Page 69 of Sightwitch
As I stared at the stars—not true stars, but spirit swifts swirling and dancing amid nine lights placed in perfect coordination—I realized that the answer stared up at me.
I laughed then. The sound burbled out, a pot boiling over in my belly.
For it was right there. The answer to the Nine Star Puzzle was right there and had been all along.
Suddenly, I knew what Tanzi had been saying all these years.Think beyond, Ryber. Think beyond.
She meant beyond the framework of stars. I had always assumed that I had to keep my chalk inside the slate, but it wasn’t true—nothing in the instructions ever said I had to.
I tore out my map, and there, right under my nose, was my second answer: the way off this ledge. It was even scribbled on the paper.
Palladin’s Hall, 38.
It’s what all these numbers on the map were.Rules.But I’d been so trapped inside the framework, I hadn’t thought to think beyond.
Tanzi had recognized that the stars, the Rules—none of it was real. It was only what we chose them to be.
I stuffed the map into Eridysi’s diary, no time to fold it. The ice was at my heels, and I had to go. Now.
I threw a final glance down. If I was wrong, then it was a long way to fall—a very long way to fall.
But I wasn’t wrong.
This was my true path. One without structure, without Sight or guarantee or anyone at my side to help me forge ahead. Yet I knew what mattered most, and I would do whatever it took to get there.
Just as I had found the Supplicant’s Sorrow all alone as a child, I would find a way to heal the Goddess. And when Sirmaya was healed, when her sleep was calm and there was no more risk that this world would end, then I would return for my Sisters. I would return for Tanzi.
And with that purpose held tight in my mind, I stepped off the ledge.
I did not fall to my death. The bridge had been there all along, even if I could not see it. What is life except perception?
This was how Tanzi had lived. While I’d been hiding behind my walls and rules, she had tasted freedom.
I walked and walked, the bridge ever descending while starry spirit swifts glimmered closer with each step.
The doorway that Captain had taken hazed into focus. First a glowing wave of blue. Then the archway. Rubble. Jungle vines.
And finally the Rook, waiting for me on the floor.
When at last my feet stepped onto visible stone once more, my lungs whooshed an exhale of such force that I doubled over. Then I laughed again, the same delight singing through me that I had felt above the invisible bridge.
My jubilance was short-lived, though, for as I drew myself up, I found the Rook chittering his beak. He skipped forward, backward, side to side.
He wanted me to go through the door.
I wiped at my face and fixed my gaze on the jungle fanning ahead. Sweat, blood, a salty line of tears—all of it smeared onto my sleeve, but I hardly noticed. My thoughts were on the Rook.
He had guided me and saved me every inch of the way. He’d saved Captain too.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” I asked, trudging a step closer to the door. “He’s a Paladin?”
The Rook’s head bobbed. He clacked his beak.
“And he’s important.”
Another clack, and this time the Rook ruffled his feathers. “Hurry,” he was saying. “No time.”
I wanted to ask why. I wanted answers toeverything—why Captain mattered, what waited beyond that door, and above all, how to heal Sirmaya. But the Rook couldn’t speak, and my only chance for real answers lay beyond that rubble.
