Chapter 2

I watched him from the Grey Wastes, a misty, ethereal place of lost souls.

The Caretaker of Lost Souls, a spectral figure draped in sea-fog, offered me a chalice.

"The Cup of Final Silence, child. Drink, and forget."

I pushed it away.

"No. I want to remember his betrayal."

My bitterness was a shield.

Through a Scrying Pool, a shimmering surface of water in that desolate realm, I saw Kaelen at my grave.

My angry words echoed into his world. "You damn hypocrite!"

A link formed then, the Caretaker murmured, a "Heart-Sorrow Link."

He would feel echoes of my pain, the pain he caused.

He fell to his knees, digging at the earth of my grave with his bare hands.

He unearthed my coffin. Empty.

Only the simple, hand-knitted shawl remained. My grandmother's.

He' d always said he despised it, that it was common.

He clutched it, his shoulders shaking.

Despair. It radiated from him, even across the dimensions.

Then, he began a forbidden ritual. The Tide-Turning Ritual.

To reverse time.

To bring me back.

As the energies swirled around him, the Caretaker spoke again, its voice like the distant tide.

"He was bound by the Shadow Curse, child."

I turned, shocked.

"It was tied to the antique compass you found, the one that led you to him. He had to feign indifference to the true bearer of his heart, or the curse would have consumed you both."

The compass. I found it washed up on the beach. I thought it was fate.

It was fate, just not the kind I imagined.

The world twisted.