In a vine-thin line of power, the water snaked up from the bucket and sliced through the tiny, barred window at the door. Then it was to her, then it was touching her—and just in time. The flame hawk had almost arrived. It barreled toward Stix, once more drowning everything in its violent heat.

Stix tossed her hands high, fingers shaped like claws, and the water obeyed. It split in two, forming arms like hers, yet with the fingernails hardened to ice. She jabbed out her left arm—quick, distracting—then followed up with a right power strike.

She’d always been proud of that punch. After all, it had earned her the title of Water Brawler at the Cleaved Man, and it had won her many a brutal fight.

Her water arced out, pure speed, pure power, and slammed into the flame hawk’s head. Where a true arm would stop, Stix’s water simply shot onward. A pillar of water to pound the hawk’s skull. To wash over it with targeted precision aimed right for the hawk’s eyes.

Where Stix turned it into a mask of ice. Suddenly the bird couldn’t see, and it toppled like a graceless fledgling to the ground. It slid toward Stix, heat coursing against her. Cotton burned, her hair singed, and her skin blistered. But she launched sideways before any real damage could be done.

The crowd erupted with delight, and Stix couldn’t help but revel in that sound. Just as she had at the Cleaved Man, even if her father told her it wasn’t seemly for a Sotar. She readied her second water whip for the final knockout …

And that was when it happened. Because of course that was when it happened: the voices returned and the memories punched into her. Hye, she had come here for those exact memories, those exact voices, but did they have to show up now?

“No,” Stix snarled, watching as the world dissolved around her. Listening as the crowd’s cheers fell away and the past shoved in. “No, no, no.”

But the old lifetimes didn’t care what Stix wanted. They had been waiting for her to come here, so now they had something to say. And as it always was, they spoke in a language she could not understand. A hundred languages all clashing together.

Stix didn’t need words to know they were angry. Come this way, keep coming, they seemed to cry. Come, come, come this way, keep coming. Light flickered at the edge of her vision, eating her sight like flames eat paper. Like this flame hawk would eat her. But she couldn’t see the bird anymore, for the past had arrived and it would not be ignored.

Her Heart-Thread is on fire, flames from an Exalted One named Lovats. Laughter from him too. “Food for my flame hawk. Food for my pet.”

Stix’s voice breaks as she begs Lovats to release Bastien.