Diya trudged down the narrow path that led to the old graveyard, her boots sinking into mud soft with last week’s rain. The air was thick and smelled of wet earth. Every footstep made her stomach lurch. She glanced back at the chanting witches and Tamsin watching from the entrance. Lanterns flickered along the rust-gnawed wrought-iron gates, their light crawling over broken headstones and leaning statues, casting long, skeletal shadows that reached toward her like hands. Somewhere in the distance, a crow barked once, then fell silent, as if it had been plucked right out of the mortal realm.

  She tightened her cloak around herself, wishing she had packed more than the bare essentials. Her satchel held a few bombs, a hunk of bread, the small jade stone Tamsin gave to her, and the small knife she always kept tucked away in her boot; all more or less useless against the dead, she reminded herself, though it felt nice to feel the familiar jingle of her explosives on her person, somehow the bombs offered her more comfort than the little green rock. The coven had been explicit; she could not bring anyone with her into the graveyard. Not Tamsin, not the elders, not even Shikra. She would face this trial alone.

  A week had passed since the Pool of Reflection, since she had tested the boundaries of memory and shame and lived to see the other side. After that ordeal, she couldn’t imagine a more challenging trial, but the fluid nature of them made them rather tricky to predict. The witches had promised her the first trial would be “different,” but no one had been able, or likely more accurately, allowed to explain how.

  The farther into the graveyard she got, the thicker the mud seemed to get, until each step was laborious and she wondered if her boots might be at any moment swallowed whole by the hungry ground. A cold wind blew through the place, rustling the leaves of the weeping willow trees and sending a chill down her spine. Craving the warmth of Tamsin’s smile, she looked back to the gates, only to be left wanting as a thick fog had blanketed the ground, making it impossible to see further than a few feet.

  Pulling her cloak tight around her shoulders, Diya pressed on. She endured, arduous step after arduous step, all sense of her surroundings lost, it very well could have been ten steps or it could have been two hundred, that was where she came upon a statue most strange. Carved from a dark stone with veins of silver snaking through it, the statue resembled a blindfolded woman, ridiculously oversized hat atop her head, lips sewn shut, and with a single hand outstretched, palm pointed to the sky.

  Diya couldn’t put her finger on it, but the statue sort of gave her the creeps, though in the middle of a foggy graveyard, she supposed even a kitten might creep her out. Her initial reaction was to get away from the statue, but the more she gazed upon it, the more she felt like it might have something to do with the trial.

  After a thorough examination, she noticed that a series of narrow and intricate pathways were carved into the outstretched palm and snaked to a cavity where the heart might have been were it human. Chewing on her lip, she pondered how to proceed. That’s when a memory hit her like a chill wind, it was the night she and Tamsin had created the weapon that drove off the Skarlith. Tamsin had sliced her palm and dripped her blood into the formula that had provided her this opportunity to take part in these trials.

  Without hesitation, Diya fished the dagger from the hidden sheath in her boot. She groaned as she wiped the mud from its braided handle, then ran the sharp edge along her palm. A crimson line appeared, then gathered when she squeezed her fist.

  Drop. Drop. The blood dripped down into the outstretched palm—where it flowed through the pathways like a sanguine river—eventually making its way to the hole where the heart might have been. For a moment, there was no reaction, and Diya rolled her eyes at the notion that she was out here freezing her ass off in a cemetery and had just sliced her palm open for no reason at all.

  The idea was hushed when the ground around the statue began to rumble violently. The air tasted of alchemical combustion as the mouth of the statue opened with the screech of grinding of stone. Out of the now open mouth, a terrible noise like a pulsating siren bellowed.

  Hands shooting to her ears, Diya crouched and looked aroun,d eyes wide with worry. If every corpse resting in this place had been jarred awake by the racket and now descended upon her, thanks to this bloody fog, she wouldn’t have had a clue—a thought that reassured her greatly.

  The courageous thought of fleeing struck her suddenly, but she dispelled it just as suddenly, for where would she flee? She was lost in a graveyard afterall. Therefore, she decided to hold her ground, or perhaps she was sick of this hellish mud. Hell, perhaps it was the ground that was holding her. It didn’t matter, she was here for the trial and what would be would be.

  Diya embraced her fate. Or at least she thought she did, for that’s when she realized she had no idea what form the dead might even take. She wasn’t what one might consider an expert when it came to conversing with the dead. Quite the contrary as a matter of fact, she had absolutely zero experience bargaining with those who had moved past the mortal realm.

  Her lamentations on the ridiculousness of her current predicament were cut short when the mangled corpse of a girl appeared from the fog. She wore the uniform of a Ghaneshan cadet, though in Diya’s experience they weren’t usually this stained with mud or in such a dire state of decomposition. The corpse shambled forward, bones popping and clicking, until it stood face to face with her.

  “This can’t be real,” Diya muttered, jaw dropping to the mud.

  Identifying a corpse that didn’t have all that much flesh left clinging to it’s bones wasn’t easy, but she recognized this one. She knew this girl. This cadet had flown into battle with her the day she rescued Zoralia from the Crimson Mast Syndicate raiders. This cadet had trusted her. And what did that trust buy her? By the looks of it, a long fall from the clouds into a shallow grave.

  Diya shook her head, hands out in front of her. “Th-th-this isn’t what I wanted. I sh-sh-should’ve protected you!”

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  The corpse of the cadet, matted hair barely clinging to the scalp, opened its jaw, maggots spilling out onto Diya’s boots. “I still don’t know if you were wrong…or it was my fault…I could’ve paid better attention at academy…been a better soldier…”

  Guilt stung Diya’s face worse than the odor of the blackblood refinery. “Nonsense! You did everything that was asked of you! I was wrong to put you in that situation in the first place; you weren’t ready for battle.”

  “I just wanted to feed my family…they said I would only be on guard duty…” said the corpse.

  “You shouldn’t of had to go into battle! I should have told The Council you weren’t ready; it’s my fault.” Pleaded Diya, face gaunt as she confronted the sins of her past. She was ashamed to acknowledge it, but she hadn’t even stopped to think about this cadet in the whirlwind that her life grew into after that fateful day. How many others had she neglected in this same way? How many had she thrown to the wind in pursuit of her ambitions? Was that human nature, or was she some callous sociopath?

  A bony hand grabbed at her, dirty fingers tightening around her wrist. “Your ambition is poison, your negligence criminal…for your sins…you must now answer!” The corpse sputtered in a dreadfully low and resonant tone.

  Diya panicked, trembling legs trying to flee, only to realize that the mud had immobilized her. No escape. That was when terrible, clawing, skeleton arms innumerable sloshed up from the earth and immediately began pulling her down into the mud. She screamed and fought, but her efforts only saw her sink that much quicker. It was no use.

  Before she knew it, she had sunk all the way to her waist. Every muscle in her arms and shoulders flexed and strained while she desperately tried to free herself from the sinkhole. It was no use.

  Down. Down. Down.

  Until she took one last deep breath, more a frantic gasp really, she was swallowed up by darkness and felt the cold mud pressing on her face. She made a pathetic attempt to break free of the mud, to pull her way to the surface, but she could find no relief. It was no use.

  With her mind consumed by panic, and the last of the oxygen in her lungs fading, she went still.

  That’s when she heard a voice in her head, Tamsin’s sweet, soft voice. “Hold this. Focus on it. Let your mind follow the texture, the weight. Even when the dead are clawing at you, you won’t lose yourself.”

  The words ignited something in her. Set her soul ablaze with the fiery energy of hope. She wriggled her fingers into her pocket and felt the smoothness of the stone gifted to her.

  In her mind, she saw Tamsin’s smirk, felt every ounce of her partner’s belief, felt her resolve explode like the mightiest black powder bomb. Suddenly, it all made sense. When she couldn’t believe in herself, she needed only believe in those who believed in her. Hope wasn’t misplaced.

  At once, the mud stopped sucking her down; it was as if gravity itself had been reversed by the unexplainable power of belief. There was an explosion of light, then Diya was fired out of the mud and into the air. She flew through the air for a moment, weightless, as if soaring through the clouds on Shikra’s back. That was when the laws of physics returned, and she went plummeting downward, landing next to the statue with a heavy squish.

  Her brief moment of transcendent triumph was exchanged for revolting reality. Diya sighed and did her best to wipe the mud from her face. The attempt was far from successful, something reminiscent of a man getting out of a pool and attempting to dry off by dumping a bucket of water on his head. She had never in her life been so covered in mud, mud in every nook and cranny; she may as well be the mud monarch, and she loathed it.

  After accepting that there would be no cleaning herself up until the trial was over, she set out to return to the cemetery gates. Except she realized she had next to no idea which direction that was. With a grunt, she picked a direction and set off.

  The fog hadn’t let up in the slightest; if anything, it had gotten even thicker. Her fingers traced the shape of the smooth rock in her pocket each time she felt her frustrations boiling over. Despite her predicament, the simple act was enough to keep her pushing forward.

  Just when the endless fog and dry, itchy mud had her thinking she might rub her fingers raw on the stone, a towering willow tree appeared out of the haze.

  Diya hesitated a moment, eyes squinting as she tried to better examine the silhouette. Her breath froze in her throat when she saw it; a man hung from the branches, body motionless. The nightmares slithered back into her mind like a brood of vipers, and she gasped, fighting with every ounce of will the reflex to flee.

  Again, she heard the voice in her head, Tamsin’s sweet, soft voice. “Hold this. Focus on it. Let your mind follow the texture, the weight. Even when the dead are clawing at you, you won’t lose yourself.”

  Gritting her teeth, fingers gripping the green stone tightly, she trudged toward the tree, towards her destiny, not ignorant, but rather prepared to face the sins of her past. The time for cowering from the marauding monster that was her memories should have ended at least a decade prior.

  Mud-caked boots sloshed beneath the rustling willow leaves as she attempted the breathing exercise Tamsin taught her. From above, she heard a sound that made her stomach drop, the snapping of a rope.

  Perhaps the time for cowering hadn’t entirely passed after all. Diya shut her eyes, letting ten controlled breaths pass before peaking like a child checking to make sure no one had found their hiding place.

  There he stood. Her father, noose dangling from his neck, face blank like a new canvas.

  Diya had practiced the moment a thousand times or more in her nightmares, and yet she now stood frozen, as if utterly unprepared for the heaviness of the moment. And indeed, heavy it was, the weight on her chest like a crate full of bombs primed to explode at the slightest spark.

  Her father’s face was bruised and dirty, yet his eyes were kind. A kindness that could melt the ice from a frozen heart and warm it by the hearth. The gentleness made her feel so much worse.

  Why couldn’t he be wrathful? Diya thought. I don’t deserve kindness.

  She grabbed his hands and held them tightly so he wouldn’t float away, so that the moment might last forever. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Forgive?” He asked, bushy brow raising. “That would require transgression…”

  Tears streamed down her face and her breath became heavy, every trace of the breathing technique abandoned, just as she had been. Her muddy fingers traced the frayed noose. “I did this…it’s all my fault.”

  He put his cold hand on her cheek. “You were only a child.”

  “A foolish, easily manipulated child!” Diya cried out. “I should never have given testimony…maybe then you would still be here with me…and things wouldn’t have gotten so out of control. You have every right to blame me!”

  “I believe in you, I always have. You have the strength, kindness, and intellect to change this broken world.” His eyes lit up like the detonation of a thousand suns. “I never blamed you, little star.”

  Diya hugged him tightly, pressing her cheek against his chest. His warmth was irrepressible; it seeped into her bones. Her mind. Her soul. Her eyes closed, and with tears pouring from them like a waterfall, she smiled.

  “Thank you.” She whispered.

  When she opened her eyes, her father embraced her, kissed her forehead and grinned at her. “Be brave, little star.”

  As he spoke, his body glowed brilliantly, then, in a blinding flash of light, disappeared; all that remained were a thousand motes of lustrous dust blowing away in the wind as the sun fell behind the skyline.

  The fog had finally gone. In the distance, she saw the cemetery gate where Tamsin jumped up and down, waving at her.

  Diya walked towards the gate, watching the last of the dust particles disappear in the wind. “Thank you,” she whispered.