She was inside a huge temple, a familiar place, a place she knew she’d been to before. Seeing the colonnades on both sides and the pale ceiling high overhead, the lattice screens and the oil burners, Chloe realized she was standing in the Temple of Aeris in Phalesia. She was approaching the inner sanctum, a temple within a temple, a place she had only been to a handful of times.

She wondered how she’d come to be here. Was she dreaming?

She was being drawn to the inner sanctum, where the high priestess performed the holiest of all rites. Reaching the screen that shielded it from the rest of the temple, she felt a sinking dread in her chest that grew stronger as she neared. She took one hesitant step after another, knowing she was going to find something terrible inside. She didn’t want to be here. But she had to keep walking, to find out what awaited within.

She took three more steps, entering the domain of the high priestess. The urge to flee became stronger. She pressed her fingernails into her palms. Flickering candlelight revealed the interior.

The walls were covered in blood.

Chloe looked down. There was a man at her feet. She didn’t know him; she was certain she’d never seen him before. A handsome man with dark, oiled hair, a narrow face, and sharp cheekbones. He was clad in a white tunic and his hands were clutched over a wound in the center of his chest. His eyes were open. He was dead.

Chloe did recognize High Priestess Marina, a tall, olive-skinned woman with a topknot. The high priestess was sprawled out at the base of the rear wall, her pale-blue robe in disarray. At first Chloe thought she was unconscious, but then she saw the red smear on the wall where her head had struck the stone after she was thrown hard against it.

Horror squeezed at her heart as she turned, and when her eyes moved still farther she saw her sister.

Sophia had grown, but she was still small, with impish features and Chloe’s dark hair and wide mouth. She was curled in the fetal position, lying on her side not far from the high priestess. Her eyes were closed.

Her face had been battered.

Her cheek was bruised and swollen, and one of her eyes could hardly be seen. Her lip was torn and crusted with blood. There was a savage crimson mark on her chin. She lay motionless on the ground, utterly still.

Rushing over to her, Chloe gave a sob as she knelt down to touch her sister, but when her fingers reached Sophia’s arm they passed directly through. Looking at her hands, Chloe saw that she was transparent, ethereal. She crouched and stared at Sophia’s chest, praying for it to move, willing it with every fiber of her being so that she would know her sister was still breathing.