I finally managed to push the notification away with a sheer act of will, like shooing a fly that only I could see. Bartholomew, who had been observing my minor breakdown with the detached air of a tenured professor watching a freshman have a panic attack over a C-minus, gave a delicate sniff.

  “Must we linger in this place of ostentatious demise?” he drawled, his fluffy tail giving an impatient twitch. “The theatrics of these zealots have left a rather foul miasma, and I should prefer not to get it on my coat.”

  “Right. Miasma.” I dragged a shaky hand through my hair, my fingers catching in knots I didn’t remember having. My stylishly disheveled pajamas felt a million miles away. “Sorry to inconvenience you with my first-ever suicide viewing.”

  Kaelen ignored our exchange, his focus on the practical. He murmured a few soothing words to his warhorse, Argent, a magnificent grey beast whose eyes were still wide with panic. The horse was bigger than my kitchen and probably had a better temperament than my Craigslist microwave. Once he was sure the animal was calm, Kaelen strode back to us, his movements efficient and sure.

  “We need to keep moving,” he said, his gaze sweeping the path ahead “Ride with me,” he stated, not as a question but as a command. He swung himself into the saddle with an easy grace that was frankly unfair, then extended a gauntleted hand down to me. Taking it was like gripping a warm piece of architecture. He pulled me up with zero effort, seating me in front of him. Bartholomew leaped up behind the saddle in a single, fluid motion, landing with preternatural softness.

  The position was… intimate. My back was pressed against the solid wall of his chest, the steel of his armor pressing into my back with each breath. I could smell pine, steel, and the clean scent of wind on his clothes. It was a dizzying, distracting cocktail that did absolutely nothing to calm my frayed nerves. My entire field of expertise was in cat videos and poor attempts at knitting. I was not prepared for interpreting the body language of a man who probably swooned at the sight of an ankle.

  As Argent began the steady climb up the winding path, a new notification blinked silently in the corner of my vision.

  [New Skill]

  [Zealot’s Conviction] [Dual]

  [Passive: You have a chance to understand the motivations behind acts of extreme faith

  or devotion.]

  [Active: Focus on a symbol or artifact of fanaticism to gain a brief, empathic echo of its

  creator’s intent.]

  Fantastic, I thought, the sarcasm a bitter acid in my mind. I get a “read the crazy” skill. What’s next? “Proficiency: Existential Dread”? I’m pretty sure I’ve already maxed that one out.

  I tried to focus on the world around me instead of the one inside my head. The canyon fell away beside us, a terrifying, beautiful chasm of grey rock and dark, twisted foliage. The wind picked up as we neared the top, whipping stray strands of hair across my face. It carried the scent of distant rain.

  And then we crested the hill.

  The castle was a skeleton picked clean by time and weather. Its broken teeth of granite jutted into the sky, a monument to decay. Most of its walls had crumbled, and the main keep looked like a giant had taken a bite out of it. Yet a single banner still fought against the wind, a tattered scrap of defiance. Its colors were faded, but the emblem was still discernible: a twisting red flame and a spear, set against a field of onyx. It matched the stranger’s dropped sketch surprisingly well.

  “By the Ancients,” Kaelen breathed, his voice a low rumble against my back. Argent shifted nervously beneath us, sensing his rider’s tension.

  “I take it that’s not the Eldorian equivalent of a welcome mat?” I asked, my voice thin against the wind.

  “That is the banner of The Firebrand,” Kaelen said, his arm tightening slightly around my waist, a purely reflexive gesture of protection.

  “I can see that,” I muttered, eyeing the flag.

  “Indeed,” Bartholomew added from behind us, his voice sharp. “This fortress was once used for their dark purposes. For his banner to remain suggests this place was not cleansed, merely abandoned. The very stones here may be steeped in his malice.”

  “Malice. Great. It’s a haunted fixer-upper,” I said. “Can we please just find a nice, non-haunted bush to sleep under?”

  “We need shelter,” Kaelen countered, his gaze fixed on the broken gate. “And a defensible position. The courtyard is walled on three sides. It is our best option before nightfall.”

  “Uh… these Firebrand guys just ambushed us. How do you know there’s not a hundred more hiding in there?”

  “I don’t. But the air is less foul.” Ser Kaelen urged Argent forward again, toward the open gate of the ruined castle.

  I wanted to argue. In every horror movie I’d ever seen, this was the part where the dumb kids go inside the abandoned murder-castle and get predictably murdered. But the wind was cutting through my thin tunic, the sky was growing dark with storm clouds, and the thought of a night spent in the rain was even less appealing.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “But if a creepy girl in a nightgown asks me to play with her, I’m out.”

  Kaelen didn’t respond, urging Argent forward into the gaping maw of the gate. Our arrival felt obscenely loud in the oppressive silence. The clatter of hooves on shattered flagstones echoed off the crumbling walls. The courtyard was a mess of debris—smashed wagons, splintered barrels, and the detritus of a long-dead encampment. But there were no bodies. Other than the hollow call of a raven, there was just an eerie, expectant emptiness.

  Kaelen dismounted, then helped me down, his hands steady on my waist. I stumbled, my legs feeling like jelly. Bartholomew landed silently beside me, his fur bristling.

  “This scent,” the cat hissed, his nose twitching. “It is recent.”

  My eyes scanned the courtyard, trying to see what the cat was sensing. My gaze fell upon the far wall, near the entrance to the main keep. It was there I saw them. Symbols, painted on the stone. They weren’t the twisting, demonic runes I might have expected. They were crude spirals and eye-like figures, drawn in a dark, reddish-brown substance that had flaked and dried in the wind. They looked disturbingly like the tattoos I’d seen on the lead cultist.

  As I stared at the largest spiral, the edges of my vision flickered. The world didn’t waver, but that damn blue interface did.

  [Zealot’s Conviction]

  A cold dread washed over me. I didn’t want to know. I desperately, profoundly, did not want to know what fresh hell this skill would unlock. But I also knew we were walking blind. A part of me, the part that was screaming to survive, took over. I focused on the symbols.

  The world didn’t explode. There was no flash of light. It was worse.

  It was a feeling.

  A sudden, overwhelming flood of emotion poured into me, an empathic tidal wave that wasn’t mine. It was the desperate, burning certainty of the person who painted that symbol. A conviction so absolute it bordered on madness. I felt a scraping, clawing terror of being left behind, a howling need to prove one’s worth. I felt the ecstatic, terrifying joy of being chosen for a great purpose. The symbol wasn’t a warning or a ward; it was a prayer. A signpost. We were here. We were worthy. We await the master’s return.

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  And under it all, the sweet, coppery smell of the “paint.” It was blood. Of course, it was blood.

  I gasped and stumbled back, clapping a hand over my mouth. The psychic echo vanished as quickly as it came, leaving me shivering and nauseous. The cold sweat was back, prickling my skin.

  “Paige!” Kaelen was at my side in an instant, his hand on my shoulder. “What is it? What did you see?”

  I couldn’t look at the symbols anymore. I looked at him, my eyes wide with a horror I couldn’t hide. The ‘game’ had given me a curse. It had forced a piece of a dead man’s fanaticism into my soul.

  “They weren’t just passing through,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “The men on the cliff were from here. This was a pilgrimage site.” I took a shuddering breath, the terrible knowledge settling like lead in my stomach. “And they were waiting for the Shadow Lord. They think he’s coming back. And they left him a message.”

  Kaelen’s grip was firm, a grounding anchor in the roiling sea of secondhand fanaticism. He searched my face, his own expression a mask of grim concern.

  “A message? What message?”

  “I don’t know the exact words,” I managed, my voice still a raw whisper. “It wasn’t like reading a memo. It’s… a feeling. A statement of intent. They’re here, they’re faithful, and they’re ready.” I finally tore my gaze away from his and risked a glance back at the bloody spirals. The psychic residue was gone, but the image was burned into my mind. “This isn’t just some forgotten ruin, Kaelen. It’s an active church. And we’re trespassing.”

  He followed my gaze, his hand dropping from my shoulder to rest on the pommel of his sword. The easy posture of a man who lived half his life ready for a fight.

  “Then we will not linger. The sun is setting. We’ll find a defensible corner in the courtyard, build a small, smokeless fire if we can, and be gone by dawn.”

  His practicality was a splash of cold water, shocking but necessary. He was right. Freaking out wasn’t a survival strategy. I nodded, taking one last deep, shuddering breath to steady myself. “Okay. Yeah. Defensible corner it is.”

  We found an alcove not far from the main gate, a collapsed section of wall that formed a natural three-sided shelter. It was cluttered with debris but offered a good view of the courtyard entrance while keeping us mostly hidden from the crumbling ramparts above.

  “I’ll check the keep,” Kaelen said, his voice low as he scanned the darkened doorways of the main structure. “Make sure we’re truly alone. You gather what dry wood you can find nearby. Stay within the courtyard walls. And keep him with you,” he added, nodding towards Bartholomew, who was meticulously grooming a paw, pretending to be utterly uninterested in our mortal drama.

  “You got it, boss,” I said, trying for a sliver of my old sarcasm. It came out weak and thin.

  Kaelen gave me a final, searching look before melting into the shadows of the keep, his movements silent and efficient. The moment he was gone, the quiet of the ruin pressed in, heavy and menacing. Every skittering lizard, every gust of wind whistling through a broken arrow slit, sounded like an approaching footstep.

  “A rather melodramatic display, if I do say so myself,” a dry voice commented from my feet.

  I looked down. Bartholomew had ceased his grooming and was staring up at me, his green eyes luminous in the twilight.

  “Easy for you to say,” I retorted, my voice sharp with frayed nerves. “You didn’t just get a psychic timeshare in the brain of a homicidal cultist.”His tail gave a slow, deliberate twitch.

  “Indeed. A most curious turn of phrase. You have yet to elucidate the precise nature of this new affliction of yours.”

  I sighed, running a hand through my messy hair. He was right. In the chaos of the last few weeks, the new skills that popped into my vision had become a fact of life I’d mostly kept to myself. They were part of the ‘game’ mechanics that no one else could see. But this one was different. This one had bled through into reality.

  “Okay, look.” I started picking through the rubble, searching for splintered bits of wood from old carts or furniture, my hands moving automatically. “You know how this world works for me, right? The blue boxes, the stats, the skills?”

  “I am aware of the arcane framework that binds you, yes,” he said with a put-upon air, as if discussing a particularly tedious bit of paperwork. “A crude but occasionally effective system.”

  “Right. Well, I got a new one. A new skill. It’s called Zealot’s Conviction.” I found a decent-sized chunk of a broken chair leg and tossed it into the alcove. “When I focused on that symbol, it… activated. It wasn’t a translation. It was like I was them, just for a second. I felt what they felt when they painted it. The crazy devotion, the terror of not being good enough, the absolute joy of being part of something they think is divine.” I shuddered again, the phantom emotions ghosting over my skin. “It’s empathy as a weapon. Or a curse. I don’t know which yet.”

  Bartholomew was silent for a long moment, a stillness that was far more unnerving than his usual commentary. I glanced back at him. He was no longer looking at me, but at the blood-painted spiral, his feline face uncharacteristically serious.

  “Psychometric Imbuement,” he murmured, the words formal and precise. “A rare and volatile branch of scrying magic. It is the ability to read the echo of powerful emotions left behind on objects or in places. True masters can even witness the events themselves.”

  I stared at him.

  “You have a name for it? So, this is a thing here?”

  “A very dangerous thing,” he corrected, turning his intense gaze back to me. “Magic born of emotion is the most potent and least controllable. The convictions of a zealot, the grief of a widow, the rage of a betrayed king—these are not idle feelings, Paige. They are raw power. They stain the very fabric of reality. To willingly invite such an echo into one’s own mind… it is akin to drinking from a poisoned well to see what the poison tastes like.”

  “It wasn’t exactly willingly,” I grumbled, yanking a desiccated plank from a pile of rubble. “It was that or walk in blind. At least now we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “And what you are dealing with,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, serious tone I’d never heard from him before, “is a potential madness. Each time you use such an ability, a sliver of that echo may remain. A residue. Imprint upon yourself enough rage, enough despair, enough fanaticism, and you may find your own emotions are no longer entirely your own.”

  A cold fist clenched in my gut. The game had never come with a warning label that read May cause permanent psychological damage and/or demonic possession. The thought of that burning, ecstatic certainty I’d felt becoming a permanent part of my personality was more terrifying than any monster I’d faced so far.

  Before I could process the full weight of his warning, Kaelen reappeared from the keep’s main doorway. He moved with the same unnerving silence, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.

  “The fort is empty of the living,” he announced, his voice tight.

  “Thank God,” I breathed, the relief so sharp it was painful.

  “But they were here recently,” he continued, dashing my relief against the rocks. “Within the last day or two. I found bedrolls in the great hall. The ashes in the main hearth are still warm.” He paused, his jaw clenching. “And there are more symbols. All over the inner walls. Painted in the same… medium.”

  My stomach churned. So the men on the cliff really were from here. And they’d only just left. Were they coming back? Did they leave someone behind? The paranoid thoughts swirled, fueled by the memory of their frantic devotion.

  Kaelen walked over to our little alcove, dropping a bundle of dry, scavenged timbers onto the growing pile.

  “We’ll take turns on watch tonight. Keep the fire as small as possible. It’s not worth it to risk more.”

  The finality in his voice settled over us, colder and darker than the encroaching night. We weren’t just camping in a ruin. We were sleeping in a temple dedicated to the Shadow Lord, a place still humming with the psychic energy of his followers. And I, thanks to my shiny new skill, was a tuning fork waiting for the signal. I looked from Kaelen’s grim face to Bartholomew’s unnervingly serious one, and I felt a kind of fear that had nothing to do with swords or monsters. It was the fear of my own mind.