Raven Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

The black sand rolled like water now. Raven Nightshade sank to her knees before she could run. Ayla grabbed her arm and pulled, but her own white boots slid too. Lyra fought to stand, one hand still pressed to the ground. "They're rising," Lyra said. "All of them. Toward us." Raven dug her claws in and found nothing solid. The moan swelled under her, closer with each breath. A hand of gray sand curled up around Ayla's ankle. Ayla swung her silver-crystal staff and burned it away with a flash of light. Two more rose to take its place. "There's no ground," Raven shouted. "We need to teleport out. Ayla, now." "I can't aim," Ayla cried. "The curse is pulling at my magic. I'll drop us inside the sand." Raven looked at the burning sky, then at her two cousins, both sinking. She had promised to come home in ten days. She had never planned to die on the first. Then the fog came. It poured over the shore in a gray wall, thick and cold, and it did not touch the black sand. It lifted them instead. Raven felt herself rise off the ground, weightless, wrapped in soft mist. Ayla gasped. Lyra clutched her orb. The three of them floated above the reaching hands while the curse groaned below, unable to follow. The fog set them down on hard stone at the shore's edge. A man stepped out of it. He was pale, with long black hair and a gray robe, and his eyes were dark as wet ink. Raven knew the face. She had seen it once at the Dead River. "The Keeper of the Fog," she said. Her claws stayed out. "You made the mark on our map. You sent us here." "I warned you here," Armin said. "There's a difference." He raised one hand, and the wall of fog thickened behind him, sealing the sand away. "Your husband and you once gave me back my city. I have not forgotten. I owe you a life, Raven. Today I pay it." Ayla lowered her staff. Lyra let out a long breath and knelt, shaking. Raven stayed tense. "Why help us cross the sea for this?" "Because the fog in your lands and the curse in this sand share one root," Armin said. "You cannot burn what sleeps here. You cannot fight it standing on it. But I can hold it back long enough for you to learn what it wants." He turned toward the burning horizon. "The ones buried below are not the curse. They are its victims. Someone put them there." Raven felt the ground go still under her boots for the first time. Solid stone. She flexed her claws and let them slide back in. "Then take us to whoever did it," she said. Armin nodded. The fog opened a path inland. Raven followed, her cousins at her back, off the shifting sand at last and onto a road she had not chosen.