Movies & TV Disclosure Day Disclosure Day Should Have Remained Undisclosed Please get us away from this era where we explain away all the wonder of the universe and treat the entire population of the world as a reaction meme. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on June 12, 2026 Credit: Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures There’s a monologue given by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) halfway through Disclosure Day to his old colleague Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth): He wants to let the man know that along the way, due to loss and grief, he got cynical and shut people out and decided that he knew better than everyone. Hugo hopes that he can convince Noah that the work they’ve done covering up “the truth” was a mistake because what’s waiting on the other side will—somehow—save us all. It’s clear that this moment is a core sentiment for the entire film, something that the writing of its script built to, or around, because it was important. And it’s just… not enough. Of anything. I’m a Spielberg kid. A great portion of the wonder I felt about the world can be laid directly at his feet—Close Encounters, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Goonies, these were all stories that informed my base code as a human being. When I saw A.I. in the theater as a teen, I left sobbing uncontrollably. What I’m trying to say is that I’m no brand of cynic, and even the director’s more divisive swings have made an impact on me before. Disclosure Day should have worked on me, is the point. The trailers were concerningly vague, until they suddenly weren’t and pretty much gave the whole plot away: Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) were abducted as children, and now they’ve both been “activated” toward one goal: Letting the world know that aliens do exist, and the government and private sector have been keeping this from us for decades. The bad guys are the Wardex corporation, led by Noah Scanlon, while the good guys are led by Hugo Wakefield, a former employee who absconded with a lot of their cohort and some very important otherworldly tech. It’s time to show the world what the company has been hiding because people deserve that knowledge. Why do they deserve it? Well, because knowledge should be given freely, a point that Daniel makes to his former-nun-initiate girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) when she questions the wisdom of dropping this intel into the world’s lap like a very hot bowl of soup. This is one of many conversations that the film tries and fails to have because it can’t seem to decide how much dialogue is the correct amount. Are we watching a dense film where we get to know characters intimately? Not really. Are we watching a sparser, moodier story where inference is a part of the experience? Definitely not. Rather, the dialogue serves the purpose of telling you what you’re supposed to feel and think, and when you should do it. That conversation with Jane is playing at depth because it turns on her faith: As a deeply Christian person, she believes that this knowledge will make people turn away from God, a need that humans are wired for and will likely be replacing with alien beings. And that could be an interesting discussion to have, certainly, but it’s genuinely weird to see this movie (and so many others) ignore the fact that the world we live in now is generally less religious than it was three decades ago. That Jane seemingly forgets or ignores how many non-Christian religions there are across the world is hardly surprising for her character, but the genuine abandonment of religious faith, worldwide, belongs in this conversation too. Aliens aside, the United States has seen radical changes in religious demographics since the advent of the internet; as of 2026, Pew Research indicates that only a little over half of Americans are absolutely certain of the existence of God. In this way, and many others, Disclosure Day feels as though it should be set a few decades in the past—even couching this as an early aughts story would have alleviated some of the narrative puzzlement it’s wrestling with. Instead, the film is set in what’s ostensibly the near-future, as we’re on the brink of World War III— —oh right, that. Try not to think too much about that. The film gives you peripheral knowledge of this and treats the entire world’s population as background sims for all that we’re meant to care about them. We see frenzied purchase sprees at a gas station, hear some dour news reports in the background of other scenes, but don’t worry about it! It’s all going to be fixed by these special, magical people. Which is, in effect, the exact opposite of what made the best Spielberg movies so good, movies about completely ordinary folks with no powers or chosen one status, who came into contact with the extraordinary—be it sharks or flying saucers or mortality itself. Disclosure Day is, in all the ways that count, nothing more than an updated version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A strange choice to make, reduxing one of the greatest achievements in cinematic history with a milquetoast successor half a century later, but it does seem that a few directors are starting to feel like their audiences didn’t get the message the first time around. (The Wachowskis had similar trouble with The Matrix, but Resurrections actually managed to hit its brief in that regard.) And that does seem to be at least part of the point, as Hugo tells us, outright, in that Very Important Monologue: The aliens know that empathy is the most important evolutionary advantage, and they want to help us understand it too.  Did you get that everyone? Did it come through this time? We said it out loud, in very simple terms, so you can’t pretend you didn’t know that was the point. It’s empathy, dammit, show some. We’re here to learn about empathy—say it again for the people in the nosebleed section. The trouble is, the definition of empathy within the film is pretty, shall we say, wobbly. Because Daniel and Margaret were both abducted, remember? As kids, for the purpose of imbuing them with special abilities so that they could… help? The aliens? But also help humanity? (I’ll be good and not go down the rabbit hole of the film utterly swerving around the fact that the “benevolent” aliens abused and traumatized the hell out of two children for their special plans because we’d be here all day.) For some reason it had to be two kids, and the plot says that’s because they were given different gifts (one gift per brain, those are the rules)—Daniel had to be able to understand the mathematical codes of the universe and Margaret had to be able to understand people. In case you didn’t quite catch that, I’ll repeat it even more simply, like the film does with its plot points: The girl is good at empathy and the boy is good at math. This absurd gender-essentialist binary distinction just about knocked me out of the film entirely, and that’s without getting into what the movie seems to think empathy is, which is plain… telepathy? Margaret can read people’s minds when she looks at them, divine what they most need to hear, and tell them. It reads as very Jesus-y, for all the weird Christian allegory that the film is layering over alien knowledge and technology. Do I want to get into how weird it feels that the film is this Christian while coming from a famously Jewish director? I really don’t. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. The action holds up well, though the score from longtime collaborator John Williams has far too many flourishes from old scores he’s written for previous Spielberg films, to the point where it gets distracting. There are also too many points in the film where characters suddenly become idiots to make the plot do what it needs to do; paramilitary officers who can’t look behind them; cars that suddenly can’t turn, the baffling decision to blow up one thing and hit the off switch on the other thing. But what’s really depressing is that this is possibly the only time that I’ve seen multiple actors come out of a Spielberg film looking like they can’t act—and not just a few, practically the entire cast has these moments, where incredibly skilled performers just can’t make the lines come out naturally or can’t summon the necessary lived-in-ness of the person they’re playing. One point in particular had me almost launch out of my seat because it hit far too close to home and got it twisted around wrong: We learn early in the film that Margaret’s father had Parkinson’s Disease and died from it when she was young, a detail that seemed weirdly specific given how vague character histories had been thus far. Later on, she’s having a (completely justified) panic attack after surviving a big action scene, violently trembling—she stares at her hands, and literally sobs “the Parkinson’s, I can’t stop, like my father” and proceeds to have a breakdown thinking about her father’s illness and death. So… I have a father with Parkinson’s. And it’s true, you do get a little more scared about being in any way shaky, knowing that runs in your family and seeing what it does to a person you love. And to see them use that fear in the most hamfisted way possible, with lines that I’d expect from a story written by a child—well, it certainly didn’t feel good. What I experienced was the exact inverse of feeling “seen,” as we term it. There are so many similar scenes in other Spielberg films where this kind of thing hits home—and yes, I am thinking namely of Lex’s “he left us” breakdown in Jurassic Park, where you know exactly what she’s really talking about without her having to say “my parents are divorcing and when the lawyer ran from our car before the T-Rex attacked, it made me think of my dad leaving our family, and I could really use a replacement father figure right now, Dr. Grant,” which was also written by Disclosure Day’s screenwriter David Koepp!—but something (several somethings) is getting lost in this new breed of film. My real beef with Disclosure Day comes from the overarching thought at its center, when the end comes on with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. Because when all is said and done disclosed, no uplifting thought or meaning is waiting. We’re meant to believe that the entire world would halt at this revelation, the sudden knowledge that there is other life out there in the universe, and it would change us immediately. But it isn’t true, and so it doesn’t feel hopeful to watch, even as a fairy tale. This isn’t an era to tout The Magic Solution to Everything—rather, it’s an era that needs constant reminding that avoiding the end of the world is work. Work that we all have to show up for. I walked into the theater hoping for that good ol’ Spielbergian wonder and awe. What I got was a potent reminder that it’s bad out there, folks. Real bad. Even the funny bit with the firetruck couldn’t pull me back in.[end-mark] The post <i>Disclosure Day</i> Should Have Remained Undisclosed appeared first on Reactor.

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Librarian, Watcher, Legend Plus: Doctor Who, Steven Spielberg, and the New York Knickerbockers By Molly Templeton | Published on June 12, 2026 Image: 20th Television Comment 0 Share New Share Image: 20th Television Hello, and welcome to a world in which the Reactor staff chat has been talking about sports more than usual! (We’ll get to that.) It’s a great weekend to make history, wouldn’t you say? And there are ever so many ways for that to happen (positively, I mean). Get some popsicles, call your reps, load up some Spielberg movies on the ol’ streaming platforms. Summer doesn’t officially start for another week and change, but no one told that to the weather! I Could Really Use a Wise Librarian to Turn to These Days It’s been a really rough couple of years for members of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast. Both Michelle Trachtenberg and Nicholas Brendan died far too young—and then, last week, we lost Giles. Anthony Stewart Head died at 72, which is still too young, to be honest. He was in a lot of things before and after Buffy (famous coffee commercials! Merlin!) but for a lot of us, he was Giles. He was long-suffering, tweedy, dry, wise, and supportive. When the news of his passing broke, I thought first—and continually—of the end of “Innocence,” when Buffy blames herself for what happened with Angel. Giles won’t join her: “If it’s guilt you’re looking for, Buffy,” he says, “I’m not your man. All you will get from me is my support… and my respect.” And Head played it perfectly. Just like he played it perfectly when he muttered about “bloody Americans” and their pretty masks that raise the dead; like when he did something terrible that Buffy would never do; like when he turned into a rebellious teen again in “Band Candy.” There are so many Giles moments to revisit. Were I more emotionally capable, I’d watch “Innocence,” and “Band Candy,” and “Lie to Me,” and probably “Once More, With Feeling,” but then I’d just want to do a whole Buffy rewatch, and … yeah, actually, that sounds like a really good idea, to be honest. RIP to one of the best fictional dads ever to do it.  It’s Fun to Find New Excuses to Revisit Doctor Who The news from Who-land isn’t great lately. Christmas is canceled, and the show’s future seems uncertain. But, on the plus side, most of modern Who is now on AMC+. And June 18th—that’s this coming Thursday—is, apparently, the 21st anniversary of the first appearance of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. He turns up, of course, when Christopher Eccleston regenerates in “The Parting of the Ways.”  This is probably, technically, a UK anniversary, but who cares? A ton happens in that episode, including the resurrection of Jack Harkness (I miss Jack Harkness) and Rose seeding the words “Bad Wolf” across time and space as a message to herself. And then Ten shows up. And then a whole small army of Doctor Who fans revisiting this episode remember how the Rose and Ten story ends up, and has a lot of feelings. It’s big feelings week this week, I guess? And there’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s Learn Something New About Steven Spielberg I’m breaking my own (loose) rules here and recommending something I haven’t finished reading yet: Bilge Ebiri’s “Raider of a Lost Art,” at Vulture, in which dozens of people tell the Story of Steven Spielberg. If you are of a certain age—a lot of certain ages, really—Spielberg’s movies are synonymous with childhood viewing. I saw almost no movies as a kid, and even I saw E.T.! He was inescapable, and definitive, and while his career has veered all over the place in subsequent decades, he has never been less than iconic. “How do you tell the story of Steven Spielberg?” Ebiri asks in his intro. “The director has, over the course of his career, told much of the tale himself, not just in his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans but also through the intensely personal elements that infuse all his work, whether it’s about sharks, Jets, aliens, dinosaurs, soldiers, con artists, or Lincoln.” This is long, and it has a lot of Vulture’s delightful side-notes. I’m certain that it’s going to be worth your time. The Only Thing We Are Planning for is Game 5, Sorry In an unexpected turn of events, the only thing just about anyone cares about watching right now is Game 5 of the NBA playoffs. Sorry, I don’t make the rules! I wasn’t even paying all that much attention at first; my time as a basketball viewer was years ago. But on a whim, I went to a neighborhood bar, and asked them to put on Wednesday’s game for the last quarter, and then a miracle happened. So we’re all Knicks fans now. People who I have never known to care one jot about basketball are Knicks fans now. And you know what? I get it. Everyone needs something nice. We really, really, really need something nice. The Knicks haven’t won a championship since 1972. That game was literally the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. Also, personally, I’ve had a grudge against the Spurs since 2005. We all have our reasons for feeling the way we do about sports. They don’t have to be reasonable. Game 5 of the NBA Finals tips off at 8:30pm (EDT) on Saturday; you can watch on ABC.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Librarian, Watcher, Legend appeared first on Reactor.

News TCA Awards Widow’s Bay Co-Leads the Pack for TCA Awards Nominations The horror comedy tied with Heated Rivalry and Industry for having the most nominations By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 12, 2026 Photo: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Apple TV Today, the Television Critics Association (TCA) announced that Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay garnered five nominations for the 2026 TCA Awards. No other show earned more nominations, though Heated Rivalry and Industry also received five. Widow’s Bay got nominations for Program of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, Outstanding New Program, and both Kate O’Flynn and Matthew Rhys earned nominations for Individual Achievement in Comedy. Other genre shows also fared well, with Pluribus receiving four nominations, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms receiving two, and Paradise also earning two slots. Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord and Invincible also earned recognition in the new category, Outstanding Achievement in Animation, and Alien: Earth received recognition in the Outstanding New Program category. Read on for the full list of finalists by category; the TCA will announce the winners in early August. Congrats to all! Program of the Year The Comeback — HBO Max Hacks — HBO Max Heated Rivalry — Crave/HBO Max Industry — HBO Max The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — CBS The Pitt — HBO Max (2025 Winner) Pluribus — Apple TV Shrinking — Apple TV Widow’s Bay — Apple TV Outstanding Achievement in Comedy   Abbott Elementary — ABC (2022 Winner) The Comeback — HBO Max The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins — NBC Hacks — HBO Max (2024 Winner) The Lowdown — FX  Margo’s Got Money Troubles — Apple TV Shrinking — Apple TV Widow’s Bay — Apple TV Outstanding Achievement in Drama The Gilded Age — HBO Max Heated Rivalry — Crave/HBO Max Industry — HBO Max A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — HBO Max Paradise — Hulu The Pitt — HBO Max (2025 Winner) Pluribus — Apple TV Task — HBO Max Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries or Specials All Her Fault — Peacock The Beast in Me — Netflix Beef — Netflix (2023 Winner) Death by Lightning — Netflix DTF St. Louis — HBO Max  Half Man — HBO Max Lord of the Flies — Netflix Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette — FX Outstanding New Program Alien: Earth — FX  The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins — NBC Heated Rivalry — Crave/HBO Max A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — HBO Max The Lowdown — FX  Margo’s Got Money Troubles — Apple TV Pluribus — Apple TV Widow’s Bay — Apple TV Individual Achievement in Drama Marisa Abela, Industry — HBO Max Sterling K. Brown, Paradise — Hulu David Harbour, DTF St. Louis — HBO Max Katherine LaNasa, The Pitt — HBO Max Ken Leung, Industry — HBO Max Myha’la, Industry — HBO Max Rhea Seehorn, Pluribus — Apple TV Connor Storrie, Heated Rivalry — Crave/HBO Max Hudson Williams, Heated Rivalry — Crave/HBO Max Noah Wyle, The Pitt — HBO Max (2025 Winner) Individual Achievement in Comedy Hannah Einbinder, Hacks — HBO Max Elle Fanning, Margo’s Got Money Troubles — Apple TV  Harrison Ford, Shrinking — Apple TV Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback — HBO Max Kate O’Flynn, Widow’s Bay — Apple TV  Matthew Rhys, Widow’s Bay — Apple TV Jean Smart, Hacks — HBO Max (2021, 2024 Winner) Tim Robinson, The Chair Company — HBO Max Outstanding Achievement in News and Information 60 Minutes — CBS (2012 Winner) The American Revolution — PBS CBS This Morning — CBS Disneyland Handcrafted — Disney+  Frontline — PBS (Eight-time Winner in Category) Have I Got News For You — CNN Marty, Life Is Short — Netflix  Mr. Scorsese — Apple TV Outstanding Achievement in Variety, Talk or Sketch The Daily Show — Comedy Central  Jimmy Kimmel Live! — ABC Last Week Tonight with John Oliver — HBO Max (2018, 2019, 2021 Winner) Late Night with Seth Meyers — NBC The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — CBS The Muppet Show: Sabrina Carpenter — Disney+ Saturday Night Live — NBC Outstanding Achievement in Reality Couples Therapy — Showtime/Paramount+ (2021 Winner) Finding Mr. Christmas — Hallmark The Great British Baking Show — Netflix Love on the Spectrum — Netflix RuPaul’s Drag Race — MTV (2014 Winner) Survivor — CBS Top Chef — Bravo The Traitors — Peacock (2024, 2025 Winner) Outstanding Achievement in Family Programming Disney Twisted-Wonderland: The Animation — Disney+ Electric Bloom — Disney+/Disney Channel  Percy Jackson and the Olympians — Disney+/Hulu Phineas and Ferb — Disney+/Disney Channel Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 — Netflix Vampirina: Teenage Vampire — Disney+/Disney Channel Wizards Beyond Waverly Place — Disney+/Disney Channel WondLa — Apple TV Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Programming Carl the Collector — PBS KIDS The First Snow of Fraggle Rock — Apple TV Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+ — Disney+/Disney Jr.  Phoebe & Jay — PBS KIDS Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical — Apple TV Sofia the First: Royal Magic — Disney+/Disney Jr. Weather Hunters — PBS KIDS The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball — Hulu Outstanding Achievement in Animation – New Category Bob’s Burgers — Fox Haunted Hotel — Netflix  Invincible — Prime Video King of the Hill — Hulu Long Story Short — Netflix The Simpsons — Fox South Park — Comedy Central Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord — Disney+ Women Wearing Shoulder Pads — Adult Swim Outstanding International Series – New Category The Boyfriend — Netflix  Crime Scene Zero — Netflix  Drops of God — Apple TV The House of the Spirits — Prime Video Last Samurai Standing — Netflix  Squid Game — Netflix [end-mark] The post <i>Widow’s Bay</i> Co-Leads the Pack for TCA Awards Nominations appeared first on Reactor.

News Widow’s Bay Widow’s Bay Will Continue to Draw Unwitting Tourists in a Second Season Please give this show all the awards, thanks By Molly Templeton | Published on June 12, 2026 Image: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV It’s been a week to be reminded that good things can still happen. One of those things is the renewal of Widow’s Bay, Apple TV’s incredibly sharp horror-comedy about a small island on which increasingly weird things just keep happening, much to the chagrin of the mayor, who would prefer a less supernatural existence. Created by Katie Dippold, who was once a writer on Parks & Recreation, Widow’s Bay is maybe the best new thing on TV this season (inasmuch as TV has seasons anymore). So it comes as quite delightful news that Apple has not just renewed the series for a second season, but signed Dippold to an overall deal to develop more shows. “Season two is about how everything is great on the island and there’s nothing to worry about,” Dippold said in a press release. Widow’s Bay stars Matthew Rhys as Tom Loftis, the mayor of the island community, who really wants his little town to become a destination. Like Martha’s Vineyard. There are several problems with this, including cursed books, peculiar mushrooms, a creature called the Sea Hag, and the island’s whole entire history. No big! Mayor Loftis will just keep refusing to accept what’s right in front of his (wide, panicked) eyes, and keep welcoming the ferries that bring tourists after a New York Times writer does a glowing piece on the place. Rhys anchors the show, but the entire cast is outstanding, particularly Kate O’Flynn as Patricia, whose job in the mayor’s office is poorly defined, but no matter! She’s very good at throwing parties and tolerating her snobby neighbors. Stephen Root, Kingston Rumi Southwick, Kevin Carroll, K Callan, Jeff Hiller, and national treasure Dale Dickey are all also excellent. Betty Gilpin and Hamish Linklater show up for guest appearances that are pure gold (and very funny, when they are not alarmingly scary). The season finale of Widow’s Bay airs Wednesday, June 17. And then our long wait for season two begins.[end-mark] The post <i>Widow’s Bay</i> Will Continue to Draw Unwitting Tourists in a Second Season appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts This Monster of Mine Read an Excerpt From This Blade of Ours by Shalini Abeysekara Death isn’t finished with them yet. By Shalini Abeysekara | Published on June 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Shalini Abeysekara’s This Blade of Ours, the conclusion of the dark romantasy duology that began with This Monster of Mine—available from Union Square & Co. on June 30th. Read the prologue below, and check out character art of Sarai and Kadra from artists Avendell and Bella Bergolts! Sarai believed the worst was behind her. However, months after exposing the government’s corruption in what has now been deemed “the Great Unravelling,” she faces scorn from citizens who preferred her and Kadra as the underdogs. Worse, eerie omens rock the country: from a deadly plague outbreak to a sweeping madness that leave the afflicted ranting of an approaching reckoning. Accused of angering the gods, Sarai returns to the only place that can clear her name: Ur Dinyé’s frozen north. But among the secrets buried in its ice are Kadra’s. When historical tensions between the north and the south worsen, a powerful religious order seizes control in the chaos, led by a man whose very voice can kill—Noceo bu Kader. Trapped between love and a crumbling country, Sarai and Kadra must outwit a power with roots as deep in fear as in cruelty. But the gods are always watching, and Sarai and Kadra may not escape a second time.  Buy the Book This Blade of Ours Shalini Abeysekara Buy Book This Blade of Ours Shalini Abeysekara Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget PrologueHer “Beware you would‑be, God‑Summoners! Take heed, all you who would call the Elsar to our plane! For when the infinite touches the finite, the latter does not emerge unscathed. A scar forms at the point of the meeting. And from it, what blood will spill? Who else will part the seams of our world as a sword does flesh and enter?Aim not for the lofty. Restrict yourselves to prayer and relinquish the selfishness of seeking out a personal boon. Let us worship as a hand does by the hearth. Plunge not into the fire!” —excerpt from The Teachings of Inquisitor Caminus of Ur Dinyé The collapse of a country was a quiet affair. Few historians would agree. They preferred to point to crushing defeats in battle, assassinations, or civil unrest to explain the peaks and troughs of political chaos. Yet, those were merely the symptoms of a rotting land’s disintegration. Its cause would have snuck in earlier, quiet enough that no academic would entirely pin it down and capable enough to reach gnarled fingers through history to throttle the present. Countries died in silence. As Ur Dinyé would today. Its current iteration, at least. Her lips lifted in a smile. Squinting against the wind hurling orange sand across the Xārōmand Desert, she urged her mare toward one of the imposing mountains ahead. Thousands of miles long, the Kaycakh Range’s jagged terra‑cotta peaks formed a land border separating Ur Dinyé’s inhospitable Xārōmand from the neighboring land of Errigal—with whom they’d been at war centuries prior. But these rocky giants had seen more than history. They had once held the future. A millennium ago, in the heart of one of these mountains had existed a temple of such renown that only Ur Dinyé’s monarchs had been permitted to know its location. Within its cavernous halls, devotees of Lord Time had meditated upon the past and present and been blessed with brief glimpses into potential futures. The Seers’ prophecies had steered Ur Dinyé from devastation for centuries, until they’d been massacred by a king who had taken umbrage at what would become the Head Seer’s final prophecy. Oh, the powerful and their fear. She cast a bitter look in the direction of Ur Dinyé’s capital of Edessa, thousands of miles to the south. She wouldn’t be freezing her ass off in the fucking Xārōmand if it weren’t for them. Temperatures dipped lower under the slow wash of night. Above, Praefa and Silun surveyed her nightly routine of the past three months. Time and time again, she halted before the sheer face of a mountain and listened. The desert graced her with a wail of wind and spit sand across her cheeks. Another night without hope. It had ceased to cut. For ninety nights, she’d ridden through half the Kaycakh Range in search of the Lost Temple’s entrance. The records she’d dug up from the Scourgemaster’s time had spoken to the temple’s rediscovery some five and a half centuries back but had neglected to mention the location after the unexplained deaths of those scholars and treasure‑seekers who’d ventured within. No matter. It was the nature of history to be lost and found again. She steered her mare toward another peak. Her mare balked, whinnying in fear as they neared the base. Sand gave way to barren soil littered with chunks of limestone. No sooner had her lips shaped a frown than she felt it, soft as gossamer. A hum of otherness like the scrape of jaws over skin. Magic. Hunger. Hatred. The reins slipped from her trembling hands, elation heating her blood. It’s here. Dismounting, she tethered her recalcitrant mare to one of the boulders fencing the mountain like teeth. Nothing in the rock face ahead indicated the presence of a door, yet the desert’s fearful thrum under her feet spoke otherwise. A warning. A proclamation of recognition. “We know your blood,” the wind seemed to hiss. “It has spilled here before.” “Go.” Sand curled around her ankles when she continued up the incline. “You are not wanted.” Cursed land. Soiled with the innocent blood of thousands of Seers and sundered by even uglier secrets the Lost Temple had witnessed. The laws of the mortal world applied loosely here. Her smile broadened. At last. Art by Avendell The mountain’s base vied with the Aequitas for breadth, rough slopes worn by Time’s chisel. At one corner, a pile of rubble listed precariously to the left, shielding what must once have been an entrance. A cave‑in or a barricade? she wondered. The elongated finger bones extending in silent plea from a gap in the rock could speak to either. She steeled her spine against a shudder. It doesn’t matter. She placed her shaky palms against the cool, stone face and felt an answering ripple within. Now for the price of entry. Withdrawing a dagger, she pricked each fingertip, barely noticing the pain. So great was her excitement that she barely winced. Five crimson streams rolled down her hand to dribble onto parched soil. Red faded to terra‑cotta. The earth drank deep. The wind halted. Quiet. It was so very quiet now. A hammering began in her chest, exultation and fear warping in a dangerous weave. She drew on the rock with bleeding fingers. A straight line, then a curved one, then several more. Zuvrai, the Urdish rune for “Time.” Mortal concept and immortal god. A rune so dangerously taxing that to draw it was to risk all the time that the user had left. The same rune Seers would have drawn to enter the Lost Temple millennia ago. Her chest squeezed with every pass of her fingers over the rock face, breaths dwindling and labored. Zuvrai was a Tenth‑Tier rune, demanding a torrential, inherently unsustainable flow of power from its user. She was no Seer. She didn’t have long. Faster. Magic was a peculiar thing. An inner well of power shaped by ancestry and tied to blood, accessible only by drawing the right patterns in one’s life force. Runes were the language of the gods, the Elsarian priests said, and their first gift to humans to allow them a taste of the divine. It was also their first test, a sieve to separate the greedy and power‑drunk from those good and faithful who would pass the gates into the Bright Realms where the High Elsar resided. When all was said and done, where would she be placed? Monster or martyr? A choked laugh tore from her. Had she access to her own epitaph, she would have written it now before history did it for her: Judge me or justify me, you know I was necessary. Red flooded her vision as she drew the final set of zuvrai’s lines, arteries bursting in her eyes like swollen streams. Blood laced her tongue when she swallowed. Her fingers drew the last stroke and paused midair. Gods help me. The rune flashed gold. Soul‑deep agony arced through her with the ferocity of a lightning bolt as zuvrai came to life, unspooling her time. Unspooling her. Invisible hands clawed at her lungs, wringing, twisting. Her screams were quickly swallowed by the now‑cacophonous desert, alive with a thousand jeers. Every pulse of her heart was a clap of thunder. Falling to her knees, she clutched her head and gasped for air. The ghosts laughed. “You were warned.” “No,” she croaked. Teeth clenched, she slowed her panicked breaths. “I won’t die here.” Slapping a palm against the rock face, she dragged herself up, gaze fixed on the now‑glowing rune drawn into the mountain. Scarlet wove into the gold lines, warning that she would soon be drained of power and life. Fifteen minutes? No. Ten. “You know me,” she hissed to her listeners, heart thudding so hard that she feared it would stall any moment. “You know my kin and my kind. You will yield,” she snarled. The ground shuddered. Yes. YES. “Let. Me. In!” she screamed. A chunk of the mountain’s craggy face crashed down with an earthquake’s force. She lost her footing and tumbled down the incline, cowering from the spray of rock and sand. Coughing, she raised her head when the rumbling ceased. By the Saints and Wretched. The chunk had reduced the rubble blocking the entrance to dust. The Xārōmand quieted when she staggered back up to that pitch‑black mouth. A torch flared in an ancient sconce by it. Then another, and another, leading her in. She shuddered. Welcome or trap, it doesn’t matter. She was going where even the dead couldn’t touch her. Art by Bella Bergolts Pain clawed through her chest, hooking in and ripping down. Blood gurgled in her throat. Eight minutes. She ignored the broken corpses piled around the entrance, red tears snaking past her jaw from her own bleeding eyes. She ran into the temple. Firelight hissed to life in her wake, drawing golden fingers down frescoed corridors of battles past, fates avoided, futures won, gods appeased, murdered Seers—Elsar save me. The bones! Hollow eye sockets regarded her flight with mockery, their jaws unhinged in laughter. “Will you make it in time?” they asked. “Can you control what even we couldn’t?” I will, she vowed. The Seers had glimpsed the land’s future but been sequestered from its workings. She knew the people of Ur Dinyé. I can control them. Libraries. Lecture rooms. Worship halls. Marble columns and limestone walls. The gilt had been chipped off, gaping holes left where statues and prayer tablets must once have stood. How many treasure‑seekers and scholars had the dead punished for it? Three minutes. She had never known such pain even when—Faster. She rounded a corner, kicked down the banquet hall’s rotting doors, then froze. There. A mighty oval courtyard hollowed into the center of the mountain. It opened to the sky, milky moonlight accompanying braziers that roared awake at her entrance. Avoiding the mess of collapsed columns, she ran to the shattered altar at the center, split down the middle by an unnaturally large handprint. There had once been a god here. Chained for centuries by magi and Seers alike and twisted into an abomination that had been trapped in a man’s body so that Ur Dinyé could win its wars. But that had been during the time of the Scourgemaster, a time of monsters, prophecies, and men with honor. This was a new age. And yet, it needed a monster too. She knew this to be debridement not death, but the arbiters of history took such umbrage to change. They needed their compartmentalizations of time and firm delineations of how the dust had settled. To stop it from happening again, they would argue, but knowledge of the past had never stopped its repetition. Blood did. Two minutes. Dagger. She sliced both palms open. Safsher, she drew the Urdish rune for “Sword” atop the altar. Tuhig for “Void.” Zefis for “Weave.” Sweat slid down her temples, stung her eyes. Her strained gasps were a preliminary death rattle as the agony in her chest pulled tight. “Soon.” Something caressed her neck. A fingertip? The past clawing for blood. She flinched. “You will join us soon.” Faster. She bit straight through her lip and drew. Khon, frazam, layk, sayag. Blood, End, Unity, Shadow, and finally, Sleep. Nibas. And she was out of time. Thick iron welled at the back of her throat. She choked. Blood sprayed from her lips to coat the altar, smudging her desperate runes. SHIT. She collapsed. The temple screamed in glee, a thousand voices grasping through death and time to claim her for their own. Blood seeped up from the courtyard’s tile, reaching inky fingers for her. A new ghost. A new scream. She tried standing but her limbs no longer worked. It can’t be for nothing! She silently pleaded with herself as the blood neared. Stand up! Stand— Blue‑green flames roared from the altar and spread to fence her from the dead. Dazed, she watched the fire climb toward the sky and coalesce into a wall. The voices vanished. She’s here. She had Summoned a god. Her fingers moved quickly across the tile, drawing zuvrai once more. The magic unspooling from her stoppered. Pain fled like a ghost. Exultation brought her to her feet right as the goddess entered the mortal plane. By all that’s holy. She fell back on her knees. Like all Naaduir, Faragathe had been human before her elevation to the minor pantheon for her service to Lord Time of the all‑powerful Elsar. It no longer showed. Starlight wove through black hair that trailed long past the goddess’s ankles to float midair. Midnight‑blue ribbons of sky slid over her twenty-foot body like an ever‑shifting gown. Four eyes, sans iris and pupil, blinked on each bare shoulder and across her clavicles. Two more apiece slitted open on both high cheekbones, and the human two stared down at her. Eighteen eyes, holding an esophageal darkness. One dark, blue‑green foot touched the ground. Faragathe tilted her head, curved horns gleaming bone white. “You call me to cursed land.” For a melodious voice, it cut like a blade. So, this is power. “I had little choice,” she said bitterly. “I’m not so powerful a magus to Summon you otherwise. But those damned Elsarian priests were right after all. A Summoning does leave a mark of incursion on the mortal plane.” “So, you pulled me through.” Faragathe’s eyes narrowed as she took in the courtyard. “Great evil was done here. A god Summoned. Brutalized.” “I don’t seek to do the same to you! I swear—” She screamed when the goddess hoisted her with a flick of her finger, inches from her unearthly blue‑green face. Faragathe waved a taloned hand, spinning her dangling body in a slow circle. “A mortal’s oath means as little as their life.” She grinned, baring sharp teeth. “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Now, what do you want?” For the first time, she wondered if she had made a mistake. What if she doesn’t care? The goddess’s many eyes were utterly blank. She had never seen anything so devoid of humanity. “I ceased being human millennia ago,” Faragathe sniffed daintily, reading her thoughts. “Why? Do you seek to offer your body as a vessel? Keep it. I take no pleasure in walking this plane.” “Because of what they did to you.” She trembled when the goddess stilled but kept speaking. “Faragathe, Devotee of Time.” She took a deep breath. “The Heretic Priestess.” The goddess’s eyes flashed. “You dare—” “I’ve risked everything to come here tonight for this, for you!” she screamed. “I spent years of my worthless, mortal life digging through ancient texts for how to Summon you. The woman whose prophecies everyone ignored because Time granted them through dreams instead of the out‑of‑context flashes of the future accepted as canon by the Elsarian Order. The priestess who was mutilated and burned alive for saying what the Order didn’t like hearing. One of history’s most brilliant minds, ultimately proven right and still all but written out of the Codices and every other religious text.” Faragathe’s smile was tight. “A choice that the Order has since learned to regret. Fear is bred in the unconscious, in the nameless things that walk between death, sleep, and waking. Unlike some of the other Naaduir and even a few Elsar, my power doesn’t depend on human belief. Everyone inevitably comes to me.” “I know. That’s why I wanted to offer you—” She jerked when the goddess planted her on her palm and leaned in. The words died in her throat. She had been wrong. It wasn’t just starlight glistening in Faragathe’s hair but bone and tar. The eyes on her shoulders were voids into worlds with terrors beyond comprehension. Darkness crowded the courtyard, extinguishing the braziers, and within it seemed to be a universe with the goddess as its epicenter, amid others of horrific, larger—all those eyes— She realized she was screaming when Faragathe laughed.“Well, mortal? What can you possibly offer me?” Mind. Where was her mind? “Recognition,” she gurgled, a portion of her mind irrevocably altered. Her gaze shied from the goddess. “There was a time after your death when people heeded you. Now, they’re viewed as mad. Remind them of you once more. Shroud this land and bind it to you. Make the priests of the Elsarian Order return your name to the Codices. We have a capital, Edessa. A cesspit of the pretentiously religious, corrupt, and greedy. Destroy them, and history will never forget you again.” “How quaint. So, this is about vengeance.” “You see my mind.” She knelt on the goddess’s palm. “It’s about more than just that.” Eighteen black, empty orbs swiveled toward her and watched. Faragathe’s brow pinched. “Yes,” she murmured. “A great deal more.” A blur of wind and limestone and she found herself deposited on the ground. “The Naaduir don’t grant wishes, mortal.” Faragathe sounded contemplative. “We accept what appeals to us and reject the rest.” Her heart sank. “Please, at least—” “We never made the same promises to humans that the Elsar did. We reached this state of minor godhood because we served them and not you. You have Summoned me, and your request was heard. There is no debt.” A tear ran down her nose to drop on her bloodied palms. “I understand.” Blue‑green filled her vision. A finger the size of her arm tipped her chin. “But in this, I will hear you.” Her head shot up. To her horror, she realized that she was sobbing. “You will?” “Violence may be the sinew of authority, mortal. But power, true power, lies in the shadows.” Faragathe trailed a hand over the ruins they stood in, the remainder of a place that had once shaped the nation. “Let them see it,” she said to the night sky. “Let it drive them mad. I will stand behind you.” Blood rushed in her ears, warmth spilling through hollows that life had carved in her chest and left to fester. So, this is joy. She bowed low. “My goddess,” her voice cracked, “from this day forth, I bind myself to you and only you.” For the first time, something almost sad flickered in Faragathe’s many eyes. “Very well, mortal. To ancient history.” She squeezed her still‑bleeding palms. The blood spattered on the ground in a silent vow. “To ancient history.” Excerpted from This Blade of Ours, copyright © 2026 by Shalini Abeysekara. About the Artists Born and raised in Munich, Germany, Avendell has been drawing and painting ever since she could hold a pencil. She pursued her art education in Savannah, GA and now lives and works in Pennsylvania. During the Covid lockdown she combined her passion for art with her love for reading and found her creative home in book illustration. Bella Bergolts is a professional digital artist specializing in fantasy illustrations, book covers, and character design. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>This Blade of Ours</i> by Shalini Abeysekara appeared first on Reactor.