I am ten years old.

The air is bitter cold in my nose, dry and I curl my arms around myself, armor clacking and I am ten years old and in a dead world, a forgotten world.

(They say it is dead but there is life, still, struggling to survive in a world even time forgot. There is Dyvim and the burrowers and the hordes of Morganthe and plants, seeds, hope.)

(I don't understand how I'm the only one who still sees hope in this world.)

(I still wake screaming from Xibalba more nights than not).

I am ten years old and they tell me to lie and cheat and steal as much as I need to worm into Khrysalis unsuspected. Kaliklak was surprised I did not kill him. Zaltana called me soft.

I think there's enough blood on my hands already. I don't want to add more.

(It will come, more often than not).

Maybe the real reason I was sent here was because where others saw ruin, I saw hope. More often I think that is more naive than not. Sometimes I think that maybe it is okay for me to be a little bit naive. It's in precious supply these days.

I wonder when Dyvim will betray me.

Kaliklak is soft spoken, warm voice and he likes to read, wanted to know more about the Burrowers, about the many subjects he'd read in the Atheneum, and he tried to kill me. That is easy to move past and I know it shouldn't be. I know it shouldn't be, and I know I should have killed him. I'm glad I didn't. Diego called this world a savage world.

Kaliklak would be killed by any of the Council of Light, I think, and maybe they wouldn't be wrong because he is part of Morganthe's army but I know she has forced them, brought them under her spell, and I don't know what is right and what is wrong anymore.

The Sword of King's is heavy in my hands as I sharpen it, whetstone clutched in my fingers, calluses rough.

I need to save the Spiral, again.

I wonder if I'll have to kill Morganthe too.

I step into the Moon Cliffs for the first time.

He is waiting there, armor glinting against the water. There are leaves falling, red and orange and sweet scent of something almost like the maple syrup of my world in the air and I am suddenly so homesick that I almost cannot breathe with it, a tightness in my stomach.

There is life here.

There are people here.

Dead world, they called it, a dead world, a dead world and I don't understand.

I am ten years old and there is a new potion strapped to my bag, brought by a teenage boy a foot taller than me. He left. I stayed.

The air smells of honey and maple syrup and I feel small.