The resonances of young men and women flowed in and out of Joren’s awareness, as they passed through the Gate of the Ancients. Each one a distant flame in Joren’s sense, winking out as they left their world, like candles in the wind.

Beyond, they were invisible to the shaman’s spiritual sight, until the climbers returned from that dead place, and their resonances roared back with the fervor of full life. For a moment, their spirits burned even brighter, having tasted true darkness—the absence of the breath of the gods.

Every Faltari adult gathered in the valley had once walked the same path. Out of their living, breathing vibrant island world, and into the bones of a distant past. It was their rite of passage. A pilgrimage to remember where they’d come, so that they might lead their people into better future.

Three climbers fell during Joren’s own Ascent. Two lost in the Abyss itself. One on the climb back down.

The children did not always return in the same order they entered, for many reasons, that need not mean death.

But when Therin Magnasein and Lera Pelesadeil returned before Petyr Bromsein, his mother refused to leave Joren’s side.

Madri tried to console her, but Petyr’s mother clambered up the boulder and would not leave. She stood beside Joren, waiting for her shaman to deliver her son’s fate.

Joren opened his eyes and turned. Her greying blonde hair whipped around her face.

He clasped her shoulder and smiled. “Your son has returned from the Abyss.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” she murmured, hand leaping to cover her mouth. Joy and fear coalesced into a sob, and then, relieved laughter.

Joren nodded to her. As she made her way from the boulder, he returned his focus to the Gate of the Ancients.

Two more resonances followed soon after Petyr. Leesa Rimadeil. Then a pair of Feathered Serpent youths. They had followed Malik and his companions through the Gate. But they returned first.

And all at once, he felt the same fear as Peter’s mother.

He doubted anyone would have guessed it looking at him, but Joren’s heart wrung inside him, and he fought the urge to clutch his chest.

He did not pray, now.

For the only gods that might reside in that dark shell of a world had fallen long ago. And they’d already stolen one son from him.

***

Malik followed Yuri past the pillars Petyr had described, through a crumbling antechamber, and they entered a series of wide corridors. The halls in this place were vast and lined with statues.

Entire walls were engraved with elaborate figures, etched in filigree. Malik was immediately struck by the light in this place. Just as it was outside, this building contained no visible light source—no lanterns or torches—the same dusky light permeated these halls. Despite the convenience, the uncanniness of it left Malik with a creeping sense of dread.

“We need to be quick,” Riese said. “There must be some sort of central chamber.”

“What is this place?” asked Yuri.

“I think it’s a temple,” said Malik, his eyes settling on a towering figure on one of the walls. They were shrouded in wispy tendrils of shadow, hovering in the air before what appeared to be a great crowd.

The three fanned out down the main hall, investigating smaller corridors and doorways, picking their way over fallen shards of stone. There were slits high in the towering ceilings, but Malik felt that it did not account for the strikingly consistent lighting.

There are no shadows, Malik realized.

He kept his half-spear out in front of him. It was so quiet, he could hear his companions breathing from halfway down the chamber.

The halls bore no smell that Malik could detect either. As the shaman’s son, he had journeyed through the musty burial halls beneath the Mountain of Souls. Perhaps this temple was so old, it had lost all sense of life.

Though damaged, the place retained remarkable detail. Walls were carved with a precision beyond the capability of any tools found on the Isle of Faltara. Though Malik was aware that there were things his people forsook by choice. There were more advanced civilizations in distant lands, but the sheer magnificence of these ruins was made all the more apparent up close. Entire columns formed out of what appeared to be one massive stone, complex patterns etched deep. Figures—human and full-grown dragons, along with other strange beasts he didn’t recognize—arrayed in lines and crowds. Ships sailing across skies. Creatures gathered around bursts of light.

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It was an ancient civilization at the peak of its might and power.

The past holds many warnings, his father had taught him, or temptations, depending on your disposition.

“Up here,” Riese whispered.

Malik retreated back the way he’d come. Riese motioned from the end of the main corridor. Yuri caught up quickly, and they followed her to the end of another hall.

The three of them formed up at a doorway about the height of two men, lined with a pair of dragon statues. Prismatic light poured out from the doorway, far brighter than anywhere else in the temple.

They entered a vast circular hall with a dome towering over a dais at the center. Walkways radiated out from the dais with rows of benched seats in between. The chamber was nearly the size of a village, several thousand feet across at least, and the peak of the dome must have been two hundred feet high or more. The peak of the dome itself opened up to the grey skies beyond, an enormous window at least twenty feet across. But that was not the source of the strange multi-colored light that filled the temple.

At the center of the dais, the focal point of the worship chamber was a wide bowl of shimmering stone. It was set high enough that Malik could not see what lay inside. But all three of them knew. The bowl itself bore the same shape, and glowed with a fierce effervescence.

“Holy shit.”

Malik and Riese both jumped at Yuri’s sharp whisper.

“God’s breath!” Riese muttered. “You ass.”

The large boy laughed. “Sorry. Just never imagined anything like this when my parents spoke about their Ascents.”

Malik glanced around the chamber, but it was utterly still. No wind from the windows, not even the distant cries of dragyrs, elsewhere in the city.

Riese led the way down one of the aisles, and Malik and Yuri followed. Nothing stirred as they made their way across the expansive hall.

Malik marveled at how preserved the room was. Unlike the outer corridors, there was hardly any damage to the stonework. No cracked pillars, or crumbling doorways, not even any dust. Which seemed impossible with an open window to the skies. The dome itself was impeccable, painted in gold and silver. Malik felt as though a procession of worshippers might file into the hall at any moment.

A circle of four steps wrapped around the circumference of the shimmering dais. The chamber echoed back the patter of each footfall as they approached. Four intricately carved pillars encircled the dais, reaching all the way up to the rim of the dome.

But Malik’s gaze was drawn straight to the bowl, which was even more radiant up close.

The half-shell was formed of tiny colorful tiles of stone, like scales, intricately etched with the forms of dragons in flight. It was the most incredible work of art Malik had ever seen. Not that there was much on the Isle of Faltara.

The bowl spanned roughly fifteen feet across, set upon a platform of white marble. Two sets of short white steps extended on either end of the shell.

Immediately, Yuri began climbing one. Riese motioned for Malik to take the other.

Malik nodded to her, and took the final steps of his Ascent.

His heart pounded against his ribcage. He’d been so focused on the logistics of the climb, he’d hardly let himself picture the prize at the end. Of course, he’d seen the ancient dragon eggs once a year throughout his childhood, as he witnessed the Ascension ceremonies of generations before him. But it was always from a distance.

As his eyes crested the edge of the bowl, he drew a sharp breath. Within, there were at least fifty eggs the size of a human head. Each shell contained hundreds of tiny scales, like the hide of a sand serpent, and each scale contained gradient shades of blues and greens and purples and reds. The eggs shone with an otherworldly radiance that was brilliant, but never blinding. The only thing Malik could liken it to was the pearls sometimes retrieved from oysters in the tidal pools surrounding the island.

Malik glanced up once to find Yuri grinning as he reached for a violet egg. Malik glanced from egg to egg before settling on an emerald one just out of reach. He hefted himself over the lip of the bowl and stretched out his fingers.

The scales themselves were so fine at the surface, the ridges felt like little more than creases of skin, and though cool to the touch, Malik was overwhelmed with a sense of warmth. It was something spiritual, the way he felt when he drew on the breath of the gods back in his world. Since arriving in the Abyss, he’d not felt it. But within the hallowed shell of this egg, the power of the gods remained. The egg itself weighed only a few pounds, far lighter than any stone of comparable size, though the shell felt as sturdy as the hardest stone.

Yuri had already retreated back to the dais, and Riese stood across the bowl, reaching out for her own dragon egg. A dark crimson one with nearly black undertones.

Malik pulled the rucksack from his shoulders, wrapped the egg in a shirt he’d brought along, and stowed it inside. The moment his fingers released it, a chill coursed over him. The absence of hish once more. He eased the pack back onto his shoulders and stepped back down to the dais.

As he turned around, he found Yuri staring up at one of the pillars surrounding them. He’d taken little note of the pillars when they arrived. At first glance they had appeared to be more of the same designs as the rest of the temple—smooth stone etched with a lighter colored filigree. But now, there were faces engraved up and down the columns. Men and women, all sleeping or praying, eyes shut.

“What are you doing?” Riese hissed, tugging on Yuri’s arm. “Petyr said don’t look at them, remember?”

Yuri did not take his gaze away from a woman’s face at eye level. Transfixed, he took a step toward the face.

Malik couldn’t help himself. He followed his friend’s gaze. The woman was beautiful. So life-like. Lips full. And her eyes—

They fluttered.

Then, spread wide.