Free Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4) by K.C. May Page A

in the years before The Sacrifice.”
    Gavin had known of the Runes of Carthis. He used them to travel to times gone by and to summon Ritol back to its own realm. He’d always thought Carthis was a place, not a person.
    “She came to the midrealm frequently,” the Guardians continued, “because there she could interact with those of pure kho without endangering her life.”
    “Because the zhi-bent tempered them.”
    “Yes. Inspired by the Wayfarer, we decided to try it. Our goal was to transfer our kho and zhi essences into a single crystal and then extract the combined essence so that we would be balanced as individuals, much like your people are.”
    Gavin felt a slight chill and got up to pace. “What went wrong?”
    “The body can survive only moments without the essence. Once decay begins, the body cannot be resurrected. The shaman combined our essences within the Nal Disi but could not extract them from the crystal, for our bodies had begun to decay.”
    The notion of removing the essence temporarily to combine it with another excited Gavin. Could the key to fixing Feanna be found in that process? “So your essence was trapped in the crystal. How did it get into the wellspring?”
    “The shaman who performed the ritual was banished and his complement along with him. He brought the Nal Disi into the mountains in the hopes that he could break our essence free from its prison. After many years, the shaman died, and his complement, unable to survive without him, threw the crystal into the spring before she, too, perished.”
    Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “But all that happened in the midrealm. How did the crystal get here?”
    “The crystal isn’t living matter, and therefore it exists in all realms, like the mountains and oceans.”
    “Are you saying that your essence infused the water of all seven realms at once?”
    “Yes, the water exists in all realms. Over the centuries the Nal Disi was submerged in the spring, beings of all realms have been affected by it, though we did our best to frighten them away.”
    Daia stirred. Gavin waited to see if she would rise, but her breathing deepened once more into the steady rhythm of sleep.
    “So Carthis was a Wayfarer,” he said, mostly to himself.
    “One of the zhi-pure from the realm of violet.”
    “How did humans become Wayfarer?”
    “Carthis was said to have visited all the realms, including those of the pure kho and the kho-dominant—red, orange, and yellow. Carthis was killed in one of those realms, and the being of a strong kho nature became Wayfarer. This began a time of chaos throughout the realms as the new Wayfarer traveled and wreaked havoc wherever he went. It was King Landon Beresfard from your realm who slew the kho-bent Wayfarer and inherited the power. It has been passed down to your people ever since.”
    “How do you know that? You’ve been stuck in a rock for hundreds of years.”
    “Though our souls are bound to the essence, we are free to travel across the dimensions of time and space. We have witnessed these events ourselves.”
    Whoa. Gavin gaped at their ghostly form a moment. “Can you go forwards in time and see how this all plays out?”
    “No, Emtor. The future isn’t written. Your choices, and those of every other being, have not yet been made.”
    “So you’re saying there’s no such thing as destiny?”
    “Precisely so.”
    “Hah!” Gavin looked at Daia’s sleeping form, wishing she could hear this. Even after all that had happened in the last few months, perhaps because of it, she still believed in fate. “So you could go backwards in time or to anyplace in the present and get information for me?”
    “We can witness events, as you wish.”
    Gavin gestured to the sleeping forms of Daia and Cirang. “You used their fears to scare them away from the wellspring. How’d you know what they were afraid of?”
    “Hopes, fears, and other emotions are communicated through the essence. It is how your mate can