Lena stared into the water. Muted gray light shimmered on its surface, reflections of worshippers passing like shadows in the background. On the floor of the fountain, a pattern of eye-shaped tiles in all shades of green and brown conjured a forest floor. She squinted, thinking she’d spotted a glint of blue-green, a flash in the corner of her eye. Focus, she told herself, and returned to her contemplation of the water’s surface, its soft movement soothing and calm. The temple around her faded as she listened to the sigh of her own breath.

Faul, please show me my magic, she thought dutifully.

And suddenly her stomach flipped as she tipped forward, plunging into blackness …

Distantly, she felt the cool fountain water swallow her body. But instead of sinking to the tiled floor, she kept falling and found herself on her hands and knees in cold, cloying mud. She raised her eyes, her heart convulsing. All around her the air was damp, a huge gray cloud wheeling like a carousel. A low rumble rent the air.

The storm cloud.

She felt sick. She scrambled to her feet, wiping her hands on her old habit, the one she’d left in her room that morning, clutching it tight around her body. This is impossible.

The forest was thick with noxious clouds, the trees diseased and deformed, trunks shifting in and out of vision. The taste of decay filled her mouth and she pressed a hand over her lips, suppressing a retch. Wind whipped through her hair. A fork of greenish lightning flashed to her right, and immediately the air smelled of fire.

She was panting, her heartbeat wild, as if she’d been running fast. Not here. Please. Not here. Horror filled her, right from the bottom of her soul. She was back where she’d started, the howls of hungry dogs echoing in her ears.

The bodies of the cloaked explorers lay in the clearing. The woman with the splayed red hair. The man sleeping his eternal rest by the black ghost of the fire. The body propped up against the tree, as if in waiting, keeping his longest watch. I have to run. Lena started to stumble backward, a strange fizzing sensation building in the hollow beneath her lungs.

Too late. The body leaning against the tree shifted, as she’d known it would somewhere deep down. The man’s chest lifted, rattling with years-old breath.

The fizzing sensation spread up through her nerves, along her shoulders, down her arms. Lena heard the creak of the dead man’s bones, the thump of a rotten heart, impossibly loud, like a war drum, but crackling and distorted. She felt warm, like a flame burning in the cool damp of the forest.