He didn’t even know what he was forcing her to see. The visions flowed through him like a speeding train, too fast for him to catch anything but glimpses, before they crashed into the walls of Zekia’s mind.

He couldn’t stop.

Many Gods, even if Wesley wanted to, he just couldn’t.

His magic was free and it refused to be shackled again, even by him.

He could feel the shadow demon screeching in his mind and trying desperately to claw Wesley out, but Wesley kept his thoughts firm, throwing dream after dream into the demon’s head until its knees shook and it convulsed to the floor.

Zekia whimpered beside it.

Wesley climbed onto the window ledge.

“Don’t,” she said.

Zekia’s voice was gravelly with desperation.

“Please don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be alone again.”

Wesley swallowed and he couldn’t believe that a part of him was even considering what she said.

“Come with me.”

Zekia shook her head. “We can’t go,” she said. “The future can’t happen and if we leave, everything falls to dust and ash.”

Wesley swore.

He couldn’t take her with him.

He couldn’t save her.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said.

And then Wesley jumped from the window.

Past the rows of bodies and headstones, into the icy water and down, down, down.

13

KARAM

The Shores of the Dead were not a ghostly wasteland.

They did not conjure images of restless spirits roaming the sand in search of purpose or revenge, nor did they make Karam clutch at her pehta’s pendant like it was an amulet of protection.

It had taken them only a matter of hours to get here via the floating railways, across the threads of the Onnela Sea, which coiled between the cities until finally pitching up onto the sand of Tisvgen. The Shores of the Dead, where people came to grieve or bury their loved ones, looking for solace along the water’s edge.

Only, nobody seemed to be looking anymore.

The train had been scarcely filled. With war in Creije, nobody seemed eager to travel, and of the few dozen passengers that had been on the train with Karam and her small group, not a single one had disembarked to Tisvgen with them.

Perhaps they were tired of death.

But the shores gave Karam a peaceful and calming feeling, and the moment she stepped onto the enchanted sands, she felt a quiet in her heart.

The coast was made mostly of white sand filled with glass headstones that glowed under the light of the moon like beacons for travelers. The dead making sure the lost found their way home. A few small monuments were scattered between, child-sized models of the dead, made entirely with coin.

Karam wasn’t sure if it was a kind of symbolism to pay their toll to the spiritlands, or if those people just really liked gold.