Emily stooped her head to enter Alex’s tent, it was no larger than anyone else's, but he’d dug it a little way into the dune so it felt more spacious. This would have taken more work but also helped to keep it cooler than those who had just thrown their tent out to escape the heat.

  Alex kicked off his boots and stripped off his layers of protection, lowering himself onto his bedroll.

  “You can use that corner but remember moderate and constant streams. Don’t pour massive amounts in and then pull back, keep the output steady.”

  Emily rose a brow at the man, but he’d already closed his eyes and a gentle snoring filled the space.

  She squinted at Alex, there was no way he could get to sleep that quickly, right? Deciding that she didn’t care, Emily went over to the other end of the tent and sat down cross-legged.

  Glazing down at the rune again, she decided to take his advice and start pouring in a decent amount of source from the get-go.

  No sooner had she done this than the rune hummed to life once more, but this time it sang in the space.

  Or more accurately her source sounded like it was the one singing. A clear, resonant note, like the chime of a distant bell, filled her ears.

  Emily could feel the color wash from the world again, and along with it taste and smell.

  The creeping numbness might have unsettled her if she had not been expecting it. Instead, as her senses faded, she felt it—the pull.

  It came from everywhere at once.

  The world had turned to shades of grey. Emily’s gaze flicked over the tent, catching the rhythmic sway of its walls where the wind ghosted through. Alex lay nearby, his back to her, chest rising and falling in steady intervals. Even the sand had changed—loose grains hovering around her in silent orbit, caught in unseen lines of force. They drifted, locked in place, neither still nor free, as though held aloft by magnetism or some other force.

  Had she been capable of feeling anything, she might have found it beautiful, but perhaps more importantly, was the way everything felt around her.

  Every grain of sand floating around her seemed connected by a threat to her skin. Beyond that, the swaying tent pulled at her. Even the way Alex lay there attracted something in Emily.

  It felt as though the world was trying to pull her apart, each demanding her full attention. This was the sensation Emily had felt when she had taken in too much source, only without the nausea and exhaustion.

  This was why she’d thought she was fading before. But what was causing it?

  Emily stared at the room around her, watching the strands stretching between herself and everything else. Countless threads of grey wove through the space—so many that even with a lifetime, she doubted she could count them all.

  Yet, within the endless tangle of grey, motes of color began to emerge.

  Reds, greens, yellows, blues—even black and white. All the source colors were here. If she could feel shock right now, she would have.

  Emily had only ever sensed grey source—and, to some extent, red, but that had only been in the tower, where she had sat atop a veritable mine of it. The fact that she could see all of them now was intriguing. More than that, it changed her understanding of grey source entirely.

  She had always thought her source was like black, something that dispersed other energies. But as she studied the surrounding threads, she realized it was the opposite. It connected them.

  Narrowing her gaze to her own sweat-slicked arm, Emily spotted motes of red flickering in and out of her skin—body heat, she assumed. But what she didn’t expect was that, as the red left her, a thread of blue motes followed in its wake.

  She squinted.

  Glancing around, she saw red motes gathering around Alex’s prone form. They drifted into him but were drawn toward his belt, where they were expelled into the world at an alarming rate. That had to be her siphon, right?

  Turning her focus to the green motes, she noticed they clung low to the ground, barely moving, yet attracting yellow motes to their side. The yellow motes, in turn, stretched upward and out of the tent, spaced evenly apart, as though interconnected.

  Curious, Emily reached out, brushing a finger through the air. The touch set off a cascading reaction, and the yellow motes knocked into one another like a Newton’s cradle. She even noted how they disturbed the blue ones.

  Grey source did not disperse, it connected.

  Emily watched enraptured by the new world at her fingertips. She couldn’t understand it all or even affect the other motes in any tangible way, but just having access to this sight felt like a trump card. It was unfortunate that she couldn’t use this in combat, but it would be too distracting.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  All of this information was useful to Emily, but unfortunately, it didn’t support their current theory that Grey Source could act as a stand-in.

  Maybe all she needed was to find some black source to study.

  Looking around, Emily found a thread and followed it over to Alex.

  There, on his forearm, was a light cut that had no doubt been made in the fight against Umbra, but the longer she looked at it, the more she could see.

  Black and white source moved through the wound in equal parts. The white motes chased after the black ones to repair the damage they left in their wake.

  From what Emily knew of the human body, if a cell was beyond repair the body would absorb it and create a new one. What was happening here?

  Emily tried to get a better understanding of how the black motes erased the damaged cells, but they just seemed to consume the damaged cells and move past the healthy ones.

  Emily spent an unknown amount of time watching this unseen world, and eventually decided she needed to try something or all of this would be a waste of time.

  She couldn’t affect any of the other sources but the same could not be said for the source in her bones.

  Glancing down at her index finger, Emily focused on the first bone. The amount of Source in the appendage was frankly distracting, so she pushed ahead and took hold of one of the grey motes at random.

  It struggled at the barrier of her skin but Emily guided it through the barrier but kept it at the threshold. This particular stand was connected to a chain of yellow motes. It wasn’t what she was looking for, but it would have to do.

  With a yank, Emily tried to pull the motes towards her.

  Like a dock line pulling taunt, the string of yellow motes moved towards Emily. It wasn’t much but Emily was satisfied when she felt the barest breeze of wind move over her palm. She was about to search for a strand connecting to a black mote, when she realized something was wrong.

  Suddenly every mote in the area froze, causing the dynamic world of moving motes around her to stagnate.

  Emily was immediately on guard and if she could still feel her emotions she would have felt how unnerving this all was.

  The world around her seemed lost and more distant than ever before, and then it arrived.

  That presence Emily was so familiar and yet had only met one other time.

  The strands of grey began to rearrange themselves, and in doing so, consolidated into a shape. The longer Emily had remained in the grey world the more she had accepted its vast emptiness, like the space between worlds. However, now, the world of grey was looking back at her. She had done something to call attention to herself, and as nothing more than a passing thought, Emily watched an eye open, made from the very strands she had just manipulated.

  She saw it just as it saw her and that alone was enough to freeze her in place. Such was the presence’s weight.

  She immediately knew who this was, that sixth, unnamed god that she had seen on her first day.

  It had been the one she’d felt some kinship with, but it had also been the one to send her here without any explanation, so she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

  It on the other hand barely registered her presence, but it seemed locked on her form. The weight of its gaze was different from the world around her. This felt like she was going to splinter apart, and yet she endured. The pain pressing down on her began to become more manageable and the moment she wrestled control of her body back, Emily closed the connection.

  The last thing she saw before the world of grey faded was the eye watching her without emotion.

  Emily took a breath and blinked away the experience as color returned. She glanced around and saw the light outside the tent was already fading to dusk.

  Groaning Emily pressed her hand over her eyes. She’d somehow lost hours and by the looks of things, outside everyone was starting to wake up.

  Alex shifted and turned over, blinking the sleep from his eyes.

  “You’re awake? Good, because starting from here the real dangers begin. We should get ready.”

  Emily removed her hands to see Alex already getting up. She groaned once more just because she could, and pulled a little vitality from her chest to wake herself up.

  From the looks of things, it was going to be a long day.

  Moving from the hovel, Emily was headed for Ashe’s tent when she spotted Fox handing out bowls of watery broth and changed her mind.

  Emily grabbed breakfast and a mug of night brew before heading over to the tarp where the animals were resting.

  She let her connection to Cupcake guide her but then she felt the animal already had company.

  Emily sighed, she’d had just about enough of people for a while and was about to turn around to find another spot when she noticed it was Gerade currently brushing down her mount.

  She paused and looked down at her food before making her way over to the quiet duo.

  Cupcake was happy to see her and didn’t even ‘ask’ where her potion was, she’d already eaten, courtesy of Gerade.

  The man noticed her approaching and eventually taking a seat on a nearby stack of hay, but he remained silent, and so did Emily.

  She quietly dipped the wooden utensil into the cold liquid and gulped it down. She’d have thought it being cold would be unpleasant, but once again Fox showed his skill with food.

  Emily was only too happy to say the soup-like concoction was refreshing, hearty, and a little like a pigeon.

  Emily glanced up at the man to see he’d started on Mist and by the look of things he’d been at it for a while, as many of the galendmares were taken care of too.

  Emily watched the man quietly and when she had finished her night brew she washed up and returned to the silent man.

  Picking up a nearby brush she began to work on one of the beasts. During this, neither of them spoke a word but when Emily needed help with attaching the hooded veil to the galendmares he wordlessly arrived and showed her how, before moving back to what he was doing.

  As Emily worked, her mind went back to the entity she’d seen. It had certainly been a shock when it arrived, but somehow Emily wasn’t sure it had meant her any harm. It had simply been observing her. Perhaps moving the strands was something it took note of.

  It could be watching her now and she wouldn’t even know it, but so what? If they wanted to watch, they could be her guest.

  Emily found that she was left reeling after each meeting with these terrifyingly powerful beings, wondering how to stand her ground.

  Most would say you shouldn’t, not in the face of power like that, but that didn’t sit right with her.

  Sure, that being was inconceivably powerful, but it had to have rules, or the other gods would have killed her by now.

  That or they just didn’t care.

  By the time Emily’s thoughts were stable she realized they had completed all the mounts and Gerade was trying to get her attention by glareing a hole in the back of her head. When she turned and saw him, he cleared his throat.

  “...Kael’s getting ready to go, but he has a warning for all of us first, so let's head over.”

  Emily nodded and packed away their tools before she headed towards the group where everyone was gathering.

  Blood points: 485