Mithra fell on the ground, sinking deep into the snow. She curled up, heaving, her lungs filled with burning ash. Her throat closed up and she could only rasp, desperate for a breath. Convulsing in the snow, the sliver of her mind not focused on survival cursed her own stupidity.

  She knew every expedition outside had an Air Mage, but she never stopped to think why. Everyone knew only death waited outside the Veil, but Duncan never told her that the air itself was hostile. Mithra was confident in her combat ability, confident she could survive on her own at least for a little while. But she couldn’t fight the air.

  The Veil was mere centimeters away and she tried crawling back inside it. She reached out, almost able to touch the polished barrier. Her vision blurred as strength left her, unable to even yell for help. Was that how she died? As a result of her own recklessness, before her life could even properly begin? Her lungs seemed to agree.

  But the divine energy in her didn’t. It sparked, sending jolts of electricity into her spasming muscles. Her limbs contorted so hard she thought her bones would snap and the energy seemed intent on tearing her to pieces, slowly and painfully. She tried to take control of it, but it kept slipping out of her mental grasp. A wordless scream escaped her lips, taking the last vestiges of air with it.

  A soft glow emanated from her right hand and, slowly, the light spread to cover her spasming body. It wrapped itself around her and then amped in intensity, almost blinding her. Mithra heard an unintelligible whisper, the same as during her marking. The light blinked out of existence. Her divine energy stilled.

  She could breathe again.

  The toxic dust filling her lungs seemingly vanished, though she could still taste it. Taking one greedy breath after another, Mithra laid in the snow, too hurt to move. Every muscle in her body ached, but they weren’t convulsing anymore. Instead, they shivered painfully, the biting cold seeping into them.

  She stirred, reaching for her backpack. The latch was bent out of shape from the Rock Mage’s assault and she failed to open it with her stiff fingers. She rubbed her hands together, desperately trying to warm them up, trying to unlatch the backpack again. The latch fell into the snow, her heavy coat spilling out.

  Spent with the exertion, she wrapped it around herself and fell into the snow again. Wreathed in the soft wool, she let herself rest for a few minutes. She was safe for the moment—the priests wouldn’t follow her outside. Thank the Gods for that. The fight replayed in her mind, all the near misses that could’ve easily seen her dead. All the times she got lucky. Mithra shuddered, not because of the cold this time; the close brush with death was sinking in. She fought her whole life, true, but never for her life. It was entirely different. Violent. Terrifying. Exhilarating.

  She looked at her right hand, at the mysterious mark that saved her. It wasn’t burning anymore. What was it? She was no Air Mage, yet it purified the air somehow. It saved her life, let her survive outside the Veil. If it did just that it would’ve been invaluable, but she had a feeling it could do much more.

  It was a second chance to become a Guardian after her disaster marking.

  The second mark wasn’t useless, not only that, it was actually promising. With it they wouldn’t laugh her out of training. She wasn’t just an Emotion Mage, she was… something else. She only had to find out what exactly her mark did.

  Mithra rested her head in the fluffy woolen hood. Everything was going to be okay. She would figure out a way to go back without the priests finding her. Maybe she’d walk alongside the Veil and enter in a different place, maybe even in Veridia. She was going to rest just a little longer and then go. Her eyes closed slightly. The coat felt comfortable. Warm.

  Violently, she shook herself awake. She couldn’t stop now. Sleep meant death in the snow. She had to move.

  Mithra stood up and the wind almost keeled her over. It cut into every inch of uncovered skin and blasted clouds of fine snow in her face. She covered herself as best as she could and took a good look at her surroundings for the first time. Snow was everywhere, the horizon nothing but a boundless sea of white, no shelter or obstacles in sight. Only the Veil stood tall, the glass-like dome so massive she could barely see its curvature. An imposing giant.

  But the most impressive sight was the sun. A blazing orange orb of light. She couldn’t believe the Veil distorted reality so much as to make it seem blue from the inside—now that she witnessed the true star, the sapphire memory felt deeply wrong. The sun was a glorious fire breathing life into her. It was right.

  Squinting, she peeled her eyes away from it. It wasn’t the harmless cold light she was used to, bright spots danced in her vision long enough to make her worry she may have damaged her sight.

  Despite the sun, it was only getting colder. She needed shelter, right now. Mithra picked up her backpack and walked in the opposite direction from the Veil; the priests probably waited for her on the other side of it, and she wasn’t about to walk right into their hands again. When she didn’t return, they’d hopefully assume she’d died and wouldn’t look for her anymore.

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  Every step sank her halfway up the knees into the soft white puff, but she struggled on. She had never felt so alive. Just being outside the Veil was a feeling like none she ever had. It was like breathing fresh air for the first time, like a bird freed from its cage. The change was almost physical, like she was wading through deep water her whole life. It was easier to walk, easier to breathe, easier to be. So much so that she almost forgot about the fact she was freezing to death.

  Further away from the Veil the snow was more packed, making it easier to walk. Mithra picked up her pace. Step after step she lost track of time, alone in the endless white.

  Slowly, shapes emerged on the horizon. Tall rectangles of gray with brutal, jagged edges cut against the horizon. To be this big from so far they must’ve been gigantic, dwarfing every structure she had seen before. Slowly, smaller shapes appeared as well. Buildings with slanted roofs and smooth stone walls, dilapidated but still recognizable.

  Houses. Mithra almost tripped in her haste to get to shelter.

  The houses were laid out in a rough grid with wide roads separating them. As she got closer, she noticed more details. The stone walls looked like they were made by Stone Shapers, too smooth to be made by hand, even when taking into account years of corrosion. But she knew there were no Shapers outside the Veil. How did the people of old make these?

  One house stood out to her. It was mostly intact and two stories tall, the type of house a family probably would’ve lived in. She tried the door, half-buried in the snow, but it wouldn’t budge. It looked sturdy too, lined with metal. The windows on the ground floor had metal shutters blocking the access, but the ones higher up were just glass. The problem was, she couldn’t reach them. Mithra walked around to the back of the building, trying to find a way in.

  Sticking out of the snow was a rectangular metal box, with a sloped ramp about half its height. It was tall enough that she could reach the second story window from it. Perfect. The ramp was curved outwards, making it hard to climb so she tried making her way up slowly. She was almost at the top when the layer of snow gave and she slid back down with it, sputtering as she ate a handful of snow and ice. Determined, she got back up and tried again.

  With the snow gone, it became obvious why someone would design a ramp to be so hard to climb. It wasn’t a ramp at all, but a glass cabin, frosted over. She crouched down and scraped off some of the ice with the back of her knife. Inside, there were two seats next to each other. One of them had a weird wheel sticking out in front of it and a skeleton laid on the other, hugging its knees to its chest. The bones were covered in tiny grooves and holes. Mithra shivered. What awful weapon had killed this person?

  It didn’t matter. She still needed to find shelter. Now that she could see what she was dealing with, it was easier to adjust her grip and climb up the cabin. The metal box made an awful scraping noise as she stepped on it, but it held. She climbed to the closest window and pressed on it. She tried to wedge a knife in between the glass and the frame, but it didn’t budge. The knife was too weak to pry the window open, and Mithra stopped trying, afraid it’d break.

  “Well, I tried,” she muttered to herself and smashed the handle into the glass. It took her five hits to finally shatter the window. She cleared the shards from the bottom part of the frame and climbed in.

  Dust flew in the air, the room undisturbed for a long time. Snow was already gathering on the floor under the broken window. Mithra looked around. The bed was too small for an adult, covered neatly with a blanket with colorful animals on it and there was a shelf filled with books, as well as one full of toys. They seemed high-quality, from materials Mithra didn’t recognize. Everything looked like someone could’ve lived there even a day ago, if not for all the dust. It didn’t look like a remnant of a dead city at all.

  Cold air flowing from the outside made her hurry up. There was nothing to cover the newly made hole in the glass, so she made her way deeper into the house, closing a door behind her. The floor and the stairway were made of wood, rotten in places. Careful where she stepped, Mithra walked towards the ground floor.

  Downstairs consisted of one spacious room and a hallway with a few closed doors to explore, but her priority right now was to get warm. The room had a table with chairs in the middle, a kitchen to the left of it and a living room to the right. The layout of the house was open enough that she could see thanks to the sun filtering from the windows upstairs, even despite the metal shutters covering every ground window.

  There was a fireplace built into one of the walls, with a glass door too dirty to see through. Standing to the side just in case, Mithra opened it. Ash fell into the room, but much less than she expected. She got to work, clearing out the fireplace in minutes. There was a basket with some chopped wood to the side. She briefly considered smashing one of the wooden chairs into pieces and using that as kindling, but that was bound to be a lot of work. She was exhausted and she needed heat, now. A quick trip upstairs and with a heavy heart, she ripped some pages out of a child’s book.

  There was nothing to start a fire with that she could see, but there were some cabinets on the other side of the room. The kitchen itself was peculiar. There were drawers with utensils, plates, even a basin built into one of the cabinets. Only, there was no stove. Instead, a glass pane laying flat took up most of the counterspace. Did people of old cook on glass? How?

  She couldn’t find any matches, but she did find a thin, steel rectangle with a flaming skull engraved on it. A warning, no doubt. It opened with a click, revealing a small wheel with a piece of rope next to it. The wheel itself was made from rough stone. It reminded her of a candle wick and a piece of flint. She rotated it carefully. Nothing happened, but it was grinding against something. She struck it faster and sparks went flying, the wick catching aflame. Handy.

  Finally, Mithra filled the fireplace and lit it, watching the flames lick the wood; hesitantly at first, but quickly growing stronger, bolder. She covered herself in blankets from upstairs and sat on the floor. By the time the logs were kindling properly, she had drifted off, watching the fire dance.