Zekia could tell just by looking at her. She wasn’t sure how or what it was exactly, but a part of Vea Akintola looked ready for war.

She’d grown up on stories of her mother, and even a few scattered photos, but those did no justice, and stories were often prone to lies. People liked to remember the dead the way they weren’t. They liked to take the best parts of them and pretend that was all there was.

Zekia had grown up being told that her mother was perfect and she’d grown up knowing it wasn’t true. Now, seeing her as clear as a shadow moon, Zekia could understand how the lies got mixed with the truth.

Her mother was not perfect, but she was glorious.

She carried a child in her arms who Zekia knew was her brother, though she’d rarely heard about Malik besides what a great leader he was destined to be. All the stories about her brother were about what he could have been, or should have been, but rarely what he was.

Malik was supposed to save them.

Malik was supposed to be Liege.

Malik was supposed to change the world.

And instead they got stuck with her.

Zekia’s brother was tiny and that struck her as odd, since he would have been older than her if he were still alive. But now she was looking at him, a baby, and she was suddenly the older sibling. It felt like an enormous responsibility, even if it was to a dead boy.

Vea carried Malik into a small shed.

Zekia watched.

Vea held him up in the air and sobbed.

Zekia watched.

Amja drew strange symbols on the floor, her hands shaking the entire time.

Zekia watched.

And then Malik cried and the shed was engulfed in black flame and everyone screamed and the forest withered and all the while Zekia watched.

She wanted to look away, or even blink. But you couldn’t blink if the thing in front of you was actually inside of your mind.

You could only watch.

Only listen.

Only wish that it would stop.

The flames seemed endless and Zekia wasn’t sure how long she would have to stare as her mother and brother died, but soon minutes passed and the black smoke faded, as did the forest, and from it Wesley Thornton Walcott appeared.

A phoenix from the ashes.

The smoke morphed into his face and he was standing in front of her, with his bone gun pointed at Dante Ashwood, while a song chanted in the distance.

Time will be carried in strange hands

across the realms and through stranger lands.

What is done will be undone,

a battle lost is a battle won.

When midnight rings on a child’s betrayal,

every success is doomed to fail.