An stood transfixed, staring at the sky, his arm extended with the rod clenched in his hand. The stars had aligned into the bde of a sword - one he seemed to be holding out before him. To be sure, he turned the other way. The lights danced, scattered, then reassembled into a bde once more.

  Stunned, trembling, he lowered his arm and stared at the ground.

  They hadn’t given him a rod - they’d given him a sword.

  So many times he had gone out on calls, never realizing that what he held was a fragment of some mysterious weapon. He had treated it like an ordinary tool - one from his former life. And now his memory suddenly untched a door that had long been sealed, and for several minutes An sifted with pleasure through the memories that spilled out: screwdrivers, wire cutters, tweezers, measuring instruments he used to carry with him. They had been his partners, extensions of himself.

  Looking at the situation from a different angle, now without awe but with careful interest, he felt along the rod in the darkness. Among the engraved curls - depicting either twisting grasses or serpents - he found rough protrusions of metal. The bde had clearly been broken off, leaving behind a heavy, awkward rod. Why had they handed it to him again and again? Or perhaps… perhaps he could fix it?

  But he was in the middle of a dark forest, not in Limbo, and still had no idea why he had been sent here this time. And he had no intention of going back - to the vilgers driven mad by blood.

  With a sigh, An trudged forward. If he’d gone far enough, he should soon see juniper thickets, then two right turns, and he’d come out onto a field. It would be easier to get his bearings there.

  He stumbled over a root and stopped.

  Was the road looping in a circle?

  He walked on a little farther and began looking around. Maybe he could orient himself by the glow of the fire from the forest hamlet. Nothing was visible - only the dark forest, vague shapes of bushes and trees, and the uneven road beneath his feet. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  Never before, while on a call, had he found himself in a situation like this. There had always been a clear task, a clear sense of where he was meant to go. Those he met along the way never attacked him; they only watched. This time, even though the dispatch had been completely ordinary, everything was going wrong.

  What was he supposed to do?

  He pulled the rod from its case again - the rod that wasn’t truly a rod at all. An had never been aggressive, had barely been in any fights. A broken sword was not his tool. He needed to find its owner and return at least part of their weapon.

  Maybe he could navigate by the stars?

  But when he lifted his gaze to the sky, he saw that the dance of the stars had stopped. They hung there, shimmering in complete chaos. No matter how long he stared, he found no patterns or signs - nothing to inspire him or give him a clue.

  Fine, then.

  Anger rose in him. It was a warming, strengthening feeling. He would find a way out himself.

  Turning, he set off perpendicur to the road that had betrayed him and turned into an endless loop. After a few dozen steps he came up against an almost solid wall of spruces and pines, their branches interwoven so tightly there was no way through. Snorting and stubbornly jerking his head, An turned and walked along the unbroken wall of trees. In the pitch darkness it wasn’t easy - but he was angry, and he was determined.

  Less than an hour ter, frustrated and covered in pine needles, he ran straight into a solid wall of bckberry bushes.

  I wonder how long I’ve been wandering out here.Will dawn ever come?

  The stars still hung motionless in the dark sky - silent, chaotic.

  If he turned now and followed the bckberry thicket, he’d just keep circling the forest.

  NO.

  He refused.

  Yanking the rod from its case, An swung it. He could hardly have said what he expected to achieve. More than anything, he was mentally fighting back - against injustice, against the pressure of some чужая воля, some alien will trying to trap him in the dark forest.

  No pilr of blinding light appeared. The bushes and trees blocking his way didn’t vanish. For an instant, when his swinging arm rose above his head, the stars swayed, briefly forming the outline of a bde - then snapped back, as if tethered to a fishing net.

  His consciousness began to fade again. Darkness slowly crept over his vision.

  NO. NO!

  In desperation, he filed the rod in all directions, blindly, spinning in pce, stumbling over stones. He sobbed, not knowing how to win, how to fight back against the unseen force shutting him down - about to erase his memory and send him back to Limbo.

  A heavy hand dropped onto his shoulder.

  His vision cleared. The approaching dawn had lightened the sky. The thorny bushes and trees were gone. A man in a long white robe stood before him, looking into his face with calm attention.

  In An’s trembling hands, the rod was clenched tight.