Baritone hums vibrated beneath my skin. Pounding drums hijacked my heartbeat. Thudding within my chest, my temples, my soul.

I shivered on the march to the Prophet of the Valley, whittled down like a wooden figurine carved too thin. Tunic loose with no armor and my body light without weapons; bare feet torn, and chilled legs slung with the cold of mud. The boots of my fellow captives trampled earth as dark as a winter's night sky into a slurry of mud.

My hands curled around a sliver of empty space that should have been filled by my bow if those demons who handed us off to the Prophet's warriors hadn't taken them away.

I had long since cursed the day my cowardly instructors on the Mountain of the Gods sealed my power, but never before had I cursed myself as badly as I did now for failing to break free of the limitations they placed on me. The so-called gods gave the instructors the ability to cut off our power for a reason and no one had ever regained theirs once that happened. They said it was impossible. Still, I could accept no excuses. Not one day had passed since losing my power that I had not fought to free myself. If I had succeeded instead of failed, then we would not have been captured by our worst enemy, and the innocent of our village would not have been taken hostage.

So few knew the truth about our world, but I did. I understood that it was advanced technology and not some mystical power from the gods that gave demons and prophets alike their abilities. There had to be a way to override whatever mechanism had sealed my power.

“Heretics!” The women gathered along our path snarled at us from beneath pale hoods gleaming with the glow of fire. The whites of their eyes burned red. Each held a torch between laced fingers, nestled against their hearts. One stared into my eyes. “Burn! Burn! BURN!”

One snap and I could have shot an arrow through her gaping mouth if I had my precious bow. But with my power, I could have struck her dead in an instant. The Prophet and his followers were hypocrites for using powerful demons to capture us when he was the most notorious demon hunter in the peninsula. I longed to crush his throat.

The thirst for vengeance gave me the strength to drag my heavy body forward. We'd walked throughout the day and night before nearing the Prophet's village. Along the road leading to his gates, men stood over the women’s shoulders. Their faces were shadowed by black hoods that drank up the shadows of twilight, their mouths closed so their hums sounded as if they came from beyond. From the gods themselves. Their stares never shifted from us. Blood dripped from their eyes like tears, cracking at the edges as it dried.

I could think only of my adopted nephew, Rune, and his little fingers disappearing from view as the demons stole him away into the night.

The coarse rope that tore at my skin was nearly as grating as the glare of the Prophet's faithful lining our path. What crushed my lungs with anguish, though, was how my best friend's form ahead of me punctuated the twilight, how far Leif felt. The same bonds that kept me from reaching for my people also tethered me to them, so I couldn't help but love what I hated.

I hadn't prayed since Dad died and the instructors at the Sacred School so poorly filled the void he left. I hadn't prayed since I learned the truth about our world, about the gods, about how nothing at all was as it seemed. Now, such desperation clawed into my heart that I lifted my face to the expanse above and I prayed a prayer I didn't believe to gods I believed even less.

Let this not be real.

Tears wet my cheeks. A touch of warmth where none could be found.

I searched for a response in the space where navy sky and dark earth melted into one, where the barely visible spread of stars above us crashed into the glow of snow-capped mountains. It was easy to see why our people turned this direction to pray, with how the towering terrain appeared to guard our valley from the rest of the Skia Hellig Peninsula, as if we were divinely protected. But I knew what was on the Mountain of the Gods.

We'd drawn so much closer while on this march.

The air ahead glowed brighter and brighter with red and orange haze until the domineering wooden spikes atop the wall of the village appeared. I craned my neck to see up to the guards posted like statues every few feet, their crossbows steadied against the stone edge. No one else in the valley had defenses close to rivaling this.

Rune's pleas for help blared in my mind. His fingers, reaching, straining.

I lowered my head.

The haunting tones of the villagers beyond the walls died as we entered the gate, replaced by a much more eerie quiet. Wooden, multi-story buildings lined the cobbled road, leading all the way to the gently sloping hill near the back where the temple rose over everything in sight.

I squinted, eyes stinging from artificial brightness of lights atop steel poles. It'd been so long since I'd been around electricity. As a child, I'd stood on jagged rocks along the shore and watched the sparkles of sunlight glitter off each ripple, like our own daytime stars. Dad had dipped to run his fingers along the water and lamented at how the light scattered. How he'd never catch the sun's rays like the Prophets did.

Our young world was like a small child with the feet of a man. Awkward and deformed. Deformed by an incredible power we weren't ready for.

Fury flushed through my veins.

The Prophet of the Valley—that damned Eskel the Ruthless—would pay for what he'd done. I'd make sure of it.

Sometimes, the faintest inklings of my power kindled within me, out of reach, but warm like a flame. The heat of it burned within me now.

Our line turned right to a wooden stage tucked into an oval courtyard. The Prophet stood in the center with a thick canvas sheet stretching behind him and a coarse rope in his left hand. Seven disciples stood like statues at the base of the stage, wearing the same dark cloak as their leader. Above them, the Prophet held a staff with his free hand, face shadowed by his hood as he watched us. I knew his image so well, and even better, the nausea it filled me with. Sealing my power had not ended the visions that haunted me. And it was these very inky black eyes that I saw in those visions every time. Strands of black combed through the straight gray hair creeping out from his hood, lying beside the wisps of his beard. An imagine I had never been able to escape.

The guards forced us into a line before him.

I swallowed down the hard knot of fear lodged in my throat.

The slender man towering over us spoke. “I am the Prophet of the Valley,” his voice boomed. Echoes of his words bounded around us. “The gods awakened me in the night with a vision of their enemy’s faces, no more. Ash and charred skin replaced their blaspheming mouths.”

Beside me, Leif’s hands twitched into fists.

“We will cleanse your people with your lifeblood. In two weeks' time, when darkness falls and the moon consumes the sun, we will seal the souls of your innocents and cleanse the Valley with a mass sacrifice.”

An eclipse was coming. The Prophets always knew when they'd come, but closely guarded the secret. This was really it. My entire life, visions of the Eclipse and the Prophet had loomed over me. Visions of my blood pooling on the stage as I died. I could not leave my people behind like this. I wouldn't. I would save them.

I closed my eyes. Burning washed over my entire body, out of my control.

The ground beneath me darkened into wood planks. The dirt I stood upon looked like a layer beneath another. I shifted slowly into that place, caught between now and a future I'd long dreaded.

No! Had to stay here. As much as I wanted to escape, going there was even worse.

Fire that no one else would be able to see licked the tips of my fingers. The flames burned up my hands and over my arms. I winced in pain, holding back my scream.

The Prophet’s inky eyes stared into mine—there in the place that haunted me in my visions and here with my people now, the same eyes from two different times.

The village snapped back in place. No flames. No heat or pain. I was among my people once more. A gasp shuddered my shoulders. The terror of a death that had loomed over me since childhood clawed for the softest parts of my soul, sinking into flesh torn open time and time again. As swiftly as I'd slipped into the future, my mind drifted, so the tightness in my body faded, the fear blurred, and I could hide so deeply within myself that no one would be able to see me. Not even myself. Couldn't think about it. Couldn't feel it.

But I could survive. I could survive anything, no matter how it shredded me.

My people needed me to stay strong.

“You will be a sacrifice to the gods,” the Prophet said. “Then your people will go free.” He ripped the rope down and the thick canvas fell to the ground in a wave.

There stood our people: the children, the elderly, the innocent. The young mother and her sons who lit the town lanterns every morning, the old man who loaded my bag with sweet bread when I went to train, the children—so many children—hiding beneath the arms of every adult. Our innocents stood with hands clasping one another, mouths closed obediently, tears shining against the red of the torchlight, though none of them dared utter a sound.

And sweet Rune, clinging to his daddy on the stage, staring at Leif beside me, silently begging for their family to be put back together again. Begging me to keep my promise to protect them, always.

Of all the lies I'd ever believed or told, this was the worst.

Tears blurred my view of them. Beside me, Leif leaned forward, as if physically drawn.

“Step out of line, and it will be your people who pay.” The Prophet marched off the stage, abandoning us with his threat and our innocents out of reach.

Fire smoldered within me with nothing to burn except my tender insides.

I would kill him. No matter what it took.

It would be a slow, miserable death.

[Discord]