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Below is an excerpt introducing the main character into the hidden world into which she is about to fall:


An eternity could have passed in the quiet chamber before she thought to pull out the comm unit from her pocket and check the chronometer, which glowed through the darkness.

"Damn." She'd just missed the train and would have to wait for the next.

On the good side, the strange man should be long gone, having, by all indications, lost her; and since she had a cycle away from the office and downtown Porton, she would hopefully be forgotten or he would be caught and imprisoned by the Peacekeepers by the time she returned. Either meant he wouldn't get to her, but the former was preferable to the latter.

"You said a man with a sword attacked?" The diviner's voice barely broke the still air.

She shrank from the eerie shadows on his face cast by the lantern. "Yes, in the alley between buildings down the street. He attacked and I ducked and ran. He was following me. I didn't know where else to go."

The priest nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face one that she recognized.

"You don't believe me." She should have known. It sounded farfetched to her, but she had experienced it.

"I do. I also know you're no daemon."

"Daemon?"

A wry smile broke the stern set to his jaw and he pointed above the door to a strange etched symbol. Now that she was aware of it, she looked about at patterns of them all around on the walls and floor.

"They cannot pass beyond the wards. The tunnels were originally meant to protect humanity from them."

Lilly bit her tongue on what she thought of his religious nonsense and stepped back from him, now anxious to leave. He stuck his finger in a fist-sized notch in the hidden door and pulled. At a small click, light returned from outside, along with the silence of the sanctuary and fresh air.

"You don't have to believe. Come." The old man motioned her forward and descended to the main level, where he pointed to the many scenes decorating the walls and ceiling. "A great war began long ago between the forces of light and dark. The daemons, the rebels, were cast from the light to the dark pits of Velok. Legions of luriel hold them off for eternity. In retaliation, the daemons came to destroy our world after the Gods departed, but the luriel saved us and continue to protect us until the Gods return."

Not yet wanting to risk stepping into the street, she followed the priest to an old book under a glass case. Pages yellowed by time and rough-edged from use revealed their illumination in magnificent pictures with text around them and gold lacings framing each page. Its beauty stole her breath.

"The Falamoer, the book of Fal Oroneth. It was written seven thousand years ago by the great prophet Alethea. She wrote the history of the Eternal Gods, who once walked all realms and birthed the luriel and daemons and condemned them to another realm. However, the Gods were destroyed in the process. The two sides are weaker than their predecessors and are strongest in their realm. She wrote about a vision of the Gods returning. We live in the hopes that her vision of unity is fulfilled." Bliss lit upon his face. "It is the cornerstone of our faith."
Myths. All well and good for bedtime stories but nothing more.

She wanted to say there was no such thing, but something inside stopped her. A feeling of homesickness ached in her when she looked upon the painting of a city haloed in golden rays on the ceiling over the alter. Winged beings in gold-accented white robes surrounded it. Part of her felt it was real but it couldn't be. It was all religious nonsense.

Or maybe she didn't want to believe, because if the Gods were real, then the horrible monsters, the daemons, were real too, and she didn't want to believe in such horrors. She believed in the sciences, which explained the universe and its order. And she'd always hated the dark.

She was a product of the Reformation. Her parents had brought her up to believe in the empirical, in what could be proven. The rest was imagination for the rush of being frightened—and she hated being frightened.

"I appreciate the faith lesson," she lied, backing away towards the door. The priest watched her with a patience on his face that belied his true motive—to convert her—but she wasn't going to give him that chance. "But I should really be getting to the train. Really. Thank you…for everything."

She turned and hurried to the door, glad for the chance to have hidden but feeling like he had tapped into the emptiness inside her. The priest's quick lesson on his beliefs left her with an eerie sensation and the feeling like she was missing something, a…unity. She had to get out of there, away from everything, and return home to the comfort of familiarity and tangible surroundings in the present, rather than the imagined worlds of the past. She needed to find herself.

She couldn't wait to get away from the city and the temple.