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Next to Yu, she stepped onto the platform. All around him snapped still.

The air, moments ago suffocated with tension, clashing rage and wild magic, turned hollow. Yet, it was not emptiness he felt, but a void with structure; the echo of something vast retreating until all that remained was the shape of its absence — as though the last reverberation of a colossal bell had just faded, when the sound itself was gone but its tremor still hummed through the marrow of stone and bone.

Yu gasped and pushed himself upright. He stared at the shaman.

With her shimmering petals and cloak, she looked like a drifting veil of ice flowers. No — that was not it, not anymore. That quiet grace belonged to another setting, to the safe confines of the guild's common room. Beneath the smoke-thick rafters and the soft lie of orblight, she had seemed composed and adorned in frost-blossoms. Out here, beneath black dome of the Albweiss sky, that illusion collapsed. The silvery shimmer was still there, but it was the shimmer of blades. What cloaked her was no floral mantle but interlocking scales; the sharp-edged armour of a predator. And though Yu had no name for what she was, or had once been before turning shaman, he could feel it now, coiled in the hush that followed her.

He had not seen it before, or had not been ready to see, but he had heard it — faint, buried in her speech; a first trace of something much grander; that splintering edge in her voice, not sound but substance. But where he had heard all but the faintest traces of ice, he now recognised something strong and ancient in her. It was not in her appearance, nor in her presence alone, but in the negative space around her — he heard the quiet that contoured around her. She was terrifying in the way glaciers are terrifying, still and silent, hauntingly beautiful yet powerful beyond understanding.

What did she do? Did she — Did she stop the magic? Yu's gaze broke free, flickering desperately across the others. Or was it Estingar with the staff? The bird? The witch with the lantern — When had it closed? That black smoke, is it back inside? What even was that? His mind thrashed, useless. Everything he recognised or remembered forked into more questions.

The shaman spoke, and her voice cut through the chaos he felt within, and through the eerie emptiness around: "I am the shaman of this guild, and I have heard your plea. Travelling witch, would you submit yourself to a Transcender wizard's reading to ascertain your intentions?"

The travelling party stared.

So did Yu. His thoughts lagged behind his breath. He was breathing, yes, shallow and fast, but it felt like something he was doing from very far away, while the shaman's words unspooled through his mind. They began to take form, to gain weight and shape, until —

Wait, what?

No.

No way.

That can't be right.

She didn't mean —

She couldn't mean —

No way she meant him.

She could not possibly think that Yu would —

Did she actually believe he could do that? Read someone's thoughts and intentions? Her intentions? Sift through the witch's mind, through the deception and madness and whatever horror she had buried in there and somehow drag out a verdict? Dare decide, in the brink of the moment, right here, right now, in front of everyone, whether it was safe to let this witch into the guild?

Yu's breath caught. He had to speak, had to correct the shaman, say something, anything to fix this mistake before it spiralled even further out of control, before it collapsed from bottomless embarrassment into irreversible humiliation.

But what was he supposed to say? I can't do that because I am fucking useless and also scared shitless? No, they hated him already. No need to confirm their suspicions.

Better lie. Just lie. Say I won't do a reading — because … because something. Because a reason. A good one that makes sense for everyone. Because … because … fuck, because what? Because I, as a wizard, refuse a witch, no matter what? That could work. Except it wouldn't. He could not refuse the shaman's order.

What if I just … do it, for real? Actually try it? Or pretend. Make the motions. Say some words. Who would know? Maybe something will happen. Maybe all Transcenders can do that. Maybe it will just happen naturally, the way magic sometimes does? Or maybe the witch would see through it and kill him where he stood. Right. That is also possible —

Dammit, just get over with it! I'll say I already sensed something. That she shouldn't enter. Yes. Or I heard something. Yes, better — wait, no! If I say that they'll expect me to do that again next time. To do it every time, with everyone. Shit.

Were they watching him? They were. The guards, the travellers, the witch. All of them.

Shit, shit, shit, just do something! All right, I'll do it, but no way I go down there. I'll call her up and just pretend and say something and then say No when it's done. 'Step forward, witch.' No, I need more. 'Fear not, witch. I will not harm you.' No, that's too much, that's not how people talk, that's not how I talk, they'll see right through it. Fuck, why is this so hard? Because it's scary as shit — Focus! Keep it simple. Sound firm, like Tria, when she greets habitat visitors. 'I am the guild's Transcender. I won't harm you I will not harm you.' Yes, that's it, that works. All right, all right, now, say it now, just say it, all right, 'I am the Transcender', there it is, yes, all right, wait, no, 'I am the guild's Transcender', yes, like that, yes, all right, say it and look official and then do something and then say No, all right, here it comes!

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Yu opened his beak: "I —"

"No," said the witch.

Yu snapped his beak shut.

Oh thank God.

"But I will leave, so they can stay," the witch added.

Yu's relief twisted instantly. There — there it was again, the I will. He had been warned. Over and over, by Tria and the paigen hunter wizard and by many more mentors at Ayenfora. That precise ambiguity. Yes, her words could readily be understood as I am going away. But in witchcraft, where intention bled into reality, words did not simply describe but enacted. In their twisted magic, where thought became force, I will leave could just as easily mean:

I will it — that you leave.

All of you.

Everyone who denied entry to her and her companions. Or to whoever they were; that word might not even refer to her companions, but to any number of evil entities she willed to stay and take over the guild. That was a whole other trap —

"No," the borman rumbeld. "You are with us."

The witch paused. Her eyes searched his face. "Kel-Khadar, they need care."

Yu stared. That was not how witches spoke. It was not how they acted. When they came to the settlements, they came to control, to capture and to kill. To bend and break and bind. They did not plead. They did not barter. They took. And yet, here she was, stepping back. Offering to leave so that others could stay —

No, no, no! Don't fall for it! This is how they get you!

Yu wretched his gaze away from her, forcing his eyes onto the guards instead. His mind whirred, trying to sort out the mess of his emotions and to scrape together what remained of his reason. He was all raw nerves and shaking breath. Did he feel it? Did he feel drawn to her? Compelled to make way, to let her in? Well, actually, yes. Yes, damn it, yes! She looked so young and exhausted. And she sounded so honest, so concerned —

For fuck's sake, snap out of it!

The shaman's voice rang out: "Borman, would you submit yourself to a shamanic reading, in exchange for entry and treatment for those you carry?"

"Yes," the borman answered without hesitation. "Make fast."

The shaman's turned to the beastkin. "And you, krynn, clinger to the forest?"

The krynn flinched at the title. His ears flattened and his tail flicked once. He shared a long, heavy look with the ker, and then gave a slow nod. "Fine."

Before the shaman addressed him, the ker spoke. "I will leave, as well."

The shaman regarded him, then offered the faintest tilt of her head, an acknowledgement. Then she raised her hand and beckoned the borman and the krynn forward.

They stepped onto the platform, and suddenly, they were right in front of Yu, so close he could see frost crusting their fur.

The borman adjusted his grip on the unconscious figures, cradling them close against his broad chest. His stance was taunt, not from fatigue but something more volatile. He shifted his weight foot to foot with visible impatience.

The shaman regarded both with the unreadable stillness of her blank mask. "Have you ever undergone a shamanic reading before?"

"No," the borman stopped shifting. "Make fast. Just make."

"No," echoed the krynn, his voice low but edged with tension.

"It will take but one drop of blood," the shaman said, "and one fraction of essence."

The borman's nostrils flared, but he gave no protest. "Just make."

The beastkin held himself rigid. He was anything but calm, but not defiant either. Restrained.

Yu had never witnessed a shamanic reading or any sort of ritual. He had never been this close to a shaman before, or even looked at one for this long. For that matter, most magic he had experienced up close had not been done for him, but to him, back at Ayenfora.

The shaman stepped in front of the travellers.

Yu braced himself for whatever came next, and he saw the others do the same. The krynn and borman tensed. The ker's hand rested on a long and thin blade at his hip, that of the witch on her shadow lantern. Tirran and Imbiad drew in tighter. Only Estingar remained unbothered, rolling his staff between his palms or pushing it from one hand into the other, back and forth, in a disturbingly playful manner.

Yu expected a knife or some other ceremonial tool for blood-letting. He expected chanting and elaborate gestures; a ritualistic performance.

Instead, the shaman lifted her hands and simply pressed her fingertips together. The effect was instant. The scales around her wrists, those precisely aligned blades, collapsed. Where they had stood vibrant, they dulled and curled inward, flattening to her body. The colour leached away and the silver-white shimmer turned to ash. The dark drew upward, from her arms to her shoulders, drawn into the folds of her cloak like water into dry earth.

As the shaman changed, so did the air around her.

Yu's feathers rose all at once.

The air around her had been hollow. Now, it was not.

Something immense had stirred — not with the shifting of earth or the cry of wind, but with a saturation of presence, ancient and terribly patient.

Yu heard it, the slow, inexorable turning of a will vast beyond reckoning. Something vast and sentient had turned its attention toward them, not with movement but in a silence that was so profound it roared in his head.

This entity had never arrived. It had always been here, bound to the shaman, wound around her like a veil of breathless shadow just beyond the edge of perception. Something ancient was now aware, and it had offered to listen.

Yu had recognised it the moment he heard it listen.

And in that hollow silence that had always been claimed, he knew. He knew it in the same impossible way he heard the breath of the mountains and the whispers of rivers and the screaming of sands and the wind's soft voice through ash and the ghost-hum of dead waters still echoing in long-dry riverbeds. He knew it with the wizard-part of himself, the part turned to all things that had no tongues but spoke to him still, and to all those things that were only voice, and nothing else.

He knew that he heard the silence of a MOUNTAIN KING. -

The shaman extended one hand. "Present your arm."

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