Her dark cloak flapped in the wind like a shadow. The mist swirled around her black-buckled
boots, disappearing into the darkness, as if she could draw it to her. Maybe she could. After all, she
was a Cataclyst—the most powerful Caster in two universes.
Or the second most powerful.
Sarafine pushed back her cloak, letting it fall off her shoulders, around her long black curls. My
skin went cold.
“Karma’s a bitch, wouldn’t you say, Mortal Boy?” she called across the pit, her voice confident
and strong. Full of energy and evil.
She stretched luxuriously, clasping the arms of the chair in her own bony claws.
“I wouldn’t say anything, Sarafine. Not to you.” I tried to keep my voice even. I hadn’t wanted
to see her in one lifetime, let alone two.
Sarafine beckoned with one curving finger. “Is that why you’re hiding? Or are you still afraid
of me?”
I took a step closer. “I’m not afraid of you.”
She cocked her head. “I don’t know that I blame you. After all, I did kill you. A knife to the
chest, in warm Mortal blood.”
“Hard to remember back that far. I guess you weren’t that memorable.” I folded my arms
stubbornly. Trying to hold my ground.
It was no use.
She rolled a ball of mist toward me, and it wrapped around me, closing the gap between us. I
felt myself moving forward, powerless, as if she was dragging me by a leash.
So she still had her powers even here.
Good to know.
I stumbled over the ridge of an inhuman skeleton, something twice as big as me, with twice as
many arms and legs. I swallowed. More powerful creatures than a guy from Gatlin County had met
their fates here. I hoped she wasn’t the reason why.
“What are you doing here, Sarafine?” I tried not to sound as intimidated as I was. I dug my feet
into the dirt.
Sarafine leaned back in her throne of bones, examining the nails on one of her claws. “Me?
Lately I’ve spent most of my time being dead, like you. Oh, wait—you were there. You watched
when my daughter let me burn to death. A real charmer, that one. Teenagers. What are you going to
do?”
Sarafine had no right to mention Lena. She’d surrendered that right when she walked away
from a burning house with her baby daughter inside. When she tried to kill Lena like she’d killed
Lena’s father. And me.
I wanted to throw myself at her, but every instinct I had left told me to stay back. “You’re
nothing, Sarafine. You’re a ghost.”
She smiled when I said the word “ghost,” biting the tip of one of her long black nails.
“Something we have in common now.”
“We don’t have anything in common.” I could feel my hands clenching into fists. “You make
me sick. Why don’t you get out of my sight?”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t in any position to be ordering her around. I didn’t
have a weapon. No possible means of attack. No way past her.
My mind raced, but I couldn’t find an advantage—and you couldn’t let Sarafine get the upper
hand. Kill or be killed, that was her style. Even when it seemed like we should have moved past
something as Mortal as death.
Her mouth curled into a snarl. “Your sight?”
She laughed, a cold sound that rippled down my spine. “Maybe your girlfriend should have
thought about that before she killed me. She’s the reason I’m here. If it weren’t for that ungrateful
little witch, I would still be in the Mortal world. Instead of stuck in the dark, battling the ghosts of
lost and pathetic Mortal boys.”
She was close enough now that I could see her face. She didn’t look too good, even for
Sarafine. Her dress was ragged and black, the bodice charred into tattered pieces. Her face was
smudged with soot, and her hair smelled like smoke.
Sarafine turned toward me, her eyes glowing and white—milky with an opaque light I had
never seen before.
“Sarafine?”
I took a step back—just as she struck me with a bolt of electricity, the smell of burnt flesh
traveling faster than her body possibly could.
I heard a psychotic scream. Saw her face, contorted into an inhuman death mask. Sharp teeth
seemed to match the dagger she held in her hand—only inches from my throat.
I winced, pulling back from the blade, but I knew it was too late. I wasn’t going to make it.
Lena!
Sarafine stopped short, as if smashed backward by an invisible current. Her arms stretched
toward me, her blade shaking with anger.
Something was wrong with her.
I heard the sound of chains as she fell, stumbling back toward her throne. She dropped the
blade, and her long skirt kicked open, and I saw the manacles around her ankles. The chains holding
her to the ground and pinning her to the throne.
She wasn’t the Queen of the Underworld. She was an angry dog trapped in a kennel. Sarafine
screamed, beating her fists against the bones. I moved to the side, but she didn’t even look at me.
Now I understood.
I picked up a bone and tossed it at her. She didn’t react until it hit the throne, falling harmlessly
into the pile of debris at her feet.
She spit at me, shaking with rage. “Fool!”
But I knew the truth.
Her white eyes saw nothing.
Her pupils were fixed.
She was blind.
Maybe it was from the fire that had killed her in the Mortal world. It all came flooding back to
me—the terrible end of her terrible life. She was as damaged here as she was when she burned to
death. But that wasn’t all. Something else had happened. Even the fire couldn’t explain the chains.
“What happened to your eyes?” I watched her recoil when I said it. Sarafine wasn’t one to
show weakness. She was better at finding and exploiting it.
“My new look. Old blind woman, like the Fates or the Furies. What do you think?” Her lips
curved over her teeth, into a growl.
It was impossible to feel sorry for Sarafine, so I didn’t. Still, she seemed bitter and broken.
“The leash is a nice touch,” I said.
She laughed, but it was more like the hiss of an animal. She had become something that didn’t
resemble a Dark Caster, not anymore. She was a creature, maybe even more of one than Xavier or
the River Master. She was losing it—whatever part of our world she’d known.
I tried again. “What happened to your sight? Was it the fire?”
Her white eyes burned as she answered. “The Far Keep wanted to have their fun with me.
Angelus is a sadistic pig. He thought they would even the odds by forcing me to battle without being
able to see my opponents. He wanted me to know how it would feel to be powerless.” She sighed,
picking at a bone. “Not that it’s slowed me down yet.”
I didn’t think it had.
I looked at the circus of bones surrounding her, the bloodstains in the dirt at her feet. “Who
cares? Why fight? You’re dead. I’m dead. What do we even have left to fight about? Tell this
Angelus guy to go jump off a—”
“Water tower?” She laughed.
But I had a point, if you thought about it. It was starting to feel like those old Terminator
movies between us. If I killed her now, I could imagine her skeleton dragging itself across this pit
with glowing red eyes until it could kill me a thousand more times.
She stopped laughing. “Why are you here? Think about it, Ethan.” She lifted her hand, and I
felt my throat beginning to close. I gasped for air.
I tried to back away, but it was pointless. Even with her dog chain, she still had enough power
to make my not-quite-a-life miserable.
“I’m trying to get into the Great Keep.” I choked. I tried to inhale, but I couldn’t get a real
breath.
Am I even breathing, or am I only imagining it?
Like she said herself, she’d already killed me once. What was left?
“I just want to take my page. You think I want to be stuck here forever, wandering through a
maze of bones?”
“You’ll never get past Angelus. He’d die before he’d let you near The Caster Chronicles.” She
smiled, twisting her fingers, and I gasped again. Now it felt like she had a hand around my lungs.
“Then I’ll kill him.” I grabbed at my neck with both hands. My face felt like it was on fire.
“The Keepers already know you’re here. They sent an officer to lead you into the labyrinth.
They didn’t want to miss out on the fun.” Sarafine twisted around at the mention of the Keepers, as
if she was looking over her shoulder, which we both knew she wasn’t. An old habit, I guess.
“I still have to try. It’s the only way I can get home.”
“To my daughter?” Sarafine rattled her chains, looking disgusted. “You never give up, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s like a sickness.” She rose from her throne, crouching on her heels like an evil, overgrown
little girl, dropping the hand that was choking me. I collapsed onto a heap of bones. “You really
think you can hurt Angelus?”
“I can do anything if it will get me back to Lena.” I looked straight into her sightless eyes.
“Like I said, I’ll kill him. At least part of him is Mortal. I can do it.”
I don’t know why I said it that way. I guess I wanted her to know, in case there was any small
part of her that still cared about Lena. Any part of her that needed to hear I really would do anything
under the sun to find a way back to her daughter.
Which I would.
For a second, Sarafine didn’t move. “You actually believe that, don’t you? It’s charming,
really. Shame you have to die again, Mortal Boy. You certainly amuse me.”
Light flooded into the pit, as if we really were two gladiators competing for our lives.
“I don’t want to fight. Not with you, Sarafine.”
She smiled darkly. “You really don’t know how this works, do you? The loser faces Eternal
Darkness. It’s simple enough.” She sounded almost bored.
“There’s something Darker than this?”
“Much.”
“Please. I just need to get back to Lena. Your daughter. I want to make her happy. I know that
doesn’t mean anything to you, and I know you’ve never wanted to make anyone happy but
yourself, but it’s the only thing I want.”
“I want something, too.” She twisted the fog around her in her hands until it wasn’t fog at all
but something glowing and alive—a ball of fire. She stared right at me, even though I knew she
couldn’t see. “Kill Angelus.”
Sarafine started to Cast, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Fire shot from the base of
her throne, spreading in all directions. It moved closer and closer, turning from orange to blue and
purple flames as it ignited bone after bone.
I backed away from her.
Something was wrong. The fire was growing, spreading faster than I could run. She wasn’t
trying to stop the flames.
She was the one making them grow.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”
She was in the very center of the flames. “It’s a battle to the death. Absolute destruction. Only
one of us can survive. And as much as I hate you, I hate Angelus more.” Sarafine raised her arms
over her head, and the fire grew, as if she was pulling the flames up with her.
“Make him pay.”
Her cloak caught fire, and her hair started burning.
“You can’t just give up!” I shouted, but I didn’t know if she could hear me. I couldn’t see her
anymore.
I hurled myself into the fire without thinking, falling toward her through the flames. I wasn’t
sure I could stop, even if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.
It was Sarafine or me.
Lena or Eternal Darkness.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to sit there and watch anyone die chained like a dog. Not even
Sarafine.
It wasn’t about her. It was about me.
I reached for the manacles around her ankles, beating on the iron with a bone at the base of her
throne. “We have to get out of here.”
The fire had completely surrounded me, when I heard the screaming. The sound tore across
the barren dirt, rising into the air over the pit. It sounded like a wild animal dying. For a second, I
thought I saw the distant golden spires of the Great Keep flicker at the sound of her voice through
the flames.
Sarafine’s burning body arched back, writhing in pain, and started to crumble into tiny pieces
of burnt skin and bone. There was nothing I could do as the flames consumed her. I wanted to
close my eyes or turn away. But it seemed like someone should bear witness to her last moments.
Maybe I just didn’t want her to die alone.
After a few minutes that felt more like hours, I watched as the last bits of the Darkest Caster in
two worlds blew into cold white ash.
It was too late to get out.
I felt the fire crawl up my arms.
I was next.
I tried to picture Lena one last time, but I couldn’t even think. The pain was unbearable. I knew
I was going to pass out. This was it.
I closed my eyes….
When I opened them again, the pit was gone, and I was standing in front of a quiet doorway in a
still hallway, in a building that looked like a castle.
There was no pain.
No Sarafine.
No fire.
Exhausted, I wiped the ash out of my eyes and sank into a ball at the foot of the wooden doors.
It was over. There were no bones beneath my feet, only marble tiles.
I tried to focus on the doors. They were so familiar.
I’d seen all of this before. It was even more familiar than the feeling I had when I saw Sarafine
coming toward me.
Sarafine.
Where is she now? Where is her soul?
I didn’t want to think about it, and I closed my eyes and let the tears fall. Crying for her felt
impossible. She was an evil monster. No one ever felt sorry for her.
So that couldn’t be it.
At least that’s what I told myself, until I stopped shaking and stood up again.
The pathways of my life had doubled back on me, as if the universe was forcing me to choose
them all over again. I was standing in front of the unmistakable doorway to all other doorways, to
all other places and times.
I didn’t know if I had the strength to go any farther, and I knew I didn’t have the courage to
give up. I reached out and touched the carved wood of the ancient Caster doorway.
The Temporis Porta.
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