~WM dimension~

Jassin's knuckles impacted the window, and the air filled with frozen shards of glass.

The pieces shot past him, grazing the hair on his arms, whistling past his ears. He inhaled slowly, watching the darkness behind his closed eyelids, and silence returned as the shards never impacted the floor.

His feet twisted on the tile as his elbows pulled back to his sides. The glass shifted around him — he felt it, moving with him, as much a part of his body as his arms or legs.

His eyes opened to a field of orange glittering, and beyond that, dimness.

Carter shrugged her shoulders as if to squeeze away from the encroaching bookshelves. It wasn't that she had a problem with the dim lighting — she had lived the first half of her life in the hours of dusk and dawn, and the second in this neverending half-light. No, it was the dust and wood and paper that she hated. The shades of tan and brown. The white tile on the floor, the painted concrete walls. Nothing malleable, nothing raw, and absolutely nothing new.

As she reached a cross section in the maze of shelves, her hand went to the wire coiled about her wrist. Cool, quiet, and full of potential. It was everything she had left, yet it meant nothing if she couldn't use it.

Jassin flexed his fingers, waiting as the glass condensed in a thick layer around his forearms. For too long, he'd failed to complete his mission, but now by the Gods — by the very God who'd created this damned place — he was going to.

He turned from the jagged remnants of the window and stepped in among the shelves.

Carter knew the way by heart. She had puzzled out the quickest route through this place years ago — it felt like centuries ago. Each time she walked it, she did so with the intention of finishing what she'd come here for. Each time she walked it, she ended up turning around and walking right back.

But that wasn't going to happen today.

She didn't care about the stupid book anymore. She didn't care about the story it contained. The only relevant story was hers, here, today, and its continuation somewhere else tomorrow.

The people of Jassin's kingdom had spent years trying to open any of the Gates scattered across the land before someone finally managed to open them long enough to allow one person through. Back then, Jassin had been honored to be the person selected. But back then, he had thought differently of the Gods and their wishes for Humankind.

He didn't care about the stupid book anymore, or whatever wisdom it supposedly contained. Written by a God or not, it wasn't worth what he was about to do.

He had decided that his freedom was.

Carter reached the wall and glanced toward the staircase ahead of her, glowing with light from the floor above. Her fingers swept dust from the walls as she climbed. For the last fifteen years, she'd stayed down in the library's basement as much as possible; the darkness was preferable to what awaited her above. But she'd waited long enough.

She reached the top of the stairs and turned to the window for the first time in months, gazing out at the flames beyond. This was one of the last unbroken windows, and it shielded her from the heat, framing an almost picturesque view of the fire that consumed the outside of the building.

It had been a mistake to train Jassin with the magic his body had absorbed since entering this dimension. At least, if what he said about Ruka was true.

Ruka loves violence. Ruka breeds violence.

Jassin had taken a long time to admit it. Yes, Ruka was God of Fire, but he was also God of Knowledge, and Jassin's people had highlighted that aspect in their worship. Besides, neither of those domains were inherently violent; that was just a matter of personality and — dare he say it — imperfection.

As he wound his way between the bookshelves toward the stairs down, he wiggled his fingers, forcing the glass on his arms to shift. What he lacked in experience, he had quickly made up for in hard work. That, and Carter had been a fantastic mentor.

Step. Step. Step.

So here Carter was at the center of the first floor, right where the Book of Fire was supposed to be. This was exactly where she'd been so many times, and just as before, there was nothing here but paper and ink and stories that were just as trapped as she was.

She wasn't here for them.

The ceiling cracked. Carter's head snapped up, eyes pushing through the shadows to locate the fissure. She flung her arm above her head, and the wire on her wrist lunged out, worming its way up through the stone. Before it encountered anything, though, another crack appeared, and then an entire chunk of stone dropped toward her face. Quickly, she shifted her arm to the side, letting the wire grab a support column and pull her out of the way.

The floor reverberated as stone hit stone.

He's gotten so much stronger, Carter thought with a weird mix of pride and regret.

Jassin hopped through the hole in the floor, balancing on a levitating plate of glass to slow his descent. The glass cracked when it hit the uneven rubble on the floor below, and he stumbled but kept his footing, jerking his hands up to reform the glass around his forearms.

Metal glinted in his peripheral vision. Jassin twisted to the side, letting the wire's point whistle past his ear. He wasted a second to grit his teeth, then flung a hand toward Carter. The glass on his arm shattered and descended on his mentor in a torrent of shards.

Wire hooked around his shoulder.

Carter yanked, pulling Jassin off balance. In their last training session, he'd had trouble separating himself from the glass while moving. Sure enough, the shards coming at her swerved toward the floor, but a few still sank into her shins. She gasped in pain, but managed to keep her concentration, jerking her wrist to the side and sending Jassin sprawling.

Jassin shook his head as he picked himself up from the floor, coughing on the dust his fall had kicked up. Seeing Carter's face contort as the glass hit her had been harder than expected.

I have to finish this. We've both already wasted so much time here.

Carter thought to her life back home, away from this library and this whole twisted dimension. The planet where the Gates resided had been uninhabited for decades, its environment destroyed by her idiot ancestors. Carter and the other scientists had only been there for research purposes, but when they'd somehow opened one of the Gates, Carter's curiosity had pushed her to go through.

Now here she was, sliding on a dusty floor as she tried to dodge the shards she'd been too distracted to see coming. It was almost surreal.

She managed to miss all the shards, but the pain in her calves caused her to stumble and end up on her knees. Desperately, she flung her wire out at her apprentice. He flicked his hand up, sweeping glass from the floor into an arc that solidified around the wire's tip.

Jassin watched his mentor's eyes widen in genuine fear as he shifted his feet and yanked his arms back.

Carter grasped at the wire as it was pulled sharply, but the coils slid from her wrist and she lost her connection.

More glass descended on her, this time dead on target.

Metal flashed in the corner of her eye.

She scrambled to the side, but still caught a few pieces of glass in her side. Hissing, she dove at the ground, bracing one arm to prevent her head from smacking down as the other extended forward and contacted the small circle of copper sitting on the floor. She pushed with the closer hand and flipped over, using her brief contact to send the metal toward the back of Jassin's head at the speed of a bullet.

Jassin saw the glint too late.

He squeezed his eyes shut. In the last second, his body calmed. Surely, this was a story worth telling. Surely, Ruka would let Carter go home.

Nothing happened.

"Fuck," Carter muttered as she lowered her hand. The copper coin plinked to the floor.

So she really couldn't do it. She couldn't create a story good enough for the God's satisfaction, and so she couldn't leave his library.

Until one of them did, the fire would keep them here, two Human lives that would never mean anything. Until one of them managed to kill the other, they would remain here wasting more time.

It would take them years more to realize that was never going to happen.

It would take them far, far longer to discover that there was one other story—one they had already found—for which the flames would part.