Alex Anomaly's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Alex followed the underwater bell for two days. The white plain never changed. Every ridge looked like the last one, and every step drank a little more heat from their chest. The fire that had felt like a forge now felt like a stove going cold. Alex stopped and turned in a slow circle. No path. No landmark. Only snow in every direction, and somewhere ahead the heart, waiting. They could walk here until their flame guttered out and no one would find the ash. Then the wind broke, and a shape stood against the gray sky. A tree. It had no leaves. Its black branches twisted like reaching fingers, and thin embers glowed in the cracks of its bark. Alex had seen it before, on the cover of a book their mother kept. Demons of Magick. She had read it aloud when they were small. She had said the old ones left signs for their own kind, if their own kind knew how to read them. Alex ran to the tree. The snow at its roots was swept clean. Someone had drawn a pentagram there in charcoal, dark lines sharp against the white. Beside it stood a heavy wooden table. A worn cloth hung over its sides. Black iron candlesticks held stubs of candle. An open book lay in the center, its pages yellow and stained. This was not a trap. It was a station left by a demon who had come before, meant for the next one. Alex knelt at the pentagram and read the book. The marks were the same kind their mother had taught them. The page showed how to burn a question into charcoal and let the fire answer with a direction. Alex pressed a thumb to their sternum and drew a bead of ember light. Their hand shook worse than before. They traced fresh fire into the charcoal lines, following the book. "Show me the way to the heart," they said. The pentagram caught. Gold light ran the lines. One point of the star flared brighter than the rest and threw a long shadow across the snow, straight as a road. The shadow pointed north, toward a notch in the far ridges Alex had not seen through the storm. But the fire took its toll. The pentagram pulled at Alex the way the ritual circle had. Heat drained from their chest into the charcoal. Their orange skin dulled again. When the light faded, Alex sat gasping, colder than when they arrived. The path was real. It would cost them warmth to reach it. Alex closed the book and tucked it under their arm. They stood on shaking legs and faced the notch in the ridge. They had a road now. They also had less fire than any day since the walk began. Somewhere north the frozen heart pulsed, and it was counting the same fire they were. Alex started walking toward the gap in the ridges.