I froze once I read the message on the wall. This whole chamber pulled on too many memories—the unsettling dreams, the message in the tunnels under Flickermark, visiting the Carver’s Enclave—for it to merely be a coincidence, even if it seemed just as illogical for a message carved into the wall of a long abandoned cave to be for me.

I wanted to ask Prevna if she saw the message as me. To make sure this place and the weird dreams and the fog weren’t somehow twisting my perception. But I also wasn’t quite ready to admit to the questions that were haunting me. The lack of focus, the fear.

So instead I said, “We should leave.”

A heart beat, two, and, where Prevna normally would have agreed or made some quip, silence stretched. I torn my gaze from the message on the wall to where she should have been standing.

Only shadowed stone filled my gaze.

Prevna wasn’t there. Wasn’t anywhere in sight.

I tore back into the central chamber, searching. Raced to the other alcoves we had found just in case she decided to double back for some reason.

“Prevna?”

Still no answer and she knew better than to drag out a prank this long. But she couldn’t have…she couldn’t be gone. Not without me noticing. Not even if the mountain spirit was known for snatching people.

Prevna would have fought. Screamed. I would have heard.

I scrambled around the chamber, desperately trying to remember the last time we spoke, the last time I actually looked at her and didn’t just assume she was there.

The more I looked the more it simply reinforced the notion that there was nothing on the main floor of the chamber to block my view. That if she was here and I couldn’t see her, Prevna would have to be in an alcove. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at the statues overhead, not quite able to stare down the fear that if I looked up I’d suddenly see her among them. Locked in stone and impossible to reach.

I searched the alcoves, one after another, and there was always another to run to. Dozens more than we had found in our initial search and more than I thought there could be, but I brushed that thought aside. The chamber stretched on and on, and if I just searched one more fast enough I’d find her.

I stopped. Froze again as I fully became aware of the impulse driving me on.

That wasn’t right. That wasn’t how I’d normally think or approach this. Running around blindly without a single critical thought in my head.

I blinked, forcing myself to recenter and take in the facts. Prevna was gone. I was in a chamber that prominently displayed the three versions of the afterlife. And…the tunnel we used to enter the chamber was gone…and the whole room was distorted and more shadowed than it should have been with my dark vision.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the chamber we had found even if it was nearly identical. Perhaps it wasn’t even real, like when my memories overwhelmed my mind.

Blocking out the chamber, I closed my eyes and focused on the things I knew were real. The things I should be seeing, smelling, hearing instead of this impossibly quiet place.

The chamber might be in black and white but I should be able to see the edges of it without any trouble. They wouldn’t be obscured in darkness. There had been the faint movement of air flowing towards the entrance where there wasn’t anything now, cool against my face. The cave had been quiet but it hadn’t the same quality of swallowing sound that was happening now. Our steps had echoed. It had smelled of dirt and the musty air that often came with underground places. Occasionally I had caught the scent of the small pouch Prevna had recently taken to wearing around her neck. Sweet flowers and sprigs of fresh leaf. I had asked her about it while we were at the Seedling Palace but she had brushed off the question by saying she was trying something new.

That was real. True. And, just like when I forced my awareness back to reality from the memories, when I opened my eyes this time she’d be in front of me, exasperated and worried. Safe. Not gone.

That was also true.

I opened my eyes.

It was still the same distorted chamber I was trying to escape from but—there was a change. Monstrously long fingers curled around my shoulders, holding me in place.

With the disturbing hands came that grinding voice from past nightmares hissing in my ear, “Aren’t you quick? Quick to search and quick to leave even though you came here for me.”

I ignored the voice and the hands, putting all my focus on breaking free of this nightmare. I couldn’t think of when I had fallen asleep but how else could I have been caught so easily and so unaware? How else could Prevna have disappeared without so much as a whisper?

The valley was playing its tricks and I refused to succumb.

I closed my eyes again and brought the image of cavern we had entered into perfect detail in my mind, the path leading to the open space outside and the trees crowding away from it. I pictured how the Pickers and the boys were likely waiting uneasily, unhappy with each others’ company.

Opened my eyes only to find that the nightmare held fast like the strongest of my memories. I gritted my teeth as the voice spoke again.

“So eager to run away when you should stay, aren’t you? Unable to face the thing you’re looking for in case it doesn’t match with what you wish. But who could even say what that is when you refuse to tell even yourself the truth?”

A new tactic then. I could ask questions too. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“You know the answer. Now,” between one breath and the next I was back in the alcove with the message on the wall as if I had never left, “what binds you?”

Some unnatural entity or my own subconscious, I wouldn’t lose. I glared at the demanding question. “What binds you?”

The hands flexed before relaxing again. Still, they were like bands of stone given my inability to break free of them. I tried to will myself to at least look over my shoulder, to at least get a glimpse of what held me, but the question on the wall filled my vision and my head wouldn’t turn from it.

Cold prickled up my spine at the lack of control but I couldn’t even throw myself into that distant comfort, separating myself from the horror that wanted to overwhelm me in this place.

The irrational fear only grew as the voice easily answered what I couldn’t. “I am bound by a wish full of hunger for choice, for balance, for knowledge of what the goddesses hoard. I am bound as a reminder of what they wish to control and the failure they can’t escape. I will fulfill that wish until the end of days and I will relish in it.”

“Nothing survives the goddess’s wrath.”

“She might wish it so, but your goddess nor the other one can destroy what makes them. What makes me.”

“You’re not of the Grove.”

Claiming that would have been beyond absurd even for this nightmare. Even if everything the voice said had a ring of truth to it that I didn’t want to acknowledge or accept.

That grating, earthy voice sounded proud as it agreed with me. “No. But while those two might be grand wildfires to my torch we are still of the same make. Even you have a spark, everything does.” The voice became harsh. “No matter how they deny it.”

Even in dream I doubted I could be so vocally critical of the goddess. This definitely wasn’t my subconscious, spinning fears and doubts into disturbing nightmares. Something else had me and—while I doubted it could be anything like the goddess in nature or power—there was little doubt that it something more than the mundane. Perhaps something akin to the wind spirits, Tike’s earth spirit, a dream entity.

The voice continued, pressing its questions again, “Haven’t you seen things more than what your blessings could account for? Haven’t you wondered where their power comes from? Heard tales of your ancestors managing feats you could only wish for now?”

I didn’t have the patience to listen to questions now. Not when Prevna was still missing and it felt like even listening the entity’s words were liable to get my blessing revoked and permanently killed.

“Let me go.”

The fingers lightly scratched against my neck. “Consider it and return when you’re ready to face me. When you can look upon that question and provide an answer that propels you forward, instead of holding you back.”

I blinked one last time and when I opened my eyes I was on the ground in the main chamber, flat on my back and staring up at statue with its arms flung wide as it grinned down at me. It wasn’t Prevna.

My mark wasn’t burning so whatever that entity had done it wasn’t life threatening. A groan came from my left. My focus snapped to the side to find Prevna pushing herself up from where she had been lying on her stomach.

She gave me a weak smile. “Did you dream of being lost in a never ending underground maze too?”

I nodded even as my throat closed at thought of sharing everything else. It was close enough to the truth and rambling out loud about the questions and theories the entity had raised about the goddess felt like it was an exercise in asking for the goddess’s punishment. That would have to wait until I had my own chance to process what had happened.

Prevna glanced around the chamber before she asked, “Do you think it was the fog?”

There wasn’t the least bit of haze in the cave. Something else that should have stood out to me more when we first entered it. And that was also beside the fact that we should still have days left before it could affect us.

I shook my head. “Something else.”

“The earth spirit?”

I gave her my own thin smile. “Maybe we weren’t her preferred prey so she had a different sort of fun.”

Prevna shuddered and pointedly looked towards the entrance tunnel that clearly stood out against the rest of the chamber as if it had never been missing. “Ready to go?”

I nodded again and we pulled ourselves to our feet before hurrying as quick as we could from the Night Cave without actually running. We still had our dignity and the others didn’t need to know how disturbing our visit had turned out to be.

Still, they could tell something was wrong despite Prevna and I glossing over everything except that we hadn’t found what we were looking for. It took all of sentence or two from Prevna and we were off to the spot Tike had identified as the best place to camp for the night. At least, the whole ordeal had lasted less than two hours so we didn’t have to chase after them had Deamar had stuck to his ultimatum.

My fingers found the stone Esie had given me as we walked away. Despite my misgivings, if that cursed entity was who I suspected I would have to return to that cave before we left the inner valleys for good. After all, surely there could only be so many elusive, disproportioned beings in the inner valleys.

Even so, I didn’t like the ease with which my dreams compromised or how Prevna and I both fallen asleep without even noticing. Not that I had any clear options on how to fix it. Nor did I like that it seemed like I had been targeted before I ever had the stone. Had the Lady of Calm Waters known what was happening or guessed? Or did the dream infiltrator do the same to everyone new to the mountains and my connection to both was simple coincidence?

Either way, I was glad to leave that cave and its imagery and its questions behind. We could focus on our main mission to search for the relic for now and come back to the cave once I could stand up to onslaught of questions and ideas that the entity forced on me without mercy or remorse.