Persephone's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The doors shut behind her, and Persephone faced a road that was not a road anymore. The frozen ground stretched flat and black, cracked stones glinting with banked red embers like a river gone cold. Fog crawled low. Nothing grew. She lifted a hand to her hair and felt the ring of glowing runes settle there — a crown of orange light a witch had pressed onto her brow before she left. A queen's mark above ground. It hummed faintly, warm against the cold. She walked. The crown threw a small circle of light, but the world swallowed it. Hours passed, or what felt like hours. The wind cut through her robe. Her breath made hard white shapes. She called for her mother. No answer came. The road forked, then forked again, and every path looked the same. Persephone stopped. Her hands were numb. The ring of light at her brow flickered. She understood she could die here, halfway to the only person she had come to find. She knelt on the cracked stone and pressed her palms flat to the ground. "I am your daughter," she said. "I am here. Come find me." She pushed warmth from her crown down into the earth. The runes burned brighter. A thin line of orange light spread from her hands along the cracks in the stone, branching outward like roots. It traveled far. It traveled fast. Then it stopped. For a long moment, nothing. The wind died. The fog lifted a hand's width. Far down the road, a small gold point appeared. A torch. It did not move toward her. It only burned, waiting. A signal, not a welcome. Persephone got to her feet. Her mother had seen her. Her mother had not come. But the torch was a place, and a place was more than she had owned an hour ago. She pulled her robe tight, fixed her eyes on the gold point, and began to walk toward it.