The material world around me had vanished.

I was weightless, hovering in a vast, white emptiness.

Nothing hurt anymore.

Am I dead?

I heard water flowing nearby. I looked to my right and saw a stream flowing through the white void, snaking toward me.

The wind blew, brushing through my hair and whistling past my ears.

The small river passed by me, then around me, drawing a liquid circle.

In front of me, a tree grew from the water. It was all so strange, yet… so beautiful. I couldn’t understand any of it, but still, it all made sense at the same time.

The tree groaned, then fell backward and scattered into moss. It was as if all matter in this emptiness were not tied to a single form or function. The moss moved around and drew another ring around the one of water.

Fire sparked out of nowhere and formed a third, larger ring around the other two. Air flowed into the fourth. I could see it rippling softly. Then another water circle formed around it, followed by dirt and moss, then fire, then air again.

It went on like that for what seemed like an eternity.

The rings surrounding me changed their form once in a while, in no particular pattern. Water became ice, then water again. Moss became sand, then clusters of raw, precious gems, then splinters of wood, then dirt and moss once more. The air was stable, ever flowing between the layers. The fire crackled into lightning, then back into flames.

I was witnessing a superb spectacle of nature, as all the elements gathered around me in billions of circles, displaying the full power and beauty of the world and its elements of life. One didn’t exist without the other. Not really.

The rings kept spinning around me, as if orbiting my body.

I gasped as I looked down. I’d lost my flesh. I was but a wisp of white light, much like the vast nothingness surrounding me.

“Is this real?” I heard myself ask, though I couldn’t understand how I was able to speak with the absence of a mouth. I had no lips or tongue to enunciate my words, but I could still hear my voice.

Do you believe in the elements, Harper?

That voice! Ramin. The Ekar bird. My dying breath as Shaytan brought his sword down. I remembered everything. I recognized the voice. It had asked me to let go.

“Am I dead?”

No, Harper. We’re just having a conversation, far from the outer world, the voice whispered. Tell me, do you believe in the elements?

“I think so… I can see them. Yes,” I replied. There was no point in denying the only things that were now a part of my existence. Wherever this was, it made everything surprisingly clear and real. “The fae themselves are proof of the elements’ existence, in a way.”

The fae are mere conduits, Harper. They’re not the elements. They’re vessels designed to hold us, to connect us to the material world. We are the elements. We are energy, Harper, and the fae are just some of our tools. We give them the power, and we can also take it away.

“You’re the Hermessi?” I asked.

I am a Hermessi, yes. That’s what the Nerakians call us, anyway. The ancient Nerakians, that is. The ones who used to believe in us, who used to make us strong.

“How does that work? I’m not sure I understand.”

We function on the energy of belief, Harper. The more you believe in us, the stronger we are. The fae are genetically engineered to be our conduits, but we cannot thrive on their life force alone. We require belief so we can make our rivers flow stronger. Make our winds blow harder. Make our fires burn brighter. Make our trees grow bigger. The world as you know it, Harper, is but a fraction of what the Hermessi can do.

I thought about that for a while, mentally rummaging through all the pages of folklore and mythology that I’d read over the years. Not once had I ever heard of Hermessi, but I could still distinctly remember even the humans back on Earth, who had once worshipped the natural elements.

“Would the world still function without people believing in you?”

I don’t know, Harper. There are creatures who still believe in us somewhere, in this universe and the others. The more who are aware of our existence, however, the stronger we can become, the better we can manifest. Here, on Neraka, I am weak. Barely anyone still believes in me. On Zathura, some little planet a million years away from here, the Hermessi are strong and powerful, and are worshipped by the thousands.

A few seconds passed. I stared straight ahead, fixated on a black dot. I hadn’t seen it before. It seemed as though it was moving. Getting closer.

“So, the more people believe in you—the more of us believe in you—the stronger you become?”

Yes, Harper.

“And what do the Hermessi do with such power? What’s your end-game?”

The voice became clearer—soft, male, like drizzling honey melting into a pot of warm milk. He chuckled softly. It made me smile on the inside.

I have no end-game, Harper. I only want to thrive, to feed on your energy, to put the love you give me back into the world. To make things right again.

The black dot grew bigger. Only then did I realize it wasn’t actually black, but red.

It had wings.

It was flying toward me.

Part of me already knew what it was.

“Ramin… You’re Ramin.”

“That is the name I was given most recently, yes,” the voice replied, suddenly much clearer and louder, echoing through my very being.

The Ekar bird approached me in flight and burst into flames.

“Whoa,” I murmured, staring at the creature that took shape before me.

The flames flickered and poured into a humanoid form, with a head, two arms, and two legs. It didn’t have eyes or a mouth, but its voice—his voice was the one I’d been hearing. Ramin was a Hermessi, and he’d been talking to me.

He’d been asking me to believe in him.

The more I looked at him, the firmer my belief, the more sense I could make of this world, in a way. “This is so weird,” I added.

“I know,” Ramin replied. “It’s been forever since I could manifest myself like this.”

“But why the Ekar? Why were you a bird?” I asked.

“The Ekars, like the fae, are conduits,” he explained. “But their consciousnesses are different. I, as a Hermessi, have never tried to speak through a fae. At least, not through the few I’ve come across on Neraka. But I’ve done my best to empower them, in the absence of belief.”

“And the birds?”

“Their consciousnesses are different. They make it easier for me to settle inside them, to use their physical forms in order to manifest myself,” Ramin explained. “I haven’t truly felt the need to speak out before. But then I met you, Harper, and everything changed.”

I was getting answers, but I was also getting more confused with each minute that went by.

“What do I have to do with anything?” I asked.

“You believed, Harper,” Ramin said. “You didn’t even know it! You believed before Neha even told you what a fire spirit was. Your energy, Harper, it’s unique. Before I met you, I simply watched Neraka’s tragedy unfold. It didn’t matter to me whether the Imen, the Dhaxanians, the Maras, the Adlets, the Manticores, and all the other creatures lived or died. It didn’t matter. The world would go on. The cycle of nature would continue. My fire would burn either way. The other Hermessi would continue to exist as well. Water, air, fire, and earth’s destinies are infinite and not bound to the creatures that cannot live without them.”

“So my belief gave you strength?”

“Yes, Harper. I do not need to feed on your soul like the daemons or the Maras do. That is perverse. I do not take anything. I feel, and I give back,” he replied. “And I can feel your emotions. Your love, your hope, your joy and your grief. Your sorrow and despair. I do not like it when you’re sad. I can’t explain it, but… I just don’t like it.”

It hit me then. Ramin was somehow attuned to my soul. Whether that had something to do with my sentry nature was yet to be determined, but if he could feel what I felt, and if he drew power from my belief without draining me of anything… then he could even help me.

“Tell me, Harper, do you want to live?” he asked, as if reading my mind. He’d probably done just that.

“I do. So much, you have no idea.”

“Would you give up your own life to save Caspian?” he replied.

“I would die if it saved everyone. Caspian would do the same,” I said. If I’d still been in my body, anchored to reality, maybe my answer would’ve been different. But given my circumstances and unprecedented clarity, I stood by my words. “The daemons, the Maras, they cannot win. The Nerakians deserve freedom and peace. I will die for it. I will.”

The fire figure cocked his head to the side. Had he had eyes, he probably would’ve narrowed them, watching me intently, filled with curiosity. I could feel it.

“You will die for Neraka’s freedom, then?” he asked.

“Yes. Though I’d obviously rather not,” I muttered.

I’d made my peace already, in a way. I wanted to live, but I couldn’t live if I couldn’t save this planet. If my death meant that Neraka would regain its freedom, that its people wouldn’t suffer at the hands of daemons and Maras anymore, then yes. I was okay with dying. It wasn’t my best-case scenario, but it wasn’t my worst, either.

I couldn’t take my gaze off Ramin. He was so beautiful, even though he was just a humanoid wisp of pure fire. His flames licked at the emptiness around him. His sparks reflected onto the surface of all the water rings around us.

“I understand,” he said. “I’d like to offer you a deal, then, Harper. I will help you defeat Shaytan, if you grant me a favor.”

“What favor?” I instantly replied. I wasn’t accustomed to making deals in general, not to mention deals with fire entities from dimensions I’d never been to before.

“I will collect it later. It will be a favor of my choosing. I cannot tell you what it is because I do not yet know it myself,” Ramin said. “But it is a risk you will have to take if you want my help. Consider it your sacrifice, Harper.”

I thought about it for a few moments. “Can you really help me kill Shaytan? He’s insanely powerful. You’ve seen it yourself.”

“Harper, I am the raw force of nature. Fire destroys everything. Do not doubt me. You know what fire can do.”

“Okay, then. Let’s do this,” I replied.

I had no choice but to accept, anyway. It was either this or useless death, since I had no guarantee that Lumi would finish the spell before Shaytan would find her—not without me wedging myself between them, of course.

I needed to be a good wedge for a little while longer.

Suddenly, everything vanished into blackness.

My eyes popped open.

I was outside the Palisade again. I was on the ground, bleeding. Everything hurt.

Caspian was wheezing, struggling to move and to breathe. Idris and Rayna were slowly moving toward him, their auras blazing red from their own injuries.

I looked up to find Shaytan holding his charmed sword over his head, ready to bring it down and split me open. This was it. The split second I’d missed while conversing with Ramin. Wherever it was that I’d been, time flowed differently there.

A bright flash made him freeze and squint.

The sky above us rippled.

Something was happening.