As the night sky engulfed Elden City, Ezra slept peacefully in his bed. But on the other side of the kingdom, Cane’s mind would not allow him a moment’s rest, a stark contrast to his brother. He just lay there, the covers draping off of him as he stared aimlessly at the ceiling above. All he could think about was Ezra. His brother had eluded him for so long it began to become an obsession to him.

  Cane curled his hand into a fist, submitting to the anger boiling below the surface.

  “You’re mocking me,” Cane whispered into the dark silence. “What more can you take from me, brother? You took father’s trust in me; now you continue to play your stupid games.”

  Cane, wrapping his other hand around his sheets, let out a scream he could no longer contain.

  “Arggh!” he cried. “A thorn in my side forever you have been, brother, but even a thorn plant runs out of thorns eventually.”

  Finally, Cane’s eyes grew heavy. He took one last glance at the ceiling before giving in to the sleep that had eluded him.

  Ezra was an enigma he couldn’t figure out. Every time he felt he had his brother, somehow, someway, he would find his way out of it. But this time he thought he finally had the answer to the puzzle, the final piece, but when he went to place it—it wouldn’t fit no matter how hard he tried. Because no matter how many pieces he placed on the board, Ezra was always one piece ahead.

  As Ezra continued to sleep peacefully, Cane tossed and turned, sweat claiming every corner of his body until he shot up.

  “Ezra!” he screamed, breaths heavy. Ragged. Even his dreams didn’t belong to him anymore—Ezra had even invaded the one place where he thought he’d get a rest from him.

  He shot up, confused for a moment, until a wave of magic hit him. His chest rose as his mouth shot open, taking in one last gasp of air before flying back into the bed. But he didn’t hit the mattress. Instead of the soft sheets and the solid frame of his bed, he felt like he was falling through an endless, watery blackness.

  As he opened his eyes, everything was pitch black.

  “Where am I? Show yourself now,” he commanded, but all he could hear was the echo of his voice stretching into the far-reaching corners of the darkness.

  Across from him, standing just as confused, was Ezra.

  “Of course this would be you. It reeks of you, brother. End this stupid game or I’ll end you.”

  But Ezra didn’t budge.

  “Ezra! Listen to me now!” But it was useless.

  “Cane, what’s going on? Is this some sort of payback for earlier? Bravo, brother. Well done. Message received, now get me out of here.”

  But all he could see was Cane’s lips moving and no words coming out.

  Ezra began to run toward his brother and Cane followed suit, but the harder they ran, the more the darkness seemed to stretch, turning the floor into a treadmill of shadows that the more they ran, the further they ended up from one another.

  As Cane’s rage reached its boiling point, he began chanting in a foreign tongue. His chants got louder and louder until symbols that stretched up his left arm began to dance, casting a bright, eerie glow across the black floor as they lit up. He had finally realised this was no ploy of Ezra’s and began to go on the defence.

  “Do you know who I am?” he said into the never-ending darkness. “I am the most feared assassin this galaxy has ever laid eyes on, yet you think some second-rate magic trick will hold me—amateur. When you finally decide to come out to play and stop hiding behind this cheap, rudimentary magic trick, then and only then can we start the show.”

  “The light will always answer the call every time the darkness calls, my boy,” the woman said calmly, her voice echoing throughout the darkness. “You may be your father’s son, but you do not have to be a product of your environment. You can be so much more, son.”

  Son—the last word felt like it stuck in the back of Cane’s throat. He was frozen. He spoke about this moment so many times. Told everyone that would listen what he would do when he saw his mother again. He had promised vengeance for her abandonment, a life behind bars for her crimes, but as he stood there listening to his mother’s voice cover him with warmth—

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  “My Ezra,” she said, her voice cracking as she struggled to keep it together. “My, how you’ve grown, my boy.”

  Ezra’s heart jumped in his chest, hope flooding him like a tidal wave. He dreamt of this moment so many times, just to hear the warmth of his mother’s words, to experience the love that his father was unable to give him.

  “I know you have questions,” she said. “I know an image has been painted on my canvas, but son, that picture is not mine. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by where I didn’t think of you, and a second that passed since leaving that my heart never stopped mourning the loss of my beautiful boy—I never stopped loving you. I loved you from the very first day I laid eyes on you.”

  Cane received the same message from his mother, but where Ezra was all ears for what his mother was telling him, Cane looked on in disgust. His fists clenched tightly, knuckles piercing against his skin as his rage burnt hot in his veins, releasing him from his moment of weakness.

  He stepped forward, his boots carrying his anger forward with the intent of snapping the magical hold his mother had on him, but as he reached out, desperately trying to combat her magic with his, he and Ezra were whisked away.

  “What is this place?” he asked, lost for words, as he stopped forward on the Hawaii beach, watching the waves come in and the sun set. Ezra, on the other hand, stood there taking it all in as the wind blew him a delicate kiss as it passed through him.

  As he opened his eyes, they were no longer on the Hawaii beach. They were on the busy streets of New York, the smell of coffee, petrol and doughnuts filling the air. Both brothers watched on as cars honked slow drivers, police officers grabbed their doughnuts and coffee, and the streets flooded with the ambition of the American dream.

  Cane spun in a circle, his guard up high, ready to fight. As he lunged forward to throw a punch, the man he aimed for just phased right through him and Cane ended up on the floor looking down at a puddle that suddenly shifted its reflection as he gazed at it.

  When he got back to his feet and turned around, the busy streets of New York were gone, replaced by the motherland—Africa. They moved through it like a book, the pages turning with every step they took.

  But this place—it felt like there was a calling to Cane. He felt a strength he didn’t feel anywhere else on the journey. The trees were spread out for miles and scaled the skies like giants. He reached out and rested his hand against the rough, jagged dark brown bark of the tree, sliding his hand down its crevices as he breathed in the warm, dry air, finally embracing part of the journey.

  Then, the page turned.

  They were suddenly in the heart of a bustling marketplace in Lagos. The colours were vibrant—indigo, ochre and beautiful fabrics swirling around them. The air around them was bursting with flavours, smells they had never experienced across the vast planets they’d been on, accompanied by the sound of instruments and the rhythmic beating of drums and singing as families all came together as one.

  Ezra closed his eyes, letting the music wash over him. He felt a sense of belonging here that he had never felt in the cold halls of his father’s kingdom.

  “It’s beautiful,” he breathed, his voice finally steady.

  Cane, however, was looking at the faces. He saw families laughing, elders sharing stories under the shade of a canopy, and children playing with a joy that felt like a personal insult to his own bitter upbringing. Their eyes burned with a love for one another that Cane missed out on in his life and made him feel uncomfortable. As he turned his back to a love that felt foreign to him, the last page of the story unfolded.

  Pyramids scattered all over as sand whisked through the air, men and women stood behind their vibrant colour stalls embracing everything about life here. But as Ezra, who embraced the entire book, stepped forward, Cane had other ideas on how this story should end.

  “Enough—enough—enough!” he screamed, grabbing both sides of his head, trying every way he could think of to pull himself out of the spell.

  Then—a wave of blinding white light began to usher toward the brothers and all they could do was cover their eyes as it washed over them. It was warm, tingling, then as their arms dropped and their eyes opened, the warmth was replaced by chilling silence and darkness once more.

  “You show us your home—your world,” Cane spat. “Yet it was a world we were never a part of, yet you speak of love. You don’t know the meaning of love. A mother is supposed to protect her children, not throw them to the wolves. You didn’t even look back.”

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  “Coward!” Cane bellowed, breaking the silence. “Speak! You brought us here, so speak!”

  “No, son,” Veronica said gently. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Cane snapped. “You ran with your tail between your legs like a coward.” Cane stepped forward, wagging his finger in the air. “But not without your people, now did you? You made sure you saved them but left us behind like we were nothing!”

  “No, son,” Veronica whispered, her eyes glassing over with a pain she couldn’t reach out to soothe, her body rigid as she fought to keep the vision from collapsing under his rage.

  “I won’t listen to another second of your lies. You may have fooled that fool over there,” Cane said as he pointed across the darkness toward Ezra, “but you will never pull the wool over my eyes. All you cared about is power. You grew jealous of father and you came for the throne—and when you failed, you ran like a coward.”

  “Cane, you’ve got to listen to me, you have this all wrong,” Veronica tried to explain, pain cracking through her voice.

  “You left your sons motherless to grow under the so-called tyrant you needed to escape from—the man the galaxy feared the most. But you expected us to what? Be the light in the darkness? A darkness that you left us in before we could even differentiate between the two,” Cane said, his voice rising.

  “Cane—” she started, but before she could utter another word, the seer pulled her hands apart and the vision shattered.