Dante knew he was dreaming, it filled him with dread.

It was one of the dreams he couldn’t break away from. It was hyper-real, his senses enhanced to an extreme degree. Focusing strained his eyes. His ears were so sensitive that he could hear the air rushing around himself, though he could feel no wind. The pressure of the air, the atmosphere, pressed in on his body. It seemed impossible that he was able to move through it, though he could.

He was inside. The building was large, with his extended sense he could feel it stretch out around him, it was spiraling, twisting, ever-changing. The floor was stone, so very cold and hard beneath his bare feet. But more than that, there was magic in the core of each stone and crevice of this place, pulsating.

There was a long red carpet in front of him that stretched from the room’s entrance all the way across to the dais to Dante’s right that held a large chair. It looked to be a throne, though it was simple, hewn from dark stone, with armrests and a tall back.

A woman with wine red hair stood in front of the dais. She wore muted tones, yet she seemed bold, bright. A certain tension ran through her, coiled. She pulsed to the same beat as the magic beneath his feet. She belonged here.

To the left, closer to the entrance to this room, was a fair-skinned man with brown hair that gently cascaded to his shoulders. That was the only gentle thing about him. The aura of magic that surrounded him was dissonant. Sharp. Cold, like metal. He was the intruder, the one who wasn’t supposed to be here. He grinned; his teeth just a little too white.

The woman who belonged and the sharp man were speaking, though Dante struggled to hone in on their words.

“Join me,” the man said. “I promise, this is everything you’ve wanted, all along—”

“Never.” Energy gathered around the woman, concentrated enough to visibly swirl around her. Despite Dante’s limited experience with magic, he could tell it was a powerful display. His skin buzzed against the increasing density of power in the room. “I will never, ever come with you. Get that through your thick skull and go back to your realm.”

“Deianira could be home to both of us, if you would come to your senses.”

The woman’s voice shook. “Don’t you dare say that name. Ever. You took her from me. You took everything. How could you think I would even consider your ridiculous propositions?”

The man’s expression turned grim. He held out his hand and the magic surrounding the woman was drawn toward him, twisting into a vortex that terminated at his palm as he absorbed her energy. The woman dropped to her knees. Her brown skin had paled, and the boldness Dante had sensed had drained away. It was a stark comparison to the powerful, dominating mage she had been only moments ago.

This man is much too powerful.

The woman spat at him. “Curse you.” Her fingers curled into claws to scrape at the carpet below her, defiant. Yet, she bowed her head in defeat. Despair. Between heaving breaths, she declared, “You can’t do this forever. I will find a way to end you.”

“You will reconsider, or you will continue to suffer.” The man shrugged. “Your choice.” He turned to walk out of the throne room.

“Not much of a choice.”

The man didn’t seem to hear her comment, or else he chose to ignore it. As he made his exit, the scene began to fade. The woman looked up, seemingly at the very spot Dante was standing. He couldn’t be sure though, because as he saw the flash of her green irises, he jolted awake in his bed, released from the dream.

He opened his eyes and saw nothing.

He could feel his worn blanket around him, he could hear rain pattering down onto the tin roof—and though it was warm enough to rain, he could still smell the sharp chill of the night, drifting in through the cracks in his window that would not seal. But, he could not see.

Instead of the darkness and shadows cast across his room, his vision was overtaken by solid white. Panic rolled through Dante as he became more and more sure that he was, in fact, awake, not trapped in another nightmare. He tried not to hyperventilate while he figured out a course of action.

He immediately discarded any thought of calling for his parents. This was too strange, too… magical to risk their involvement. Jayden wouldn’t be a problem in that regard, but she might try something with magic to help him. Even though the soldiers had left, he still couldn’t put her at risk. Already he was putting them in enough danger, with that godsforsaken crystal orb he still hid under his bed.

Jayden was right, he needed a better hiding place, but something made him want it close. He wanted to get rid of it altogether, but he just… couldn’t. He was unnaturally drawn to it, despite all his reservations. At least Dante couldn’t sense any magic coming from it once he had finished putting it together. It laid dormant, haunting him from below each night.

For now, he was still blind, and no solutions sprung to mind. I’ll just have to wait, and hope my vision returns. He shut his eyes, though it had no effect on the strange lightness, it made it slightly less disturbing. He adjusted his blankets and made himself comfortable, wondering what his life would be like blind. Could he still work for Ferrick at the clinic, or would he be doomed to accomplish whatever farm tasks his parents thought safe enough to assign him?

He pooled in his misery until a few minutes passed and the lightness began fading into the darkness that he should have been observing all along. His sight slowly returned. Dante had never imagined he’d be relieved to see the back of his eyelids.

So everything was okay. For now. But if this happened once, it could happen again… will my vision always come back?

The dream he woke from had felt so real—just like the ones he had of Jayden falling. There had been other dreams like this, too. Most of them had been disorienting, confusing, the images didn’t quite fit together. But even those, he could sense the weight, the reality of them. Others had been images of his past, things he’d rather forget but was instead forced to relive in excruciating detail.

He didn’t know why he would dream of two mages he had never seen before, in a place he didn’t recognize. It was the only one of these dreams where he hadn’t directly been a part of the scene. Though the woman seemed to spot him at the end, he knew in that way you just know things in your dreams that he was an observer, not someone present in the past or future that this meeting happened in.

These were visions. He couldn’t keep denying that it was what they were. Visions of the unchangeable past, the permutable future, or… whatever that last one had been.

Magic kept drawing him in, even as he tried to escape it. A simple life, to be a healer and herbalist, was all he wanted. He shivered beneath his woolen blanket. If he tried hard enough, maybe he could finally turn off the powers he’d never sought out. He shut his eyes tight and wished it was so.

He couldn’t sleep. He knew what lingered beyond his consciousness, the images that would come to him if he gave in to exhaustion. The recurring dream that haunted his nights more and more constantly. It was too vivid to be a regular nightmare. Too clear, detailed, every moment was exactly how it had happened.

The flames. The stench of burning flesh. The screams of the girl’s pain and terror. His father, whispering into his ear: “You are not a mage. This is what happens to mages.”

Dante could almost feel the flames licking his skin as he spent the night awake, afraid of what he was becoming.

#

Dante woke once more, not from a nightmare, but from the morning light shining in through his window. Somehow, he had managed to sleep for at least a couple hours.

He rolled out of bed and worked through his stretching routine. Though his work with Ferrick was less physically active than farm work, he’d never grown out of the habit of stretching first thing in the morning. Plus, even if he wasn’t spending his days toiling in the fields, he still had chores.

Knowing his mother would want him to fetch water, he dressed and gathered the buckets from out back. He hummed merrily as he made his way down the path to the well and hauled clean water up from its depths.

The soldiers had moved on two weeks ago. Perhaps he could accept that he and Jayden were safe. Ferrick seemed to have properly gotten through his parents—enough that they had dropped the talk of sending him off to the army, anyway.

Dante, encumbered with full buckets, made his way back to the house. As he got near, he spotted his father standing on the porch, waiting for him, his face white and stern.

Dante put the buckets down as his father approached him. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

His father didn’t respond at first. The soldiers were gone. Jayden had been more focused on her chores than seeking out opportunities to practice magic, for once. Everything should be good. But the stiffness in his father made panic rise from Dante’s gut.

He wouldn’t make eye contact with Dante. “Milo saw you. The other day.”

“Milo?” What does he have to do with anything?

“He came to me last night. Told me that he saw you.” He finally turned to look straight at Dante. “He saw you using magic.”

Dante’s stomach churned. He was sure that he and Jayden had been alone when she had fallen, and he hadn’t used magic since. Milo had headed back home after they’d spoken that day—there was no reason he’d be anywhere near the forest. “That’s impossible.”

“Why would Milo come to me, if he wasn’t sure about what he saw?”

“I don’t know, but Dad—”

“You are no longer my son.”

“Please, just listen—”

“No!” His father kicked over one of the buckets. Water pooled out around Dante’s feet, soaking through the holes in his boots. “There are no excuses. You will leave Briarglen by noon. If I see you again, I’ll bring you to Kingsmount and hand you over myself like I should have in the first place. You’re lucky I don’t magebrand you here and now.”

With that, his father stormed away toward the barn, leaving Dante shattered. His world was ripping apart. He felt like the crystal orb before he’d mended it. Fractured, scattered. But there was no fixing this. Magic had been the hammer, it wouldn’t be the glue.

This can’t be happening. How did Milo see him save Jayden from the fall, and how could he rat him out like this? It had been over a fortnight since the incident and Milo had given no indication that there was anything wrong in the meantime.

“What was that about?”

Dante snapped out of his stunned state and looked up at Jayden. She stood in the doorway, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Dad banished me from Briarglen.”

“What?”

“Milo saw me save you with magic, back in the forest.”

Jayden leaped down the porch stairs, wide-eyed. “He followed us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well if he saw anything, he saw you save my life, Dante!”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m… I’m done.”

Dante had never seen such a serious look on his little sister’s face. “Look. I’ll tell him it wasn’t you using magic, it was me,” she said. “I was the one messing around, you only used your gift to save me.”

“No! No. He must not have seen you doing magic, or he wanted to spare you. I know I’d rather it be me than you.”

“But—”

“Jayden. You’d probably get both of us thrown out, and what good would that do? You should stay here and be safe, for as long as you can.”

“I’m coming with you.” Jayden’s fists were clenched tight. “We can make it on our own, the two of us.”

Dante knew it would be hard to fight her on this, but he had to. “I promise I’ll be alright. I know you’d make it out there, if you had to. But I don’t want you to have to. If I’m fending for myself, I can get by as long as I know you’re okay.”

“But I won’t be okay! I don’t want you to be banished and gone, and I want to use magic, and I want—”

“Spend the next few years figuring out a plan to get out of here. And then, then leave this place.”

“But it’s my fault!” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I got you into this mess. I didn’t listen, I just wanted to practice magic, I never thought… I never thought something like this would really happen.”

“I’ll forgive you. If you stay.”

“Dante—”

“That’s the only way.” He gave her a sad smile. “Deal?”

Jayden sniffled, and nodded.

Together, they packed what useful items they could into a travel bag. As much of the non-perishable food as they could find and fit. Warm clothes. A hunting knife. He fetched the crystal orb from under his bed, too. The extra weight was unwelcome, but he still couldn’t leave it behind.

His last moments with his sister went by all too fast. She clung to him as they skirted the edge of town, avoiding the townsfolk who would be bustling about by now. They made it to the eastern road that led to Thornsbury, the next town over.

Jayden pulled him into an embrace. “Stay a little longer. Please.”

“Even if I could, I should go while there’s still light. I have to find somewhere to camp.”

It was early enough that he could reach Thornsbury by nightfall if he tried, but he didn’t want to rent a room there. Dante had a bit of coin, though that was going to be for emergencies. Food and shelter when he couldn’t find his own, or when the weather took a turn for the worse. In Saridian, that was bound to happen sooner or later. Today was warm enough, hopefully it would hold.

He didn’t know if he even wanted to stop in Thornsbury. Sometimes he went to the market there with Ferrick. Dante didn’t want to be recognized, to have people ask why he was there alone, and not on a market day.

“Do you know where you want to go?” Jayden asked, echoing his line of thought.

“Nowhere near here,” Dante said. He didn’t know much of the landscape beyond his hometown. He knew there was a city, maybe a week’s walk away. But being around even more people was the last thing he wanted right now. He could head to a port, or a border, and get out of Saridian altogether—go elsewhere, where mages were accepted. Travel across borders was heavily restricted, and if they found him out as a mage, that would be the end. “I don’t know. I’ll have to figure it out.”

“I have to be able to find you one day, but if I don’t even know where to begin…”

“I’ll find you,” Dante said. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

Tears streamed down Jayden’s face. Dante knew he had to leave now, or he never would. As he walked away, tears fell from his own eyes as well.

All he had wanted was a quiet life. He didn’t need magic or adventure. It should have been an easy thing to accomplish. But instead, he’d been born a mage, and now he walked down the path to the unknown.