I still had my share of the mana coins. I shakily dug them out of my pouch and clenched them in a fist. Something had gone terribly wrong, and I couldn’t remember what. The phoenix egg teleportation, I remembered that—and then things got fuzzy and indistinct. Damnit, I’d specifically had my soul checked. But what had happened after?

Whenever I tried to remember, my head pounded and I felt sick. I gave up for the moment and took stock of my surroundings. I hadn’t lost anything in transit other than memories. My spear glowed green. I looked around the alley. It was empty. I frowned and walked toward the end. The shadows were weird here. I could’ve sworn they were moving out of the corner of my eyes, only to go back to normal when I turned to face them. I broke into a run, but the end of the alley seemed to stretch farther away.

I siphoned some of the mana from my coins and leaped. I could see outside, but everything was strangely muted. Bustling streets and bubbling voices were dulled and warped. Everything out there had a sense of unreality to it. I stepped forward.

A tendril of shadow slithered up around my legs, locking them in place. I froze in place, a prisoner in my own skin. It reached up to my face. “Remember,” it sighed.

Then it was gone, and I was stumbling forward into a crowd of unfamiliar faces. I had no idea where I was, and I didn’t see a phoenix egg anywhere around me. I dodged people and confetti made of light and winced at horns and distant booms that seemed to come from cannons. The bursts of light from the celebration made it look like it was day, but the moons were high above. This time the broken moon was brighter, the red one looking dim and distant.

I ducked under an archway leading into a less crowded garden and slumped down on a bench. A bunch of smoke had told me to remember something, and now that I thought about it I did. It was like remembering only the next step in a plan. I needed more mana, a lot more. Once I gathered enough, I needed to wait until the next time the broken moon was this bright and … and do something else. I was confident I’d remember when the time came.

Again I struggled to remember the experience, and I again I failed. It was as if I’d read it in a document. Nothing except the facts remained.

That worried me. A lot. I hated forgetting, enough that I even struggled to hold on to my dreams. Well, I had back on Earth. My journal was out of reach now, and I’d had more important things to worry about. But now something had taken my memory and I wanted it back.

Maybe a skilled Aelon would be able to help me. Though I guess if they could help me remember things they could also make me forget. The soulstone was incredibly powerful, it would likely be able undo whatever had happened, but it would also hold that out as a reward for completing another trial, which would take a while. I’d talk to Corin about it to, when I found him, just in case he knew something.

“What are you searching for?”

I jumped, and found someone sitting right next to me. She was old, and had a staff leaning on the side of the bench. Her hair was made of strands of silver light, floating about as if underwater. How she’d gotten there without me noticing was a mystery.

I shrugged. “Stuff.”

“Hmm. You will remember in time,” she said, looking me up and down as if studying an interesting bug.

I leaned forward. “You know something.”

She stood up, and her staff flew into her hand. I frowned. She didn’t have any more mana than a normal person inside her, and I didn’t feel any mana crystals near her. The mana seemed to come through her, like she was a gate instead of the reservoir that an Awakened or Aelon was.

“How are you doing that?” I said.

“The barrier over this continent is failing. Things are already slipping through. You have forgotten of survival. When the storm comes, it will sweep the children that pretend to understand mana away in an instant.”

I sprang to my feet and moved to follow her. “You’re not from here.”

More mana streamed through her. Her form flickered as she walked away, rippling as if she were a reflection instead of a person.

“Wait,” I called. “Tell me how to survive it. Please!”

She turned, but glanced back. “Take a look in a mirror,” she suggested. And with that, she was gone. All that remained was a cloud of silvery mist.

No one else seemed to have noticed anything odd. I went up to an older women who was strolling through the garden. “Hey, do you know the way to Fornel?”

She nodded. “Of course, Bright One. Follow me.”

That gave me pause. “It’s just Ember, please.”

“Apt,” she said, smiling.

I really needed to find a mirror. She led me through twisting roads and around celebrating groups of people until we got to another pedestal holding an enchanted phoenix egg. Well, that was a dilemma. Did I want to risk whatever had happened to me happening again? I had a strong feeling that it was a one-time thing, but it might just be a trap to lure me into thinking the phoenix transportation was safe.

“What is this place? This festival?” I asked, stalling for time while I deliberated.

“You do not know?” Her eyebrows rose.

Uh. Right, time to make something up. “I was isolated, growing up. I don’t really know much about the outside world. A demon forced me away from my home, and now I’m here.”

“During this time, Luna is strong enough to have some sway into this world. She forces her sister away and picks a champion who will carry out her will.”

Luna … I was guessing she meant the bright moon, and that her sister was supposed to be the red one. There were religions on Earth that venerated the moon, so it wasn’t all that odd. What was weird was the part about a champion.

She continued. “Her champion’s hair glows silver on nights where Luna is powerful as a sign of her favor. When Luna is strong, her champion shares in her power. When her sister holds sway over night, her champion is hunted by evil.”

Huh. That old woman, with the staff and the floaty silver hair—she was the entire reason for the festival. It looked like the moons actually did something on this planet. If the bright moon actually contacted people, then … that Aelon who’d checked my soul had mentioned the Lunate Isles, a place where people extremely skilled in soul magic lived.

“The champion is given tasks that she must carry out before she can contact Luna. You are in this early stage, Bright Ember.”

Oh. I rushed over to the phoenix egg, looking for a place where the cage of silver was particularly dense.

It turned out that I didn’t even need a mirror. I pulled a few strands of my hair before me to look at, and stared. They’d turned from red to silver.