By The Sword - Homepage

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“Felix?”

The woman’s voice hung in the air as the world spun around me. I blinked and tilted my head, trying to prevent myself from teetering. The brown-haired woman kept up her stare.

Waves of disgusted interest washed over me, all coming from the back of my mind. The white-hot fire inside me twitched, reviling the woman’s words and piling onto my emotions as if to make me as revolted as it was.

I shook my head once, pushing away the waves. The woman wiped her eyes and squinted at me. “Felix?”

Flaming discomfort blanketed my skull and I cringed, taking a step backward. The name echoed in my head, immediately familiar, but immediately painful. Spinning and spinning, it mixed with the rest of my thoughts. And each time it came around, it scratched my skull, picking, prodding, and tearing at a scar as old as my life itself.

“Excuse me?” I finally asked as a full breath entered my lungs. The world stopped spinning momentarily and I was able to open my eyes wide enough to watch the woman’s mouth close.

Her lips tweaked downward and the smile on her face softened. Whatever words she’d been about to say shriveled away at her lips. Her eyes narrowed as she looked me over.

Blue irises moved in frantic yet calculated movements as she flicked her gaze around. After she tore away from my face, she looked at my clothes, then at my chest, then at my shoulders. For a moment, a tiny smile threatened my lips as I raised my chest higher, proud of the muscles I’d built within.

But with each passing moment, the woman’s brows furrowed harder, coming together like puzzle pieces. And as soon as it became apparent that her inspection was more than a glance, I made use of the time myself.

The breeze picked up for a moment, blowing over her fair, slightly tanned skin. In a flash of chestnut brown, her hair billowed away from the spot where it had been draped over her gray tunic. As the woman’s brows furrowed even more and her lips continued to drop, the same familiar smile stayed on the whole time.

Flames licked at the back of my eyes and waves of regret hit me. I cringed, keeping my gaze frozen on the woman. The longer I stared, the more familiar she looked and the way I felt broken, unreadable memories rising up deep in my brain only cemented that conclusion.

Slowly, unsteadily, the woman ended her stare and blinked, straightening up.

“Felix?” she asked again, as if the impossibility of the situation had her stuck on repeat.

Once more, the white-hot presence in my mind lorded over my thoughts, spewing out its disgust. I shut my eyes tight and took another step back.

“That name…” I said, trying not to feel the headache coming on.

The woman’s eyes lit up, sparkling in the almost-afternoon light. “Felix!”

The mention of the name one more time only brought my headache on sooner. My hand fell by my side, instantly clutching the grip of my blade.

“Who are you talking about?!” I asked, frustration bubbling just underneath confusion.

The woman fell back on her heels, raising an eyebrow at me before holding up a hand and gesturing. “You, Felix.” I rubbed my forehead with my free hand, but she kept talking. “Where have you been? And what are you wearing anyway?”

“My name isn’t Felix,” I said, the name dropping from my mouth like an anchor. My breathing accelerated in an instant and the pain fell away bit by bit as artificial feelings of relief washed away.

The woman’s lips faltered as my words wiped away her smile. She stepped closer to me, narrowing her eyes, and squared her gaze with mine. For a moment, the air around me froze as her splitting, piercing blue eyes moved nearly imperceptibly over mine. She stared with intent, curiosity spinning within her as if she was inspecting a wound.

After a while though, her smile dropped completely.

She was staring into my eyes, but she was still staring into my eyes. And whatever she was searching for wasn’t there. Not anymore.

The white-hot presence stemming from the back of my mind calmed, singing my eyes as the woman stepped back and looked away. Disappointment lined her every move.

Her hand shot up and ran through her hair as she glared at the floor. Mumbling something even I couldn’t hear, she shook her head. Then she lifted her gaze up again, squinted, and stared into my eyes. But in the short few seconds since the last time she’d done it, nothing had changed.

“S-Sorry,” she eventually said. She shrunk and skittered backward like a scared mouse, still shaking her head ever so slightly before fully turning around.

An image flashed in my mind, one blurry and distant. I widened my eyes and stared at it, watching myself sitting against an old building in the rain as I drank from a bottle.

I jerked backward and shook my head, the memory slowly fading away. I tried to grasp onto it, to hold it and inspect it further, but it was falling away too quickly. I was powerless to stop it. The wind tickled my neck and brought me back to reality. I squinted at the ground in confusion. The image, the memory—it didn’t make any sense. I didn’t drink, and I never had.

But as the white flame deep in the back of my mind dwindled, I pieced it together. Once again, a realization came down on me like a falling church.

“Wait!” I yelled, holding my hand out in the direction of the woman still walking away. She turned in an instant, surprised eyes meeting mine.

I released my grip on the sword by my side and rushed toward her, my thoughts spinning as I figured more and more of it out. The presence I’d entered this body with lessened its grip, fading back to the dormant thing it had once been.

I didn’t want that to happen.

So as I walked up to the woman again, my mind working in overdrive, I carefully formed a lie.

“I-I’ve only met one person named Felix in my life,” I said. The woman stared at me, arms crossed, but I didn’t miss the glint of hope in her eyes. “Him and I… we looked alike.”

The woman’s stance softened, the hope growing ever-brighter. “Felix Whitblood?”

The name sped into my ears and attacked my mind, bashing against the inside of my skull. I grimaced. At least I didn’t have to feign the impact that the name really had.

It took me only a few moments to regain my composure. “I haven’t heard that name in too long,” I lied. “Say, if you know him, how is he doing?”

Feelings rushed up from the back of my mind but I ignored them all. Instead, I just focused forward. I just focused on the way the woman’s lips curled in distaste and how the hope in her eyes switched out with sorrow. “We… haven’t seen Felix in months.”

I blinked, trying to keep my breathing under control as my first night reborn came back to me. The pitch-black, the shifting trees, the terrible wind that attacked my fresh body—I shook it all away.

“Oh,” I said, trying to sound as sad as I could.

“He was always a little off,” she said, the warm smile returning bit by bit, “but those last few weeks, he was completely off the wagon. He grew afraid of everything, and he wouldn’t let any of us do so much as talk with him about it. One night, he just ran out into the forest and we… we didn’t seem him after that.”

My breathing slowed and my gaze fell to the ground. The soft flame in the back of my mind wavered, barely moving at all. My heart sunk. Only silence followed her words as the warm smile she’d developed was threatened once more.

Eventually, though, the silence had to be broken. “So… you knew Felix?” she asked. I blinked, nodding. “The resemblance is striking.”

I laughed nervously but tried to play it off as I tore my gaze away from the ground. “That’s… actually how we originally met.” My stomach turned as I lied through my teeth. “No better drinking partner than someone like yourself, I guess.”

The woman nodded, her lips pressing into a thin line. She didn’t question my story.

“You knew him as well, then?” I asked, my mind still working on what else to say.

The woman’s eyes blurred and she brushed hair away from her face. “Yeah. I knew him quite well.” She sniffed, taking a long breath as the wind blew over her before she turned back to me. “I’m Shalin, by the way.”

I smiled, the name registering somewhere friendly in the back of my mind. “I’m Agil.”

She smiled back at me. “Well… it was nice to meet you, I guess.” She shrugged her shoulders and averted her eyes as if unsure on what to say. “Sorry again that I thought…” Her words stopped, spiraling down into silence. “I’ve got to get going.”

Shalin’s smile weakened as she rubbed her neck. “I’ll… see you around.”

I blinked, and in an instant, she was already walking away. The foreign curiosity and interest that had built up inside of me faded away and the white flame dwindled once more. I shook my head, rushing to catch up.

“Wait!” I yelled. She turned, a million questions blooming in her eyes. “You said Felix is dead… right?”

Her head bobbed an answer. Up and down. “He is.”

I cringed, wanting to apologize, but I was already in too deep and I wasn’t letting any of it go until I got the information that I wanted. “If… if I can’t talk to him ever again, I’d like to know more about him. He never really told me much about himself while we were drinking.”

She stared at me, the questions sharpening. I could see doubt in there, distrust and distaste etched into the corners of her eyes. But as I stared at her with a pleading gaze I didn’t even have to fake, she caved.

“Sure,” she said softly. “But if you want to hear, you’re going to have to walk with me.”

My smile rushed right back and I nodded. After all, I’d already been walking all morning. A little more wasn’t going to hurt.

“So how did you know Felix?” I asked, adjusting my pace to walk beside her.

“I took care of him,” Shalin said, still looking at the ground. Every few moments, her gaze would raise and shift over to mine, but it never stayed for long.

I pursed my lips. “Are you Felix’s mother?” I finally asked.

The woman’s lips broke into a much wider smile and a soft laugh built in her throat. “No. World’s no. I came in after his mother, and if you asked him, I could never compare.”

Broken, erratic frustration rose from the back of my mind, becoming nothing more than an annoying mental itch that I was forced to ignore. “He didn’t like you?”

Shalin shook her head. “He tolerated me, I think. But I came in only after he became scared and bitter so it wasn’t like I was going to have a good relationship with him from the start.”

I nodded softly as if I knew exactly what she meant. My mind spun trying to think of what to say next, and only with some nudging by the flame did anything actually come out.

“Well, Felix didn’t have a good relationship with many people,” I said. “I don’t think he really had many friends.”

A sharp breath escaped Shalin’s nose. “You’re right about that.”

“And even with me, he rarely talked about anything personal.”

Shalin lifted her gaze, squinting at me. “You were his friend though?”

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. But I tried to nod as believably as possible. “Maybe. Drinking partner is all I can really say for sure. He just liked an ear to rattle off into when he was drunk, I guess.”

The brown-haired woman bit her cheek, thinking for a moment before she said anything else. “He must’ve talked about all of his crazy ideas to you then, huh?”

I had to wrangle my eyes not to widen too far. “Always,” I said with a fake laugh. “I’m sure you got an earful of them too.”

“Of course,” she said. My grip softened as my goading started to work. “At that point, he was crazy and I’m convinced of it. I did so much for him, and all he ever gave me were a few insincere comments a year and his wild ideas. Felix had an imagination, at least. I can give him that.”

“That he did,” I said, nodding along.

“I just wish he’d used it on something better, you know?” She didn’t even glance over to see whether or not I agreed. “He questioned too much and answered too little. I wish he’d used that brain of his to take care of himself instead.”

Shalin sniffled and blinked away tears as we walked on. I stared at her with a weak smile and watched the way her shoulders rose and fell sporadically as if she was trying to wrestle her breath into submission.

“He never did do that enough.”

“What?” Shalin asked, glancing up at me with another sniffle.

“Take care of himself,” I said, keeping my tone as steady as I could. Whatever emotion I had left to fake poured into my words.

Shalin turned away and quickened her pace, straightening her back. “Right. He was always more occupied with the world inside of his head rather than the world his body was rotting in.” A chuckle slipped from her lips without even a trace of mirth. “For someone as afraid of death as he was, he sure didn’t mind tempting its hand.”

I swallowed, my fingers twitching in the air. I had to resist the urge to curl my hand into a fist at even the mention of the beast. Thoughts surged and I expected them to be matched by the reaction of the flame. But it just sat there, staring through my eyes, surprisingly silent.

“He drank far too much. That’s for sure,” I offered. “I mean, back then, so did I, but at least I had other things.” The emotion pouring into my voice became less and less fake as the lie solidified in my head. “He had nothing. Or, at least that’s how it came off to me.”

Shalin stayed silent for a moment, rolling her shoulders before she responded. “He had more than nothing,” she said. “But whether or not he acknowledged it is an entirely different thing.”

My heartbeat slowed and I hung my head, letting the silence smother me for a moment. Her words played back in my mind and I winced, upset at a person I never even knew. The white flame was still there and as interested as before, but it still stayed eerily quiet.

After a while, Shalin lifted her gaze again, looking at some object around us. In the corner of my vision, I watched trees and houses move past us unimportantly as we weaved down the street. Shalin was a pace or two ahead of me and I’d just fallen in line, following her steps as we made our way to wherever she’d been designated to go.

“With how little he even acknowledged our existence, it’s a wonder life feels so different without him around.” Shalin sighed, still looking up.

My gaze lifted as well, pulled up by the contentment in her voice. She sounded upset, as if she’d just faced defeat. But from her tone, she almost felt like it didn’t matter, as if the defeat was from someone she respected.

As my eyes lifted from the ground and followed the brown-haired woman, my own pace slowed. Ahead of us, at the end of the street and tucked between two twisting trees, was a house.

Shalin sped along the empty road, leaving me standing on my own. Around us, I noticed, there wasn’t anybody. The street was clear and silent, void of the commotion I’d come to expect from the town. And there were no houses either, the closest one built multiple dozen paces away.

As Shalin’s steps sent the wooden porch creaking, I noticed the age of the house. It’s stone foundation was simple and cobbled together, now cracking from age. It’s wooden porch was small and dry, some of the planks obviously replaced multiple times. And its roof was simple too, barely even at an incline—a design so uninteresting it felt archaic even compared to the rest of the town.

It was as if this house predated Farhar itself. As though the house had been built out into the woods and the town proper had just sprung up around it.

“Are you coming inside?” Shalin asked, ripping me back to reality.

I blinked, my head already bobbing before I could decide what to do. The white flame danced its approval and I didn’t argue. I just plastered the most genuine smile I could offer and surged forward, hoping to keep the fiery thing involved.

The ancient, creaky wooden door to the ancient, creaky wooden house slammed shut behind us.

Immediately inside was a narrow hallway with a low ceiling that actually, was no problem for either Shalin or me. Both of us were about the same height, standing a comfortable two heads below the top of the wooden frame.

“Brandon!” Shalin called as soon as we got to the end of the hall. Immediately after, a room stretched out wide, filled with tables, chairs, and ornate and contemporary decorations alike.

Sitting in a green cloth-covered chair was an older, black-haired man rubbing his forehead.

“Shalin, you’re back,” he said, keeping his eyes closed. A warm smile formed at his lips.

“The market didn’t have any of the pastries you normally enjoy, honey,” Shalin said. The man—who I presumed to be named Brandon—just sighed and nodded.

“It’s alright,” he said, lifting his head up and opening his eyes. His smile only widened as he saw Shalin’s face.

But then it broke off completely when he locked onto mine.

“Shalin?” he said, his voice hardening. Something about the edge in his tone made my insides shudder.

Shalin walked forward calmly and held up her hands. “He’s not… he’s not Felix.”

Brandon’s eyes darted to her, questions flying over his brown irises. “He’s not… W-What? Who is this?”

An entire moment of silence followed his question. And in that short time, the tension grew unbearable. I took a deep breath, stepped forward, and tried to relieve it myself.

“I’m—or, I was—a friend of Felix’s.”

The black-haired man squinted at me, the crinkles next to his eyes sharpening with each move. “Felix didn’t have friends.”

I swallowed dryly, only adding to the lump in my throat. “Well, friend might’ve been an exaggeration. I drank with him… while he was still alive.”

The lie I’d crafted rose back. I latched onto it, trying to keep the story the same. The white flame danced in idle amusement peaceful enough that I barely even noticed the contempt it was hiding.

He squinted at me. “You look exactly like him…”

Shalin sighed. “It’s not him. They look almost exactly the same, but they aren’t.” Her gaze flicked back to my eyes.

“That’s how we first bonded, actually,” I jumped in, stepping farther into the house. The stubborn man eyed me, but didn’t let out any words. He looked like he was staring more in confusion than suspicion. “I think the first time we met, we both thought the other was a drunken hallucination of ourselves.”

A chuckle fell from my lips, but nobody else in the room laughed.

“He… he didn’t know about Felix’s death,” Shalin said. Brandon’s face softened.

I nodded. “I just wanted to know more about him. I-I didn’t learn much while he was alive and now… I can’t ever get that information from him.”

Brandon nodded, straightening in his chair. “Not like the poor sod would’ve told you about himself anyway,” he said.

A genuine laugh spilled out of my mouth at that. “That is true. All he ever did was rattle off theories and opinions that I’m sure sounded much better drunk than they ever would sober.”

Brandon’s lips split into a smile and that smile then split right into a laugh. “I guess you got the longer end of that stick then, eh?”

I laughed myself, letting my shoulders relax as the warm, swirling air of the house chipped away the cold morning breeze. “I guess so.”

A silence followed my words, but it wasn’t as painful as before. It was peaceful if anything, and I was just glad the burning flame in my mind hadn’t checked out entirely.

“Why don’t you take a seat,” Brandon said, gesturing to a beige cloth-covered chair.

I tilted my head and smiled at him, taking note of the warm way his eyes tracked over my face. Each time he did though, I didn’t miss the slight, uncomfortable shifting that took place in the back of my head.

Following his gesture, I stepped through the house with all the grace I could muster and sat down in the old beige chair. I lowered myself slowly, though, so that I didn’t punch a hole in fabric ten times older than I was.

“So,” Brandon started again. I glanced at him, but his eyes weren’t on me. He was looking, with unmistakable fondness, at Shalin settling into the only other cloth chair in the room—the one right next to him. “What did you want to know?”

His question hung in the air and I smiled. But when I opened my mouth, I was at a complete and utter loss. And the flaming presence in my mind gave no help when I reached out for assistance.

“I don’t know,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Where to start?”

Brandon’s eyebrow shot up. “Best to start at the beginning if you ask me.” I blinked, my lips parting to ask him exactly what he meant. But words were scared off my tongue by the loud way he cleared his throat, leaning forward in his chair. “What do you know about Felix’s boyhood?” he asked.

My eyes flitted uselessly, my own surprise melding with the feedback I was getting from inside my head. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Like most people then, eh?” he asked. I squinted at him, nodding slowly. “He never was real open about it. Only reason we know about him is because we knew his parents when he was young.”

The mention of Felix’s parents left a bitter taste on my tongue. I swallowed hard, but the vile taste didn’t leave.

“His parents?” I asked, suddenly hating my own question.

Brandon nodded, closing his eyes for a long moment. “Brilliant people, his parents. Absolute stand-up citizens. They gave their all to this town and they protected it with their life.”

“They protected it?” I asked, the answer already forming in my head. But each time I tried to realize it, I was blocked off by some mental wall.

“Of course they did,” he said, snapping his eyes back open. “That’s what guards do. And they were some of the best among ‘em.”

The fake, artificial mental walls broke down as the truth streamed in through my ears. White-hot resignation drifted up to the front of my mind as the little white flame just sat back and listened.

“Felix never mentioned anything about them,” I said. Brandon was already shaking his head.

“Of course he didn’t. He never talked about them. Disrespectful, if you ask me, but what can you do? They gave him such a nice life here.”

“Here?” The question basically just fell from in between my lips.

Brandon nodded, lightly stomping his foot on the ground. “Here. This house right here. A relic from an older time, isn’t it?” I nodded, but he pushed right ahead. “Never did get an explanation for how the two got ahold of it… Some say this house is older than the town itself.”

“It could be,” Shalin added. “This is why I’m always telling you we’re so blessed to have it.”

Brandon chuckled, his tone stocked full of mirth. “Blessed. Of course. If there’s anything I am, it’s blessed all right.”

Shalin’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed red.

“What kind of life did Felix live here, then?” I asked, cutting back in. My attention rolled inward for a moment, just to make sure the white flame was still watching.

“Pampered,” Brandon said flatly. I was immediately frustrated by his tone, even though I had no reason to be. “That’s how the boy developed his imagination, I reckon. He was just as crazy as a child, really. Always in his head, always distracted. I still remember the times from back when I was younger. The times when I’d come over to meet talk with his parents, just to check up, and whenever I even tried to talk with the boy my words would get lost. He always was doing wasteful things like glaring at a wall or staring up at the stars.”

I blinked, realizing my mouth was hanging open. In a moment, I snapped it shut and ground my teeth, churning the words through my head.

“Don’t be like that,” Shalin said, pulling my attention back. “He still worked back then, and he was plagued with fears his whole life.”

Brandon gave her a sidelong, disbelieving glance. “Of course he was. The boy was afraid of everything and anything his little mind could get obsessed with. That was something that never changed.”

“That’s for sure...” I said, just trying to add something to the conversation.

Brandon nodded solemnly, but Shalin tried to force a smile. “At least he took care of himself while they were still around.”

“That’s true,” Brandon snorted. “At least then he socialized. At least then he trained.” The black-haired man turned back to me. “You know, the boy showed a lot of promise with magic in those days. Everyone said he’d grow up to be head of guard, that he was blessed by the world itself because his magic looked different. And if he—”

“Because his flames were white,” I said, staring at the floor. Brandon stopped mid-sentence and cleared his throat.

“Yeah...” he said. “Because his flames were white.”

I didn’t need to look up to feel the way the older man was squinting at me.

“Felix didn’t actually become head of guard though,” I said.

Brandon couldn’t help but scoff. “No, of course not. But still, the poor sod showed so much potential. Nobody that anyone has ever heard of for millions of paces had white flames like him.”

“What happened?” I asked far quicker than I’d intended. My fingers trembled slightly as the truth I somehow already knew started to break through the fog.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Brandon’s lips twitch, suddenly speechless. It was a strange sight on the man who’d just spent minutes relaying a life story to me.

“He didn’t…” a voice started. Shalin, I recognized and lifted my gaze to meet hers. “He stopped training. Stopped socializing. Stopped everything.”

“What happened?” I asked again, an unknown bite in my tone.

“The poor sod’s parents died,” Brandon finally spat out.

My breath quickened, gasps of light warm air tickling my lungs. The white flame inside of me wavered, twitching into flurries of movement before freezing and repeating the cycle again. I felt my blood run cold and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t rip Shalin’s quivering blue eyes from my view.

“He never mentioned that,” I eventually got out, remembering the lie I was supposed to be telling. Right now though, it didn’t feel like much of a lie at all.

“Of course not,” came Shalin’s voice. “He never talked with anyone about them after they died.”

“Not even us,” Brandon added softly.

My insides trembled, shaken to the very core by the truth that kept spinning in my head. Every word of it was vile, repulsive to the highest degree. And yet I couldn’t get rid of it, I couldn’t stop hearing it, and I couldn’t deny it was true.

After multiple moments of silence, silence that seemed to lock all of us in sorrow, one last question nagged in my mind.

“How?”

Both of them looked up at me, but neither of them spoke.

“How?” I asked again. They just sat stock-still, lips frozen as my question loomed menacingly above them. I didn’t ask again, and I didn’t clarify either. They knew exactly what I meant.

“It was on a hunting trip,” Shalin finally said. My gaze snapped to her with such fiery speed that I wasn’t entirely sure I didn’t see a white haze in my eyes. “They were sent to eliminate the threat of kanir from the town.”

My thoughts screeched to a halt, stopping to pick apart each of her words. But I pushed passed their nonsense.

“They died to a kanir?” I asked, this time my voice fully mine.

She nodded.

“That’s why he hated the damn things so much,” Brandon muttered. My eyes moved lazily to him. “He hated them almost as much as he hated death itself.” My fist clenched, but he didn’t seem to notice. “After they were gone, his hatred cut deep… I still remember the way he told us he was going to banish death from this world if it was the last thing he did.”

I shifted in my seat. “We know that wasn’t the case.”

Silence took the room again, holding each of us by the neck. And for quite a long time, neither of us dared challenge it. We just sat there with our lips pressed together and the weight of our conversation still looming too far above.

The little flame in my mind, however, didn’t give into the silence. As the seconds wore on, it started pushing me again, sending me fractured feelings and ideas to work out through speech.

I blinked, words appearing on my tongue. “Casting out death was one of the only things Felix did tell me about,” I said. “I even still remember that dull knife that he always said he would do it with.”

Shalin’s eyes lit up. “The small, flat one with the awkwardly painted grip?”

“Yeah,” I said, my eyes narrowing as the vague image of it sprouted in my head.

Shalin pushed herself up out of her seat and let a smile take her face again. “You know what… I know where that is, actually.”

My eyes lit up too and the white flame flickered in approval. “Where?”

“It’s still in his old room, in one of the drawers, I think.”

My heart roared. “Can I see it?” I asked, ignoring how forward I was being.

The brown-haired woman hesitated for a moment, her hand hovering, but she nodded only a moment after. “Sure… I mean, it’s not like we have much use for it ourselves.”

I pushed myself up out of my chair as well. In front of me, Shalin and Brandon exchanged a glance, but the black-haired man only shrugged.

“It’s… it’s just this way,” Shalin said, smiling to her husband before hurrying away to the door on the far side of the room.

I followed in toe, walking with much less grace than I’d entered with as we made our way across the room. The wooden door we approached was old, the corners of it were reinforced with iron bracing, and the metal handle looked chipped and rusted at the edges.

All in all, the door looked old and generic, like one of the doors I could’ve found before an old cellar in a tavern of Credon. But as I stared at this door, my feet carrying me inexplicably toward it, it didn’t look generic at all. It looked familiar and friendly, as if it was a portal straight into the lands I most held dear.

But when Shalin stepped up to it and turned the stiff metal handle, what I saw was definitely not what I’d expected. Inside, the room kept up with the ornate, antique aesthetic of the rest of the house. Except it did it with only one difference.

It was far messier.

Really, the first thing I noticed when I entered the room was the slight change in smell. As my nose twitched in the unknown air, it wasn’t as bad as some things I’d smelled, but it was different from the rest of the house. The air was thicker. Mustier. Each breath felt like eating a stale cracker.

“Haven’t been in here in months,” Shalin mumbled ahead of me as she weaved her way across the bedroom.

“Felix lived in here?” I asked, my eyes scanning the room once more.

“Yeah. This is the same room he slept in for his entire life, actually.”

I wrinkled my nose again. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Shalin tried to stifle a laugh, but it came out all the same, drowned out only by the sound of shifting wooden drawers.

“Here it is,” she finally said.

I tore my eyes away from the rest of the room and glanced at her. My eyes widened as they sharpened on the dull, horribly-made knife she was holding in her hands.

“That’s it,” I found myself saying despite never having seen the thing in my life.

Leaving the nightstand drawer open, Shalin sat back on Felix’s old bed, staring at the knife. I joined her in short time, instantly uncomfortable on the lumpy mattress.

“He carried this thing almost everywhere,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. I furrowed my brow and opened my mouth, but I was stopped in my tracks by the tears running down her cheek.

“Yeah,” was what I ended up saying. “He did. He’d always wave it around while we were drinking.”

Shalin nodded, wiping her wet eyes. “And yet here it is,” she said.

My eyebrows dropped as the realization hit me too and I stared at the knife with renewed interest. “He didn’t take it when he went into the forest.”

The brown-haired woman next to me shifted, balancing the knife in her hand. “It just seems like something he should’ve had with him.”

My gaze fell to the floor and a sudden melancholic hand gripped at my heart. I looked inward, staring at the flame for any comment or feeling it had on the matter, but it stayed silent.

Waiting. Listening. Burning.

“Shalin!” a voice came yelling in through the door. Both Shalin and I jumped and she nearly dropped the knife, only barely saving it before she stabbed me in the leg.

“Brandon!” she yelled back. “What do you want?”

“The chair!” Brandon yelled. “I think the wood is splitting again.”

In a complete change of tone, Shalin rolled her eyes. “Why are you yelling at me then?”

The black-haired man scoffed and I could almost see his boisterous face from here. “Just come in here, will you?”

Shalin’s fingers twitched dangerously on the knife, but after a few seconds, she just sighed. Pushing herself off the bed, she handed the knife to me and weaved back across the room to the door.

The flimsy metal thing cascaded through my hands as if my fingers had suddenly been turned off. I scrambled to catch it, but my efforts were futile and it clattered to the floor, slipping barely underneath the bed.

Glancing back at me, Shalin’s ears went red and she held up a hand. “Sorry,” was all she said before quickly turning away and storming right back out of the door.

I sighed, clenching my fingers into fists. It didn’t make much sense that I’d dropped the knife, but I didn’t spend much time on it. Instead, I just crouched down and grabbed it myself.

Before I knew it, my chest was pressed to the floor. The hand I’d grabbed the knife with was gripping tight and my eyes bloomed wide as control ceded from my body.

The white flame flared, licking at the back of my eyes and settling around my neck. My head angled and my eyes narrowed, staring into the mundane darkness underneath Felix’s old bed. I felt completely bewildered. Completely frozen in place for a few moments, stuck even after I’d wrestled back control. And by the time I shook my head, starting to push myself up off the ground, something glinted in my vision.

There, among the darkness and just barely in view was the corner of a sheet of paper. From what I could see, the paper was old, dusty, and yellowing. It looked like old parchment, something useless that was thrown away because Felix couldn’t have been bothered to use it.

But even still, my arm surged toward it. Eying it with increased and startling interest, my fingers grasped the sheet and pulled it toward me. Before I knew what was happening yet again, I was sitting back onto the bed with a crinkled sheet of parchment in my hand. My eyelids fluttered, blocking out the world for moments at a time as if refusing to believe what I was seeing was real.

But it was.

Completely real and completely unmistakable, the piece of paper I held in my hands was a map.

The realization came at me like a falling boulder and I was frozen in place. In the back of my mind, the white flame purred its satisfaction and removed its heat from my thoughts. But even though its influence was gone, the map in my hands wasn’t.

A hitch caught in my breath as I stared at the thing, slowly pulling it out to look at the whole thing. Sounds of frustrated conversation drifted in my ears and calmed my heavy breathing.

They were still talking.

I still had time.

Pushed on by a sudden sense of urgency, my eyes flicked across the map and scanned its every detail. The thing was masterfully made; it had to have been formed and crafted over far too many years. It was made by hand, obviously, and its scope was enormous, larger than anything even I had ever seen.

Sprawled across the face of it in large, hand-written letters was the name ‘Ruia,’ and the title didn’t seem to lie. The more and more I looked over the map, the more impressed I was. In the lower half of the map, I recognized a forest and the few towns that surrounded it.

Farhar, Sarin, Tailake, the names all registered in my mind. And each of them was placed exactly where they truly were, at different edges of what the map called the ‘Forest of Secrets.’

As moments wore on and my eyes absorbed more and more of the handcrafted ink, the little white flame started pushing me again. For the first few moments, I barely even noticed the way my gaze was lifting to the top of the sheet. And by the time I realized what the fractured flame was doing, my mind was already occupied with other things.

There, in the middle of a much more undetailed part of the map—one riddled with question marks that took the place of labels—was a name that should never have gone on a map.

The World Soul.

“Fine!” came Salin’s voice, ripping through the air. It rattled in my ears, pushing past the thundering of my pulse as she walked back toward the door.

My eyes shot wide and I surged into movement. I folded the map again, trying to make it as small as possible without damaging it at all, and stuffed it in my pocket. And by the time Salin entered the room, my eyes were still wide and I was painfully sure that I looked white as a ghost.

“Are you okay?” she asked warmly, her brows knitting together.

“I-I’m fine,” I spluttered. “The memories of Felix are just… a lot.”

Shalin’s expression softened and she nodded at me. “I get it. Did you want to… take it as a way to remember him?”

Her hand raised up and gestured to my side, where I was still clutching the badly made knife with everything I had.

I twitched, letting go of a breath. “Could I?”

She just shrugged. “I don’t see why not. We don’t have use for it here, and you look like someone who enjoys knives anyway.” Her eyes narrowed as she scanned over my clothing again. “What is that uniform you’re wearing anyway?”

I offered a weak smile. “I’m a ranger…” I started, instantly trailing off as I remembered myself. The afternoon sunlight draped onto my face from the bedroom’s window and I remembered Jason and Myris.

“A ranger?” she asked. “You… you’re from Sarin, then, aren’t you?”

I nodded quickly and plastered another smile on my lips before rushing forward. “I am, I am. But actually, I’ve just remembered the time.”

“Oh,” she said, taking a step back.

“Thank you for everything,” I said. The proper respect I’d been raised on was still serving me well. “For telling me about Felix, for the hospitality, everything.”

Shalin opened her mouth, but I was already pushing my way out of the bedroom’s door. The soft ‘you’re welcome’ she mumbled barely even registered in my ears as I made my way past Brandon and out their door.

The ancient wooden door slammed shut behind me, locking me back into silence a rather calm bout of silence.

Yet as I made my way back, the impossibly windy streets reflected the truth of my state. I rubbed my neck and held my head low, still trying to untie the knots that held tight in my mind.