“For the crime of divination, the King of Graoungers hereby sentences you, Oscar of No Land. After your punishment you will be driven to the south. Begone from this place, and do not return, or we shall surely encircle and kill you.”

-Declaration of the Council

244 YT, Summer. Kivv.

When Oscar awoke, the first thing he felt was the light.

It remained dark behind his eyes – forever dark, though in the growing awareness of his own body, he could feel the cool tears filling his eyes. In the terrified sprint south from Graoungers’ hall, Oscar had almost forgotten his punishment. Though he could not see the light, he felt it on his face and on the arm with which he reached out. His fingers brushed against glass – warm glass, and when he flattened his hand against the pane he felt the sun outside. Birds sang outside the window, but they were different birds – none of the blackcaps of the archipelago. Warblers he heard, or thought he heard, the one familiar birdsong among all the others.

He began to take stock of himself. He was terribly tired – an ache in all his muscles, bone-deep and chilling. The tremor was in his fingertips, and he clutched at the sheets over him –

He was wrapped up in warm, clean sheets.

Oscar’s head rested against the pillow. It was so soft he could have sank into it and stayed like that for the rest of his life.

He was warmer than he’d been in what felt like weeks. When Oscar tried to recall how he’d gotten to this place, he remembered only running through the woods, a cold wind at his back. Every few seconds the earth folded under him and he stumbled forward, cutting his way and twisting the path to his needs. The branches stunt at his face, cut blood from his skin, but he did not stop.

His wounds no longer ached, as he lay there. Even his eyes – burned out and made useless by magecraft – had long ago ceased to hurt.

There was a central warmth in the room, and Oscar reached out toward it. His hands ran along the edges of a table next to his bed. Fingers stepping up and over the edge, he reached forward, forward – leaning toward the side of his too-large bed, finally finding the source of the warmth. his hand closed around a hot mug of steaming liquid, southern black tea and honey by the smell of it. Oscar picked up the cup slowly, with shaky hands, and brought it close to his chest. He pushed himself back against the bed’s headboard, heard it clank against the wall, and slowly inched his way up into a sitting position. Oscar smiled, took a deep breath, and raised the mug to his lips.

The tea was fresh, though steeped a little weakly for his taste. He would have preferred the red tea of the archipelago, but – Oscar was sure he was no longer in that land. If he could check outside the window perhaps he would have been sure, but the air felt different. Not only was it warmer, it was less crisp. Even indoors, the air of Graoungers swept across you like a perpetual springtime breeze at all times of the year.

When Oscar sipped the tea and swallowed, he felt his eardrums crackle, and took pleasure in the feeling. The air in his ears felt cleaner and the hot liquid slid down his throat, soothing. It warmed him from his heart to the tips of his fingers.

Oscar sat there for a while longer, taking slow, luxurious sips from the tea and letting the steam fill his head and help him drift awake again. He held the cup in one hand, using the other hand to probe the opposite side of the bed. It was a narrow bed, with several layers of sheets, all thin linen that made a pleasing sound when he rubbed the fabric between his fingers.

He took up the sheets and wrapped them over his shoulders, hugged himself tightly, leaned back against the wall and listened to the knocking of the headboard against the wall behind him. Rhythmic. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. He relaxed. Thud, thud.

Oscar reached back with a hand, ran it between the headboard and the wall. Thud, thud. He tilted his head. The rhythmic thud wasn’t coming from the wall behind Oscar, but the wall to his left. Again, thud, thud. A voice from behind the wall, muffled: “I’m coming in.”

The sound of creaking hinges, and a set of footsteps entered. Oscar turned his head in the direction of the door. Though he could see nothing else, he saw the spark of human life approaching – a delicately flickering, dancing flame he’d seen once before – and not long ago.

running through the woods, the branches stinging at his face and cutting his cheeks

That voice was so familiar, though he’d only heard it a single time before – and the girl, seeing him, let out a little squeak and took a step away, her footfall echoing in the room. Oscar felt that the room must have been quite small, by the way the footsteps echoed.

Then she spoke. “So you’re awake!” she exclaimed, and Oscar heard her footsteps again, rushing rapidly to the door. The flickering flame, fading a times but never dying, danced away from him. Oscar called out.

“Wait a second!”

The footsteps stopped. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. Oscar looked at the apex of the flame’s tongues.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the Reaper Monastery at Kivv,” the girl said, and the flame danced across the room toward him. “I’m sorry. I should have guessed you’d want to know, but there’s someone else who’s going to want to talk to you, who’ll have a lot more information to give.”

“Is it the other man, from before? The one who was with you when you found me?”

“When I – you remember that?” The flame flickered, wilted.

“It’s the last thing I remember, before this,” Oscar said. “Other than that, just… dreams. Vague memories, fragments… how long have I been asleep?”

“Weeks,” said the voice, and the flame danced closer, growing a little, confident and warm. “You were hurt so badly… injuries both physical and mystical. It’s a good thing we had Arien to help you – he’s a Sower, and a healer.” A bit quieter she whispered, “and a friend of my brother, I think. I never did… I never did catch your name, by the way.”

“I never caught yours either,” Oscar said. “But my name’s Oscar. Oscar of Graoungers, although…” he trialed off.

“I’m Hilda Zelenko,” the flame told him, and something in Oscar’s mind flashed with recognition. For a moment, he could see – truly see, not only the colored silhouettes of flames dancing in endless darkness. He saw a young woman with blood on her face and sand whipping around her like the wind itself, red glow at her hands, running across the fields of the Vale. Above and below her, a mass of red and gold and black massed, shining metal beneath the grimly smiling sun.

“You,” Oscar said, though the voice felt that it did not come from him, “are the first to stumble and the last to turn.”

“What?”

Oscar coughed. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

The fire leaned away as it flickered and danced, hesitant, nervous. “I’m… going to be right back. There’s someone else who’s –“

“-going to want to talk to me, yeah,” Oscar muttered. “Head Reaper?” He was still at the edge of consciousness, but the name of the Reapers was familiar. If he was in the Wanderer’s Vale now, and in Kivv no less…

“Wait,” he said.

Hilda stopped next to him.

“You’re Mirshal, right? The famous order of warriors, Abrist wardens of the Veil? There’s an invasion coming. A war, you know that, right? The Invictans. But I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the coming battle.”

“What does that make you –“ Hilda asked, her voice low and heavy with concern. “Some kind of diviner? What does ‘first to stumble and last to turn’ mean?” There was sharpness and accusation in her voice. “Are you trying to scare me? I’m not scared.”

Oscar’s laugh was bitter. “I’m a blind man and I’m in your house. If I wanted to scare you, I’m doing a pretty poor job of it already. Those words are just… what came to me, I don’t know.” Oscar flapped his hands as though to brush away the thought. “But I have seen pieces of the battle to come, I think. I see you. You’re a Reaper, running the power of the Desert through your hands."

"That’s not what we do,” Hilda said. “We prevent the Desert, we don’t channel it.”

“And yet you use it, don’t you?”

Hilda’s voice went flat, her tone entirely uninviting. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I’m going to get the others.” The flame had died down a little and now retreated, and Oscar heard the door shut and Hilda’s footsteps retreat even as the flame grew fainter in what now passed for his sight.

He sighed and lay his head against the wall. Though so much of the pain he’d felt on the way was gone, Oscar realized now after having been awake for some time that he was still tired to the core, aching in his arms and legs and his neck and back. He felt as though he’d run for a year, and only now could he rest a little. This was a safe place, even if he hadn’t exactly made a good impression on his hosts.

But if only he could clear his head and figure out what –

The door opened again and this time, three sets of footprints, three flickering flames, came close to him. He turned toward them, tilting his head slightly as they settled nearby. A voice he did not recognize spoke. It was an older man’s voice, gravelly and baritone, yet soft, confident, strong all at the same time. His flame was small, yet so bright and constant that unlike the others, Oscar couldn’t call it a flicker at all.

“Hello, Oscar,” the man said. “My name is Antonin Voloshko. I’m a Mirshal Reaper, just like young Hilda here, who found you in the woods north of town. It seems like you’ve had quite a difficult journey here. Do you remember what, exactly, happened before you woke up here?”

“I was running away from the hall of Graoungers,” Oscar said. “They exiled me, told me to leave the archipelago.”

Voloshko chuckled quietly. “By your accent, I thought as much. At least that you came from the archipelago. But can you explain how you came to cross the sea? It is many days by ship and you did not come with any boat.”

“I don’t know quite how to explain,” Oscar said. The memories flashed through his mind, from the moment he was cast out of the hall with his mage-blinded eyes, running from the spears at his back, until the first folding when he stumbled and crossed miles in a step. “When they exiled me, I was first punished – it was the witches of Graoungers who did this to me.” Oscar indicated his eyes. “Then the warriors gathered, and I was told to run. So I ran, and they fired arrows and slung stones and threw spears at me. I nearly died right there, as I ran. A spear hit me – it grazed my side, I think.”

“Indeed,” said a third voice. This voice issued from the smallest flame of all, and though it, like Antonin’s, was bright, it flickered wildly, casting off little tongues into the pervasive darkness, swaying as a thin pine in the plains’ strongest wind. “That wound nearly killed you, even after we brought you in. Arien had a difficult enough time patching you up, but the wound site was infected as well.”

Oscar turned his head, tilted toward that new voice. “Who are you?”

“Aleks,” the voice said. “I’m Hilda’s brother. I’m a Sower.” The voice went on. “You were at the edge of death when you got here, really. But Arien says that Hilda and Lucian insisted you had to be taken care of.”

“Lucian?” Oscar glanced between the three of them. So there was a fourth savior? “Is that the other one who was there? In the forest?”

“Yes,” Hilda said. “He was with me when we found you.”

“But we’ll let you finish your story,” Antonin cut in. “How did you manage to cross over from the archipelago?”

“I…” Oscar sighed, recalling how he’d stumbled over the ocean, wading through the shallows, one step, another, and the ocean was like a ribbon beneath him, like cloth thrown out onto the earth. With each step, he had crossed a hundred miles, and though it was water beneath him, he did not sink. “I’m not sure, I’m not sure how I did it, but after I got hit by that spear, the earth started to… fold under me. Like every time I took a step forward, I wasn’t taking just one step, I was jumping forward, thousands of paces.”

“Shortening the path with each step,” muttered Antonin. “And you don’t know how you did this?”

“I just did it.” Oscar grunted. “I don’t know how. But listen to me. I was cast out of Graoungers for a reason, and it’s because of that I need to speak to you.” He took a deep breath, set his hand against the frame of the bed to calm his shaking. He wondered how he must have looked to the other three, who surely could see him. It was perhaps foolish for a blind man to be worried about his appearance, especially knowing how he’d gotten here. But, Oscar did not want them to see him as mad or delirious. When he spoke, he spoke low and quiet and slow, projecting confident as much as he could manage.

“I don’t know how I managed to get here, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I came to your city at a time like this. maybe it’s the ancestors that guided me here. I don’t believe they’d turn their backs on me, even if I did…” he held up his hand, angling his head down. If he could see, he would have beheld his fingers curled, nails scratching at his palm. The other three, he could see them in a way – if only as flames, souls, burning and dancing in the darkness that surrounded him.

As for himself, he could see nothing.

“I committed acts of divination,” Oscar said.

“Forbidden magic?” Hilda asked.

“Forbidden to me, at least. The Witches of Graoungers are permitted to use that power, but as for me, they say it is an abomination. That divination is not a talent a man can hold.”

“A man?” Aleks made a nonverbal noise of inquiry in his throat. “What does that have to do with it?”

“A man may not divine the future, just as a woman may not scry the past. Except in consultation with an ancestor, of course, but that is hardly the same. It’s law in the lands ruled by the House of Graoungers. Has been for a hundred years or more. When I was found to have violated those edicts, I was brought into the House of Graoungers and tried before the King and his Council. The Witches all said that I should be blinded and exiled at the point of the spear, and the King assented. From the moment I was brought before them to the moment my sentence began, it must have been no more than a few minutes.” Oscar lowered his hand again and held onto the frame of the bed. “But that’s not important. I need to tell you what I saw. It is about the war.”

“The war here?” Antonin’s voice was urgent, his flame leaned forward toward Oscar, almost filling the strange fire-vision that was all Oscar had left. “Mirshal’s war?”

Oscar nodded. “I saw fighting in this city, and I saw the God of the Invictans walking among them. Their God is not like an ancestor, but like a man who carries weapons and wields ancestors like weapons. Instead of creating homes for their ancestors, keeping them safe as the spirit in my staff, they take their ancestors’ spirits into their own bodies. That’s the Invictan way, I’ve seen it. And it makes them powerful, so very powerful.”

“That’s how the Solists work their magic,” Hilda murmured. “It’s not only the Invictans. Luca has a power like that, but it doesn’t come from an ancestor, the way she described it…”

“Luca,” Oscar muttered. “In my visions, I saw you, and I heard you calling out that name, Hilda. When you were fighting Invictans in the hills and the woods. ‘Luca, you messed up. I was counting on you.’ But I didn’t see her. I don’t think she was there. When you were fighting, it was like the Influence was all around you. You had clear fire in your hands, and you moved like a Monster or a Naphil, or something in-between.”

“The Influence?” Hilda’s voice was shaking now, a little, when she spoke to Oscar, and her flame was flickering more wildly. But under that fear there was an aggression as well, a need to know.

“It’s what you southerners call… the Aether… Heaven, perhaps? But listen, there is more. I saw you fighting, yes – and I saw you rise to victory over the invader, though it was only through great pain. But I saw other things as well. Older things, and things which I am sure must have been the poetry of the ancestors, not the speech of the future. And perhaps the council was right to bar me from divination, to push me toward the past instead, I don’t know. I feel like I saw more of the past than I did of the future, even though what I did see of the past was… harder to understand. I saw a great empire rise and fall and, after three thousand years, I saw it rise again, and rend the corpse of the Old One.”

“The Old One?” That needling edge in Hilda’s voice again. She was curious, a little fearful, most of all determined.

“The… Old One, yes.” Oscar shifted in his bed, turned his head, tried to remember what he’d studied of the lands beyond the archipelago. “I think you folk call it… the Dying God? I saw this great empire rise again and rend the corpse of the Dying God, and revel in the Void that came to flood the world again. I do not know if this is past, or future, or both. Only, in this vision, though the empire did this thing, it did not celebrate as one. The people cowered in fear of what they had created while the spirits that they held in their bodies danced. These spirits, they reunited with the Influence, the Void – and they knew such great joy, then. I could feel it, not only see it in their dances. They were so joyful, like people torn from their families for a thousand years and finally able to see them again. You can’t imagine the sorrow that ended on that day.” He shook his head. “Or, will end. Or…”

“Is everything you saw this cryptic?” Aleks asked. “That is a lot of words to describe what could just be a fever-dream.”

“Don’t dismiss fever-dreams,” Antonin intoned quietly. “And do not disrespect our guest.”

Oscar chuckled. “Am I a guest? I saw other things, too. I saw people flock to the Well at the End of the World – your people, and the people of the empire you fought. Will fight. Have been fighting, forever, perhaps. But I saw the Well itself collapse into the Void, tendrils of Influence around it and under it, and I saw the earth crack open and bend. I knew, of course, the risks of sharing this vision. They’d say I was foretelling doom only because of the weakness of my mind, but I am not sure that what I foretold is doom at all. I saw an age of glass, yes – the earth become glass, the Well tumbling into darkness, though I don’t know what that Well is or why it’s so important.

“I knew the risks of telling the others what I saw. It was a crime, what I did, and I only did it because I had been studying recent events in the south, and I heard that the situation was worsening, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. My… my staff. Do you have my staff?”

“You dropped it in the woods,” Hilda said. “Further back from where we found you. We found the staff, damaged, with your blood on it.”

“Where is it?” Oscar couldn’t contain the fear and the urgency in his voice with that outburst. “Is it intact?”

“It’s damaged,” Hilda said. “I think it will still work as a staff, of course, but –“

“Bring it here,” rasped Oscar, desperately. “Please. Bring me my staff. I have to know. I have to know if it’s intact.”

“I’ll go and get it,” Hilda said, standing up.

“What’s so important about that staff?” asked Antonin as Hilda left the room. Her footsteps with rapid and echoed down the hall.

“The spirit of my great-grandmother. It was her who suggested flouting the rules of the House of Graoungers and committing divination. I fought her about it, of course, but she convinced me in time. It simply had to be done. I knew the risks, and I knew once I had my vision that I had to share it, and that I would most likely be cast out. I thought, at least that the witches would be willing to hear of my vision, but they would have none of it. They said anything I could have foreseen must have been tainted, that my visions were useless. And because my visions were useless, they would deprive me of the ability to have another vision. They turned my eyes mage-blind, so I could see neither the future nor the present. But if my great-grandmother is intact, if I can still speak to her, maybe she’ll help me.”

A moment later, Hilda returned. Her flame, flickering still, came close to Oscar, and she said, “reach out with your hands, please.” He did so, and he felt the warm, smoothed wood enter his grasp. He ran his hands along the length of the staff. Further up, it had splintered and cracked, and the finish was scratched away to reveal sharp, rough wood. Oscar recalled the old-growth forest from which this wood had been carved, how he’d walked there as a child and smelled the birch and pine, and eaten the wild berries.

It was faint, but he could still feel the ancestor within the staff. She needn’t return to that old forest, because the staff was still a safe place for her.

“Thank you,” Oscar said, feeling himself calm immediately, as quickly as he had become agitated at the thought of losing her. “I’m sorry for troubling you.”

“All of this is troubling,” Hilda murmured. “Wanting your things back is the least troubling thing you’ve said since you woke up.”

Oscar laughed, a real laugh, for all that he hated that Hilda was right. “But listen to me – Graoungers may be a dead end. And I do not believe that is only my bitterness talking. But you have to do what you can to rally the others, the other battle-clans. They might help you. You can’t fight an empire alone. You need allies, and here you have holed up in your city and you have made yourself a fortress. How long can this last? The Wypsie battle-clans have already, some of them, started selling weapons and knowledge and magic to the Invictans. There is no love lost between us and southerners, but if we can set that aside to help one set of southerners, surely we can help the others – especially when, as it stands, it is the aggressors that we’re lending aid to. Maybe none of the battle-clans will listen to an exile. Maybe they’ll see me and say, ‘why would we agree to help someone who is hated by his own family’? But I think you have to try. Because in my vision, when I saw you fighting with the Invictans… the militia by your side, they had weapons of many makes and indeed there were allies beside them from many lands – it was not only Valers who fought against the empire.

“I saw weapons of Ordian make, those legendary shifting blades and guns. But I also saw Wypsie weapons and gear, our scanners over your soldiers’ eyes and sigils of transportation on their crests to carry them from place to place.”

“And you think that you might be able to win us allies?” Antonin asked. “You’re right that we’re desperate for help. We’ve gotten some aid from Corod, and we have allies in the south – the Adma, but tensions are high between us and them. I believe they’ll still help us in the end, but –“

“I can’t guarantee they’ll listen to me,” Oscar said, “but I have to try to help you. And my great-grandmother…” he held up the staff. “She’s with me now, or will be soon. She was a respected diplomat in Wypsie lands. I think that… if they won’t listen to me, perhaps they’ll listen to her through me. Please, all I’m asking is that you let me help you.” Oscar looked between the three flames – the one that sparked small and quiet, the confident and bright one, the hesitant and flickering flame that danced from close to far and close again. “Let me help to save all of your lives.”