They ascended to the pinnacle of the pyramid.

  They crossed the threshold into the heart of the pantheon.

  Illara and Matthias took a moment to catch their breath.

  The ascent had been exerting, even to the peerless constitution of the Astrastars.

  “Look,” the Nightblade said.

  The steps ended at a plateau of black marble that reflected the stars above.

  The surface polished to a mirror sheen but swallowed reflections.

  Before them stood the apex of the pyramid.

  A pyramidal stonework of thick seamless black marble columns trimmed in gold.

  Within it, an oculus and a circular chamber.

  “A temple,” Illara said softly.

  “A pantheon,” Matthias agreed.

  A pathway.

  A passage cut into the stone, its edges traced with veins of dulled gold that no longer shone, echoing a memory of splendor.

  Illara halted.

  Her honed instincts whispered the unseen sight of watchful eyes.

  But the pantheon interior was deserted.

  No Dread Coils pursued them.

  No Dread Coils came forth to assail them.

  Illara cast her sight back.

  Downwards.

  Towards the edge of the forest.

  The Dread Coils stood at the edge of the lake.

  Still, unmoving.

  Staring at them.

  “They did not pursue us,” she said.

  “They had fulfilled the will of the Temple.” Matthias said grimly.

  “Their most sacred place, and they move not to defend it.”

  Matthias regarded the deserted pantheon.

  He felt it too.

  The Nightblade’s hand hovered near his blades.

  In his heart, he knew even rune-enchanted steel availed them not here.

  “Perhaps they need not to,” he murmured.

  Illara did not reply.

  “No turning back,” the Nightblade shrugged, gesturing to the pantheon he said, “shall we?”

  Illara nodded once.

  They stepped forward.

  They strode between two thick columns.

  They felt it in their bones.

  The air shifted.

  Their strides felt lighter.

  Not colder.

  Not warmer.

  Thinner.

  Matthias looked to Ilara.

  It was as though they were moving beneath water before they crossed the threshold.

  Their ears popped.

  All returned at once, too loud, too sharp.

  Illara felt the familiar sensation she always felt emerging from her mistwalk.

  Matthias felt as though he came out of the shadow fringe, without the chill.

  The distant murmur of water, the whisper of mist, even the echo of their own steps, all rushed back louder.

  As though they broke the surface of the lake.

  They stood now within the sanctum of the pantheon.

  A vast circular chamber unfolded around them, far larger than the pyramid’s exterior should have allowed.

  At the chamber’s center rose a circular dais.

  Three tiers.

  Each carved from darker stone than the last.

  At its heart stood nine voidstones.

  Tall.

  Slender.

  Featureless.

  Obsidian pillars that absorbed light completely.

  They were arranged in a perfect ring.

  Equidistant.

  Immovable.

  Ancient.

  Each aligned with a constellation above.

  Matthias halted beside her.

  Before them stood nine monoliths.

  Not stone.

  Not crystal.

  Not any materials Illara could name.

  Not of any materials of Arcana.

  They rose from the floor like fragments of a broken firmament.

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  Towers of absolute blackness.

  Smooth and flawless.

  They drank the light instead of reflecting it.

  “Voidglass, perhaps.” Matthias muttered.

  “What are Voidglass?” Illara asked.

  “Nothing of Arcana,” the NIghtblade replied.

  “Remnants of dead stars, extinguished in violence.”

  Illara did not reply.

  Each slab stood equidistant from the others, arranged in a slow, spiraling constellation that defied Euclidean sense. No matter where Illara stood, the pattern subtly shifted, as though the chamber refused to be mapped.

  Nine pillars.

  Nine witnesses.

  Their surfaces were not empty.

  Within their depths, faint radiance drifted.

  Not reflections.

  Not inscriptions.

  But living sigils—forms of light suspended inside the darkness, moving with glacial patience.

  They floated like drowned constellations beneath frozen oceans.

  Memories of gods encased in eternity.

  Each monolith contained a symbol.

  Not carved.

  Not painted.

  Not crafted.

  They hung suspended within the voidglass.

  A curved rune not wrought by the hands of any artisans.

  A word not written, but existing.

  Spirals that curved within the glass.

  Light entrapped, where light should never be entrapped.

  Runes shaped from stellar residue and remnant of the void.

  Illara had known them.

  She did not name them.

  For to name them, was to invoke them.

  She knew, instinctively, that each pillar corresponded to one of the Nine.

  Not as how the mortal children perceived them.

  But as they truly were.

  Reflected in the stars above.

  Looking at them too long made her vision swim.

  Her thoughts began to fray at the edges.

  Matthias shifted beside her.

  “Let us not linger,” he murmured.

  She obeyed.

  At the heart of the chamber stood the ninth monolith.

  It towered over the other monoliths.

  Darker.

  Its interior light burned faintly gold and sickly pale at once, like moonlight filtered through old bone.

  Five inverted triangles aligned as a star.

  Illara knew this constellation.

  Tiamat.

  The Queen of Darkness.

  The Five-headed Dragon of the Void.

  Illara’s knees weakened.

  Whispers.

  Voices.

  Five.

  A distant, voice spoke to her.

  Beckoning her.

  Knew it in the way prey knows shadow.

  The stone beneath her grew cold.

  Cold as the void between stars.

  She breath fogged briefly, then vanished.

  This was Her Temple.

  Illara raised her hand.

  Her gauntlet hovered a finger’s breadth from the nearest monolith.

  For a heartbeat, she almost withdrew.

  Then she pressed her palm forward.

  Contact.

  The surface was smooth.

  The whispers became audible.

  Covenants. Oaths. Promises.

  Unbroken.

  Infinite.

  Her mind flooded with visions.

  Fragments.

  Stars collapsing.

  Worlds folding inward.

  A shadow that eclipsed the sun.

  Dragons burning across the void.

  Voices layered upon voices upon voices.

  A choir of extinct divinities whispering in languages that predated sound.

  A cacophony of roars.

  Flames and darkness.

  Dragons of the Void.

  Dragons of the Night.

  She gasped.

  Matthias pried her hand from the monolith.

  “Touch nothing,” he said softly, stiffly.

  Illara nodded as she reoriented her senses.

  Matthias walked away, mumbling something inaudible.

  A sharp intake of breath.

  She hurried after the Nightblade.

  Behind her, the five sigils flared briefly.

  “This place isn’t a shrine,” Matthias said at length.

  Illara looked at him.

  “They dwelt here.”

  They came before the outer edge of the temple plateau.

  The floor was a single slab of obsidian-black marble, veined faintly with silver threads that resembled frozen lightning.

  It curved subtly upward at the edges, forming a shallow bowl.

  Along its edges were intricately crafted motifs.

  A ring of marble relief depicting the epoch of a lost empire.

  The marble columns rose in perfect symmetry.

  The gap according them an unobstructed view of the entire isle.

  Illara beheld the Sea of Mists.

  The horizon enshrouded by a thick veil of mists.

  The ship they disembarked from was nowhere in sight.

  Black stone polished until it resembled night made solid.

  And above them—

  Illara’s breath caught.

  The dome.

  It arched overhead in a flawless hemisphere, its surface darker than shadow.

  Blacker than the void.

  No joints.

  No ribs.

  No visible supports.

  At its apex yawned the oculus.

  A perfect circle cut into the dome’s heart.

  Illara turned as she took in the sight.

  She saw what truly defined the chamber.

  The encircling oculus.

  Inlaid into the black stone were countless fragments of crystal, gemstone, and star-metal.

  Diamonds.

  Sapphires.

  Void-amber.

  Opals that held storms.

  Fragments of meteor glass.

  Slivers of auric alloy.

  They were not scattered randomly.

  They were arranged.

  Carefully.

  Painstakingly.

  Across every surface.

  Constellations.

  Hundreds.

  Thousands.

  The known stellar pattern from Arcanian charts—past and present—was here.

  More.

  Many more.

  A field of stars that did not belong to any age she know.

  Through it, the night stared back.

  From within, the opening was undeniable.

  From without, she knew, it could not exist.

  The pyramid’s stepped mass would have concealed it entirely. No angle from the shore, no vantage from the ruins, no ascent of the terraces would ever reveal this wound in the sky.

  Only from here.

  Only from within.

  Only by invitation.

  Three moons hung framed in the aperture.

  Astraria.

  Vesperia.

  Nautauri.

  All black.

  All aligned.

  All silent.

  They did not shine.

  They eclipsed.

  Their radiance a mere pale halo.

  The light of the Black Moon Nautauri engulfed the skies as liquid shadow, threading through the chamber in faint, almost imperceptible streams.

  Illara felt it pricked her skin.

  Shards of darkness.

  Pinpricks of the void.

  “Lara, the stars…” Matthias whispered.

  His voice sounded small here.

  Illara lifted her gaze slowly, mapping the heavens and the constellations instinctively.

  But something was amiss.

  The stars.

  They were not her stars.

  Not entirely.

  The familiar tethers of Astrastarian navigation.

  The Hunter’s belt. The Silver Crown. The Spiral Harp, twinkled with familiarity.

  But they were displaced.

  Unaligned to the star-charts she can recall by heart.

  Stretched.

  Distorted.

  As though the sky itself had been reshaped.

  “This place…” Matthias said, “beware, Lara, it sought to deceive us.”

  “No, Matt,” she murmured.

  He looked to her askance.

  “These… these are from another epoch.” She said softly.

  “Are you certain?” he pressed.

  “The Halls of the Thousand Leagues,” Illara began, “within the archives, we have charts…”

  “Wait,” Matthias asked, incredulous, “the Hall of the Thousand Leagues have an archive?”

  Illara shot him a look she typically reserved for filth she scraped off the sole of her boots.

  “I will have you know, Nightblade,” the Mistwalker said softly, “that we are one of the nine Houses of Starspiral Cathedral, held in the same regards as Steelheart or Weavelight.”

  Matthias held up his hands placatingly.

  “As I was saying. within the Halls of the Thousand Leagues,” Illara continued, “there were star-charts… Old and decrepit.”

  Matthias’s eyes narrowed in understanding.

  “Before treaties with the firmament were drawn.

  Before the jewel of the void settled.

  When the heavens were wild and tumultuous.”

  Matthias spoke the words aloud, “before the Astrastars.”

  Illara nodded.

  Matthias stepped closer to one section.

  “This one…” He hesitated. “It’s Astraria’s early drift.”

  Illara followed his gaze.

  He was right.

  Lines connected points of light in unfamiliar geometries.

  Curves intersected where no curves should.

  Shapes implied creatures, symbols, catastrophes.

  Some glowed faintly.

  Others were dead.

  All were etched into the stones.

  Precisely.

  The moon’s ancient orbit—long since altered by cosmic rebalancing—was preserved here in stone and crystal.

  Nearby, another panel showed Vesperia’s primordial path.

  Farther still, Nautauri’s descent.

  All three intersecting.

  All three converging.

  Right here.

  Right now.

  “This chamber,” Illara whispered, “perfectly aligned.”

  For this moment.

  The convergence of the spheres.

  She circled the perimeter.

  With each step, understanding dawned upon her.

  The walls recounted an age.

  Before the Astrastars come to Arcana.

  Remembered and immortalized.

  Epoch by epoch.

  Age by age.

  The slow taming of chaos.

  The gradual settling of the world.

  The waning of the Nautauri the unseen Black Moon.

  The waxing of Astraria and Vesperia as Queens of the Night.

  The sealing of ancient pathways.

  “This is a map of the heavens,” Matthias said quietly.

  “Yes” Illara replied.

  “In the age where the heavens broke.”

  “When Nautauri waned,” Illara murmured, “the twins were allowed to shine.”

  “And now,” Matthias replied, “it has returned.”

  “Briefly.”

  “For this.”

  “No,” Matthias said, “I think we are not on Arcana anymore.”

  They stood beneath the oculus, in silence.

  They were overwhelmed by the revelation.

  The triple darkness pressed down.

  Astraria and Vesperia remained locked in alignment with Nautauri, exactly as they had been in the elder charts.

  Not as they were now.

  As they had been.

  When Arcana was young.

  When the Black Moon ruled.

  “Madness,” Illara said as she placed her hand on Matthias’s forearm.

  “Madness it may be,” Matthias said, “but I speak truth.”

  “When did we crossed?” she hissed softly.

  “When the Temple appeared,” he returned evenly.

  “They built this,” she whispered, “to remember a world that no longer exists. Is all.”

  “No.” Matthias said with conviction.

  She looked at him.

  The Nightblade pointed to the heavens.

  “We are no longer on Arcana.” Matthias’s voice was steady.

  “Because the skies are still here.”

  Author’s Note:

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