Page 1 of Spellcast
Prologue
Where It Ends
The final day
The evening sky bleeds fire.
My arms and legs pump, blood throbbing in every nerve as I race for home, the acrid stench of smoke stinging my nostrils.
Home.
The village of my youth, my world...the only one I have ever known, where I live my half life alongside my family, my people, whether they realize it or not. Very well—not. They don’t realize it because...they don’t know I exist.
No one knows I am here, there, anywhere.
Because I am not.
They donotknow it.
They cannot know.
This is my reality. A truth long held, even as I’ve fought it with everything that grinds and churns inside me. A desperate heartbeat that stubbornly pounds, that will not quit. Teeth that bite and will not release.
They cannot know theybelongto me and I to them because I am nothing.
A whisper that fails to be heard.
A vapor that fails to be seen.
And yet I have to get to them. I cannot hide. I cannot stay away.
As thoughIcan do something. As thoughIcan save them, I run, muscles straining and aching as the air takes shape, becomesa tangible thing, burning around me in crackling pops and hisses. The embers-soaked wind tears at my eyes and hair, flinging the hood of my cloak back off my shoulders. I go, pushing on through the melting heat as though I can stop death from rolling forward in a great consuming wave.
My feet skid to a stop atop the hill overlooking the village, snow piling up at the toes of my boots. I look down into the vast bowl of the valley where dozens of cottages and shops huddle closely together for warmth against the endless winter. The spire of the meetinghouse at the center of town stretches skyward like a hand clawing to the heavens, desperate to escape the nest of flames engulfing everything below.
It’s too late.
There is no saving anyone.
Red-orange cinders snap and rise, swept up on the angry wind, twirling over the air, reaching me, singeing me, the fiery flecks scorching through my clothes and blistering my flesh. Still, I do not move. Do not utter a sound. Can only gawk with a hammering heart and disbelieving eyes.
Great winged beasts of various colors soar above town like carrion birds circling the buffet of corpses below. For they are all dead. There is no surviving the inferno.
Dragons cut through the smoke with slow flaps of their wings, curving through air that glows red against the black night. They dive and dip, shaking the sky so forcefully that I can feel the wind they stir where I stand.
It’s too unbelievable. Myth coming to life before my eyes. History returning.
I blink. Rub my stinging eyes. Doubt my vision. Marvel and wonder if I’m caught in a dream—a nightmare. Except acrid smoke burns my nose and the heat from the blazing village radiates toward me, licking my face. And there’s the smell. The stench of death.
This is no dream.
I choke out a gasp. My legs wobble, threatening to collapse. Ibend over at the waist, my hands dropping to my knees for support as I pant raggedly, gazing at the hellscape.
The fire roars, loud and vicious, a monster bowing and twisting, snarling, gobbling up everything in its path as it hastens through the timber and thatched-roof buildings, taking them out like they’re nothing more than brittle wisps of straw.
I spot a few bodies, villagers running, chased from their homes by smoke and fire, some ofthemaflame. They dash wildly. Except escape is impossible.
From the fire.
