Ethan's entire body went rigid. He knew that line. Perfectly. He had read it again just an hour ago. The name. The mirror. The madness. The exact phrasing. No way. There's just no fucking way! His lips parted. His breath caught in his throat as the realization slammed into him like a falling wall. Dragonmount. The name had burst into his thoughts, and he tried to push it out. The prologue?
The Eye of the World.
His heart thundered. I'm injured. I must be. I fell. I hit my head. My skull's cracked open like an egg. This can't be happening. This had to be some dying fantasy. A final spark of memory stitched into one last hallucination. But the symbol on that clasp that held a part of the man's coat closed; he knew it. The ruined palace. The madness. The words.
I'm in the prologue of the first book.
But again—that was impossible. Yes, any reader could visualize what they were reading. If they were good enough at it, they could lose track of time. Become immersed in the story, drawn so deep that the world around them faded into silence. This... this was something else. It was all around him. The smells. The sights. Not imagined. More than imagined. This isn't real. It can't be real.
People did not step into printed words and walk among them. Book lovers dreamed of such things. A lifetime of turning pages sometimes led the mind to wander. It was fun to imagine walking through scenes as if ink were a doorway. But it was fantasy. Thought games. Nothing more.
And still... he had read that opening at least seven or eight times. He had practically memorized it. Ethan gasped aloud. The sound was sharp and involuntary, torn from him by the sheer weight of what could not be.
The man in the mirror stopped laughing. Behind him, the air shimmered. The center of the ruined chamber pulsed faintly, like heat rippling off black stone. But neither the man nor the fabric of the world acknowledged it.
Lews Therin Telamon-Ethan knew the name now, knew it beyond doubt-turned slowly toward the hallway. Graceful. Controlled. Completely unhinged.
His eyes gleamed, dark and unreadable. When he smiled, it was not with warmth. It was the smile of someone untethered. Someone who had walked too far into grief and never come back.
He spoke. "Ah, a guest. Have you the Voice, stranger? It will soon be time for the Singing, and here all are welcome to take part. Ilyena, my love, we have a guest. Ilyena, where are you?"
Ethan's heart kicked against his ribs. His vision blurred again. For a second, he thought he might lose consciousness. He had gone from reading these words to standing inside them. Now the man who had spoken them was staring directly at him.
Behind Lews Therin, the air shimmered again. The center of the chamber pulsed; clearer now, sharper. Before Ethan could faint, before he could even form a word, the rippling air behind Lews Therin grew denser. It began to condense, taking form. For reasons he could not explain—some idiot impulse buried in instinct—Ethan tried to shout a warning.
What left his throat was a strangled squeak. The shimmer resolved into a man.
He wore black, head to toe. Silver trim edged the cuffs of his sleeves and the high collar that rose stiff against his neck. His boots gleamed as though untouched by dirt. His long cloak flowed like smoke as he walked. He moved with care. He stepped around the dead with silent precision, as if death itself deserved courtesy.
The earth trembled again—an aftershock, brief but forceful. Ethan lost his balance and dropped to his knees, palms striking stone. Neither Lews Therin nor the man in black so much as flinched. The man in black had stopped a short distance from the mirror. His voice was calm, unhurried.
"Lord of the Morning," he said, "I have come for you."
Lews Therin turned toward the man without hesitation, as if he had expected him all along.
His expression did not change. The same hollow joy lingered in his eyes, the same smile stretched thin across his face. He spread his arms wide in welcome, as though greeting an old friend to a festival rather than a figure who radiated menace.
"Ah," he said brightly, "another voice. Yes, yes, this is good. You are just in time."
He took a step toward the man in black, oblivious to the tension in the room, to the dead all around him, to the unnatural hush that settled with the newcomer's presence.
"It will be a grand Singing," Lews Therin continued. "A chorus to shake the stars and here all are welcome to take part. Ilyena will want to hear it."
"Ilyena, my love!" He called out once more, eyes scanning the ruined chamber with childlike urgency. "Come quickly now. Guests have arrived." His voice echoed. There was no answer. Only the whisper of wind through shattered walls. Only the faint sound of Ethan's breathing, shallow and fast where he knelt. Only the silence of the dead. But Lews Therin waited, head cocked slightly, listening for footsteps that would never come.
The black-clad man's eyes grew large, and they darted to the body of a golden-haired woman on the floor Ethan had not noticed before. There was a ragged hole in her chest where her heart should have been, and her wide eyes were still frozen in disbelief.
"Shai'tan take you! Does the taint already have you so far in its grip?"
Lews Therin flinched at the sound of the name and raised a hand to ward off something. Ethan shivered.
This isn't real. I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. Ethan's fevered inner rant pulsed in time with his racing heart.
"That name, Shai—" Lews Therin hesitated. "You must not say it. It's dangerous."
"So you remember that much," the man said. "Dangerous for you. Not for me. What else do you remember? Remember, you Light-blinded fool. I will not let it end with you cradled in forgetfulness. Remember!"
It was all madness and delusion. But the man in black had appeared as if by magic. Not walked in. Not entered from another room. He had Traveled, the word from the books rising unbidden in Ethan's mind. Traveling. That was what Jordan had called it.
Lews Therin was staring at his own hand now. He rubbed it across his coat, smearing grime over already stained red fabric. Then he looked up, his face clouded with tired confusion. "Who are you," he asked, "both of you? What do you want?"
The man drew himself up arrogantly. He had yet to notice Ethan and said with pride in his voice, "Once I was called Elan Morin Tedronai, but now-"
Ethan stared, too stunned to blink. His brain kept searching for safe explanations. Mushrooms, maybe? He struggled to remember the last time he had eaten the ones that brought out the pretty lights.
"Betrayer of Hope," Lews Therin whispered. The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. It rippled through the air. Ethan saw the flicker in Lews Therin's eyes—a memory surfacing. Recognition. Pain. But then the man turned his face away, as if hiding from it.
Elan Morin's voice tightened. "So you do remember. Yes. Betrayer of Hope. So have men named me, just as they named you Dragon. But unlike you, I have embraced the name. They gave it in scorn. I will yet make them kneel and worship it." He stepped forward, growling the words with fury.
"And you? What will you do with your name? After this day, they will call you Kinslayer. What will you do with that?"
Lews Therin did not answer. His gaze drifted past both men, distant and wandering. "Ilyena should be here to welcome our guests," he said softly. Then louder, "Ilyena! Where are you?"
The floor trembled. The golden-haired woman's body shifted slightly. But Lews Therin did not look. He did not see her. Would not see her?
Elan Morin grimaced, and Ethan, still frozen, immobile beneath the strange, theatrical weight of what played out before him, heard the black-clad man speak with growing disgust.
"Look at you. Once you stood first among the Servants. Once you wore the Ring of Tamyrlin, and sat in the High Seat. Once you summoned the Nine Rods of Dominion. Now look at you. A pitiful, shattered wretch."
He stepped closer, voice rising. "But it is not enough. You humbled me in the Hall of Servants. You defeated me at the Gates of Paaran Disen. But I am the greater now. I will not let you die without knowing that. When you die, your last thought will be the full knowledge of your defeat, of how complete and utter it is. If I let you die at all."
"I cannot imagine what is keeping Ilyena," Lews Therin mused. "She will give me the rough side of her tongue if she thinks I have been hiding guests from her. I hope you enjoy conversation, for she surely does. Be forewarned, the both of you, she will ask you so many questions you may end up telling her everything you know."
He smiled faintly, still drifting inside his own mind. "Ilyena will be cross," he said. "She thinks I hide guests from her all the time. She does love guests so much. You will be begging leave for bed early just to make her stop asking questions."
Ethan felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He knew what came next. He knew it line for line. Some of what was happening differed slightly. His presence alone apparently changed the shape of the moment, but if the prologue held true...
I shouldn't be here.
If he stayed quiet...if he rose from his knees and backed away, perhaps they would forget he was even there. The two men, locked in their own grand tragedy, seemed unaware of him. A fragile hope stirred as Ethan began to move, slowly rising and taking a step backward, cautious. Then his shoe brushed against a loose stone.
Well, shit, he thought, somewhat wryly, as Elan Morin's eyes flicked toward the sound. Then they found him. And Ethan froze. Their gazes met. It was not anger he saw in the man's face—only mild surprise, and even more mild curiosity. Cold. Clinical. Dissecting.