The hairs across the nape of my neck prickle as we reach the Borderlands. The hard-packed soil’s pockmarked with huge craters and gouged out with long furrows. Towers and battlements, stained soot-black, slant at perilous angles. Torn banners flutter in the sour wind. We enter into great, echoing halls of smooth marble, encrusted with cyan jewels that glisten in the swords of sunlight that pierce the domed ceiling. It’s breathtaking in its beauty and utterly at odds with the bones jutting from the gritty sand, little white daggers or roots.
If the Chaars had a faith, this would be their grand cathedral. It has that same power, utterly irrevocable. So much damage has been done to it. Such a tragedy it’s been abandoned to the cruelties of time like this. Such a waste of—
I startle. I know
