I opened my eyes in a bed of glass.
For a moment I thought I had to be dreaming. The sky was tinted red,
like the bloodiest of sunsets. A numb buzz rang in my ears. My skin was pebbled with goosebumps. The pain came slowly, and with it the realization that I was not dreaming. The buzzing faded as the sounds of horrified screams rose.
I had fallen from the Towers.
I sat up and was immediately rewarded with stabbing pain where glass bit into my palms. Sharp rods of silver and gold jutted from the wreckage like spears. I looked down and saw a book lying beside me, pristine, bearing a sun and a moon symbol intertwined.
Beside it was a single, perfect hand, attached to nothing.
I had not fallen from the Towers. I had fallen with the Towers.
The panic hit just as my senses careened back to me in full, overwhelming force.
I ignored the pain as I forced myself to my feet. A perfect circle of debris surrounded me—I had succeeded in my final, half-conscious attempt at protection.
But Max was not beside me. “Max?” I said, quietly.
And then, more frantically, “Max!” I turned to see him behind me, near the edge of the circle, splayed out and motionless.
I didn’t remember running to him, just leaning over him and shaking him, saying his name over and over again. When his eyes opened, I could have wept.
“Tell me you’re alright,” I choked out.
He didn’t answer, but I watched his eyes grow larger and larger as the memories came back to him.
“Ascended fucking above.” He jerked upright. He surveyed the landscape and with every second, the panic on his face grew sharper.
I did the same, and suddenly lost the ability to breathe. The fear consumed me so completely that I could think of nothing else.
The Capital city had been destroyed. The Towers were gone. The surrounding area had been decimated, buildings ripped apart as if they were crushed dollhouses. A strange, red mist coated my vision—I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at, until I realized that it was coming from beneath us, like steam rising from a crack in the earth. It made my skin tingle and my heart race.
I looked down to see that my palm was burning. The gold mark on my hand had spread all the way to my forearm, and it had grown redder, as if irritated.
The realization left me in a panic. “The heart,” I gasped.
It wasn’t hard to find it. We were both drawn to it, and the fabric of magic itself seemed to pull towards it, like finding a tear in a piece of clothing. We dug through the glass until we found it.
The Lejara glowed red, as if surrounded by odd, heatless flames. One glance, and I knew that something about it had changed irreparably. The magic that surrounded it was now chaotic and volatile.
Because the heart had been shattered into many, many pieces.
