I had been walking for hours, my calves and thighs becoming sore from a ck of exercise. It had been quite some time since I had attended ranger trainings, and I wasn’t interested in learning to fight; I didn’t have any reason to.

  The wind nipped at my cheeks and nose, and the air was still crisp as the morning sun began to creep over the horizon to light my way. The moon had been bright and big, just enough glow to illuminate the path during the night so that I didn’t have to light a torch or nterns – a blessing, considering I hadn’t had the time or sense to take any from home anyway.

  I treaded lightly, watching my steps and being careful to avoid any twigs or leaves. While I wasn’t strong or athletic, I made up for it in stealth and awareness. Years of trudging into the woods with my two older brothers to hunt game birds, wild pigs, and small deer had taught me patience and the art of silence.

  I had learned to be aware of the sounds and smells around me, conscious both of prey and predators in these woods, although I had never traveled quite this far. I stayed near the forest's tree line, although not within it, just close enough to keep out of the light where I might be spotted and away from the darkness of the tree coverings where danger might lurk.

  I had been startled a few times into reaching for my weapons, only to discover that the noise I heard was a squirrel or other small animal, leaving me feeling foolish. Besides the occasional small game, the hike had been uneventful, giving me plenty of time to dwell on the responsibilities that had suddenly been thrust upon me.

  I thought of what I might do when I get to the border of the wall, what I might find, and how I would handle it. I realized quickly that I didn’t know enough about the pnts near the magic; we weren’t taught about the things inside the walls or around them, only to stay away. I imagined pnts of legend, like my moonflower, and hoped I would know and understand their properties.

  Too impulsive, Leora, my father would say if he knew I were here.

  He would be right, I knew, and as I considered the possibilities, beads of sweat began dripping from my forehead, and my breath felt tight in my chest. What was I thinking? I had no idea what I was doing, what I would see or find. This was a fool’s errand.

  I would arrive at the wall, find nothing, or worse: everything, and have no idea how to use it. It could take me weeks— even months —to discover the uses of the pnts I found, not to mention the pushback I would receive from my family and friends.

  What if I couldn’t find a cure, and Talen suffered despite my efforts?

  My face began to flush and heat with anger. I was angry at my father for choosing to exclude me from these discussions and meetings, and I was angry at myself for being so ridiculous as to think that I could have done anything to help in the first pce. I was furious with Corvin for knowing about it all and helping to hide it from me, and I couldn’t help but be angry with Talen for getting hurt.

  Tears began to well in my eyes, blurring my vision and soaking my shes as I tried to blink them away. As I wiped my eyes clear, I saw a small opening. A cove brought the ocean close enough to the tree line for me to stop, lined with rge boulders and beautiful golden sand.

  I stepped into the cove, climbing atop and sitting on one of the smaller boulders, as I reached into my pack and pulled out the apple I had taken from home. I calmed myself, breathing deeply and chewing slowly while watching the ocean’s waves roll in and whip against the rge rocks.

  The view was beautiful. The sky was still a deep blue speckled with stars, as a line of golden sun peeked shyly over the ocean’s horizon. I closed my eyes, inhaling the smell of salty ocean air and listening to the sounds of crashing waves against hard rock, when I heard the distinct crack of a twig behind me in the trees.

  I jumped from my seat, nding behind the rock I was sitting on, back pressed against it. I quickly reached into my right pocket, holding my dagger but not removing it. I sat frozen, listening intently for any footsteps or noises.

  “Just another squirrel. It’s nothing to panic over.” I said to myself as quietly as I could.

  Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and turned to my left. Curling my torso and holding that breath, I peered beyond my hiding pce to see what might be there.

  Sitting at the edge of the cove was a small fox, with fur so silver it almost appeared blue. It sat calmly, staring in my direction, just past the boulder I was hiding behind.

  I exhaled and leaned back into the rock, dropping my hand from my weapon. Yet again, I had let myself be terrified of a small and entirely harmless animal. How would I withstand a real threat if I were this jumpy at a fox?

  I began building the barrier I had previously learned to make so weakly, attempting to lock the emotions away again. I needed to stay strong; I needed to stay focused. Impulsive decision or not, allowing myself to panic and die out here would do nothing to help my brother.

  I stood, turning to face the small fox ahead of me. It looked up at me quickly, staring me down with icy blue eyes for a moment, then turned and scurried away into the forest.

  I grabbed my rucksack and slung it over my shoulder again, looking to my right to assess the path ahead. I’d heard in past council meetings that following the road where the trees meet the sea would take one right to the river of the divide, and I could see now why it was described that way.

  The cove I stood in was the narrowest point of the path, the rocky terrain nearly touching the forest's edge. Ahead of me, the beach extended further out, and the wide gravel path continued into the distance, separating the forest from the ocean. This trail had been here for years, once a traveler’s road to cross the river to reach the capital of Terravellum.

  Squinting my eyes, I could faintly see the small shape of an old outpost on the ft nd, my first honest look at the divide beyond. Somewhere beyond that stone tower would be the walls that held the magic themselves.

  I locked the barrier walls in my mind, wiped the residual tear stains from my cheeks, and continued along the road to the outpost.

  As I walked, I returned to my stealthy hunter’s motions but increased my speed. Eager to finish my pns and head home, I had covered the distance to the outpost in a short 45 minutes, slowing here and there where tree limbs had fallen from past storms.

  The small outpost was essentially in ruins, and all but a single tall stone tower y in rubble. Debris around old, crumpled buildings that once housed Briarholt soldiers could be seen every few feet; a total of what looked like possibly 10 small shelters built during the Great Siphoning War before the divide.

  The ruins of the outpost felt cold, and a wave of dread began to wash over me. It was as though I could feel and sense the death that had been here before, the bodies that had once inhabited the stone walls.

  I took in my surroundings, taking care to leave things as they were and not to touch or disturb any piece of the history around me. Besides the stones scattered throughout, the camp was barren. Dry dark earth, a few patches of beige dead grasses, and an occasional vine of Ivy across a half-standing wall.

  Continuing through the outpost and nearing the only remaining structure not in ruins, I noticed that the dirt beneath my feet had only darkened. I bent over, digging my nails into the ground, picking up a small piece of the nd.

  Dry, deep, and dark, it was flecked with something I couldn’t recognize. Fshbacks of the day we found Talen in the clearing flooded my mind, as did the dirt we had dug up in that gde.

  I continued approaching the tower, looking beyond it at the river below. The outpost was pced carefully on a small hill above a short walk down to the Terravellum Strait. Valorian soldiers would have had to sail the width of the rge river dividing their continent from Briarholt and the continents around us, where they would have been spotted long before they reached nd.

  The river water was deep and dark, like the earth around it. The divide's walls could not be seen with human eyes but could be sensed. The feeling of unease and dread I had experienced had only grown as I neared the tower and became even stronger as I stared at the depths of the river before me.

  Something called to me in that river, something deep inside me, and I felt the sudden urge to lunge forward and run towards it, but I didn’t listen. I shuddered and took yet another deep breath – something I’d been doing a lot tely, it seemed – and reminded myself that I was here to find a cure for Talen.

  I slid my pack off my shoulder, pced it against the wall of the outpost tower, and pulled out a piece of dried venison. I bit off a rge chunk of the meat, putting the rest back into the bag, and looked at the nd around the outpost.

  The dirt ahead of me sted another twenty feet before diving off a short cliff and becoming rock and dark gravel. Small dark vines spiraled around the rocks, clinging tightly to avoid being swept away by the water's ebb and flow. Beyond the river was more nd, what appeared to be a small beach, and some low mountains just beyond that.

  When I scanned my surroundings, the vines were the only pnts in sight, and the deep bck earth was mostly void of life.

  Well, they’re pnts anyway. Might as well check them out.

  I walked to the cliff's edge, the drop a measly few feet, and hopped down to the gravel below. Keeping my head on a swivel to watch for danger, I walked toward a small patch of dark vines attached to a rge rock ahead of me.

  I step over a small pile of decently sized rocks, and just before I reach the pnts, my forehead is met with a hard surface and a loud thud that bounces me backward slightly. Shocked, I rubbed my forehead and stared ahead.

  The… Wall?

  I’d expected more before I reached the wall. More danger, more darkness. The stories we were told as children made the wall seem treacherous, as though the dark magic would eat us alive simply for standing in its presence. And yet, I had just casually bumped into it, unscathed aside from a minor goose egg on my forehead.

  I reached out to the wall, feeling its hard yet smooth and invisible presence, and ran my hand along it. It seemed to hum beneath my palm, a slight vibration that felt almost electrical. I walked along the length of the wall, dragging my hand against it in awe, focusing purely on its essence and my footsteps so I didn’t trip and fall.

  I walked toward the ocean, my mind lost in the complexity of what I was experiencing. Even if I tried, I couldn’t access the dark river ahead. I walked and felt, guiding myself along the rocks until I reached a point where the wall no longer braced my hand.

  I felt around the space where my hand no longer felt the force of the wall. An opening, hard edges I could feel and squeeze my hand between.

  A crack?

  I took a few steps back. Beyond the river still was the nd behind it, the dark water before me. But where my hand had just been, a small rip appeared in my view of the river.

  More dark, deep earth extended from beyond the river rocks into the hole in the wall, which stood approximately as high as my chin and was as wide as a rge cow. The dark vines that crept along the terrain seemed to be crawling eerily from the wall.

  I could easily fit through the crack if I wanted to, and I wanted to. The urge to rush toward the river became an internal voice, as though the magic inside called to me.

  “It’s in here, Leora,” I heard in my mind, “What you seek lies in the dark”.

  And so I squatted, and through the crack in the wall I went, all knowledge of danger aside.

  The dirt on the other side of the wall looked like the earth outside, but even darker. It was bck as night, flickering with an unmistakable purple hue. There was no water where I stood, but deep bck earth covered in bright green ferns almost glowed with a vibrancy I had never seen, full of life. Tall, ashy grey trees surrounded me, branches curling like vines and extending around them almost like fences.

  The air within the walls felt different; a consistent whirring sound was heard throughout, regardless of the ck of wind. I felt eerie, uncomfortable, and had a strong sense of danger. Yet I felt at ease even knowing I had entered what was quite possibly my deathbed. My skin tingled as I brushed against a fern leaf, warming my skin and almost tugging a small smile from my lips.

  I leaned down, brushing my hand across the pnt and feeling it lightly, when a low growl ripped me from my focus and dragged me back to reality.

  Instant terror flooded through me as I realized the danger I had truly put myself in.

  I felt heavy footsteps nearby and heard the pounding as they thumped against the ground. I could sense the eyes on me, though I didn’t look up. I didn’t know whether I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, but my eyes and body didn’t move from that beautiful green fern.

  The footsteps stopped, and silence grew. Slowly, I stood and turned to face my left, where the creature met me. I was face to face with the drooling mouth of what appeared to be the most enormous wolf I had ever seen. Deep bck fur and razor-sharp teeth were less than three feet from my face, panting heavy, rank breaths that nauseated me.

  I shifted my gaze upwards and made eye contact with giant, deep purple eyes.

  The creature huffed, releasing more foul breath into the air and unching saliva onto the ground before me. Its eyes narrowed, and its paw lifted as though it would strike me down with one blow.

  I had to move now.

  I pivoted as quickly as possible on my left foot, turning so sharply that I feared I would snap my ankle. As I reached for my knives, I began sprinting for the crack in the wall. The creature let out a low roar, undoubtedly a warning to its now-running prey.

  Just as I reached the tree I had seen first upon entering the wall, the beast nded in front of me, skidding to a stop and tossing bck earth into the air as he nded.

  I let out a blood-curdling scream, my body smming to a halt so fast that I struggled to keep my bance. I stumbled backward, knees buckling, fumbling to unsheathe the bde in my pocket, as the beast lowered its head and snarled – its razor-sharp teeth bared.

  The creature lunged just as I could unbutton my dagger and pull it free of my pocket.

  I threw my body weight to the side, rolling my face across the dry roots of a nearby tree as its cws sshed through the area I had just been. My arm seared with pain, a fsh of heat as the edge of a cw sliced through the sleeves of both my cloak and shirt.

  As the beast redirected its attention to where I now y on my back, I gripped my dagger tightly with my unscathed arm and began wildly swinging. It charged toward me, mouth wide, and just as I thought it would rip my head from my body, I felt the bde of my knife connect with the rugged jawline of the creature.

  It jerked back, briefly shaking its head, and I could see the small, jagged scratch I had left. For a small moment, I felt hopeful that I would survive.

  Then it locked its eyes on me again and released a jarring snarl as it reared back to deliver another blow.

  I braced myself for its impact, gripping my knife tightly and raising my arm in hopes I could deliver one more blow before it reduced me to shreds. The sharp cws aimed for my chest, and I held my breath as a whirl of silver ripped past my vision and lodged itself in the creature’s leg.

  A knife – and not mine.

  “MOVE!” A voice shouted, and I listened instinctively as the creature focused in the direction the knife came from.

  Darting again to my right and bracing the ground with my good arm, I pushed myself to my feet as fast as possible. I heard the whoosh of another flying weapon just behind me and listened to the thunk as more metal lodged into the creature’s thick fur.

  I turned, the beast now lying on the ground behind me. It seemed to teeter on the brink of death, its deep violet eyes darting left and right as its panting heavily slowed. One knife lodged in its leg, the one I had witnessed, and another through its right side where its heart should lie.

  “Turn around, head right back through that split in the wall, and go HOME, " the voice said, and I snapped my head to the right. A tall man in a bck uniform with golden accents strode toward me angrily, his jet-bck hair with small waves just above his ears whipped in the buzzing air.

  The outfit colors were unmistakably Valorian, and he looked pissed.