’ll butcher the whole lot of you if the demon stops breathing.”

  Nick pushed up to his feet only to be greeted by a kick to his stomach. He gasped, a bit of blood spilling out of his lips. A fist striking the top of his head dropped him. The soldiers surrounded him, kicking and punching as he lay on the rain-soaked earth. Sorrow lay outside his grasp as his health bar steadily drained to almost 0.

  They beat him until his father’s voice pierced the night like a knife.

  “Enough.”

  The soldiers retreated. Nick rolled onto his back, his vision blurred with tears and his entire body a bruised and beaten transmitter of pain. He stared up at a monster wearing his father’s face and wished death for them both.

  “I see that stubborn spirit within you,” Lucien said, kneeling down and gently cupping Nick’s face. “Birthed of a soft hand, and my own misjudgments. But do not worry. That stubbornness will soon be broken. You’re coming with us to Castle Astarda. In its lowest depths, I will have all the time in the world to undo the mistakes of my past.”