“Kai, we can still do it alone,” Myriam said one more time, though she sounded as if she had already given up.

“I’m coming, Myriam,” I said. “You need me.”

I waited for a moment and even though she didn’t voice her agreement, she nodded her head slightly.

“Kai,” I said, and then paused to think about how I started my sentence again. “Or rather, the thing that’s in Kai… bring them all here and make them touch each other.”

As soon as the tentacles started moving the four of them toward me, I flipped the hourglass and started counting down in my head.

I moved closer to them, and put my head between theirs in a group embrace.

“I’ll make sure—” I started saying, but was interrupted by my sister whose mouth had now been freed.

“You are the bravest man I know,” she said, which took me by surprise as I was expecting her to scold me. “And you will be the death of us.”

“Always take note of the last place you felt mana working,” Kard interjected, “and make sure you return there, if you want to turn your own hourglass.”

“He still has—” Krysha said, startled.

“Take care of yourself, brother,” Man said. “We will be waiting for you.”

“I’ll return as soon as I can,” I replied to Man, and gave a slight nod to Kard’s recommendations. “I’ll make sure The Divine is restored, and I’ll come back.”

“You make sure you are safe first, and—” my sister shouted, but I kept her from continuing by squeezing them even tighter, knowing our time was almost up.

“I love you all,” I said, and pushed myself away from them.

Not a second after I broke away from their embrace, the four of them disappeared.

They were safe back in the tower to the north. Safe within the walls of Leka An and surrounded by our people.

“I’m sorry,” Myriam said quietly, and I turned around to face her.

“It’s fine,” I said honestly. “They’re safe now and we can see to it that The Divine is restored.”

“No,” she continued. “I’m sorry for everything you must have gone through to follow us here. Sorry for leaving you alone in Nara.”

“You had no obligation to stay with us,” I replied, but she would have none of it.

“No, Adel,” she said quickly. “I should have stayed, and I know it. I put Kai’s safety above all of you and I have to live with the consequences of my actions.”

Myriam wasn’t asking to hear kind words that would lead her to believe what she did was the right thing. She had come in terms with her choices. She was simply asking to be forgiven for the fact she could only carry the responsibility for Kai and not for all of us.

“I saw the funeral pyre traveling down the river, Adel,” she continued. “I’m sorry you had to go through it all alone.”

“But I wasn’t alone Myriam,” I replied. “I had all of my brothers and sisters who took part in the liturgy with me. We did all of it together. We’re one clan now.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said, and smiled a little at me before she threw a worried look at Kai.

We stood there, looking at each other. For a few brief moments, I forgot we were standing at the southern edge of the world and imagined we were overlooking the valley south of Nara, beneath the tree where we used to meet every day. Just two friends growing up together. But the void above us and the absolute silence around us quickly brought me back to our bleak reality.

“We should move,” I said, and started walking toward them. “The members of The Order may be just behind us or in front of us.”

“Give me your swords,” Kai said, without moving a muscle.

“I’m not giving up my only means of protection, boy,” I said, trying to emphasize the last word. “I promised I would help Myriam and that’s what I’ll do.”

“Kai, it’s fine,” Myriam said, and started walking as well. “I trust him.”

“Still using cheap tricks, eh, Adel?” Kai said, and smirked at me. “You never were able to provoke me.”

“I was just making sure I was talking to you,” I said, and moved a little faster to keep pace with them.

***

Over the next thirty minutes, they explained to me how the forest worked, something that had eluded us so far, though we had only made one failed attempt to find the correct route. We spoke only quietly, and walked in absolute silence, trying to not be heard by whoever might be in the forest with us.

The bad thing about being sent back to the beginning of the forest path after taking a wrong turn was that every time you were sent back to the start, you were forced to walk miles back to where you went wrong. The good thing was that we knew as soon as we took the wrong path because our magical items stopped working. This was also the moment where we needed to be most careful.

Stumbling upon the priests of the Order in an open field with mana would be challenging to say the least. Trying to fight them in a null-magic zone while they had access to spells was certain suicide.

For this reason, whenever we chose a wrong path, we sprinted quickly to the next two-way split and took the right path so that Myriam and Kai, would have their spells available again. I, of course, was not in such a terrible hurry to get to a place where mana worked, but I guessed having the help of a spellcaster, as well as the aid of my numerous magical items, would prove beneficial if it came to doing battle.

For the next few hours, we made our way through numerous twists and turns of the forest path, taking the wrong route at several junctions and having to start all over again. We had successfully covered six intersections, that ranged from two to five possible paths. The one with five paths took us three tries to get right and it was the part where we spent most of our time.

Even though we were becoming increasingly tired, especially since we couldn’t ride our mounts and had to walk miles on end, we didn’t want to stop and rest. That would mean we would need to talk to each other and none of us was ready for any of that. Despite our frustrations, we always believed that the end of the forest could be just after the next intersection.

The latest split in the road, however, made us change our minds. The purple orbs illuminating the road flowed around all seven paths in front of us. I moved a little closer and realized that some of the paths split down into further trails a short stretch after the initial large intersection.

“This is impossible,” Kai said, frustrated.

“It’s not impossible,” I retorted. “But it will take a lot more time than we thought.”

“That’s what I meant, Adel,” Kai replied to my remark.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to make it in one run,” Myriam said. “I think we should rest and recuperate.”

“I agree,” I said. “It may be the case we will need to fight at some point. We won’t be able to do it effectively if we’re tired from hours of walking.”

“But this could be the last one before we reach the Tree!” Kai protested.

“Kai, listen to me,” Myriam replied, and looked at him with affection. “I’m as eager to get this over with as you are, but even without fighting, we’ll need to be at our best when we perform the ritual. Tell you what. You pick the next intersection and we go down that road. If it’s correct, we continue to see what comes after it. If it’s not, we rest.”

“Okay,” he replied. “Should I pick the path now then?”

“Go ahead,” I answered.

“Nobody asked you,” he hissed at me.

It seemed like he didn’t trust me yet, but it was okay. He didn’t need to trust me, and I didn’t trust him either. He did trust Myriam though, who nodded in agreement to his question, and this had to be enough for the moment.

“Let’s go this way,” he said, and took us to the third path in the large split in front of us.