“I’m going to kill you,” the girl said, “and everyone like you.”

“You’re not the first to tell me that,” Zezili said. “Are you coming?”

Lilia limped after the legionnaire. Her lungs burned and her body ached. She could barely see straight. She kept seeing the bloody haze flit across her vision. The air here felt strange. She stopped after a few paces to vomit.

The legionnaire, Zezili, urged her on.

She wasn’t sure how long they walked until she realized they were following the scent of something. Maybe it wasn’t a scent but a… breath. She saw a reddish haze floating on the air. At first, she thought it was her eyes again, but it was a trail of red, not a gauze across her vision. As they walked, the trail got thicker, heavier. Lilia put out her hands, expecting to feel a damp mist, like the blood that had merged to form the gate. But she felt nothing. She even tasted the air.

“What are you doing?” Zezili asked.

Lilia had stuck her tongue out. “The red mist,” she said. “Don’t you see it?”

“No,” Zezili said. “That’s what gifted people see. When people use your star to make something.”

Lilia shook her head. “I’m not… I… Oh.”

“You murdered my women back there,” Zezili said, “and it wasn’t with air. You’ve got the dark star in your blood. It’s crept in, and it’s not going away.”

Lilia could see a blue tower ahead of them, at the bottom of the charred rise, and something beyond it. The hazy red trail continued on past the tower, toward a glint of silver-red metal that looked like some massive arch.

“It leads to the arch,” Lilia said.

“The mirror,” Zezili said. “Come and see what your mother made. It’s how I knew she was alive. Isoail said her gates all opened here.”

They walked together to the tower. Zezili drew her blade and went inside. Lilia waited in the foyer. Blue and amber tiles glinted from the floor.

Lilia turned away from the tower and walked around to the other side. In the valley below, she saw the full height of the mirror for the first time. It was at least as tall as the Temple of Oma. The border of the mirror glistened a startling ruby red. As Lilia stared at it, she couldn’t even think of it as a mirror. It was a looking glass, a window onto another world. Inside the face of the mirror was another sky, another place. She knew that lavender-tinged sky. It was the world they had just come from. And it was where the swirling trail of red mist ended. The tails of red trailed off in every direction, breathy wisps leading out into the hills around the mirror.