Malik and his father walked to the edge of the Faltari encampment, and ascended the hill where the dragon pyre had long since dwindled.

Together, they hauled a pair of engraved wooden chests in a small wagon. The chests were covered in ancient runes from before the Crossing and contained urns for gathering ashes of the dragon eggs, just as Malik’s people would gather the cremated remains of one of their island kin. But for dragons, it was a ritual that belonged to the shamans alone.

The valley had gone silent. No tents were erected within at least one hundred yards from the pyres, and Joren and Malik were entirely alone. They retrieved long metal rods and began shifting the smoldering remnants of logs away from the center of the fire.

Malik was glad for the effort. His cloak was thin, and his skin pricked with shivers. Even the coals were barely warm any longer.

“I’m sorry it’s so late, Father,” Malik murmured.

Joren shook his head. They worked together to move a particularly large log. “The ritual is always late, but I must remind you, you have duties that surpass any other matter now. Whether it be a festival, or something more personal.”

“Father?”

“You were with Riese, were you not?” Joren’s face was solemn.

Malik rolled his eyes. “She’s a friend, nothing more.”

“Yes, I know,” Joren said. “Like a sister. I expect you’ve always been closer to Riese than your own sister. And I know you’d never speak of it, out of respect for your friend’s privacy. But as shaman, we sense much about our people, like when someone’s words and actions do not match the timbre of their spirit.”

“Father?”

“All of us must sort through such feelings to some extent. Learning to navigate the treacherous shores of duty and family and one’s own desires. It always requires balance, and often sacrifice. Certainly, I had to learn this when I was your age.”

Malik’s father had never spoken of his journey to the outside world, but Malik knew that was what he was hinting at.

“For Riese, I think it’s a little different.”

Joren patted him on the shoulder and smiled. “Yes, I believe you’re right. And for you?”

Malik heaved at one more large cinder and heaved it aside. He could feel only slight warmth through his leather boots.

Surely, his father sensed something off with him since his Descent. Since his brother’s death. Was he acknowledging it? Speaking against the thoughts Malik entertained? Why couldn’t fathers and shamans ever just speak plainly?

“What do you want from me, Father?”

Joren sighed. “I want you to find your way.”

“Why did you runaway after your Ascent? Why did you come back? Why don’t you ever talk about it?”

Joren traded his pick for a wooden shovel. “Bring an urn, would you?”

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Malik sighed and stepped out of the ashes, shifting the latch and opening the first runemarked chest. It was empty. He opened the second, and found the urns. Each one had been fashioned to look just like each of the dragon eggs retrieved during the Ascent. The clay makers from the Feathered Serpents were especially adept with dyes. At the top was Aram Tulsein’s dark blue urn. Malik retrieved it and, with a twist at the center, the clay egg opened. It was remarkable how similar the urns were in size and weight to the original eggs they replicated.

Joren scooped a small shovelful of ash, and Malik closed up the egg and set it in the empty chest.

So the process went for several more eggs. Removing the urns from one chest, placing a small scoop of ash within, and replacing the urns in the other chest. When the time came for Malik’s own emerald urn, he felt only a dim sense of melancholy about the loss.

Neither he nor his father spoke as they performed the rites. Tomorrow, each climber would inter their egg in the crypts at the base of the spires, and they would journey back down the passes to the sea.

Malik set his own egg in the second chest, and reached for another.

When he turned, his father had stopped digging. Joren stooped down in the ash and motioned Malik over. At first, Malik thought his father had struck a rock at the base of the pyre. Joren brushed at the stone with a bare hand, exposing the soft ridges of dark blue scales.

It was Aram Tulsein’s egg.

Joren pointed to another spot beneath a pair of crossed cinders, and Malik stooped, heart racing. He brushed away the ash, revealing crimson scales.

Riese’s egg.

The scales were shimmering with a light they’d not possessed before. A faint inner glow.

He looked to his father.

“Th-the eggs… they don’t truly burn?”

Joren hesitated. “Most of them are destroyed. Most of these eggs could never have been hatched, left dormant for too long perhaps. But there are always one or two that survive the flames. It is how dragon eggs have always been tested, I expect.”

Malik drew a long breath. His chest tightened, as though the air had suddenly grown thin.

“Tomorrow we will take the urns to the Hall of the Ancients, as we always do.”

It was a vast cavern beneath the crypts and the Well of Souls. Walls were etched in runes and pictographs, telling the tales of the Crossing. Malik had never seen it. Only those who came of age as they buried their eggs for good.

“You asked why I left the island,” Joren murmured. “Because I learned an unspeakable truth. One I could never share until this moment. Until it became yours to bear as well.”

“What truth?” Malik asked.

Joren picked up Aram’s egg and set it in front of the chests upon the fading grass. Malik did the same with Riese’s egg. Joren shifted away an ember with a slight grunt at the heat, then stooped and retrieved one more egg.

“My,” Joren said. “A third survivor. That is especially rare.”

A golden one. Malik recognized it immediately from the ceremony. It had been Petyr Bromsein’s. Surviving not only the flames, but the fall from the Spires as well, and now, a soft luminescence permeated its scales. Joren set it with the others, then picked up an urn that looked just like Petyr’s egg.

“I left because I learned the true reason for the Ascent,” Joren said softly. “The reason we send our youths to face death. Yes, it is about confronting our past, how we came to be set apart from the rest of the world. But only we shamans know the full truth. This is half of it. The eggs are not all destroyed. Some survive, with the possibility of being bonded and hatched.”

Joren began to fill the urn that looked just like Petyr’s egg and set it with the others. Joren handed Riese’s urn to Malik and took up Aram’s for himself.

Malik looked down, gut wrenching. Her dragon lived. The potential to be bonded. And tomorrow morning, she would lay her urn to rest just like the others. Unrest tearing at her spirit as it had tonight, and now, Malik understood why she’d hesitated to cast her egg.

Joren placed the three surviving eggs into a rough-sewn sack.

“What is done with the eggs that survive, Father?”

There was a tremble in Malik’s voice. Anger, confusion, and even more resentment. Before he voiced the question, he already knew the answer deep in his spirit.

The life his people had always known, their isolation, their piety and peace and superior simplicity compared with all the rest of the world, and…

All of it is bullshit, Malik thought bitterly.