A Flame in the Shadow
Cold is the first thing I feel, no pain, no grief, not Orion’s arms shaking as he presses his forehead to mine while my blood soaks into the marble beneath us.
Just cold, it wraps around me like silk drawn over skin. When I open my eyes, the world is ash and silver. I am standing on a shoreline made of black glass. It stretches infinitely in both directions. Above me, the sky is not a sky at all but a living current of shadow, breathing and pulsing like veins across a celestial body.
In front of me the Gate stands tall and imposing. It is enormous, forged of bone and obsidian, arching so high I cannot see its crest. Symbols burn across it in molten gold and silver, the binding ritual, the pr
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