Chapter 1: Introduction
The air in the Blackwood was always thick, tasting of damp earth and things decaying quietly under the moss. I pushed through a curtain of thorny vines, my leather gloves scraping against the bark. I’d been hiking for two days following that half-rotten map, and my patience was wearing as thin as the last of my water.
Then I saw it.
The Sorceress’s Tower wasn’t much to look at, just a jagged finger of black stone jutting from a rocky outcrop, cloaked in veils of grey mist. No glowing windows, no swirling storms above it. Just silence. That was almost worse. It felt less like a fortress and more like a grave marker.
I found the door—a slab of ironwood grown into the stone itself, nearly invisible. It swung inward at my touch with a groan that sounded too much like a sigh. Not trapped. Interesting. Either the sorceress was incredibly confident, or she’d been gone a long time.
Inside, the silence was absolute. My boots on the spiral staircase sounded like drumbeats. The place was a tomb, dust swirling in the thin light from arrow slits. I passed empty rooms with shelves of desiccated things in jars, libraries with books that crumbled at a breath. Nothing of power. Nothing of value.
At the top, in a circular chamber under a dome of smoky glass, I found her.
Not the sorceress. A mirror.
It stood alone on a stone dais, a tall oval of flawless silver glass in a frame of twisted, tarnished metal. My reflection was a ghost in it, pale and watchful. I approached, my disappointment sharp. Had I come all this way for a fancy looking-glass?
I reached out to touch the frame.
The surface rippled like water.
My reflection dissolved. The mirror went dark, then filled with a slow, swirling crimson light, like wine poured into the glass from within. A shape formed in its heart. I took a step back, my hand going to my sword.
She coalesced from the blood-light. A woman, or something like one. Her skin was the deep, vivid red of a setting sun, her hair a waterfall of spilled ink that moved in a breeze I couldn’t feel. She was clad in shadows and suggestion, but her eyes… they glowed with a steady, amber light. She pressed her palms against the inside of the glass, her expression one of aching relief.
“A visitor,” her voice echoed, not in the room, but directly inside my skull. It was smooth, husky, and layered with unthinkable age. “A brave one, to come so far.”
“What are you?” I demanded, keeping my tone firm. Spirits could smell fear.
“I am Tavix.” She smiled, and it was a beautiful, terrible thing. “I was called a goddess, once. In eras when your kind still huddled in caves and painted my symbol on the walls for protection.” Her head tilted. “Then I was… tricked. Bound here by the one who built this prison. She is dust now. I am not.”
A trapped spirit. A powerful one. My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. This was the power the old tales whispered about.
“Tricked how?”
“With promises of alliance. A shared throne.” A flicker of genuine anger heated her glowing eyes. “She wanted my knowledge, the secrets of realms beyond your petty mortal understanding. When she had siphoned what she could, she used my true name to cast me into this reflection. An eternity of watching the world gather dust.”
I circled the dais. The mirror showed only the room from every angle. She was only visible from the front, a living portrait. “Why hasn’t anyone else freed you?”
“The weak-minded cannot hear me. The greedy hear only their own desires echoing back.” Her gaze followed me, piercing. “You are different. I feel the hunger in you. Not for gold or lands. For substance. For a weight in your hand that means something.”
She saw right through me. The petty lords, the bandit kings, the dungeon delves for trinkets… it was all noise. I wanted the power that shaped worlds. The kind that lasts.
“You want to make a deal,” I said.
“A contract,” she corrected gently. “A spirit-binding, as your kind would name it. You speak the words of binding, break the seal… and my power will be set free. I become the wind at your back, the unseen hand that topples kingdoms. You get everything you deserve.”
A shiver ran down my spine. Everything I deserved. The phrase was a key that fit perfectly into the lock of my ambition.
“And you get your freedom.”
“Of a kind.” she whispered, her voice a caress. “Our fates will become intertwined. I will guid you, teach you, help you grow.”
It sounded perfect. Too perfect. “What’s the catch?”
“The catch,” she said, her smile turning wistful, “is that power like mine demands changes in you. Are you willing to be changed, hero? To become something… more?”
I stared at my own ordinary face reflected in the glass beside her radiant, impossible form. Simple skin. Yes. That’s all I was. All I’d ever been. Here was the chance to be more.
I didn’t want a servant. I wanted an army. I wanted a throne that echoed when I walked. She was offering me the foundation of that, and all it cost was a signature in blood.
“What are the words?” I asked.