“Almost immediately, I knew something was wrong. It was too quiet. There were no Revenants. My heart sank. I started to run toward my brother at the Redwood Gate.”
Alex’s voice was tight. Rough. The pain in the memory had lost none of its power over time. “By the time I arrived, chaos had erupted. It had been a coordinated attack. My brother and his group of Elementals had been ambushed by a large horde of Revenants. They were fighting hard, giving everything they had, but they were being overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. I realized that it was a trap—that we’d never truly understood just how many Revenants lay hidden within the Between.
“I joined the fight, but it was too late. I watched ten Elementals die in that moment, including my brother Thomas. I nearly lost my mind—grief and madness took hold of me. I fought my way blindly through the Revenants and managed to make my way to his side before he died. Thomas begged for the Tigers to come to me. As he took his last breath, the Tigers slid onto my arm.
“When I looked up once more, I was surrounded by nothing but death. More Revenants were bearing down on me, an Ancient amongst them. I ran. I was a step too slow, and the Ancient delivered the wound to my side. I knew I was dying, but as the Elemental High Master, it was my duty to warn the Gifted. I had to get back to Mandla. I was desperate. I ran for the Walking Forest, knowing that the Revenants wouldn’t follow me through.
“I made it through, leaving a trail of blood amongst the silver trees. Five more Revenants were waiting on the other side. I was weak by then, but I made it to Sanctuary Hill. I screamed for Mandla to go, to warn what remained of the Council. But he chose to stay with me. He pulled the Gate closed and killed the Revenants chasing me.”
Alex paused, his eyes closed, grief overtaking him for the moment. Allyra placed her hand gently over his, allowing the walls around her mind to drop momentarily, letting her sympathy to flow through the bond that joined them. Alex looked up with a wry smile and continued.
“If not for Mandla’s loyalty, I would’ve been dead. The truth was, every one of the five Elementals tasked with protecting the Gates chose to stay and fight with their partners rather than run. Loyalty ran deep, but we lost them all that day.
“Mandla and I were the only survivors, and we were trapped within the Between. The first few years we waited at the Gates, for the annual ritual of Gifted arriving to renew the Source. After ten years, we realized that they weren’t coming anymore. After twenty years, Mandla started to lose hope, and he grew angrier and angrier, believing that you had betrayed us, leaving our bodies in a place that no one could find. He started to believe that no one came, because they simply didn’t know we were still alive.
“The fierceness of his belief made me question my decisions. I started to lose hope, and I began to contemplate the idea of death. Because, after all, what could I do from the Between? My visions had become a mass of twisted destruction, filled with darkness that I couldn’t bear to see anymore.
“It was in that desperate moment of darkness, when hope had abandoned me, that I saw my last vision of you. You were stumbling into the Between, scared and confused. I realized you would die without me. Linked to that vision of you were others—a delicate strand of time where the future might still be saved. I knew I had to live. I had to live so that you would.”
Their eyes met then, loaded with emotion and the weight of the connection they shared. Destiny, fate, whatever name it went by—in that moment, she believed it.
Alex looked away and broke the connection. He picked up his story once more. “I shared my vision with Mandla, and for all that he had been through, still he trusted me. And, for a while it gave him strength. It was something to believe in. But in time, even that wore away, like the sharp edges of rock under the constant flow of a river. He began to lose his mind, little by little, day by day. Until he was nothing more than a shadow of what he once was.
“I’d lost my best friend, but still I held on. Every time I wavered, I clung to the vision of you. I survived because of you. I might have saved your life that day in the Between, but you had saved mine long before that.”
A tear ran down her face. Their lives—so intertwined. He had seen her, even before she had existed. They were connected, across and beyond time.
Alex sighed wearily, “There’s not much else to say. I knew that we had been betrayed, that the deaths of the thirty-one Elementals were the result of a coordinated attack. The Revenants had known we were coming, it meant that someone had divulged our plans to them. But I never knew who, or how. At least not until today.”
Allyra looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”
Alex glanced at her, a wry smile on his lips and an inscrutable look in his eyes. “I don’t belong in this time. My time has passed. Generations have lived and died during the time I’ve been trapped in the Between. So, when I woke up today, I didn’t expect to recognize anyone. Yet, somehow, I recognized two.
“The body the Ancient wore was that of my uncle Marcus. He was my mother’s older brother, an Inferno who never quite lived up
