The Burned One took me by the elbow and led me toward the nearest chair.

“Have a seat, Anya.” His voice was casual. As if we were not in a torch-lit stone hall with violet banners on the walls but in a fast-food restaurant in the other world. So different from the commanding tone of his “Now leave us” which sounded far more appropriate for this place. I even seemed to see the black ravens sewn on the banners turn their surprised silvery eyes to us after this absolutely non-Crealian invitation.

Obediently, I took the iron seat covered with a large animal’s skin and looked up at the Burned One.

I remembered seeing him once before. In this very hall—the Hall of Wisdom, that must be it.

On my first Crealian night, being rocked on the smoky waves of the Penetration Grass as it carried me into Kasamarchi’s childhood. I had seen the Burned One through Erderak’s eyes. He was present at the Magisterium meeting when Kasamarchi cut into his memories using his Spider ring.

The hall hadn’t changed at all since then. The tall altar behind the Magister’s back still had the large wooden map of Crealia.

The empty silence was only interrupted by the soft crackling of the candles. But no sound came from the Raven’s claws clattering as it walked on the map, raising its leg high with every step.

One step for the mountainous shore of the Ironsea.

Another for the Milky Plains.

And yet another for the village of Lerk.

I suddenly felt like the Hall of Wisdom wasn’t empty at all, like all the members of the Magisterium were here, like they had been that time, only hidden by the shadow.

I gave a start.

No.

The Burned One and I were in private.

I couldn’t help but notice that the passing years had barely affected him. The terrible burn scars still covered half of his face, making him look like Freddy Krueger. The gleaming waxy skin was still folding as he turned his head, the folds going down his neck and beneath his robe. His face still looked like an amazingly lifelike mask of a lizard-like creature, his piercing eyes drilling into my soul.

I remembered what Kasamarchi had said that morning on the bank of Lizard, after my awakening. He came to Crealia looking like that. No one knows from where. Before him, the Magisterium had never been that powerful. They say he hasn’t changed at all over the past fifty years.

Small wonder he hadn’t been affected by the next thirteen years either.

Hey, stop!

He was not the only unaffected one.

Again, I saw Quentor’s elderly, scarred face distorted by loathing. You didn’t change at all over the last thirteen years, devil spawn.

All these thoughts flashed through my mind in a split second. Like tiny bricks, they came together to form a single fantastic realization.

The Magister’s out-of-place tone.

His using Anya, not Ana.

The Burned One was watching me closely. The fervent flow of my thoughts must have somehow shown on my face as he pulled up another chair to sit across me. Then he said, “My name is Valery, Anna. Your father, Viktor, used to call me Wizard. And I called him Asp.”

I kept an impassive look on my face, staring at the anthracite-black clasp on his cloak and struggling to imagine how that clasp could transform into a bird.

That was beyond me.

I was bewildered.

I slid my gaze over the banners, a mocking silver eye staring back from each one.

Valery…Valery...Wait a second.

I suddenly remembered the crazy night of my first encounter with the Demon.

Could it be the same Valery whose phone number Mom got from Marina on that ill-fated morning after my birthday?

I remembered the one-sided phone conversation well.

Me? Iryna. Nice to meet you, Valery. Eleven works for me. See you then.

But Dad?

What does he have to do with that?

How did Valery come to know him?

***

Dad was a soldier. He died eleven years ago, when I was three.

His image in my mind was blurred. I had no memory of his hairstyle or eye color; I could only see them in family photos. The handsome man in military uniform portrayed there didn’t have much in common with my vague early memories.

A giant figure blocking the light from the window.

A booming voice.

Bristly cheeks.

“Vitya! Stop! You’re unshaven!”

Warm hands pick me up from under my arms, my breath stopping as they throw me up to the ceiling. I stay up there for a moment, long enough to see the dusty boxes piled on the wardrobe before I fall and am caught by those same strong hands.

“Vitya! Stop that, I beg you! You might drop her.”

But Dad throws me into the air again and again. I fly up to the ceiling, almost touching it with my shoulder blades, and fall down, squealing with delight. It’s great fun and not scary at all.

Then something changed.

Mom cried a lot, holding me in her arms and kissing me with salty lips. Then I spent a night without her, at Marina’s place.

After that, our extended family came to visit, as though for a birthday party, except that everyone spoke in hushed voices and hugged Mom around her shoulders. Mom wore a scary black headscarf that made her face ghostly pale and strange looking.

No one explained anything to me, but still, I realized that Dad was no more.

No more big bear prickling me with his bristle and throwing me up to the ceiling.

But Dad’s scent lived in my memory.

Growing older, I realized that this scent was actually composed of various scents, like a tapestry made of individual threads. Whenever I encountered one of those scents, I would draw the air in greedily—a moment before realizing I was actually trying to smell that smell, to recreate that unique tapestry, restoring it in full, thread by thread.

The first thread came from the male worker assembling the newly purchased furniture in our apartment. He would often go out to smoke a cigarette. When he would come back in, I would stay close by his side, touching his bolts and screwdrivers. I wanted him to linger at our place as long as possible. He smelled of Dad.

When I grew older, I learned that Mom was a smoker, too, but she never smelled like that thread. Her scent was different. But the one coming from that man or our handyman was exactly like Dad’s.

The second thread lived in our wardrobe, among our old travel bags. Once I discovered it, the wardrobe became my favorite place to play and hide in because of the thread of Dad’s scent it contained.

I came across the third thread in the school gym. I found it in a pile of old balls, mats, and dumbbells, and it kindled my love for P.E.

The fourth thread was also at school, in the room that had gas masks, digging tools, and first-aid kits. I fell in love with this place the moment I took my first breath there when a thread of Dad’s scent came with it.

***

“I served in the military with your father, Anya.” Valery’s face was impassive, but the black pits of his eyes revealed pain. “I was with him on the night of his death.”

Sitting in front of me was a man from my home world. He spoke like a normal person with a normal life, making all the banners, torches, and altars look like props for some absurd performance. And Valery, in his black satin cloak, looked like a tired actor who lingered for some reason on the dark, empty stage after the show was over.

And I was the only spectator remaining in the hall.

I waited for him to continue his story as I had never waited for anything in my short life. I couldn’t care less about the other actors or the mismatching scenery and props.

Or…or maybe they weren’t mismatched at all?

“As you probably know already, this world, however absurd it feels at times, is absolutely real.”

“Yes. I know that.”

“I learned about it some time ago. Much earlier than you did. About seventy local years ago. Or eleven of ours.”

I was totally engrossed in this odd performance. I even stopped breathing so that I wouldn’t miss a single word.

“You would never have met me or learned about Crealia if it weren’t for some…some circumstances that left me no choice but to get you involved in this game. But, before I explain it, we’ll have to travel back to the night of your father’s death. Those events are directly related to your Asp. And to my arrival to this world.” He added the last sentence after a short pause, then looked down and spoke as though addressing his clasp. “Show her the birth of Asp, boy.”

I heard a click similar to what my hairband produced when unclasping and saw the Magister’s satin cloak flow down, coming to rest on the stone floor of the Hall of Wisdom.

Then a loud clap came from above, the blowback stirring my hair. I looked up and met the gleaming eye of the big black raven spreading its wings over my head.

The bird tilted its head to the side, watching me with its only eye, as anthracite-black as the Magister’s clasp.

I fell into the bottomless chasm of that eye. The pitch darkness consumed Valery, then all the banners, the altar, and the walls.

I felt the stirring of a night breeze. As my eyes adjusted to the moonlit semi-dark, I was able to make out the edge of the forest: a lopsided fence in the grass and soldiers stealing up to an abandoned-looking wooden hut. I was unsurprised to see them without spears and cloaks.

Moonlight fell onto the half-domes of their combat helmets, reflecting off the dim metal of their assault rifles.

As the first several soldiers approached the house, the rest moved toward its back door.

That was when the old wooden roof cracked open, and a dark figure soared into the sky with shrill laughter.

The silence was shattered by harsh commands and gunfire that separated the semi-dark into dazzling flashes of light and pitch darkness around them.