Nobody told her death smelled like burnt toast.

Clumps of mud clung to the tips of her boots, reminding her of the torrential rain that visited town for the last week. Her eyes trained towards the miniature urn being lowered by at least three prongs to a hole punched into the dirt. Were those prongs truly needed? Mavyn would have no way of knowing. Up until two days ago, she wouldn't have to because the contents of that urn walked among the living. Up until two days ago, Mavyn had a fiancé, and she was set to become Mrs. Philozoros, gallivanting around town as the wife of the young bachelor.

Time had a cruel way of passing.

Yesterday was spent preparing for the burial, with the matriarch of the Philozoros family calling every relative she could through the fastest page boys she found. At dawn today, people sauntered into the hall, dressed in the finest black apparel they scrounged together for the occasion. Everyone came for the man lying on a ceremonial casket with a shroud covering his face, and whispers flooded the small chapel the family's patriarch rented for the day. He shouldn't have died. This is way too early. Poor lad.

Not one of them glanced at the girl in the corner, standing closest to the door with a veil over her face as if saying she was one with her almost-husband. Mavyn preferred it, however. She didn't need to face nosy relatives and useless acquaintances. None of them would bring Abnegem back.

The mass ended around noon with a long procession from the chapel to the edge of nowhere where a graveyard awaited them. Mavyn remembered strolling past the markers, both bright and faded with time. Everything was the same. The same way Abnegem's wealth didn't save him on that rainy night, the people who beat him to this place saw no salvation from the thing they struggled all their lives to achieve.

If anything was crueler than Time, it was Death.

Mavyn flinched when flintstones screeched and embers sparked to life on the torch dipped in oil. The bright, flickering flames contrasted against the flecks of cinder flying into the wind's direction, black and ashen. She watched, eyes squinted, as the gravedigger—a man in his early adult years—touched the tip of the torch on the tip of the shrouded body. Her body stayed frozen, legs rooted to the ground, as the flames, in their hearty crackles, consumed the entire shroud and the corpse beneath it to a fine, silvery residue. With a few expert sweeps, her fiancé was squeezed into a clay pot she could have used to store fermenting xia beetroots in her cellar.

The smoke curling to the heavens and the smell they carry reminded Mavyn of the slices of bread she used to roast over an open-pit fire. Slap some butter in it, and she would survive until lunch.

Now, the urn made a final thump on the bottom of the hole, and with a grunt, the digger started doing the opposite of his job. Metal scraped the moist, upturned mulches with every scoop of the spade. Within a few minutes, the hole disappeared, taking her fiancé with it. Forever. Her eyes remained dry. These people didn't deserve to see her tears nor witness her suffering.

A snotty sniff echoed from Mavyn's left. She turned to find a tall woman with pinned up blond hair dabbing an embroidered kerchief under her nose. "Poor lass," she muttered under her breath. "Your life is over before it even starts."

Which said a lot about how these poor lasses saw their own lives. Mavyn's teeth dug against her tongue. Silence was her cloak as much as the netted veil over her face was. "Come on, Marmie," another reedy voice speared through Mavyn's ears. "She's not worth spending a dime of your attention on."

She turned to find more elegantly dressed women crowding around the blonde. The hems of their dresses dragged against the mud, and if Mavyn told them, chaos would erupt. Better that than pompous grief.

"What did Mr. Philozoros even saw in her?" The question made Mavyn's gut churn. "She's nothing special."

Oh, if they saw why Abnegem chose her out of the pool of women who would gladly throw themselves at his feet, they would soil their embroidered loins. Mavyn waited for everyone to trickle out of the graveyard's embrace and go on with their little, merry lives, and when the Philozoros family followed in their wake, she was truly left in her own misery.

Still, not a single tear fell from her eyes.

The sky never cleared. A sheet of gray hung overhead like an impending sense of doom. Perfect for such a day as this. Mavyn glanced at the empty and silent cemetery, daring anyone to show up. She turned on her heels, marching the opposite way she came. Her soles left light impressions on the slippery soil, eyes trained towards a lone shed hidden under the thick canopies and gnarly trunks.

Hinges whined when she shoved the door open. The familiar interior of her hut greeted her. Not a thing moved from their places since the last time she visited. Jars and vials of both common and rare ingredients and extracts glinted in their perch on the shelves nailed to the wooden walls. Cupboards remained stocked with supplies, enchanted to never run dry. Fixtures placed with purpose never moved from their posts, guiding her way towards the cellar where more secrets awaited her.

The stairs creaked under her weight as she climbed down. Plucking a talc stick from the vanity under the steps, she faced the plate of translucent silver showing her a lump of black veil and skirts. She snapped her fingers, warmth rushing from her chest to the sconces nailed to the stone walls. Light exploded with the heat, bathing the figure in the mirror with an amber tinge. With careful hands, she unpinned the veil over her face, relishing the rush of fresh air to her lungs. Well...as fresh as the stale, dusty cellar air afforded her.

Dark plum hair with magenta streaks framed her face, complimenting her golden honey complexion. Her lips, though pale and cracked, could easily be fixed with film of red paint, and her eyes, ever so murky green, betrayed nothing of the sadness everyone expected from her.

Little did they know—death was not the end. It never was.

Chapped lips in a thin line, she marched to the wide space of the cellar. Instead of stocks and crates of flour and wine, it was empty save for a keg of freshwater and the remnants of the scrawled marks on the floor. Mavyn got to her knees.

Then, she started drawing.

The scritch-scratch of the talc stick accompanied her every move as she drew circles upon circles, building the core of the ritual. Add a string of Rjonse runes for protection against deception, the criss-crossing patterns of Thavi's Assimilation seal, and a series of Mynrow Diagonals, and she would be done. By the time the stick of talc was reduced to a small pebble, a complete summoning circle appeared before her.

She opened her palm, the stump of the talc stick resting on her cold skin. A blast of purple fire shot out of her hand, devouring it to nothing. When the smoke cleared, she drew a knife from her boot and straightened. With a swish of the blade against her palm, pain and blood blossomed from her skin. Tilting her palm towards the edge of the circle, she watched blood drip into it. One. Two. Three. Four.

"Inracce xoia," she chanted.

The entire circle flashed in purple light. Her blood never stained the stone floor. Instead, crimson followed every arc and groove of the circle, staining the lavender marks red. "Quatreca inym, etcra el noixe monerei peregua sicisstomi," she continued chanting. The circle glowed red. Darker. She needed it darker. The color of love, but one gone wrong. "Summaquoia cennefoi tanma el delecti, summaquoia ichari tanma el scussit l'roxa."

"Sancto mixe, sancto rode." The circle was the color of freshly-spilled blood now. The darkest shade of crimson, just like the void of the stake she put into this spell. Just as she wanted it. "Sancto roi, sancto mysah. The Shadow of the Night, The Face of the Stars, The Voice of the Sea—come."

The air dropped into a winter-like chill. She gritted her teeth to prevent it from chattering. A Kathari wouldn't be impressed to find a weakling on the other side. If this was to work, she needed to impress him. This was the only way she could get one of them to listen to her plight. Smoke wheezed from the pulsing waves of light humming from the active summoning ring. She waited, her magic licking her skin with its blazing warmth. Anytime now...

Like a torch dunked into a bucket of water, the circle's light went out with a huff. No! The spell was thick in her tongue as she dove to salvage whatever efficacy was left in its ebbing marks.

"You would not find me there, sweet gleam." A voice rang behind her. She caught herself mid-dive, pivoting her feet to face the source. Wind whooshed through the closed cellar, snuffing all the sconces in darkness before she could glimpse who spoke. "I will not be caged by silly, mortal spells."

Fire ripped out of Mavyn's palm, but even her strongest flare wasn't enough to banish the inky shadows bleeding from the vanity. "Show yourself," she said. "I will not be talking to a formless void."

A chuckle. The fingers of the shadows staining the stone floor crept closer to the tips of her boots. She remained in place. The fact that she wasn't dead yet meant this creature wanted her alive. Her next words would determine her fate. "Such belligerence from someone with brittle bones," the voice said. It was distinctly male, deep and scratchy like a herald's voice after delivering an edict in the town square. "You intrigue me, dear gleam. What is your name?"

"Mavyn of Krauss," she answered. Betraying one's name to anyone, even to non-witches was considered suicide, but it wasn't the only name she had, nor was it enough to give the creature power over her. "Yours?"

The shadows hissed, driving a jolt into her gut. "When you tell me why you summoned me, I might oblige."

There it was. The Kathari didn't like wasting time. "I need you to resurrect someone," she said, leveling her gaze at the oscillating shadows. "His name is Abnegem Philozoros. I believe he entered your realm recently."

Silence thickened in the cellar. "Hello?" she called. Her voice could have bounced against the brick walls, but the void swallowed the sound and never let go. "Are you still there?"

"Why would you want to bring back the dead?"

It was an innocent question, but coming from a Kathari, it was an omen. And Mavyn has to play her cards right. "He was my fiancé until his death two days ago," she said with a sigh. "I miss him." And I need him, she wanted to add, but that might sound pathetically desperate. She'd rather kept her pride.

The voice hummed. "Hence the lingering sorrow laced with the call," he said. A pause. A long one. "What makes you think I will grant that request without giving me something in return?"

"I can give you something," Mavyn replied. "Something you direly need."

"Confident, are we?" came the mocking tone of the Kathari.

Mavyn squared her shoulders, her back straightening even tighter. "I would not know if you never tell me," she said. "And you would not have kept me alive nor answered the call if you didn't have a goal in mind. A goal you think I can help you achieve."

The shadows retreated a fraction. Her gut released a bit of the tension holding it in place. She was winning. Little by little. "You are a bright gleam," the creature answered after a hearty minute of silence. "I have a need for you—that I cannot deny. But can you handle it?"

She scoffed. "I summoned you and didn't die. Does that tell you anything?"

If the Kathari hated being talked down like this, it didn't betray anything from its tone. "My sister is getting married soon," he said. "And I need a companion."

Mavyn knitted her eyebrows. That was...unexpected. "Companion? You mean, like a chaperone?"

"A date, more so."

She frowned. "A fruit?"

"No. A mango is a fruit. A date..." the voice paused as if ripping through his mind in an attempt to explain something that hasn't yet been invented. "Think of it as a temporary alliance. A brief partnership to achieve a common goal."

"An ally, then," she supplied. At least, that was a concept she understood.

Relief smoothed the distress in the Kathari's tone. "A special kind of ally," he said. "You will pretend to be my lover at my sister's wedding."

The idea of playing that role for someone she didn't know, or even see sent her blood chilling. "You do realize I just lost a lover to your realm, right?" Mavyn snapped. No use angering a Kathari, but she couldn't help it. What he asked for...was it too much?

"Do not forget about the chance it will afford you," the voice answered, finally showing his hand. Like she couldn't waste her chance at speaking to an immortal creature from the Land of the Dead, he couldn't throw away this rare instance either. Desperate people called for desperate souls. "While you are a guest at my sister's wedding, you will have an opportunity to scour the realm for your lover. I will raise him from the grave as an incentive as well."

Too good to be true, with the way he said it betrayed a glimpse of the secrets deep in his void. "If I agree, will I be granted safe passage to the Underworld and out?" she asked.

"Of course."

She extinguished her flame and let the shadows drown her entire world. Without her flickering flame, not a lot has changed. Still dim. "Then, I concur," she said. "We have a deal."

The void churned, sucking in the greedy fingers of shadows licking her boots. They melted into a solitary figure resembling a human body who stepped out of the thick wall of darkness as if it was merely a doorway from another realm. "A pleasure to be working with you, Miss Mavyn of Krauss." A man with wind-swept hair cropped close to his ears gave her a quick tip of the head.

His face was youthful but rough. Only then did Mavyn notice the shadows now composing his skin, resembling the midnight sky without stars. His hair was made of silvery moonlight strands. Her gaze locked with his, piercing red against muddled green.

"Valen Nox," the man said, offering Mavyn his hand. Long, slender fingers matched the shadows that once belonged to the void. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Mavyn placed her hand on his palm. A tale of old once said that true lovers would always find their way to each other, and not even death could separate them. This was the only way she could think of; the only way that would bridge the gap between life and death so she could find him in another realm.

Her fingers tightened around Valen's hand, bringing her eyes as deep into those unnerving crimson gaze as she dared. The darkness howled beneath them, tearing through the layers of bedrock and punching through the cellar floor. It enveloped her, leaving not a corner unconsumed.

This was the only way she would get what she wanted.