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A FTER ESCAPING H IGHMOUNT , Kanthe gathered again with the others in the back room of a dressmaker’s shop in the Midlins of Azantiia. It was here that their group had donned disguises for their first foray into the Shrivenkeep—which felt like ages ago.

And not all of them had made it back.

Llyra, along with Jester and Mead, had rejoined Kanthe’s group in the shop, but a notable absence weighed on them all. The loss of Tykhan still devastated. It was a blow to their cause and to Kanthe’s heart.

Two others now took Tykhan’s place.

Kanthe had hauled in one of them. Wryth kept his face stoic under the many glares. It had taken fierce convincing and much shouting to keep a sword from gutting the Iflelen. Kanthe had become the Shrive’s chief defender. Wryth was now as much a fugitive as any of them. And at the moment, they needed each other.

Wryth clearly knew the threat that Eligor posed to the world, while also valuing his own skin—and maybe his ambitions just as much. He could lose all his aspirations, and likely his life, should Eligor rise to full power. Especially if Wryth remained in Azantiia. Kanthe suspected—due to the Iflelen’s hasty flight with them—that the man had fallen out of favor with Mikaen, a position that usually ended with one’s head rotting on a pike. If true, Wryth needed to be gone from the city as much as they did.

Recognizing this alignment of mutual interests, Kanthe knew his side had best make use of Wryth. The Iflelen had knowledge that could serve them—both about Eligor and about Hálendiian plans.

Plus, Kanthe remembered the list of his own faults he had tallied while jailed, which included not finding gratitude for boons bestowed upon him. He ran a palm over his smooth cheek, unmarred by burning iron. He stared as Frell argued with Llyra and Rami whispered with Cassta.

They all still lived.

As much as he hated it, Kanthe had to spare Wryth some latitude in helping them escape, to keep them still breathing. Still, Kanthe kept Frell’s warning close to his heart: He cannot be trusted.

Though, for now, such concerns could wait.

The second newcomer to the back room addressed the more immediate problem. “The Razen Rose has secured you passage aboard a brigand wyndship,” Symon hy Ralls informed them. “A small arrowsprite, captained by an associate of the pirate Darant.”

“It’s good to have friends in low places,” Kanthe mumbled.

Llyra glared at him. “I thought that was more than apparent. It was my rough army that kept the dogs from your heels back at Highmount.”

Symon ignored them. “The arrowsprite will moor in the Nethers. It will not tarry long. Once we hear word, we must move swiftly. Already the king’s legions are flooding the streets, hunting for you all.”

“When will the sprite arrive?” Rami asked.

Symon frowned. “A pirate’s schedule is seldom their own. Until we get confirmation, we stay here. We don’t want to be caught idling on the streets.”

No one looked happy about waiting.

Wryth spoke for the first time. He had not even voiced an objection to Llyra’s sword at his belly. His one eye fixed on Kanthe. “You said you knew where Eligor hid the key that he so desperately wants.”

Kanthe inwardly winced. He had hoped to delay this conversation until much later, like while soaking in a steaming pool in the imperial baths. But even Frell stared at him with narrow-eyed curiosity. As did Rami and Cassta. Symon simply looked on with studious interest.

“You swore an oath that you knew,” Wryth reminded him.

Frell frowned at the Iflelen, then cast a wary glance at Kanthe. Despite Frell’s obvious interest in discovering what Kanthe knew, the alchymist had urged caution. But Wryth had been stripped of all weapons, even his poisonous Shriven cryst. Plus, the Iflelen was surrounded by those in the room and a cordon of Llyra’s men outside. Wryth would only be taking this information with him to the Southern Klashe.

Rami asked another question, one tangential but important. “How did you even learn the location of the key?”

Kanthe shrugged. “Tykhan told me.”

“How?” Frell pressed him.

“When?” Rami added.

Cassta merely lifted a single eyebrow, her equivalent of a shocked surprise. It was unduly fetching, but he focused on explaining.

“If my dear brother had not given me so much time to ponder my state, while iron heated on coals, I might never have understood what Tykhan had been trying to tell me at the end, as he succumbed to his injuries.”

Kanthe only reached this epiphany as he stewed in his cell, going over his life’s choices, tallying his many faults.

Specifically one.

How I’m far too preoccupied with how the world sees me versus placing myself into another’s stance.

Kanthe drew back to that moment beneath Highmount, as Tykhan fell, blasted to ruin, his bronze slagging across the stone floor. The ta’wyn had fought to hold his form as it melted around him. Kanthe had wanted to stay, to seek some way of rescuing Tykhan from this doom. But Kanthe had relented, recognizing the futility, responding to Tykhan’s urgent demand that he leave, a demand that the ta’wyn had reinforced by pounding against the floor, his eyes pleading.

Or that’s how I interpreted it at the time.

“I was too focused on myself,” Kanthe said. “I thought Tykhan’s efforts had been all about convincing me to leave. I had made that moment all about myself. I failed to see through his eyes, to perceive what he was trying to communicate at the end. It had nothing to do with me. It was all about the key. ”

Rami crinkled his brow, his gaze falling off into the distance as if returning to that chaotic moment, too. “But Tykhan said nothing. He did not even have a mouth to speak.”

“Still, he said plenty. If I had not been too self-involved to listen.”

“I don’t understand,” Frell admitted.

Kanthe turned to his mentor. “Back at Kysalimri, down in the Abyssal Codex, when Tykhan communed with the giant crystal arkada, he saw a glimpse of the ancient ta’wyn battle.”

“Of Eligor raging with the power of a fiery sun,” Frell said with a nod. “And the reveal of a Shadow Queen enthralled to him all those millennia ago.”

This last statement drew a hard glance from Wryth. The Iflelen was clearly stupefied by this revelation—as they all had been at the time.

Kanthe continued, “You were all too focused on that show of power, at the dark reveal, but none of you paid any attention to where this all took place.”

Frell frowned. Even now, the alchymist remained blinded by the more spectacular details of that revealed moment.

Kanthe shook his head. “Those events happened on a mountaintop. That’s what Tykhan told us. Did none of you wonder why that one image was stored and preserved in crystal? Of all the battles during that war? It couldn’t be solely about the Shadow Queen—or that’s what I must assume.”

“Why?” Rami asked.

“Beneath Highmount, Tykhan had sought to tap into Eligor’s memory, like he did with the crystal arkada. That was part of our plan. To see if Tykhan could strip the knowledge of the key from Eligor.”

“You think he succeeded,” Frell said.

“I know he did. Especially as he must have seen another mountain inside Eligor. Maybe the same one preserved in crystal.”

“How do you know this?” Frell pressed him.

“He showed it to me, in the melt of his bronze as it hardened. Its shiny edge had swept toward my toes in jagged peaks. I thought Tykhan was pointing to the way out, urging me in that direction.”

“Because you were too focused on yourself,” Cassta said with the ghost of a smile.

“Exactly. If I’d only turned my back on Tykhan, bent down, and stared through my legs, I would’ve viewed the spread of bronze as Tykhan saw it, as Tykhan shaped it.” Kanthe cast his gaze across the room. “The edges of the melted pool formed the shape of a mountain, with a cracked summit, one created by ancient eruptions. ”

Frell leaned back, going ashen.

Now you figured it out.

Kanthe continued, “Tykhan focused on me because he knew I had seen that same mountain.” He pointed to his mentor. “So did you. When you were studying to be an alchymist. At the Cloistery of Brayk.”

Frell shook his head, still refusing. “How can you be sure?”

Kanthe sighed. “Because, as much as I loved Tykhan, I believe he thought I was somewhat slow of mind. Which considering how long it took me to understand his message was likely true. He wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding. He pounded it into the bronze to make this clear. He did it twice.”

Kanthe pictured Tykhan struggling at the end, with no mouth to speak, with only one way to communicate. To name that peak the only way he could—with an arm barely formed. Kanthe heard again the strike of bronze against the sculpted mountain on the floor, pounding that name clear.

Once, then again.

With a fist made of bronze.

They had all witnessed this.

“The key’s hiding place…” Frell gasped out. “It’s The Fist.”

Kanthe nodded. “The volcanic mountain at the center of the swamps of Myr.”

He remembered his slog through those swamps, of glimpsing the fiery mountain rising in the distance, shrouded in smoke, steaming with brimstan. He also knew what made that peak their home.

Kanthe continued, “It’s why I’m almost certain the image preserved in the crystal arkada, of Eligor burning at the center of a sun, and the rise of the Vyk dyre Rha over his shoulder, was also The Fist. I suspect the ancient Shadow Queen rose from that same region and was riding a bat from the same mountain.”

“Like Nyx,” Frell whispered.

“I don’t think it was pure chance another Vyk dyre Rha rose from those bogs. Nyx was raised by a she-bat from that mountain, then poisoned into power by a bite from the same colony.”

Kanthe stared hard around the room. “I sense there is much we are missing, that still has yet to reveal itself. About all of this. While we know where the key is hidden, buried deep in the fiery mountain, we are far from the truth.”

“You are no doubt correct,” Frell admitted, though to Kanthe’s ears it sounded begrudging. “But if the key is truly there, we need Nyx back. With The Fist guarded by that poisonous colony—where Bashaliia arose—only she could open a pathway down there.”

“Or Eligor risen to full glory,” Wryth reminded them.

“Nyx must return before that happens,” Kanthe warned. “But with Tykhan gone, we lost our only way of reaching her in the Barrens.”

“Not necessarily,” Frell said. “Tykhan knew he might not return from the confrontation. It’s why we discussed destroying his body if he was at risk of capture. But you had raised this very concern about communication when we nearly lost Tykhan the first time, when his schysm was stolen. Tykhan took that worry to heart.”

“How so?”

“Back in the Southern Klashe, he devised more than just waveketches. He also took bits of ta’wyn alchymy, scraps that he had gathered over his long millennia of walking the Urth, to craft a new means of communicating with Shiya. One that didn’t depend on him.”

“Why am I hearing of this now?”

“Tykhan asked for our discretion. He knew of your affinity for him. He deemed that talk of his death and defeat, and the plotting around it, might unnerve you when you needed to be at your strongest.”

Kanthe sighed, knowing he could not deny this.

“But to reach what Tykhan built,” Frell said, “we must get back to the Southern Klashe.”

A swift knock drew their attention. Swords flashed into the air from scabbards. Symon crossed, peeked the door open, then drew it wider.

A young boy dashed in, breathless, dressed in a neat fall of grimed clothing, from scuffed shoes to a cloth cap atop his tow-haired head. He looked no older than nine or ten, but a steeliness to his eye made Kanthe question his age.

The boy passed Symon a curled missive from a skrycrow. With a quick read and a nod, Symon turned to them. “From the arrowsprite. It will be mooring in the next quarter-bell. We must be off.”

The boy then thrust out another tiny scroll. “This came, too.”

Symon scanned it as quickly, but there was no nod, just a look of consternation.

“What’s wrong?” Frell asked.

Because there’s always something wrong.

Symon nodded to Rami. “It’s from your sister. The empress warns of a pending quake. Another Cataclysm of Gaius.” The man’s gaze swept the group. “Only, the Bad’i Chaa ’s scholars believe it won’t be limited to the Southern Klashe. But will strike the entire globe, worsened by the ever-stronger pull of the moon.”

“When is this expected to happen?” Kanthe asked.

Symon’s expression hardened. “Her message was sent five bells ago.”

Kanthe failed to understand the significance of this last statement.

Then the ground trembled under them. The bolts of cloth lining the dressmaker’s back room shivered dust from their rolls. With each breath, the tremoring grew more violent. A crack skittered through the wall’s thin plaster.

As Kanthe fought to keep his balance, he recognized the truth about when this cataclysm would start.

Right now.