The Deep Ones were waiting for Elara at the edge of the Glass Sea.
They rose from the salt flats like ghosts—silver-skinned, silver-eyed, their faces unreadable. Their leader, Serev, stepped forward.
You should not have come.
"I go where the void leads me."
The void is not the only hunger beneath the salt. A second heart grows. The old hunger's heart.
Elara's blood went cold. "What old hunger?"
The one before the void. The one the void consumed to become what it is. It did not die. It slept. Now it wakes.
"How long?"
Weeks. Days. The second heart pulses faster each hour.
"Then take me to it."
You will die.
"Maybe. But I'm going anyway."
---
Serev led her across the salt flats.
The cracks in the earth were wider now, pulsing with silver light. The air was thick, heavy, hard to
