“You haven’t looked well lately. something bothering you?” Mondena asked, concern in her voice as she took in Eliza’s sallow face and the bruise-dark crescents beneath her eyes.

  “Nothing—maybe it’s the pressure from studying. I’ve been having nightmares lately.” Eliza rubbed the silver amulet and glanced toward the big tree at the edge of the field.

  “What kind of nightmare? Though honestly, your grades are already so good—you’re not doing practice tests in your sleep too, are you? Hey, what are the rest of us supposed to do, those of us with lousy scores who still need teachers to take pity on us?” Mondena joked. In fact, after two weeks together a quiet rapport had begun to take shape—more precisely, under Eliza’s care and encouragement, Mondena’s once-gloomy temperament was slowly brightening.

  “Not all practice tests…” Eliza murmured. “Last night I dreamed…” Her hand trembled without her willing it; then a coldness uncoiled from the base of her spine and spread outward.

  Because in last night’s dream she had seen it again—the antique clock that had appeared at the market.

  But it differed from reality: in the dream the clock was a vast disk hung in the sky by an invisible force. The brass dial had long since rotted and rusted; the painted enamel had peeled away in flaking layers. Where the Roman numerals should have been, the markings had been shaved away one by one and replaced with the twenty-four human figures Eliza had seen earlier in her prophecy. Silent and wreathed in thin mist, they were nailed to the face like limp, lifeless rags. Their eyes were thrown wide and vacant, fixed upon the enormous hand at the clock’s center.

  All at once Eliza noticed what she had failed to register when she revisited the site of the prophecy—what she had not had the time to truly observe: the figure fixed at Number Twenty-Four began to change. Unlike the other twenty-three deadened shapes, the gray-black haze shrouding this one suddenly thinned and blew away; the figure flared into a tall outline rimmed with a golden nimbus. The radiance swelled, so bright that Eliza could barely keep her eyes open.

  Forcing herself to see, she narrowed her gaze into the heart of the light. It was a man—clearly an elder. His frame was powerful; his hair fell long down his back; a beard of gold hung naturally from his chin. Yet even in that blaze his features wavered, their edges drowned in glare. Bracing against the brilliance, she lifted her head to meet his eyes. As she did, she could not help but expel a first breath. Perhaps driven by that breath, the massive hand—caked with rust and a tar-like grime—gave a thunderous jolt, sprang from its resting point, and began to revolve counterclockwise.

  As the hand swept past the man blazing with gold, the impossible occurred: the flame-bright aureole was snuffed in an instant. The elder’s head dropped; a deep seam opened at the center of his chest and split wide. Blood welled from the shocking wound, pouring along the metal channels of the dial and dripping downward. The moment the blood touched the cold rock beneath the colossal clock, the whole earth convulsed. The hideous sound of ground riving widened and rose, and, mingling with noises from the earth’s core, turned into an uncanny, rolling thunder.

  In the tremor Eliza’s footing slipped; she crashed to her knees. Grabbing a jut of stone for support, she steadied her breath and peered up at the clock’s face: the opened elder’s eyes had dimmed to lifelessness; the heart laid bare to the air withered like a shriveled fruit, hardened in the cold wind, and crumbled to grit. Then, from behind him, a dense human-shaped white mist surged upward. It gathered and drew tight until it had taken on the old man’s very likeness.

  Eliza was struck dumb, terrified and aghast, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes. She knew it was the old man’s soul—and that soul, screaming as it went, was being dragged by some force straight into the center of the clock.

  The second. The third. The fourth…

  With each precise fall of the hand, another of those poor people was called by name and laid open from breast to belly; threads of soul were torn raw from their spines and, under the clock’s inward pull, vanished into an unseen aperture at the core. Their screams were not the cries of throats but a kind of unspeakable resonance that pierced straight through Eliza’s eardrums and rattled her blood and heart.

  “Don’t look,” she told herself. But the hand kept running backward. As one by one the souls were sucked into the clock and as the blood continued to fall, the earth’s convulsions grew still more violent; and for an instant, as the hand swung toward the last few, Eliza thought she heard, from deep within the ground, a muffled bellow—something brute and abyssal…

  At last the hand leveled at the twenty-fourth. The handsome influencer did not rant, did not struggle. He only breathed out, softly: “As someone who has seen the wonders of this world…”—and died. The final wisp of soul rushed into the clock’s core.

  In the next heartbeat, the hand dissolved…

  It did not snap, nor did it shatter; rather, like a shadow recalled to darkness on schedule, it was wiped clean out of reality. At the same time, the clock’s center began to blacken, to heave like upwelling tar, to boil, and a malefic fog of interwoven black and red rose: it was like cotton tinder catching from a single spark, uncanny red light flickering, blood-crimson and pitch-black chasing one another within. Scalding cinders crackled from the fog and peppered Eliza’s skin, and the sting drove a cry from her throat—not illusion, but real burning pain, crawling along her cheeks, her arms, her whole body…

  The malefic fog kept spreading. It swept over the twenty-four corpses and swallowed them all. As flesh and blood sank within, a long, eerie sigh welled from the heart of the red glow—like a murmur rising out of a grave, knotted with a thousand wrongful souls, with screams and sobbing beyond counting. Then, within the thickening vapor, four eyes slowly opened.

  At first there was only a single pair, and they were not human: they had neither sclera nor pupil, only two clots of flame, burning. Tracks like molten rock streamed from those sockets; when they struck the ground they turned to a heavy black liquor that burned through the stone. The other pair that opened afterward was larger—so vast that Eliza could not describe its diameter by any ordinary measure; and in those second eyes two dark vortices kept rolling: seas heaved within, lightning and a chill gleam flashed and flashed again, as if the entire ocean and storms without number had been gathered there. The four eyes surveyed the world, then snapped toward Eliza and fixed, unblinking. There was nowhere left for her to run. Her throat cinched; cold sweat slid down her spine.

  Eliza had already collapsed to the ground in fright. She tried to brace her hands and scoot backward, and found her body would not obey. She looked down: a baggy outfit hung on her, its cut and colors nothing like her own habits. Worse, the body itself was far from her true frame. Startled, she raised her hand and saw the back of it pleated with the creases of age, stained as if with herbs and blood. Horror of gore and of that gaze kept spreading through her; and now, recognizing her body’s alteration, she broke altogether—for she could not be sure who she was now, what she was, or in whose body she found herself.

  But it was not yet her turn to be afraid. All at once, countless black-red hands thrust out of the fog—clumps of ghastly fingers like deadwood. Their surfaces were like charred bark; their tips had been eaten by lye, exposing the flesh beneath, which writhed and crawled. Those hideous hands kept levering the fog wider, and between them the four eyes pressed forward.

  Eliza opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come. One hand flew to her throat; her eyes went wide; within the smallest possible range she shifted focus, trying to find some blank in the scene where she could exist.

  “Don’t look,” Eliza told herself again. But she knew it was already too late.

  As a myriad ghost-hands reached, the fog burst into chains of sparks that spattered across Eliza’s brow ridge, her zygomas, every patch of skin; the pain was unbearable, and she curled and dropped. With a queer detonation the four eyes moved in earnest: the eyes of flame narrowed, as if laughing; the eyes of sea-storm drove outward, as if to spill the gales and towering waves pent in their pupils. Now, at last, Eliza felt the force pouring from those two gazes—heat, cold, wetness, a breath like death itself—striking her all at once.

  “Ah!” She jerked hard and woke, drenched in sweat.

  Her breath had not yet steadied. She scanned every corner of her room in fright; only when she was sure the horrors she had just seen were a dream did she let out a long exhale. She dragged heavy steps into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of hot tea to calm her nerves; and when she lifted her eyes to the sky she found it roofed in strange nimbostratus with a faint purple-red sheen. “Some special weather pattern?” Eliza murmured. But she had no mind for it now. After a night of nightmares she only wanted some fresh air.

  She threw on a simple windbreaker, warmed her hands around a thermos, and went out—and as she crossed her threshold, a queer tug flickered through her mind: Go take a look at the town square. Maybe she was simply exhausted; maybe it was the nightmare. A walk among shops and stalls might help.

  What Eliza did not know was that an unseen force was drawing her on, leading her toward the place where wonders would be seen.

  The purple-red thunderclouds overhead slowly turned gray-green; thunder grumbled, like some great beast giving a clumsy lowing in the distance. The square looked as it always had, and yet no sound could be heard. Everything was preternaturally still. Eliza lifted her eyes and looked around: the houses at the square’s edge were smudged to blurs behind a thin curtain of rain; the canopies’ bright fabrics had dulled in the weather’s strangeness. There were many people in the street, but there was no one talking. They all stood quietly, every one of them with their backs to Eliza.

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  She could not see a single face, not even a clean, entire profile.

  “Mom?” Eliza called suddenly, still sweeping her gaze. A familiar figure stood with her back to her before a stall—that was her mother’s coat, her mother’s gathered hair... she jogged up and laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  The woman whipped around.

  Eliza’s known world collapsed in that instant. She stared at a visage that was and was not a face—the outline matched her “memory,” the positions of the features were “more or less,” but the whole had been sluiced from above with burning tar and pitch. Shiny black filth sheathed the skin; black-red tongues of fire sizzled; blackened liquid streamed down the cheeks, striking the stones with a hiss of white vapor and breathing out a stench that mixed cloying sweetness with rot. Across “her mother’s” chest a wide dark blotch had spread, the color of dried blood feathering shocking patterns into the gray-white cloth.

  Eliza’s knees went out and she sagged to the ground. She tried to scream, and it was as if someone palmed her mouth and nose; no sound came. She crabbed backward, her hands skating mud across the slick stones. The burning, befouled face did not come closer; it only “looked.” Eliza could not see any pupils, yet she knew this “person”—this thing that wore her mother’s look—was waiting for its chance, probably ready to harm her.

  The next moment, the people who had been standing in the street twitched their shoulders as if they had received a silent order, and turned to face Eliza. Without exception, every face was wrapped in the same tar; flames burned across them; black, fetid liquid dripped from zygomas and jawlines. Unlike the one that looked like her mother, the filth that leaked from these faces split the paving the instant it touched, cracking and collapsing the stone and exposing the darker earth beneath. That hideous corrosion advanced with the march of their feet. They didn’t run; but came on with a slow, mechanical, irreversible tread.

  “Don’t—don’t come any closer…” Eliza did not know to whom she was speaking. Her gaze razored around, hunting any place to hide—but the square held no safety. Behind the stalls were more backs; at the thresholds of every house and shop more figures stood, turning. Eliza had nowhere to flee. Her heartbeat swelled in her ears, heavy and dull, until her temples throbbed. She tried to rise—and found she was wearing, again, that ill-fitting clothing. Her body, as in the earlier dream, had begun to change.

  On the verge of collapse, her right hand already forming a seal, she was about to cast a spell in sheer defense when a pale hand wearing a scarlet ring reached from her left, found her wrist unerringly, and closed with iron strength.

  Eliza snapped her head around—

  It was a woman of astonishing beauty. Her features were fine, porcelain-delicate—so beautiful as to seem abrupt and obscene in this horrific scene. And she did not seem human. Rotted leaves and charred vines hung from her whole body; her skin was the color of lime stirred with cloud. Smiling with reddened eyes, she fixed them on Eliza and slowly opened her mouth.

  The sound that came out was not a human voice. It was like two vocal cords of different sex forcing each other—one high, one low—scraping and shoving together into a strange, blade-edged howl. That tone, driven to its limit, traveled through the air and Eliza’s eardrums like an invisible, terrifying bowstring drawn beside her ear. Even as Eliza stared, the woman’s “beautiful” face gave a faint shudder; then it split down the middle as if by a sharp blade, revealing the other body hidden beneath the skin—the very twenty-fifth faceless woman she had seen in prophecy.

  This woman, hung all over with clotted, putrid flesh, pressed down with a touch and pinned the already limp Eliza to the ground. Eliza gathered her will to fling the creature off, but the monster’s look—and the sigh braided with it—locked every nerve in her body. The faceless woman reached her other hand behind her, drew a broken spear from her waist, and with that dreadful voice chanted, “Af oreum tínum má tér verea tyrmt; en mee dauea tínum skulu framtíe mín ok ríki mitt miklast.

  By Thy Words, Thou Mayst Be Spared; And By Thy Death, My Future And My Realm Shall Be Made Great · English Version,” and then drove the bronze-glinting spear straight for Eliza’s chest—

  At that moment a thunderclap rolled out of the cloud-choked sky, and time stopped.

  All motion slowed to the edge of perception. The rain still fell, and the fine drops drew out into long threads of light before Eliza’s eyes. Tongues of flame crept and withdrew along the edges of the “faces” in the tar. The keen spear hung suspended in air. Eliza heard her own heart knocking in her chest—not a single thud, but a sound decomposed into two beats, and three.

  Then Eliza’s soul began to shudder.

  That is not poetry. Her consciousness was struggling inside bone and blood to find a way out. A force rose from the back of her spine and pushed her senses—even her very soul—out of that body. “Ah—” At last she found her voice, and she flung herself upright from the bed, drenched in sweat.

  Harsh breaths rang through her room—and this time the echo was real. Eliza looked down: the violet-blue iris-print quilt had been wrenched into a lump; pillow, sheets, and fringe of hair were soaked. She steadied her mind, then pinched the cuff of her sleep shirt: the garment was hers; and the size too. She tried a blink; her lids stroked obediently up and down. Eliza flicked her hand toward the desk and, with a thought, a silver amulet leapt from the tabletop into her palm. “Syn dags, blekkingar n?tur; af mínum oreum verei sannleikr ljós, er sál mín logar.

  The Vision Of Day, The Illusions Of Night; By My Words, Let Truth Be Told As My Soul Ignites · English Version.” The amulet engraved with flames and the sign of the war-god Tyr began to kindle with a faint gold; the light grew stronger, even pricking her skin with heat.

  “Tch.” Eliza sucked the singed finger and allowed herself a small smile, then smoothed it away at once: she knew that flicker was not relief, only the natural rebound of muscle on returning to the real. She set a hand to her chest, and her racing heart little by little came to normal. “A dream within a dream,” Eliza murmured. She knew she was truly awake; what she could not be sure of was whether—even in waking—she could make sense of those dreadful scenes, those burning faces, that broken spear hanging still in the air, or keep their pressure from her door.

  “What did you dream?” Mondena asked.

  “Huh? Oh—just a nightmare. I’m fine now.” Eliza let out a long breath.

  “You were silent for almost five minutes and you call that fine? You’re pale as a sheet. Nightmare and no lunch—hello, low blood sugar. Come on. You’re always buying me drinks, and I always feel guilty. Today I’m taking you for a flat white. On a gloomy day, a little sweet will makes you happier,” Mondena said, stroking Eliza’s shoulder.

  “I’m really fine,” Eliza said, rubbing her eyes.

  “Oh, come on.” Mondena took the still-morose Eliza by the hand, and together they walked off the field.”

  “Two flat whites, with oat milk! Do you want to go sit over there and wait for me? The queue is pretty long,” Mondena said, fishing a few crumpled banknotes from her backpack and calling over to Eliza.

  Eliza dipped her head in a small nod, skirted the crowd, and went straight to the door. The rain had thickened again. She lifted her gaze to the ground where the leaves knocked down by the rain were plastered to the pavement, and a chain of thoughts rose in her

  “Since the day of the riverbank initiation, this omen has hung over me like a shadow. No one around me understands what it is to be kept in the dark, to be walled off from the truth. From that ceremony in London till today’s nightmare and A dream within another, I don’t want anyone calling me weak or melodramatic; Parents and the Coven still keep the information sealed tight, even telling me I’ll only be told more after I return to Norway for a formal initiation. I’m tired... Every so often I get dragged back into the tangle of nightmares and confusion. What does the prophecy actually mean? Why won’t the Three Mothers of Fate reveals more? Who is the faceless woman? Whose body was I in last night? In this prophecy, what exactly am I supposed to be?”

  At that thought, Eliza’s heart tightened once more. Pressure, wave after wave, left her short of breath. She could only breathe deeply, again and again, to steady herself.

  “Here.” Mondena came over with two cups of steaming coffee. “I know you’re not feeling well today, but there’s always a way through, isn’t it? Didn’t you mention that to me back then?”

  Eliza turned slightly and gave Mondena a wry smile. “Yeah. If we’re still alive, there’s always a way. I’m just overthinking it today.” She took a big gulp—and forgot it was fresh and scalding. Heat bit her tongue. “Ow!” Her features scrunched all at once. Mondena snorted a laugh. “Still pretending you’re fine? I’m waiting for mine to cool. Take it slow.”

  Eliza laughed at her own impatience, snapped the lid back on, dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin, then exhaled a long breath. “Thanks for the coffee. That burn just brought me back to life, haha. Come on, let me walk you home.”

  The rain stopped. In an alley near Avon Way, Eliza and Mondena were chatting as they hopped through puddles. Mid-sentence, four tipsy teenagers came lurching toward them from the far end of the lane: their clothes were rain-soaked, buttons misfastened; one gripped a half bottle of Black Label with the cap off. Cigarettes hung from their mouths as they jostled each other and kept kicking the corrugated metal barrier that fenced off a construction site.

  Mondena’s face clouded; she seemed to know their illustrious history. “Let’s move. These guys aren’t good news.” Eliza glanced over—she wasn’t afraid, but she did tuck her canvas bag tighter under her shoulder.

  “Who are these then? Out in a back alley on a rainy day looking to score a hot stranger?” The first to speak was a buzz-cut kid in an army-green jacket. He took a swig from the Black Label his buddy handed him and leaned right up to Mondena. Mondena startled and took an instinctive step back. Eliza clenched a fist, fixed the boy with a half-smile, and said, low and even, “Excuse us. Let us pass.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Pretty girls like you don’t want to have a little fun? You and your shy friend join us and we’ll show you a good time, yeah? Right, Mat?” The buzz-cut turned to a long-haired man in a black T-shirt with a crotch sagging to mid-thigh. As he spoke, his hand reached toward Eliza’s cheek. Eliza caught his wrist, arched a brow with a spark of anger, and lowered her voice: “I said—let us pass.”

  “And if we don’t?” His hand slid straight to Eliza’s waist. Mondena was shaking now. A sharp crack—Eliza’s palm whipped across the buzz-cut’s face.

  “You little bitch.” He cupped his stinging cheek and barked, “Guys, let’s have some fun!” He slammed Eliza into the wall, grinning a mean, greasy grin as he yanked down his zipper. The others closed on Mondena, hands already landing on her shoulders.

  Rage surged. Eliza pulled a ballpoint pen from her canvas bag and raised it in a guard. “What—you think that crap will save you? Come on, you little minx, show me what you’ve got.” He licked his lips and leaned in. Eliza slashed with the pen to keep him off, but that only excited him—he ducked and reached again, aiming for her chest. A scream tore out of him. He clapped a hand to his face, where a fresh, hairline scratch bled. “You dared to mark my face? Hah! Bitch! You won’t give up, huh? Come on—let me fix you up with the pleasure you crave.”

  The others were already on Mondena, hands roaming the unarmed girl, one even yanking up the hem of her shirt.

  “Enough.” Eliza’s eyes flashed red as she shouted.

  With a bang the buzz-cut flew, lifted off his feet by an invisible shove, and crashed into the corrugated fence several meters away. The metal buckled in a deep dent. Stunned by the hit, he sobered halfway, went from dazed to livid, and gathered himself to lunge back at Eliza.

  The others, startled by the noise, dropped Mondena and rallied to his howl, moving on Eliza.

  “Pa. Pa. Pa. Pa.” Eliza cut the signs with her right hand. Using Telekinesis to invoked those Invisible force to slammed all four drunken idiots into the metal sheeting. “Vándar sálir frá Lífsins tré, hlyeie máli mínu ok fremjie gl?pi yera. Mee afli mínu, kveikist nú—megie lifa eea skulue deyja.

  Wretched souls from the Tree of Life, obey my voice and commit thy crimes. By my power, now ignite—you may live or must die.”

  She opened the five claws of her left hand and squeezed the air. At once, welts rose around the throats of the four youths. Faces flushed to purple; tears and snot streamed. They clawed at their necks, scrabbling at the invisible noose.

  Mondena’s legs buckled and she sat hard, trembling. Two shocks colliding in her system—the near-assault, and her friend’s impossible powers—left her mind confused and blank.

  “It’s been a hard day. I’d rather not end it in wrath and sweat. You morons—shameless, worthless creatures—walking through this town like dogs. Is that what we women are to you? So people who haven’t hurt anyone deserve to be harmed and humiliated like this? Or do you expect women to look down, keep quiet, and let you keep messing with our bodies—or our lives?”

  Eliza smoothed her mussed hair. “This is the first and last time you disrespect us. It ends here. If you spread any rumors or dare to gossip about what you did to us, you’ll taste my wrath!And I assure you,Next Time You will choke on it!Now,Out of my sight!”

  With a light wave, she released them. The four thugs sucked air in ragged gasps, horror stamped on their faces. “Witch?!” the buzz-cut croaked, as if a thought finally struck him. He grabbed his mates, and they scrambled, tripping over each other to flee the alley.

  Eliza hurried to Mondena, helped her up, and sat with her on a stoop. “Are you okay?”

  Mondena was still on the edge of shock. She shrank back a little, voice shaking. “I—I… they’re gone… we almost…” She tried to say something, but terror left her unable to form a full sentence.

  Eliza patted her back and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “It’s over. They’re gone. I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough—otherwise they wouldn’t have had the chance to lay a hand on us.”

  Mondena turned to Eliza, breathing hard, eyes full of confusion and fear. “They were just drunk punks… so you, Eliza—Who are you? Or… what are you?” Her voice still trembled; she was on the verge of breaking.

  Eliza sighed. “You went through what you never should have, and saw what you never should have seen.”