“See?” Eneva scoffed.
“I can’t understand them,” said Neri. “I only see what they want me to see. I can . . . skim power from the surface. I don’t know how to go deeper. Not on purpose.”
“Do youwantto go deeper?” Jacen asked gently.
Neri wouldn’t answer. He tried to set his jaw, but it wobbled. “Maybe that’s enough,” Seth cut in. He ignored Ysira’s restraining hand.
“No,” said Neri. “I have to. If I can’t control this, who else will? Am I supposed to just pass it off to someone who’d be burned alive?” His next words were a whisper, to Jacen alone. “Please show me.”
Neri was asking. He was terrified, but he wasasking.
And who was Jacen—a failure, an addict, the offspring and accomplice of monsters—to hesitate along this path, however difficult? His heart beat faster. He looked at the dark, still water, then at Eneva.
“All right. I’m ready.”
The Gatekeeper lifted her chin, appraising him. Then she seized him by the collar and shoved him facedown into the pool. Jacen struggled on reflex, water flooding his unprepared airway. Telkaan root was a hallucinogen, exponentially more powerful than cactus fruit, and it hit him like a meteor.
Eneva wrenched him out of the water, and it seemed to take hours. He could have counted every drop that sprang from his skin and hair as he fell back and collided with the stone. He had forgotten how to breathe, and for a brief eternity, he was frozen inside that single moment of terror. Somewhere far away, muffled voices shouted. A spider crawled across the floor, inches from his face, and it sang to him.
The ceiling trembled. The extradimensional energy clustered around the Gate writhed, twisted, and spread across the chamber in a thousand creeping tentacles. Jacen couldseehow it must have reached him all the way down at the harbor.
A shadow moved over him, blocking the light. Eneva. She pressed two fingers to his forehead, tilting his head back.
Everything went dark.
As one might use a stepping stone to cross a river, the drug made it easy to catapult his mind across Neri’s—to Naxal. For this, Jacen now understood, was the work of a prophet. To venture inside a mind unbound by space and time, and?—
To—
See.
At first, Jacen could not comprehend it. There was too much color, too much sound. Stars danced. Celestial bodies collided. Distantly, he sensed Neri’s panic.
Don’t try to focus on details,Jacen told him.Keep your distance; see the whole. Find the beginning.
The chaos crystallized, shaping into a vision far less alien. Jacen saw the ocean again. Its waters receded, leaving in their place a barren expanse of rock and sand. Beasts crawled out of the sea on four legs, then walked on two. They developed tools and settlements. They began to speak. They lived and died and changed and lived and died. The only constant, underlying it all, was the Source. It flowed beneath the surface of reality like a great artery, everywhere and nowhere.
Deep in the canyon, the Source opened wide—the first Gate. It brought forth heat and shadow.
Naxal.
Generation after generation, the demon chose its hosts from among the people of the Scar. They counted among their number brilliant scholars and great leaders, bloodthirsty conquerors and depraved murderers . . . women and men who led lives defined by grief, jealousy, or hate. All of them were in pain, especially toward their ends, as their bodies withered beneath the inexorable force of Naxal’s power. Some were driven mad. When they succumbed, the Disciples of the Gate returned Naxal to the Source. They took it on faith that their great guardian would return to choose another. For fifteen thousand years, it was always so.
Time raced forward. The Zal Empire flourished, expanding across the continent. They even began to look up—toward the stars. They traveled to the moons and sent probes out into the dark.
They could not have known what was listening.
A hooded man sat on a shadow-shrouded throne. His ruby eyes peered out like dying twin suns. His body sagged with tumors, dark veins like lines of frost cracking over his limbs. He felt pain and ecstasy, grief and mania, and he could no longer tell them apart. This man’s mind was a nightmare from which he could not escape.
His voice was loudest of all, clearer than the rest. Neri said,He was the one before me.
The man looked directly at Jacen.I am Artek Var Naxal.
Jacen knew him—perhaps not by name, but by deed. He knew what they were about to witness.
A dozen soldiers of the Firstborn Empire, clad in beetle-like armor, approached the throne. They left a shattered resistance in their wake, countless bodies strewn across the stone. Theytrained their strange weapons on Artek Var Naxal. He raised a withered, blackened hand. It pulsed red, with an energy so mighty, it made the canyon tremble.
Soldiers’ steps faltered. One shouted at the others. Jacen did not understand the language, but he didn’t need to. They did not believe Artek would go through with whatever he was threatening.
