Thalias had never been to the vast cavern that housed the Mitth family’s Csilla homestead. But she’d seen pictures, and looked at maps, and as they approached the final checkpoint she was fully prepared to look upon the ancestral site of her adoptive family.

She was wrong. Completely and thoroughly wrong.

The cavern was larger than she’d expected. Way larger. Large enough that there were actual clouds drifting across the sky, a panoramic blue she would have been prepared to swear was an actual sky above an actual planetary surface. Peeking out from behind the clouds was the blazing disk of a sun she would also have sworn was real. On both sides of the tunnel car tracks were stream-fed lakes, the one on the right big enough that the light wind rustling through the orchards and gardens was able to churn up small waves across its surface.

A dozen buildings clustered around the lakes or nestled under the forest that stretched off past the lake to the left. Some of the structures were clearly equipment sheds, others seemed to be homes, the latter large enough to each house two or three families in comfort. In the distance near the cavern’s far end was a range of mountains shrouded in mist. Whether they were built into the wall or were freestanding, she couldn’t tell.

And in the center of the cavern, rising majestically from the grassland and garden arcs surrounding it, was a mansion.

It was huge, eight floors at least, with side wings that stretched out a couple hundred meters. It looked vaguely like one of the old fortresses that had been common in the days before the Chiss learned to travel the stars, but the design was somewhat more modern and lacked the bristling weapons clusters that had made those ancient structures so intimidating. The exterior was all patterned stone, glass, and burnished steel, with small angled observation turrets at the corners and an asymmetric tessellated roof that gleamed in the artificial sunlight.

“I assume this is the first time you’ve been here?” Thurfian asked.

Thalias found her voice. “Yes,” she said. “All my other dealings with the family were at their compound on Avidich. The pictures don’t do this place justice.”

“Of course not,” Thurfian said. “Fully accurate, fine-grain pictures might contain clues to the homestead’s precise location. We certainly can’t have that.”

“I thought this was the Mitth family’s old land.”

“It is,” Thurfian said. “But that land covers over six thousand square kilometers and includes many other caverns like this one, all of which have tube car access. Trust me: No one arrives at the Mitth homestead without Mitth family permission. This is your last chance to change your mind about the Trials.”

Thalias braced herself. “I’m ready.”

“Maybe. We’ll find out, won’t we?”