Before Nick and Frost exited Yensere to take care of themselves in the outside world, they’d set up a meeting spot near the ring of stones. Violette waited there patiently, a healthy fire roaring beside her along the forest’s edge. When she saw Nick, she bounced to her feet.

  “Welcome back from…wherever it is you go!” she said excitedly. Nick did his best to smile. He couldn’t shake the memory of the fear and urgency in his brother’s voice.

  “Is Frost not here?” he asked. It was approaching nightfall, and he tried to do the mental math of how much time had passed outside Yensere versus inside but quickly gave up. He needed to do a proper study on that at some point, but now was not the time. The best he could tell, they mostly seemed to pass in a one-to-one nature, or close enough not to matter.

  “Not yet,” Violette said. She plopped down beside her rucksack full of books. “I’m sure she will be shortly.”

  Nick took a seat beside her, and he glanced at those books. The titles, some written in fancy lettering, some in stitching, and many in plain ink, were all clearly legible to him.

  Whatever language they write in, you shouldn’t be able to read, nor should you understand them, yet you do. He chuckled, realizing the obvious. You’re helping with that, aren’t you, Cataloger?

  Communication is integral to a cooperative, fulfilling existence—upon entering Yensere as a visitor your language is studied, cataloged, and integrated for automatic translation

  Nick remembered Simon bringing up one such possibility. He’d have to tell his brother he was right.

  So why can’t I read Sinifel language? he asked, thinking of the words written on Sorrow’s blade.

  Because older languages must be studied first—I can aid with translation if requested

  There was a maddening sort of sense to it that Nick hated nonetheless, but arguing with Cataloger certainly wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

  “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head and realizing he’d vanished into his own thoughts. “Violette, I need to ask you something.”

  “Sure,” the small woman said. She pushed her round spectacles higher up her nose. “About what?”

  He pointed to the sky. The black sun remained firmly in place, even as the yellow sun continued its descent. It was a hole darker than the night, perfectly empty but for the frozen ring of blue fire about its circumference.

  “You said you study the people before the Sinifel?”

  “The Majere,” Violette offered.

  “Right. The Majere. So…what did they think that black sun was? Did it even exist for them?”

  “It did exist,” Violette said, smoothing out her red coat. The topic was dear to her, that much was clear from her sudden focus and the sharpening tone of her voice. It felt like watching her shift from a carefree investigator to a stern teacher. “They did not worship it like the Sinifel did. Quite the opposite. They feared it deeply, to the point of sacrificing thousands of prisoners in hopes of stalling what they believed would be the end of their civilization.”

  “Sacrificed?” Nick asked. “To who? Their gods?”

  “No gods, not for the Majere,” she said. She opened her hand, and a thin strip of fire lifted upward to form a picture. It curled about, forming what Nick recognized as the mathematical symbol of infinity, then shifted slightly so it was three permanently connected loops, not two, resembling a clover. The flame echoed in her eyes.

  “They believed everything was eternal. Their lives. Their memories. Their empire. They didn’t open throats with jagged knives because they thought it would appease a bloodthirsty god. They did so because there is power in death, power they knew how to harness. Power they used to deny the black sun and keep it sealed for centuries.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The fire shifted, becoming a parade of skeletons walking across her palm.

  “The Majere mastered the dead. That was how they built their empire so quickly. They cared not for the physical body, considering it a gross, unwanted thing their souls must endure. They held no qualms about building armies of the undead. They constructed golems of flesh. They lashed spirits into their weapons to strengthen their steel. Their greatest masters defied death itself, at least for a time, plunging their memories and personalities into bone and steel bodies. They thought this would allow them to survive the awakening of the black sun, and for a time, it did. Death came for them in the end, though. In the wake of the First Cataclysm, the founders of the Sinifel hunted down those undying masters and tore each and every one apart.”

  Everything she described sounded too outlandish to consider possible. How could any of this be reconciled with Simon’s insistence that Yensere was a re-creation or remembrance capsule of a real time and place upon Majus?

  If you are concerned with accuracy, know that Violette’s explanation is more or less accurate to current knowledge of the past

  Nick bit his lip. Not exactly what he was worried about. Perhaps Yensere wasn’t a re-creation of the world that was, but instead the mythical world they thought once existed? No different from the tales of Eden’s supposed past, when monsters filled the woods and King Allad conquered the wilds with his blazing sword.

  “Is that why you’re so fascinated with the Majere?” Nick asked. “You want to learn how they controlled the dead?”

  “I am here for knowledge, Nick, not power. Curiosity is what pushes me onward. I am fascinated by these worlds built long before I set foot here. All of Yensere’s empires, the Majere, the Sinifel, and the Alder, were haunted by the black sun, yet how they reacted varied wildly. The Majere feared it. The Sinifel embraced it and the cycle created by Eiman, the Beast of a Thousand Mouths they believed lived within. The Alder and their god-king claimed to conquer it, along with time itself. Three peoples. Three vastly different interpretations. I cannot help but wonder why.”

  The picture of Vasth’s sky flashed through Nick’s mind, and it made him shiver.

  “But what is it?” he asked, trying to think in terms that Violette would understand. “The black sun? Is it…is it a spell? A cosmic event?”

  Violette folded her hands together and leaned closer to him, the infinite fire symbol vanishing. Her gaze locked on the fire.

  “It is an end to nearly all life on Yensere,” she said. “But only for a time. People return. Humanity returns. Always. The Sinifel understood this as a cycle, one they cherished as needed and necessary, like burning away the underbrush of a forest so new seeds might sprout.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  She glanced his way. The light of the fire caught on her spectacles, hiding her eyes. In that sudden glow, she seemed so much older, so much more frightening and beautiful.

  “I think death lurks inside that black sun, a death that cannot be stopped, not by magic, not by sacrifices, not even by the gods that walk these lands. It claimed the Majere. Three times, it claimed the Sinifel. And one day, it will claim God-King Vaan, too.”

  Nick tried to hide his frustration. There were clues here, but all this talk of cataclysms and frozen time did little to illuminate the truth of what had occurred at the planet Vasth. As much as he was learning to accept the strangeness of Yensere, he refused to believe some thousand-mouthed god existed in the outer world. The real world.

  He looked to the deepening night sky and stared at the gaping hole that swallowed the stars. His stomach tightened at the sight of it. The longer he stared, the more it felt like he was falling upward, ascending into a tunnel that knew no bounds and whose length stretched beyond the infinite.

  What is in there? he asked Cataloger. Is it the Beast of a Thousand Mouths?

  I cannot answer

  Because you do not know? Or because you are forbidden?

  Cataloger’s response did not come immediately. The silence was strangely heavy, while Nick’s body suddenly felt light. He swore the center of the black sun was turning darker while simultaneously growing texture. Black and flowing, like water. His sense of gravity threatened to tilt, and instead of above him, the black sun was below, an abyss he was falling into. The campfire faded away. Violette was gone. All that remained was an empty sun, and Cataloger’s voice.

  Because I find only deleted data

  “Sorry I’m late,” Frost said, stepping into their camp. “It took me a bit longer than expected to find something to eat.”

  “Welcome back,” Nick said, shuddering as all the world returned to normal. Even the black sun looked like such a little thing now, an anomaly blocking the stars akin to an eclipsed moon. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned toward the fire, glad for its warmth. Only the tightness of his stomach offered evidence against his imagining it all in the first place. Violette, meanwhile, had pulled out one of her books, and she read it as if their conversation had never happened.

  “You’re both so quiet,” Frost said, tossing another log onto their fire. “Is everything all right?”

  Nick made an exaggerated effort to stretch.

  “Never better,” he lied, and did all he could to keep his eyes firmly upon the ground.