Ice shielded me and icy particles formed on my fingertips. My ice light illuminated the path before me in the dark jungle.

I trekked toward the Angel’s shuttle.

Birds chirped, insects cried, and animals bellowed. Each sounded creepier than the former. I had no memory of this jungle, though my markings told me I frequented the space. 

I was here to seek the portal and make my way home.

What was home to me?

It called to me in the depth of my soul. It was more than vengeance.

Who were my parents? Who did I miss the most? Had I cared for anyone there? Had I had lovers? The Wicked Witch wouldn’t be monogamous, right?

I didn’t know how old I was, but when I stared into the glass mirror in the tower, I saw a woman around twenty or twenty-one. I must have been discarded in Pandemonium when I was around seventeen.

I prowled through the jungle as quietly as a shadow, but it didn’t matter. The abysmal dark power that dwelled and governed the jungle was watching me like a bored spider observing its prey.

The hair on my neck stood up, but I kept going.

The portal had to be here.

I had to find the fallen ship.

I followed the rough route I had etched onto my skin, but the jungle had shifted since last night. Akem was toying with me, exactly as my markings had warned me.

But as long as his interest in me remained, he would allow me to enter his realm.

I had never come face to face with Akem. I had no idea what his true form looked like, but I’d fought his nightmare creatures.

I’d recorded my first escape from the jungle with my magical markings. I’d woken up with a flying owl-lizard staring down at me with ominous interest from his high perch, and a hellhound had his fangs near the hollow of my throat, its hot breath burning my skin like acid fire.

I hadn’t screamed, though I’d wanted to.

I’d stared them back, then I’d thrown all I had at the hound, as if instinctively I’d known I was a powerful witch.

My magic of ice and darkness had come to play, to ensure my survival. 

I’d roared, and then an ice spear had appeared in my hand.

Akem had called off his hound before we’d battled. He’d scanned my mind and couldn’t find anything there, and had been intrigued ever since.

Safeguarded by my ice and darkness, with a spear in my hand, hollowness in my head, and fear in my heart, I had stumbled out of the jungle, only to find a scouting party of five vampires waiting right outside.

I hadn’t known they were vampires.

They’d regarded me as an easy pick, so I’d let them taste my magic to its full extent. I’d wielded the spear and impaled the vampires like a natural fighter.

I’d killed all five bloodsuckers that day. I hadn’t shown mercy after they’d taunted me and torn my red gown to pieces. When I had reached the City of Nine, I’d learned it was a city of monsters, cannibals, and criminals.

It was worse than the jungle.

But in the city, my magic grew stronger.

I’d figured out how to use my blood magic to record events, though it was an arduous process.

I shifted my mind away from my thoughts as I spied the gleam of metal ahead.

The shuttle looked cold and dead without light and power. I entered it through the half-open cabin door, my ice spear in my hand.

A one-line magical glyph on my left calf mentioned that the pilot was Archangel Gabriel. I’d brought him out of the jungle and now he served me in the tower.

His ship Red Dragon was the first one that had fallen into Akem’s jungle. That was why it was significant. There was a connection I had yet to find. 

I checked every device in the ship. The power source and backup batteries were all drained, just like any other ship that crashed onto this planet. Akem might be a force that fed on the ships’ energy. He might even have generated the vortex above the planet’s atmosphere that caused all ships to fall.

I was the only alien who hadn’t fallen with a ship but had been shoved through a portal.

I shut my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the past, but felt nothing but agony. It was as if someone had put a metal splinter in my head to prevent me from remembering.

I ignored the pain and pushed through the seemingly unbreakable high wall made of unknown material. A tiny crack appeared in the wall from my brutal force, a flicker of dim light glimmering from the other side.

My heart jumped to my throat. A trail of darkness crept into my mind but it didn’t come from me.

Akem.

I flashed open my eyes, but didn’t break my concentration. The spark was too precious. It was the backdoor to my memories. I couldn’t afford to let Akem sabotage it just because he’d invaded my mind when I didn’t have a shield up against him.

Get out of my head, Akem! I hissed, not caring about offending the greater power.

The invasive darkness didn’t withdraw, but it didn’t come closer either.

It dawned on me that Akem didn’t intend to smother the spark. He was just as curious as I was.

He’d penetrated my mind twice in three years. The first time I’d been vulnerable. The second time was when I’d tried to explore his essence to find his weakness, and by doing that I’d opened the pathway for him to enter mine. His darkness had almost drowned me. I’d pulled out in the end and survived, but it had leached me to my core for a very long time, bringing me to the verge of suicide before my magic had finally purged its influence.

During that time, Kaara Nightshades had come into my life, aiding me with her natural-born warmth and calm. I still didn’t know what she meant to me, but she meant such a great deal that I’d once risked going to war with vampires for her.

After my last encounter with Akem, I became extremely cautious when toying with power much darker and greater than mine.

This planet was his, not mine.

But Akem hadn’t gotten anything out of me. My mind was a blank sheet. And I’d had a small vengeful satisfaction at his futile effort.

Now I’d finally seen a faint light, and the ultimate predator in the jungle wasn’t going to pass on the opportunity to learn about me. He knew I wouldn’t risk fighting him to lose the pulsing light.

Whatever I learned, he’d know. 

The beacon grew weaker.

No!

My ice spear pierced the tiny fracture in the wall in my mind’s world, turning and twisting to open more space, but a punishing force hammered into my chest and threw me back.

Whoever had put the barrier in my mind was more powerful than I. The excruciating pain drilled into my brain at my challenge, but I wasn’t giving up.

I was so close to reaching the glinting light! This could be my last chance.

With a furious roar, I got up, hurling myself toward the wall, and my spear went hurtling through the narrow rift. My ice crashed onto the barrier with a hiss.

The guiding light was inches away, within my reach. If I seized it, I could unveil what I had been seeking all these years.

My torment would be over.

The crack opened wider, and I inserted my hand through it. The ragged edge of the tear cut into my flesh, my witch blood dripping to the ground.

But I snatched the beam of light. 

Reveal! I squeezed it and commanded, my dark power surrounding it.

The liquid beam twirled around my hand like a snake biting its tail. The rift in the wall was closing, its pressure threatening to shatter my bones.

I wasn’t powerful enough to hold on.

Reveal to me! I screamed, and Akem’s darkness creeped closer.

Bastard!

I threw up my free hand, my ice storm slamming into him and halting his darkness.

The light around my hand spelled Icearth 2788h 450.7m, −88975.01° (Y-1034b).

It was the magical riddle on my inner wrist.

What does it mean? Tell me! I ordered.

It hesitated.

I’ve come so far, I begged. Please. I’m failing, and I can’t continue like this. 

The way home, my own voice answered. It didn’t sound like mine, which was often cold, harsh, but it was mine from the past—naughty and innocent at the same time, and sweet. 

How? I asked. I need to know how. 

A firestorm burst from the wall, repelling my ice and darkness, and sent me flying back.

The wall sealed, and then it vanished.

I held my ice spear tightly, but I knew if I stabbed into where the wall had been before, I would only damage myself.

I wheeled toward Akem’s darkness at the corner, my eyes burning with madness. Before I rained down my wrath on it, his darkness withdrew with a snicker.

He’d witnessed my failure. He’d accumulated another weakness of mine. And he’d learned I would never be able to move forward without the light of my past.

I sent an icy storm through Red Dragon’s opening. It howled and expanded, decorating everything it touched with icy frost and withering the black blossoms in its path.

How strange that there were blossoms in this poisonous forest of scarce light.

Akem was gone, not wanting to bother with me anymore.

The chilling realization that he could come and go at such speed with merely a thought sickened me.

I rummaged through the ship, hoping to find information that could shed a light on the riddle of Icearth 2788h…

If it was a way home, could it be the coordinates?

How could I have the resources to decipher it when every ship on this damned planet went dead before it’d crashed? After I went through every inch of the ship, I slumped to the floor in exhaustion.

If there was any data, it was locked inside the dead machine.

I abandoned the useless ship.

When I looked up at the broken branches above it, an idea formed in my mind.

Could the portal be in the air?

I sent icy mist up toward the sky where the shuttle had tumbled down, in the hopes of finding an aberration in its path.

All I saw was the gloomy, narrow open sky between the thick foliage.

On Pandemonium, days were short and nights were long.

I had lingered in the jungle for too long. I needed to return to my tower before night fell, before Akem’s creatures, especially the phantoms, came out to play.