I t’s not all that hard to keep yourself sane, so long as you’re flexible with your definition of the term.

It’s just a matter of finding one solid thing—one constant. Numbers were perfect in theory, at least in the beginning. Three always came after two always came after one. It never changed. And yet, when you have nothing in your life but those numbers, it’s so easy for them to unravel before you. Does three really come after two? Does one thousand seven hundred and six actually follow one thousand seven hundred and five?

This was the problem with the numbers. They were too intangible. That was why, I think, I started with the drawing.

I say the drawing because there was only one. Three shapes, always in the same arrangement. And I say “I think” because I couldn’t recall when I started drawing them, or why. Only that it was the only thing my hands felt right doing.

Maybe the shapes meant something in a dream, once. Maybe they meant something in a memory. Both were equally hazy, now.

Now, I lay on my stomach, left hand flat against the cold ivory stone of the floor. Everything in here was the same—ivory floor, walls, ceilings. Ilyzath was a dead place. Everything was empty. The air was eerily silent, Ilyzath’s magic choking back every sound. The walls were bare save for the carvings etched into them—no windows, not even a door. When people did come here, the opening simply stepped out of the stone, and it was gone again as soon as they were.

The white was torturous, so bright and dark at once that it seemed to burn my eyes, but it was preferable to the alternative.

My other hand clutched a little piece of metal, just sharp enough to etch into the stone. I knew Ilyzath well enough by now to know that the moment I took my eyes away from this drawing, it would be gone when I looked at this spot next. Ilyzath had a way of erasing any mark its prisoners tried to make on the world.

Maybe it was my petty act of defiance, then.

The drawing was the same every time. A cluster of three shapes, always in the same arrangement—one lopsided circle to the left, another slightly lower to its right, and a third, longer shape beneath the first, the three of them together forming a triangular formation of patches.

In the beginning, I would wonder what they were. Now I figured it didn’t even matter.

The air shifted, and I froze.

I knew this feeling by now. A pit formed in my stomach and I dutifully ignored it, my eyes trained on the markings I etched into the floor, even as the room darkened.

I would not look.

I would not fucking look.

Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. A red cast suffused the room.

The snap of flames grew unnaturally loud. “Max.”

I knew that voice. I knew it even though, still, I didn’t understand who it belonged to. And yet, the sound of it still made my eyes snap up, no matter how many times I told them not to.

The sight of her was just as horrifying as it always was.

The girl was perhaps eleven or twelve. She had long, sleek black hair and a demeanor that seemed so familiar in more ways than one. Also, most notably, she was on fire.

Sometimes, she was weeping as she crawled across the ground to me. Sometimes, she was furious, trying to strike me. Today, she just stood there, almost serene, as chunks of flesh melted off her face.

She looked sad.

“Why did you do this to me?” she asked. “Why would you of all people do this to me? Those were my last thoughts, you know. It hurt worse than any of this.”

She gestured, weakly, to her burning body.

And there was something there, just for a moment, some shard of a memory that kicked me in the gut. Gone before I could wrap my fingers around it.

Or maybe… maybe I stopped myself before I let myself remember. I looked away.

“You’re not real,” I muttered. “Yes, I am.”

“Nothing in this place is real. You’re just another nightmare.”

The stench of burning flesh now seared my nostrils. I forced my eyes back to the ground. As I suspected, the marks I had etched into it minutes ago were now gone.

Oh well.

I started again—always, the same three shapes, again, again, again.

Still, out of the corner of my eye, I could see the markings on Ilyzath’s walls shifting, as if all to orient themselves towards me.

Ah, you think this is a nightmare?

It wasn’t quite a voice. Ilyzath spoke in a million blended inconsequential sounds, creaks and wind and groans of stone bleeding into something like words.

I didn’t answer. Sure, I’d talk to my hallucinations, but I generally tried not to speak to the prison itself. A man had to draw a line somewhere.

What makes you think, Maxantarius, that nightmares are not real?

Perhaps it is all real, and that is the greatest nightmare of all.

My jaw tightened, and my hand paused its familiar path. I wouldn’t admit it—not even silently to myself—but that thought struck a nerve.

There was, after all, so much I didn’t know about my own past.

The time before I came to Ilyzath was a blur, like a hundred colors of paint all running together in the same soupy sewer water. Every so often I’d grasp glimpses of images, memories, sensations—sometimes the smell of flowers and a certain shade of green were seared into my head, vivid enough to almost lead me to the memories they kept, always just out of reach. Sometimes they were darker, ash and moans and the feel of my hands around blood-slicked, unforgiving metal. Burning and burning and burning.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Only a nightmare, Max. Pull yourself together.

The burning girl was still standing there. I would not look.

“Max—” she said again, but then the sound of grinding stone cut her short.

All at once, the shadows and the glow of the fire disappeared. I looked up to see that a door had opened in my cell, two eyeless, black-clad soldiers standing there, spears in hand.

“Get up,” the blond one said. “The Queen needs to see you again.”

I was already rising to my feet. Honestly, I’d take the Queen’s torture over Ilyzath’s any day.

And today, at least, I had a plan.

Things had gotten worse.

Ara was at war. When I was in Ilyzath, I understood this only distantly

—nothing penetrated Ilyzath’s walls, and that, I supposed, included horrific warfare. But every time the Queen had me brought to the mainland, its marks were visible everywhere.

This time, it was worse than I’d ever seen it. The Syrizen and I walked down cobblestone paths. The Palace loomed to the left, silent and mournful. Two of its knifelike peaks had been snapped off since the last time I was here. Ahead, the Towers loomed. The upper windows of the silver one had all shattered, leaving a fragile-looking silver skeleton to be devoured by the clouds.

Around us, groups of exhausted soldiers gathered in clusters. I slowed my steps, watching them. One of the groups parted just enough for me to see between them—at the monstrous carcass seeping blood on the ground.

Ascended above.

The sight of the thing, even lifeless, made a shiver pass over me. It was perhaps two or three times the size of the soldiers that surrounded it, its form comprised of darkness and too-long limbs. I stared at it, but the boundaries of its shape never quite came into focus, like my mind couldn’t decide where it ended and its shadow began.

I’ve seen that thing before.

The thought popped into my mind without warning. Like most of my thoughts these days, it was unhelpful.

One of the soldiers looked up and met my stare. His eyes went wide before he turned to mutter frantically to his companions.

A sharp nudge jolted me from my thoughts. I nearly stumbled. My ankles were bound, just loosely enough to allow me to walk. My wrists, too tight to let them move at all.

“Let’s get this over with, Max,” the blond Syrizen, who gripped my right arm, muttered. “No time to linger.”

“How many were there?” I asked. “Those creatures. There must have been many of them. More than this.” I nodded to the field, where the soldiers gathered around the carcasses. “Sent by the Fey, right? How far did they get? Did they make it to the top of the Towers?”

The guard didn’t answer, but her lips pressed together in a way that confirmed my suspicions.

“And that was what,” I went on, “a few hours ago, by the looks of things?”

Again, no answer.

I didn’t need one. I knew I was right.

Less than a full day after some of the worst attacks yet, and the Queen was pulling me out. She was doing it now, in daylight—rare that happened, and only recently. At first, it had just been a few scattered outings, always at night, always when there weren’t many people around. I hadn’t figured out why. Only now did that piece click into place, as I watched the soldiers around us all look up to stare at me.

These people knew who I was. Not that I had a clue why.

And for whatever reason, the Queen would prefer that they didn’t think about me. Again, not that I had a clue why.

You killed hundreds of innocent people, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Isn’t that reason enough for infamy?

An expression I couldn’t read passed over the guard’s face. “Here’s hoping that the Queen is right and you’re our damned savior,” she muttered, pushing me forward. “Let’s go.”