Varajas looked at Samir, who was flickering back and forth in the same way as the card in his hand. First the Samir he knew, the Samir who was trapped in Ulek with him and Ruan. Then a younger Samir, bedraggled and half-starved looking, dressed in rags with a sigil of the Star at his throat.

Varajas knew just enough to grasp how little he understood. The knife—had the knights ever understood the nature of their guardianship? How much knowledge had decayed over time along with everything else about their order? Had they ever really known what this thing was they held, this trinket that could speak and dream and cast its shadow through the world?

“We don’t know what it is. Maybe someone did, once. We’ve found records back to the time of Grandmasters Alín and Tiarna, who were leading the order around the same time as the revolution in Ter Luniel.” Samir’s eyebrows went up, and Varajas all but heard the question he wasn’t asking—if there was another connection to be found there? Varajas didn’t know, so he went on.

“It’s…it’s evil. It’s pure, roiling power. It’s death.” He gave a wry nod towards Samir’s card. “It talks to people sometimes. It can reach into your dreams.”

He couldn’t look at Ruan while he was saying this, not while he was confirming every horrible accusation Ruan had ever made about the knights—about Varajas.

“The magics you saw the knights using at the end—the decay, the blight, that night at Naktigan—that power all came from the knife. We were supposed to be guarding it, keeping it locked away, its power shackled. But I guess once things got desperate enough…” He could hear the bitterness in his own voice.

“How could you do that?” Ruan sounded sick. “How could you support that?”

Varajas could only laugh, a hollow, empty sound. “You think I knew? You think I was ever given the choice to…” He scrubbed his face with his hands as the words fought to get free. Everything he’d swallowed since they had crept away from Ulek with their horrible burden. Everything he’d wished he could say to Derian. Every accusation he’d wanted to sling at Ádan.

“They kept it secret from all of us.”

“Who?” Samir asked.

“Derian. King Kolyn. Derian and his precious inner circle, the order of knights within the knights. The rest of us—all we knew was that we were fighting for our lives and Derian had done…something. Magic you weren’t allowed to question.”

Varajas took a deep breath and pulled his hands away from his face. He had to tell the rest. “When it was clear the end was coming, Derian sent us away—Ádan and Nikki and I. With the knife. Back to Triome, to keep it hidden. Except what are we supposed to do? The entire order couldn’t keep it safe, and now there are three of us and we don’t know shit.

“We can’t control it. We can’t contain it. It started talking to Korin, so now he’s one of us. And maybe this,” he waved his hand around to the maze, sliding it along the stones with the tree and the knife over and over again, “maybe this is part of it too. Maybe it’s been reaching into the world more than anyone realized for longer than anyone’s known. I don’t know. I don’t…fuck.” He slid down the wall to the ground, burying his face against his knees. “Just…fuck.”

There was silence, until Ruan spoke, with an eerie calm. “Show us the rest, Samir. Show us the death that set you free.”