Evin looked out the window of the house and saw the wall that rose from the forest near his village. It was as stark white and never ending as it had seemed that morning when he was awake—only, the wall was different somehow. Its angles, the way it refracted the light, everything about it was different.

Evin hated the house. The walls seemed as though they might fall at any moment and crush him. He wanted to run away, leave the giant house, explore the world.

The dream felt so real—the chill air breaching his thin clothes, the body odor of the other children, the grumbling of his stomach, the longing to be anywhere else in the world—that when Evin woke with sun piercing his eyes, he was confused as to where he was and why he was there.

He rolled onto his back and winced as a particularly large stone cut into the small of his back. He saw the canopy of the trees above him, wet leaves glistening in the sunlight.

Craning his neck back, Evin looked behind him and saw the wall. It was right by the forest, where it always was. It did not look angled improperly and it was the right color.

A boot hit Evin lightly in his side. He rolled his head and looked up. Jorick stood above him, his hair even messier than usual.

“Is it time to go yet?” Jorick asked.

After a quick meal, they gathered their belongings and headed off. They exited the woods to walk around the ruins of Hesiod first, and managed to find traces of tracks from the dog-men. The tracks, too, headed north—the same direction in which Curston lay—and Evin felt sure that it was fate leading them to Zendric now. The wizard would help and everything would be all right.

A wide dirt road cut through the overgrown fields to the north, and Evin and Jorick hiked along it, kicking at stones and saying very little. By midmorning they reached a fork in the road, with the well-traveled path heading east and the path that continued on north to Curston overgrown with towering weeds and thorny vines.

The two boys stomped over the underbrush and went on. Evin felt for a moment like he was heading into the deep wilderness on the grand adventure he’d always wanted—which, he supposed, he was. Even with his worry about his family, Evin felt a strange little thrill. As horrifying as it was to see Hesiod go down in flames, life was now never going to just be the same boring routine every day.