When I stepped out of the portal, I was not standing in front of a huge building, as I had expected, but in a forest. I could hear a river rushing nearby, but otherwise it was completely silent. This was not how I had imagined Aretuza to be. Although it had never been described in detail in the books, I had imagined it differently. I had thought of a large, magnificent building, but this was just a clearing. The wisest and strongest mages had studied here.

"It's not like what I pictured."

Only now did I realize that I was alone. I looked around for the stranger but couldn't see him anywhere. All I could see was Alvin's body lying on the ground next to me. There was still that lifeless look in his eyes. Where was the stranger, why would he bring me here without following me? And why would he leave his dead friend behind? No, it didn't make sense.Whatever had happened when we stepped through the portal, the stranger hadn't planned it.Something had gone very wrong. I slowly began to doubt that this place was Aretuza at all. If the stranger wasn't here, how would I know where I was? Of course I knew the stories that had been read to me as a child to keep me away from magic. Portals that kill. Mages who couldn't control their Chasos. Betrayal, death and all the other evils of this world. They all had their origin in magic, or so the stories said. But that was not true. Not completely, at least. All my life I had used magic here and there and nothing bad had ever happened. Whatever had happened didn't have its origins in magic alone; someone had used it to make this happen.

I looked at the body on the floor. I couldn't leave it here, but it was clearly too heavy to carry. I was sixteen and this Alvin was at least thirty. If I picked him up, the chances of him burying me alive weren't even that small. And a corpse wasn't the usual traveling companion either. A portal would have been very helpful now, but I didn't know how to conjure one.

Desperate and tired, I sank to the ground. Maybe I'll just drag him under one of the trees and bury him there. It didn't seem like the right thing to do, but it was still better than leaving him here. As I got up again and went to grab Alvin's body by the feet, I noticed the silver chain around his neck again. Suddenly I remembered something from one of the stories about the magicians. They took their necklace in their hands and said the words adan y marw to call for help. In the story, two lovers had died that way, but that had been an old tale. What would happen if I tried it? Either nothing would happen or I would get help.

So I took the necklace between my fingers and began to repeat the words over and over again, if I remembered correctly they were called something that could be translated as Dance of Death. I said the words again and again and was about to stop when a portal opened next to me and I wanted to scream with joy, but I didn't. There was nothing to be happy about that day. I had lost everything and just because I didn't have to spend my night in a forest with a corpse didn't bring me back my old life. This time I took Alvin by the wrists and pulled him through the portal with the last of my strength.