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D AAL HUNG IN Shiya’s arms. He shivered and felt hollowed out, an empty husk of bone and skin with nothing beneath. Each breath took labor, maybe every heartbeat, too. After being harshly sapped by the Dr?shra of all his strength, he could barely hold his legs under him.

Steps away, Nyx rose from where she knelt before the great mankra curled at the center of the cavern. She blazed like a torch from the energy hammered into every fiber of her being. To his eyes, she looked less flesh and more a figure of pure light.

He tore his gaze to the side. Around the cave, four waist-high tanks circled the beast, burbling softly with a golden alchymy. Parched for energy, Daal sharpened his sense of bridle-song. He watched those tanks trickle strength into the mankra, likely sustaining it, possibly over millennia.

Daal followed those four streams to the golden fire fed by those energies. Like Nyx, this beast glowed with such fervency he had difficulty discerning its ancient body through that shine. The flesh looked inconsequential compared to its shining core.

He had heard Nyx name this beast.

Khagar.

If true, here rested the Guardian of this desert, a Chanr? god, the true heart of the Kraena, the horde-mind of this colony.

Nyx lifted a hand and rested her palm reverently on the crown of this king. “At the end of the war, after the Kraena were torn asunder, the Dr?shra must have retreated here, fighting a last stand to save this great beast, to preserve a golden ember of the horde-mind.”

Daal glanced back to the other cavern. He remembered the bronze queen’s warm fondness for the little dhelpr?. She clearly had shared a similar affection for this king. Over the centuries, she must have grown an affinity for this land and its creatures, an empathy whetted by bridle-song, binding her to this desert.

But none more so than to this beast.

Daal stared at the ancient mankra and suspected why the Dr?shra had fought so hard, endured so long, protected this creature with such love.

Here lies the Bashaliia of that bronze queen.

Graylin drew Daal from the wonder to the practical. “But what are we supposed to do now?” he asked, turning to Nyx. “What was the purpose in guiding us down here? Does she expect you to take over her guardianship?”

“No,” Nyx said. “She spoke to me when she filled me with Daal’s strength. She must believe I can somehow bring Khagar back to the world, to bring the fight once again to the Revn-kree, to rid these lands of its entrenched army.”

“How?” Shiya asked, still supporting Daal. “His ancient body can never leave this cave.”

“That’s correct. This will be his tomb, resting forever next to the queen who loved him.” Nyx turned her gaze from Khagar. “The Dr?shra forced this strength into me for a reason, perhaps to grant me the power to free this last golden ember of the Kraena and carry it out to the world. Perhaps it can be a torch to draw the ravening horde, a seed from which that ancient mind can be reborn.”

Graylin stepped closer, protectively so. “How? Did the Dr?shra offer any guidance?”

Nyx winced at his words. “No, not exactly. But she pressed upon me the word wyldstrom. You all heard it, too.”

She searched their faces, clearly looking for any insight. She especially lingered on Arryn, who knew these lands best, but even he shook his head.

“What does that mean?” Graylin pressed her.

“I don’t know. I sense it’s what she wanted me to become. It sounded like she didn’t have the strength to do it herself—not in energy, certainly not in heart. After so long, I don’t believe she could let Khagar go. She needed another to take this burden from her.”

“You,” Arryn whispered.

Daal stirred enough to speak, rasping out his certainty. “You… You’re wrong.”

Gazes swung his way.

He shook his head, an effort that trembled his knees. “Can’t you all see? She didn’t fill Nyx with my power to give her strength, but to empty me.”

Graylin frowned. “What do you—”

“She hollowed me out as a vessel for that fiery heart, to carry it out from here.”

“Did she tell you this?” Nyx asked.

“No, but I know it to be true. The emptiness inside me is drawn to that golden fire. It pulls at me. My hollow wellspring is meant to preserve Khagar’s essence, long enough to leave here. After that, maybe the energy the Dr?shra passed to you was intended to do as you said. To draw the lost flock, to forge anew the Kraena horde-mind.”

“How can you be sure?” Graylin asked.

“Let us see.”

Daal shoved out of Shiya’s grip and staggered toward Khagar. With each step, his certainty grew. The wellspring, stripped and starving, led him forward more than his legs.

“Careful,” Nyx warned.

He cast her a disparaging look.

When have you ever been careful?

Once standing before the blaze, Daal lifted his palms. Too weak to stop himself, too drawn by the hunger inside him, he fell against the wizened king—and kept falling.

He felt himself tumble into that shining heart. He gasped as he reached the core of that blaze. He burned within it, but rather than being consumed, the wellspring inside him fed greedily. It sapped fire and energy into its parched emptiness, blazing light into darkness.

Daal writhed as the strength poured into him—not from the burn of that flowing fire, but from the memories that came with it. Similar to when he communed with Nyx, he became this great beast. He fell back through countless millennia to a life that was not his own but became his nonetheless.

The memories streamed too fast, too large. Snatches of the past burned across his mind’s eye, cascading in a flurry of experiences, muddled and confusing, terrifying and heartbreaking.

—he nestles in warm fur, tastes sweet milk on his tongue, as a chorus sings around him.

—he flies across open sand, the sun blazing above and off the crimson dunes.

—he mates for the first time, wrapped by wings and flowing air, tails entwined.

—in all and forever, he is alone, but many, seeing the beauty of the desert through a thousand eyes.

Then those memories raced ever faster, burning with blood and strife, with misery and loss. Daal fought against that tide, but it refused to be denied.

—he screams at bronze, with the fury of all.

—wings and bones burn to ash as the sky darkens with smoke.

—sand melts into a sea of molten fire.

—in all and forever, he is alone, but many, seeing death and loss through a thousand eyes.

—agony, as even that multitude is ripped from him, as his body is torn and others scattered.

—he finds solace in one heart, who shared these horrors with him, who made a promise in song, who dreamed with him through the long, endless night.

—here he has been forever, no longer many, but not alone.

—not until this moment…

A sorrow without end, grief without limit, drove Daal back into his body, now raging with fire. He could not contain the immensity of a memory spread across millennia, or of the brief glimpse of the enormity of one mind shared by many.

He stumbled back, fleeing the anguish, the heartache.

He glanced toward the outer cavern, toward the dark queen entombed on her throne. The misery of that loss carried out with him.

He crashed to his knees, burning in that golden blaze of a broken heart. His body shook, quaking with power, struggling to hold it all, wanting to forsake it but knowing he must not.

Then arms of bronze caught him, held him.

His memories blurred with another, one more ancient. He reached with a shared palm and touched a warm cheek, one that shimmered into another queen, whom the ancient one knew well.

My love…

Then he was gone.