Daemon launched a dose of calm through their bond, and not a moment too soon. Like when she’d gone diving with the eagle rays, Daemon’s presence helped Sora come to her senses, and she clamped her mouth shut, swallowing the air back where it belonged. She’d swum herself upside down in the pain of the freezing water, but now she settled back into position to swim toward the trap door.

Sora kicked downward. She would need to blow open the door, find the golden soul pearl, replace it with a decoy, and get out of there, all before her air ran out.

But as she pushed deeper into the lake, her vision began to turn milky white at the edges. Am I low on air already? The whale spell was supposed to give her about twenty minutes underwater, though, and it had only been two, maybe three. Panic rose in the back of her throat.

The milkiness in her vision persisted, oozing in like a spilled bottle of cream until she could see nothing else. Sora rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms. It didn’t change a thing.

A sharp tang, like vinegar, suddenly filled her nose, which made no sense, since she wasn’t breathing in. And the water seemed to thicken like jelly. The muscles in her arms and legs strained as she tried to keep swimming.

Oh gods . . . I’m really going to die in here.

Then, all of a sudden, the milkiness in her vision and the vinegary smell cleared. The thick gel of the lake was gone, too, replaced with solid ground.

What in all hells?

Sora looked down. She stood on top of a pile of dead soldiers wearing uniforms that belonged neither to the taigas nor the ryuu but to a foreign army. All around her, a battlefield was littered with corpses, and the air was tinged with the smells of steel and blood.

But instead of fear or horror, pride inexplicably swelled in Sora’s chest.

She took in the scene around her, and the drunken heat of victory began to course through every vein in her body, filling her with delight. All this death was my work, my power! A flagstaff suddenly appeared in her right hand, and she impaled its sharpened end through the bodies at her feet. Another wave of satisfaction surged through her as the pole pierced through lifeless flesh.

“Well done, sister,” a voice said from behind her. Sora turned to face Hana.

“Is this the future?” Sora asked, part of her still conscious that the battlefield wasn’t reality, that her body was somewhere else . . . although she couldn’t remember where.

“Yes,” Hana said. “This is us, destroying the Faleese army.”

“So this is Fale Po Tair.” Sora looked past the battlefield to get a glimpse of the kingdom, but it was just a flat expanse with a mountain in the distance and seagulls hovering over the ocean.