It was the first time since my awakening that when I looked upon the new world, I saw something that was not entirely foreign. Indeed, what I saw made my bones cold with sick disgust and heartbroken longing.

  Levanska was a city not unlike those from ages past, though it was run down and filled with vagrancies, so I had heard—though confining myself to the outskirts, I barely experienced it. Rotaalan, in all its former glory, was a place to run from, to hate, with much uncertainty and danger lurking there. But here, in Drazivaska, we walked through the streets, albeit carefully, but with no few eyes towards the features of the once-great city. Emalia had said it was meant to be a second Nova, a place of great population, cultural innovation, and Sorcerous research. To me, it appeared the barbaric Vasians had been trying to recapture Pethyan inspiration.

  The homes were stone and tall with rounded roofs, great public works dotted the squares of fountains, sheltered marketplaces, and small parks of flourishing, massive trees—likely hungrily fed by the Sorcery. There were theaters, public halls of colonnades, and impressive arches, all sporting patterned carvings. All that was missing were extensive harbors and the tell-tale guild manors of my homeland. I stared wide-eyed, mouth dry as ground bones, at the lost world around me. Lost for the Vasians, lost for myself. A strange, couched tragedy.

  “This place has your skin white as marble,” Feia said, her hand weaving its way into mine, fingers interlaced. “How do you fare?”

  “Poorly, truth be told.” I held my voice distant and flat so the emotion swirling through me might not take hold. When released, pain had a way of swallowing up all rational thinking, drowning the sufferer in sorrow. And we did not need such weakness here, not now. “It reminds me of Pethya. Of my home.”

  She glowered at that. “Vasians don’t just destroy, but steal. And they’ve stolen much from the world. But their thievery here is an insult, especially grievous. I am sorry you must bear witness to it.”

  I smiled at her. It was a sad smile, a calm one. “It is not hate which grips my heart so, Feia. It is loss. It is longing. I look around and see what once was—a poor rendition, perhaps, but one all the same. I see old memories lost to the decay of time, a people forgotten and absorbed, a legacy of ash and dust.” I bowed my head, for others were listening in, and I could not meet their eyes. It was not shame, but the fear of breaking down the gripped me. “Yes, I despise Vasia for it. But that is not it. That is not all. For even when the ideas of Pethya live on, they are in tomb cities, touched only by uncontrolled Sorcery and the Dead. Feared by common man. I hope my people live somewhere else, free and prospering, far from this sadness and decay.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “Perhaps you are right, and your Pethya lives on somewhere beyond Vasian reach. The world is a wide, mysterious place.”

  “Yes,” I muttered, feeling in my heart that such a thing was unlikely, “perhaps.”

  Up ahead, Oskar cleared his throat. He and some others were standing tensed and ready at the end of the small street. Up ahead, the road intersected a large thoroughfare, which meant open terrain for being spotted by any of the unseen Dead in the city.

  “Do you sense anything?” I whispered to Protis. The Soulborne was at my other side, crouched and tensed with violent potential.

  It raised its head in the air as if to sniff, but I knew better than to believe it was actually smelling the air. “Stone tombland permeated with Death. Corpses hide, burrowed away. Many or few, but they hide here. Dormant.”

  I nodded. “Curious.”

  Oskar was talking to Sovina up ahead, though they were too far away for me to overhear. Emalia was close, but she was silent as usual. She must be communicating through Sovina, then. Coward gods-slave. I shook my head, doing away with my roiling spite. Here, in a city of mocked rendition to my homeland, it was hard not to hate the priestess for what she was and what she planned to do. It felt like an old tale was about to repeat itself, and here I was, trapped in its endless workings like a caught fly before the spider of fate. I will not succumb to such base emotions, I told myself. Now, more than ever, I must cling to my humanity lest I slip into the dark waters of loss.

  We crept forward from our narrow street and out into the open. Immediately, my skin prickled with goose flesh, for we were exposed on many sides. Up and down the wide open thoroughfare, statues stood in the center, cracked and time-worn, some swallowed by moss and nature’s creeping wringings. To our left, vaguely in the broken wall’s direction, the way was empty and unthreatening. To our right, the road plunged deeper into the city, and the structures, already far from humble, grew grander. Walled and private estates, towers, oblong arenas, and the main keep, spire-topped and ruined with a cavernous wreck in its flank revealing dark innards and a mote of pale green light. It flickered like a fire, bouncing off the walls and gleaming. It reminded me of Soulfire. I felt my jaw tighten. So this is the broken portal? What lies there, stowed away with decrepit Sorcery? What tools for my purpose? More immediately, what uses for Emalia’s holy ambitions? But we would not know gazing from afar, so the band ventured forth, watching all around, hands clutching weapons.

  It was cold here, though a different sort than in the mountains, where the ice crept into you like a treacherous blade; here, in this abandoned city, the cold was a tainted sort, a Sorcerous sort. I doubted the others could sense it as well as I, but by the look on Feia’s face, she too experienced the seeping presence of Corruption in the air.

  “It’s not enough to leave permanent scarring,” I whispered to her.

  She cast me a dubious look, arms crossed over the trinkets and vials hanging from leather straps over her chest. “It feels like how rotten meat and ash tastes.”

  “The sensation differs to all. To me, it is cold.”

  Feia snorted. “Must be pleasant.”

  I stayed silent at that. It would not do to explain that it was the same sensation when I raised legions of Dead upon my sister’s death, when my final acts in a world I called home were destruction on a scale most cataclysmic. That the feeling she deemed innocuous was bound up in the kind of dread and despair that haunted me every time I closed my eyes.

  This place was horrid enough without my own past to darken it further.

  “Suppose we couldn’t keep getting lucky,” Oskar muttered.

  Up ahead, the stone keep, which was really just a wide tower, was defended by a wall, and unlike the curtain wall of the city proper, this lacked collapsed patches from nature’s persistence. It stood over three times my height with merlons that added another arm’s reach. It was constructed of smaller bricks of dark stone visible through the crumbled, old plaster whitewash. Fortunately, it was short enough to scale with our current supplies.

  Upon reaching the wall, Sovina pulled out a rope and crude iron hook, gave it a few swings, and hurled it to the top. The first throw didn’t catch anything, but her second did. Upon tugging it to ensure it was taught, she began to climb. Emalia watched her, eyes never straying, locked and bound on her companion. There was something between them, something more serious than I had previously given credit, perhaps. Can I use this? As soon as the thought struck me, I cast it aside. Sinister, manipulative, cowardly. Sovina reached the top faster than I thought one could and secured the rope, Emalia quickly following.

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  I turned to my Soulborne and summoned them closer. Protis was the largest of them, standing out with its intelligent eyes and strong stature; the others seemed to defer to it, offering it the closest space to me. Their understanding of hierarchy, even when unelevated and simple, was not lost on me. Past experimentation had revealed possibilities for self-sufficient systems of order on the battlefield, but we’d never implemented it in mass in Pethya. Waves of them, destructive and capable in a simple charge, had been adequate.

  “Soul Raiser?” Protis asked, meeting my eyes.

  “Is this my name? Not master nor creator? Not even Daecinus?”

  My creation did not reply but merely stared at me.

  “I would prefer Daecinus unless you have a more fitting form of address,” I muttered, then looked at the other three, patiently waiting with the kind of full attention only the bound Dead can muster. “Protis stays with me; the rest will prioritize the group’s defense. That means guarding our moving perimeter, clearing forward halls, with one staying behind at our rear. I don’t want any surprises or ambushes here—what threats linger, I wish to know about them. Protis, is this line of instruction clear?”

  It grunted confirmation but asked, “None to watch Emalia?”

  “When the time comes, you will all know it. But until then, I want restraint when it comes to my allies.”

  Again, my prime creation grunted in understanding.

  “Good. Now, my two from Levanska, take the lead.”

  Immediately, they began to climb the wall, claws finding all the substantial cracks in the brick to haul themselves up with terrifying speed. This wouldn’t work on a maintained wall. I would need seige engines, deception, or tunnels. They reached the top before Emalia, hurdling over the ramparts like besiegers eager to kill and loot. Most of the mercenaries followed in a slow procession up a second rope. When it was my turn, I am not ashamed to say that I was slowest of the lot, for I was no fighter, no warrior, and the stagnant Corruption was steady and poisonous to any strenuous physical activity. From atop the wall, the inner courtyard of the keep of Drazivaska was visible for all. And the sight was not one to raise my optimism.

  There were a few stone buildings, such as a forge and stable, but in the space that was once green and open, perhaps adorned with eye-pleasing gardens and hedges, was a mass of Dead. Hundreds of them, milling about, silent except for a muted shuffling of dry earth beneath feet. The others of the band were crouched low, staring wide-eyed. I wondered why they didn’t warn the rest of us, but at such a sight, I felt it hard to move myself, much less raise my voice in warning.

  “Pricks are penned in,” Oskar hissed. “By all the gods, we’ll never get to this tower.”

  “I feared this.” Emalia’s narrowed eyes flicked from the horde to the tower, then off to the sides. “But we are not entering through the courtyard.”

  “Then where? The bloody thing is sitting in the middle of it.” When Emalia didn’t respond, Oskar’s face fell. “Underground again?”

  “There’s a route through the northeast tower meant for a quick escape for any Sorcerers facing instability in the portal.” She nodded to the right along the wall. “They were fools, of course.”

  It was not hard to see why. The whole city had been taken by Corruption. Any escape through a secret passage was a mundane solution to a problem of far greater scope.

  “Will it require Sorcery this time?” Feia asked.

  “I do not know. All I know is that a tunnel exists there. It should be shorter and less dangerous than Rotaalan’s according to the descriptions, but the details were sparse.”

  “Damn priests and their tunnels.” Oskar gestured off toward the tower, as standard as any other. “Let’s get moving then.”

  My Soulborne, as usual, took the lead. Though there were no Dead on the walls that we’d seen thus far, it would not cost us to be careful. And yet, why were they all locked in the courtyard? It was as if they were trapped, penned in. Perhaps this was merely my mind trying to assign reason to mere chance, but I thought not. Possibly, someone sacrificed their life to secure them, hoping to loot the city after? Some enterprising mercenaries? Or was this the work of Sorcerers securing resources for future use? The thought made me even more wary, for it were true, we were meddling in an unknown enemy’s territory. And yet, one final hypothesis entered my mind: What if this is the work of Souls? Of a hand beyond in the High, reaching down to shift them for their gain? What if, in all unlikelihood, this is the work of whatever—or whoever—is affecting Emalia? Was that even possible? We knew little about Souls operating in the realms of the High and Low, and what they could and couldn’t do. But if such a Soul wishes to see me killed and used in a ritual, then they are making a significant mistake. They are gifting me an army. In the cold dread of leaking Sorcery before a vast horde of Dead threats, I felt my face stretch into a sharp smile.

  …

  The tunnels were different. The city was different. And yet, Emalia felt the odd insurgence of déjà vu at being in such a place once again. It was not filled with traps and strange, Sorcerous designs, but it had an ancient, foreboding feeling like Rotaalan.

  They had crept down a tower’s internal stairwell, opened a rotted wooden trap door by splitting the lock with a few wincingly loud axe blows, then hurried underground before the mass of waiting Dead could rush inside and feast upon them. She had held her breath as they stepped into the cold, moist dark. But no Dead came. Of course they would not, she thought as they followed Sovina and the two lead Soulborne underground. He is watching for me. Here, far from all, Raizak is near. So close to his goal, so close to his will, she wondered what power he could invoke and if restraining the Dead was one of them.

  As she went, she looked at Sovina’s back, shoulders set firm and curved blade out, gleaming in their torchlight. Have I been too hasty in my dismissal of her concerns? It was a foolish question—for, of course, she had. Sovina never meant harm in her words. And she never would. It was out of ignorance that she spoke. Emalia couldn’t blame her for that. How could she truly believe such things as god-spoken demands of sacrifice and ultimate commitment? They were raised in the devotion of the Column together, yes, but that was still a step away, an irreconcilable distance from that which Emalia had to do. Sovina would not fully understand, yes, but would she obey? Emalia felt it in her bones that her Column-sister would.

  So Emalia pressed forward with a clear mind, a reaffirmed conscience. Whatever the path ahead might be, she and Sovina would face it together as one. And after it was done, Sovina would understand. All would, eventually.

  She exhaled and momentarily closed her eyes, allowing her mind to roam over her body. Her skin was cold and prickled, contrary to the hot flush of impotent frustration earlier. Unsurprisingly, her feet were sore, the muscles and bones aching something fierce, only made worse by the sting of lingering pain from her touch with frostbite and death before Raizak saved her. And the others, of course. I am your vessel, oh Great Martyr. I am your tool. A faint breeze whispered through the tunnel, and Emalia smiled. You hear me! Praise be!

  She put a hand on Sovina’s shoulder. Her friend looked back and nodded, shoulders hunching forward, head lowering as her neck muscles bunched up in preparation.

  Soon, the floor sloped upwards and met a series of stairs. As she climbed, a sound echoed down from up ahead. A clatter, a thump—a series of them. It was getting closer. Sovina reached back and pulled Emalia and her to the side just as a torn torso thunked on past, dark blood splattering out like pitch from a fallen bucket. An inkwell knocked from the desk in shock as the mind was taken by visions of another world.

  Emalia looked ahead. The pale form of a Soulborne was outlined in murky light from an open doorway. “Let us keep moving,” she murmured.

  Sovina glanced to her, then nodded. Her gaze lingered, but Emalia tried not to give it mind. There were unspoken words to be said, but this was not the time or place.

  The tunnel exited into a small room with the other half of the Shambler. One Soulborne stood inside as the other loped up a winding set of spiral stone stairs. Higher to climb. Higher to go. How much higher until she reached the portal? Until she reached him? The portal stone, the truth, the heart. A deathly fate, a necessary one. Could she do it? Could she press the knife into the man she’d come to know these last weeks? The sacrificial creature, destined for death long ago? It was not a problem of the Soulborne nor his Sorcery but of her internal well of conviction. It didn’t matter. She had to. That was all. There was no other choice in the matter.