There was no sense of urgency or time in that place, but the spirit felt its passage with keen attention. The one called Veleph explained how time flowed in both directions here, a river with tides wholly of its own discretion. Hours coursed into days, days coursed into hours, and sometimes it held still. The spirit felt the river wind its waters through that place of nothingness, and knew she had been there too long and yet not long enough.

The one called Veleph grew weary after many days—or hours—of travel through the static dark of the void. He answered the spirit's questions in his patient manner, ever ready with a word to urge her onward, and confessed to a certain lassitude of his own spirit. The spirit understood he was not as she was and that he did not belong in this place. She didn't belong in this place either, but his exclusion was different. He explained the idea of a projection, a thought made corporeal in the void where being and unbeing could be interchangeable, and expressed how their travels here exhausted him.

When she asked why, he simpered and said, "Too thin, little one. I've stretched myself too thin pushing my thoughts into the void while giving my attention elsewhere. A realm must be led, even one so disorderly as the Pit, and my voice must be given to my agent in the real. Many roads with many destinations, and I must walk them all."

The spirit contemplated his meaning and remembered the words. Though she kept dropping threads, she remembered more of his words. The spirit remembered more of herself.

'Ere they journeyed too long into the nothing and lost themselves to its malicious ministrations, the one called Veleph led the spirit to a place where the void was not as prevalent, where its existence and nonexistence were thrown into questionable disarray. A world became visible beyond their own, a world of bruised shadow and wavering light, but a world of substance all the same.

The spirit stood on a blackened mountaintop, separated from the real by a thin membrane at the void's end. They were there, but not there, only looking, like fish coming to the shallows of murky waters without actually touching the surface. The mountaintop was ringed in tall stones like fingers of the ascending dead poking through the upturned earth, each fingertip set alight with immense, roiling energy.

One among the fingers was calm, its energy harmonized into a single, shimmering thread that parted the void and disappeared to somewhere else. The others were not in settled states, clutching and twisting far too many threads about themselves until they appeared as a tangled web that frazzled the void's corners. Each finger plucked and plied its threads, sorting through them, searching for a melody like a jaded musician seeking to sooth its unquenchable need.

The spirit did not much like this place. The fingers pulled at her—yanked and pinched, pried and scratched. They attempted to change her song to fit their own, and she did not like that.

A man appeared at the mouth of the path leading down from the mountaintop. He was a man and yet not a man: he was a spirit like her, walking on the other side of the void, in the real. He was a tall creature with dark hair and a strained expression, a tiny spark of something silver clutched in his fist. As the spirit and the one called Veleph watched, he ran to one of the fingers, mountain the crooked steps, and came to where the rock was depressed and contoured into repose, the place where the energy pooled the most.

The other spirit—the man—thrust the silver object into the energy and shouted a name.

The one called Veleph stirred, a twisted wing curling about the spirit to draw her closer to his side. He laid a hand against her back and bent nearer her ear, his eyes still on the man. "He's going to die."

"He is?" The spirit frowned as a curious sensation gripped her middle.

Veleph nodded and continued to speak in a conversational tone. "Yes." 

They observed the man as he again shouted the name and despair began to take hold like a blue cord wrapping steadily about his throat.

"I told him a lie, you know."

The spirit was surprised, as Veleph had not lied to her for the duration of their time together. She wasn't sure if she'd known what a lie was before he mentioned it. "What did you say?"

"I had someone tell him the object in his hand could control a spirit, that it could summon it forth through the void. That is not true. There is nothing that can summon a spirit forth. They are autonomous things, freed of flesh's mandates, and thus cannot be compelled by earthly magics. They control their own fate, their own beings."

The spirit was troubled by Veleph's confession and wished he had not lied to the man. The sensation in her middle grew warmer and more peculiar.

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"Because he needs to believe he's in control, that fate is not beyond the dominion of his reach." Veleph laughed. "He is a very prideful man."

The spirit stared at the man in question as she and the one called Veleph came nearer. The man knelt as the spirit stared at the lines of his shoulders, at how they rose upward toward his ears, at the curve of his bowed back, at the long-fingered hands he braced against his sorrow-filled face.

"Forgive me," the man whispered to the slender silver vial resting upon the rock where the finger's threads were the most knotted. "Forgive me for asking too much of you, for leaving, for not listening. Forgive me for not being strong enough, or quick enough, or clever enough. Forgive me for failing you."

The wing at the spirit's side shifted and black feathers glanced across her arm. Veleph's voice was quiet when he spoke, the words fragile birds taking flight out of necessity rather than desire. "He needed to believe he could save you, and so I lied. I had Cage lie. Spirits cannot be risen, cannot be revived as a dying man at the brink of ruin can be. Souls can only return on their own volition, on their own strength, on their own determination." His eyes, like twin suns hung in the darkness, found the spirit's. "To that end, your destiny has always been your own. There were no witch spells to keep you composed, no mages to guide you forth. This journey was yours to undertake, and yours alone. Had you been weaker, had you cared less, had you wanted to move on—you wouldn't have made it here. You would have disappeared, and there is nothing he could do about it."  

The spirit laid a hand against her chest, wishing the pain there would disperse. She realized she could feel pain again. 

"It is ultimately your decision: will you return? Or will you not?" 

She didn't answer yet, because she was unsure. There was a serenity to the void's cruel caress that was difficult to shake, one she neither liked nor disliked but understood. She did not understand what returning meant, and that indecision sewed fear through the quiet spirit's heart.

The one called Veleph understood, and thus when he spoke he did so in a soothing voice, no judgment or challenge in his tone. "It is all right, little shadeborn." His gaze flickered to the man, then to the spirit again. "Do you want him to die? Does it matter to you?"

The man spoke again, words cracking like the glass angel the spirit had once watched Cuxiel shatter. The memory returned to her and she gasped, the feeling in her chest twinging painfully. Threads were returning, rising from the dark to twine themselves about her ribs and to tie tiny knots in her soul.

"Dammit, idiot girl!" the man shouted, and though there was anger in his voice, there was also grief. "Return to me!"

His eyes were a becoming shade of crimson, like the roses her grandmother had planted in her garden, or the ruby in her grandfather's silver ring. She remembered the black dagger set atop the ruby, and her Papy's laughter as he'd explained it was a family heirloom. "A little trinket from home, ma fée. They called us the Uncrowned once, you know."

The spirit hadn't known she'd been reaching for the man until her fingertips struck the void's end, where being and unbeing came to a head and created a physical barrier from the tension.

She remembered a dark night in a familiar room, the man sitting at the edge of the mattress, listening as she'd told him things she'd never be able to tell others. His crimson eyes hadn't flickered as she'd expressed a need for bloody vengeance and disgust for her actions. The spirit had displayed herself plainly for the man, had shown him the true weft and weave of her dark little soul and he hadn't minded. He'd liked all the things that'd always marked the spirit as different.

She was pressing against the barrier more firmly now. "His name is Darius."

"It is."

The spirit remembered more. The images came too fast to linger for long, but they came and they remained in her thoughts.

A name fell from the man's lips on a heavy exhale. The spirit knew it was hers. She knew it was hers, and knew she belonged there, not here. She belonged in the place where her name was spoken, where her memory was known. She belonged where she wanted to be.

Before the spirit could speak another word, the one called Veleph lightly pushed upon her back. The spirit fell forward into the harsh pull of the threads wound about the finger's spire.

The Seat of Pride was ripping my soul apart.

The vacuum of power created by my first death held its own resonance, a howling song that required the correct harmony to complement it, and so it tore at the void in search of a spirit that could serve its purposes. Every soul a Sin comes across in his life becomes entangled in the Seat's pull, though the souls eventually weather and disperse after a decade or so.

In simplistic terms, the soul of every dead person who'd crossed paths with a newly dead Sin in the last ten years of his life—be their meeting lasting or fleeting—was put into a catalog, and the Seat of the Sin perused that catalog in search of the soul who accompanied the Seat best. Those who'd died with prideful thoughts left small imprints or tones within their souls. It changed their song—minutely, but just enough to entice the Seat, as it'd been crafted to anchor the definition of a prideful soul. My soul.

The Seat recognized the resonance of my spirit and pulled at it. Pulled hard. It demanded my soul return, that I complete the tear in its manifestation, and thus bring order to its eternal, screaming choir.

I resisted. I came running across the mountain's pinnacle and ignored the hollow discord of six incongruous songs being wailed into the void and mounted the steps to the Seat of Pride. The energy there was weaker than it was in some of the others seats, but it was familiar. So familiar. Two Seats over, the Seat of Envy was an effervescent pillar, a spire of light so engorged with the tangled bits of souls Balthazar had stolen over the last ten years, that it nearly tore down the void with the insuppressible cyclone waiting to be filled.

Whoever ended up in that Seat would be in for a difficult time.

I spoke Sara's name, held the ampoule above the curve in the rock where I'd once sat and ruminated. I waited, and the fetters of despair took hold as nothing happened. I was so weary. The pain of the Seat's draw was agonizing, and I fell to my knees lest I collapse entirely.

As time passed and still I waited, fury ignited in my heart and a growl tore from my throat. She would not ignore me. Not now. Not after all I'd been through, after how far I'd come. I wouldn't be denied now.

"Sara!" I shouted, fists braced on the Seat's edge, head bent and my back bowed. "Sara!"

The energy changed then. It writhed in a new direction, something in its composition being altered to a new octave—and she appeared. There was no prophetic flash of light, no blare of trumpets or heralding voices. The kinetic energy spiraling from the Seat's vacuum crystallized into a tangible form as it shook matter from the stillness, and she appeared from one breath to the next.

Sara looked just as I remembered—or, more accurately, as she last remembered herself. Her clothes were ragged from her internment in Sethan's bunker, her black hair in knotted tangles about her face and neck. Every detail was precise. There was blood on her front from a wound that no longer existed. The fingers she'd plunged into Balthazar's chest were scarlet.

Had my heart been beating, it would have stopped. She was here. She was alive.

Sara was unconscious and slumped against the uneven rock. As Cage had said, I could sense the deficiency in her being that failed to bridge the gap between her material and immaterial states of actualization. She had a soul and a body, but lacked the connection to bring those two halves together to make them one. If she were to stay here, the Seat would quickly knit that connection between the halves, but she would be different. It would infuse her being with immortality and power while it also broke her soul, bending it to the Seat's requisite shape, changing its very nature. 

Sara wouldn't remain here. She would be fine, safe from the unceasing torture of a Sin's life. I would make sure of it.

My fingers weren't solid, and thus passed without effect across her dirty cheekbone.

Magic not of this realm rose in a sudden tide, though I recognized its acerbic taste as mage in origin. Before the Seat could accept Sara Gaspard as its new Sin, the magic twined its nebulous strands about her body and pulled her from this Realm. My weary spirit sighed with relief when she disappeared, and before the Seat could muster its strength to drag Sara back, I sank into its unyielding cradle and resisted its pull no longer.

As the energy tore through my being, I embraced the persistent ache and inhaled the taste of ash and brimstone. My soul was being unwound, its notes returning to where they belonged, the Realm of Sin beginning to fade from sight. The chaos emanating from the Seat of Pride found consistency in its song, and where souls once met in a thrashing choir now rose a terrible—familiar—war cry.

For the first time in months, I felt fire in my veins and basked in its assault.

Sara wasn't the only one coming home.