They kept walking in silence. Behind Issari, the exiles of Eteer trudged on, the strong helping the weak. Men and women held their children, their elderly parents, their weary friends in their arms. Dust coated all their faces, and their eyes were large and haunted. Several women among them had survived birthing nephilim; they moaned, bleeding, dying, held in their husbands' arms. Night fell and the temperature plunged; the day had been sweltering but in the darkness they shivered, the air colder than any winter in Eteer. The stars burned above, cruel and small and taunting them, piercing their eyes, and even the sight of the Draco constellation could not soothe Issari as she shivered; it seemed too far, unreachable to her, unable to aid her, only able to stare down upon her pain.

She tried to sleep in Tanin's arms that night, but even his body would not warm her, and the sound of his breath would not comfort her. Finally dawn rose, stretching orange and yellow fingers across the sky; that sky seemed vast here, ten times the size it had seemed from her old city. When the light fell upon the camp, it revealed a dozen dead—elders and wounded Eteerians too weary to cling on. They buried them beneath stones, and when the survivors walked again into the south, vultures circled above.

It was the next day, leaving ten more graves behind them, that the Eteerian exodus saw the walls of Goshar ahead.

Issari took a shaky breath, trying to swallow down the horror.

From this distance, she could see little details. The mountains soared like a great wall of stone, covering the horizon, the border of the desert. The range dipped in only one place, a crack in the wall. Here, within this mountain pass, rose the city of Goshar. Its walls were the same tan color as the mountains; beyond them, Issari could just make out the slivers of towers. The people of Eteer pointed, whispering in fear, praying to their gods. As they walked nearer across the rocky earth, more details emerged. Goshar's walls seemed small next to the mountains, but they must have stood twice the height of Eteer's walls; the soldiers upon their battlements seemed small as insects upon the rim of a well. Turrets rose at regular intervals, bearing the banners of Goshar, displaying a nude woman with a snake's head. A gatehouse rose ahead, large as a palace, many archers atop its towers, and reliefs of snakes coiled across its bronze doors. After walking another mark, Issari winced to see the cages Tanin had spoken of. They hung off the walls, dozens of them, their prisoners languishing or already dead within; crows hopped around the bars.

Goshar, Issari thought with a shiver. City of Bones.