Nahl'Karai.
The name echoed in Orin's head like a curse whispered across time. The floating tower in the image still rotated slowly in the projection, casting long shadows across the black desert around it.
Kaelen leaned in. "It wasn't always like that. Nahl'Karai was once a city of scholars—astral engineers, skybinders, poets of flame. They built the first lattice to channel sky-energy."
"What happened?" Mira asked.
"They tried to unbind a piece of the Hollow Star. Just a fragment. To study it."
"And?" Orin said.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "The city inverted. Not just the tower. Everything. Half the population vanished. The other half turned to dust. What's left now… isn't alive, but it's still watching."
Mira stepped back from the map. "And we're going there?"
"The second anchor lies beneath it," Kaelen said. "If we're to delay the Hollow Star's awakening, we don't have a choice."
Orin stared at the projection, sensing something deeper than danger. It was like looking into a wound in the world—and realizing the wound could still bleed.
"How do we get there?" he asked.
Kaelen tapped the table. "The Observatory has a hidden skyway—one of the old leybridges. It'll take us to the edge of the Black Waste. After that, we go on foot."
Mira crossed her arms. "And what about the Scorchers? The Order?"
"They won't follow us into Nahl'Karai," Kaelen said. "They're terrified of what's inside."
"Great," she muttered. "So only we're stupid enough to go."
That night, Orin stood beneath the star map alone. It was different now—responding to his presence. Constellations shifted. One, in the shape of a spiraling flame, glowed brighter than the rest.
He reached toward it.
A whisper tickled his ear.
> "You are the Third Flame. The last anchor bends toward you."
Orin spun around. No one was there.
But on the table, the Codex of Threads had opened itself.
A new page shimmered into view.
And written there, in a script only Orin could see, was a prophecy:
> "When the tower turns upon the sky, and memory bleeds from stone,
The Skyborn child must face the Eye, and stand before the Throne.
Bind the flame, or break the chain—
The Hollow Star will rise again."