Page 24 of Curse of Thorns
Caelynn
Tyadin presents uswith guest rooms right next to each other. His apartment is two floors above ours, but he spends several hours in Rev’s room. Long enough that he either sleeps there or I simply never hear him leave.
I flip through the books Rev provided, learning as much about the Wicked Gates as possible. It feels like such a masochist endeavor. I’ve known that my soul is bound for the Schorchedlands when I die for a full decade. It’s a fate I can’t avoid after everything I’ve done. My soul has been tattered and scarred since the day I wandered into the wrong tunnel inside the Cave of Mysteries ten years ago—the moment the Night Bringer shoved his talon through my chest. Or perhaps it was when I agreed to his bargain and his magic entered my body. Either way, the girl who entered those caves did not come out.
So, learning details about the fae afterlife and the broken souls bound to it isn’t my favorite research subject.It’s all to help Rev, I remind myself. I want his life to be worth sacrificing mine for. I want to know I made the right choice.
I heave in a long breath through my nose and continue reading.
There are three distinct sections of the Schorchedlands. The outer edge, the inner circle, and finally, the core. Each section holds worse and worse evil spirits. Each inch closer to the center, it becomes hotter, the world darker, the smog thicker. Living beings can’t survive for more than a few hours inside the core because the air is poisonous to them.
One of Rev’s books tells the tale of twelve fae who had entered through the Wicked Gates and returned. One of them lived an entire year inside the walls. Another of his books is about the legends surrounding the origin of the Schorchedlands. The beings that created the fae realm and its people had infighting between them, and three of those ancient beings created a magical place of punishment, so strong that even one of their own would be trapped once bound to the place. I graze through that book, but the story reminds me so much of the Night Bringer that I can’t bring myself to focus too heavily on it. If the Schorchedlands holds a being like him—or perhaps worse—I certainly don’t want to know about it.
The Wicked Gate, it reads, was spelled to only allow one living being to enter and return every ten years. The return part being key.
Living beings can enter as much as they would like, but with the clear understanding that they can never return. Any living being who enters must give the Wicked Gate a formal request of total free will. The purpose was so that no one could be coerced into the lands as mortal punishment.
The book says nothing about a prerequisite for getting into the realm. It says nothing about needing to answer a riddle or needing to have a tarnished soul.
It does, however, explain that in addition to the initial purpose of holding the most evil of powerful beings, it was always intended to be a temporary holding. That every soul is redeemable, no matter how sullied, and once any soul within achieves the redemption they missed while in the land of the living, they will then pass onto the next life.
This is the reason many wraiths accept bargains from the living. Some just for a sense of adventure, for a chance to cause mischief in the world they once inhabited, but for others, it’s a chance to redeem what they missed while living.
Souls needn’t be entirely pure to pass on,the book says. Many souls have several conflicts weighing them down. But one negative attribute will stand out most significantly. Your gravest sin. Your deepest seeded flaw.
This becomes the soul’s new quest. Resolve it, and be redeemed. Refuse, and remain forever.
The Schorchedlands exist to hold evil spirits away from the living but also to allow these spirits the opportunity to face their single most damaging flaws and fix them. Once this single quest is completed, they will be expelled from the land of death and given life anew.
The text then goes on to list the most common solutions to an unredeemed soul.
Selflessness. Humility. Forgiveness—themselves or others. Acceptance. Truth. Honest caring.
They’re fairly vague answers that don’t tell me much. Beneath each is an example of a soul who was redeemed by one of those things.
I must fall asleep somewhere in this list because the next thing I know, someone is knocking on my door hollering from the hallway.
