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“Sparrow!” Raithe’s voice made me jump. The iylvahn held out a hand, his gaze stern and yet almost pleading. “The city is

lost,” he said, and the truth of his words turned my heart to ice. “Kovass has fallen. We have to get out of here before it

crushes us, too. You know the city better than me. Where is the best place to go?”

“The docks,” I whispered. There was no way we would get through the gates; we’d be crushed under buildings or swallowed by

the earth before we made it out of the district. “The striders might still be operational. We have to get to the docks.”

We fled across the rooftops, leaping from building to building and feeling them shake under our boots.

Around us, the city continued to collapse, clouds of dust rising into the air as one structure fell and another pushed its way to the surface.

The new buildings were huge, blotting out the suns as they soared into the air.

The scale of destruction left me breathless; the sheer power of what was happening around me was incomprehensible.

Raithe hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the Deathless Kings were nearly gods.

I wished I had listened to him sooner, but it was far too late for regrets.

As I followed the assassin, leaping onto another roof, the stones beneath me crumbled. I dropped, but managed to throw out

my arms and catch what remained of the edge. My legs dangled over the street as I tried to claw myself up, feeling the entire

building tremble beneath me.

Strong fingers clamped over my wrist, and the iylvahn pulled me onto the roof. Surprised, I met those pale eyes for just a

moment. I hadn’t expected him to help; none of my teammates in the guild would’ve come back for me. The unspoken rule was

every hood for themself, and if you couldn’t keep up, you weren’t fit to be there in the first place.

“Are you all right?” the iylvahn asked. He sounded breathless, too. I nodded, feeling another tremor quiver through the ground

beneath us, and he turned away. “Keep moving, then. We’re almost there.”

The docks were a madhouse. People were scrambling over each other, blindly shoving others out of the way, trying to escape

the chaos. Waves of sand smashed into the rocks, sending geysers of dust into the air. Figures swarmed the piers like ants,

several tumbling into the roiling sea and being immediately swallowed by sand.

On the farthest dock, at the end of the pier, silhouetted like a great wood-and-metal insect against the sky, one last strider crouched.

Mobs of people rushed it, scrambling over the docks and sending more figures tumbling into the churning sea, shoved or thrown over the edge by the panicked and the desperate.

A grinding sound reverberated through the air, echoing over the voices of the mob. A shudder racked the strider’s body and

it rose from the sands, as if it were standing up.

“It’s getting ready to leave,” Raithe said, and leaped down to the docks. “Hurry!”

We ran for the pier, dodging multitudes of bodies. Thankfully, I had a lifetime of practice weaving through crowds, and Raithe

seemed to be an expert as well. People stumbled, pushed, shoved, and jostled around us, but we dodged and wove our way through

the human sea until we hit the last dock.

The strider began to move. People were still flinging themselves at it, reaching for the rope ladder that was quickly being

drawn up the side. Some leaped for its legs, missing and plummeting into the sands below. A few managed to cling to its sides,

hanging on for dear life as the wood-and-metal beast continued down the dock.

Raithe narrowed his eyes, gauging the distance between the strider and the pier. “We’re going to have to jump,” he muttered,

glancing back at me. “Can you make it?”

“Yes,” I gasped, but my voice was drowned out as, with the thundering of a landslide, the earth broke apart and a great tower surged into the air at the edge of the docks.

Shedding sand and boulders, it loomed over us, its gilded roof flashing a dull gold in the eerie light.

Raithe grabbed my wrist and yanked me back as rocks rained onto the pier, smashing into planks and crushing civilians.

Most of the crowd vanished into the waves, screaming.

We pressed back against a wall as chunks of stone continued to rain down, sending up massive plumes of dust as they crashed into the sea.

The strider wobbled, lurching to the side as stones bounced off its body. The ground beneath it heaved, and a huge wave of

sand smashed into it, causing it to stagger even more. I watched it lean to the side in seeming slow motion, shedding figures

that went flailing helplessly into the waves. A metallic scream pierced the air as one of its legs buckled under the unnatural

weight. With a groan like the dying howl of a great beast, the strider collapsed into the churning waves. A swell rose up

to swallow it, and then it was gone, taking my heart to the bottom of the sea with it.

Raithe and I staggered away from the wall and stared at the harbor, at the empty spot where the strider had gone down. The

docks were in shambles, wooden planks smashed apart and floating on the waves. Bodies lay everywhere, struck by falling rock

or crushed under the feet of their fellow humans. The boats and sand skiffs had long been taken, and the last strider lay

in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the Dust Sea. No way out, except to go back through the collapsing city to try to reach

the gates, clear on the other side.

I knew for a fact we weren’t going to make it.

“Sparrow!”

I jerked at the sound of my name. Nearly inaudible, it floated to me through the chaos around us. It hadn’t come from the

harbor or the streets behind us, but from somewhere in the ocean of sand.

The bow of a sand skiff crested a wave, sails flapping wildly in the gale, and moved toward us. A figure stood at the rudder, trying desperately to make the little boat go where he wanted. Blond hair gleamed in the suns and deep blue eyes flashed as they met mine.

My own eyes widened, and I gasped. “Halek?”

The Fatechaser waved at us, then quickly grabbed the rudder again as the sand skiff lurched to the side. “Come on!” he cried,

steering the vessel toward the broken remains of the dock. A wave caught the boat, nearly tossing it into the air, and he

winced. “I can’t bring it much closer. You’re going to have to jump!”

I glanced at Raithe, and we sprinted over the shattered dock, leaping broken planks and bounding from post to post. Sand swells

rose frighteningly high, and waves slapped against my legs, filling the air with grit. Raithe reached the end of the dock

and sprang over the roiling sand, landing in the boat with room to spare. Halek’s gaze snapped to him as a swell caught the

boat, pushing it farther from the docks just as I reached the end.

“Sparrow!” Raithe lunged to the very edge of the skiff and held out an arm. “Jump!”

I jumped.

The Dust Sea boiled beneath me, hot wind and sand blasting my face. My eyes stung, blurring with tears as I fell, and I reached

out blindly with one hand.

Once more, strong fingers closed around my forearm and yanked me forward, and I fell into the skiff. I landed on top of the

assassin, feeling his rigid body against mine as I pressed him into the boards.

Panting, trembling, I raised my head and met that pale blue gaze, the face within the hood a breath away from mine. The expression staring back at me wasn’t anger or even unease; it was calm, plus the barest hint of relief peeking through the stoic features.

A muffled roar echoed behind us. I rose and stumbled to the back of the skiff, then watched the docks shrink rapidly from

view as we sailed away. I could barely see Kovass through the massive dust storm swirling around it, but the hazy silhouettes

against the sky were not familiar.

My legs buckled, and I sank to my knees on the deck. Kovass—my city, the only home I’d ever known—grew smaller and smaller

beyond the waves. I thought of the guild and the people I’d known my whole life: Rala, Dahveen, Shadyr, Jeran. All gone. Maybe

someone had survived, but I had seen the utter chaos in the streets as the city collapsed, and knew they were probably dead. Swallowed

in the fall of the city. Or killed at the hands of someone they knew.

And Vahn. The one I’d trusted the most. Who’d taught me everything, raised me to be the best. Who’d been planning the rise

of the Deathless King and the fall of Kovass from the beginning.

But Vahn wasn’t responsible. The Circle wasn’t even responsible. There was only one person who could have gotten the soulstone

and brought it back to the surface. If I hadn’t gone into the ancient city, if I hadn’t been so determined to prove myself

to Vahn, Kovass might still be standing. Everyone I knew might still be alive.

I heard Halek’s voice at my back, asking if I was all right, but I couldn’t answer.

Raithe was silent, but I felt his eyes on me, appraising and concerned.

I didn’t turn around. The skiff bobbed on the waves, the suns beating down overhead, and I continued to stare at Kovass until it became a smear of dust on the horizon and finally vanished altogether.