And then something touched his face.

Monk, a voice scoffed. It was androgynous, and the only echo it gave was inside his head.

Jossua could not reply straightaway, such was his shock. That voice had sounded slick and alien, filled with hatred even he could barely fathom. “I’m the Elder,” Jossua said. His whisper sounded so loud down here in the dark.

Elder, Monk . . . magic-hater.

“Not hater. Protector.”

Protect by destroying. The voice was filled with disdain.

“Better than welcoming it back so that the Mages can take it again.”

Truly? We wonder.

A million fears flooded Jossua’s mind, but he could speak none of them. He had no idea what the Nax wanted. He blinked at the dark.

Your time is near, Elder.

Jossua did not feel surprised. The Nax was here for a reason, after all, though that reason remained obscure. “Where is it?” he said.

Near the Widow’s Peaks. Its taint has awoken us there.

“Did you drive the Mages away from the keep? Was it you?”

No answer.

“Show yourself.”

You have no reason to see us.

“Why do you come here?”

We know your reason for being. We have no wish for magic to return.

“Neither do we.” Jossua shivered as a waft of cool air broke against his sweaty skin. The Nax was moving along the tunnel. “How does it reveal itself? Where is the magic?”

In a male human. Deeper than his soul. Barely a part of him, but growing.

“How do you know all this?”

No answer. Jossua tried to touch the darkness, but his outstretched hand felt too exposed and he drew it in. The dark was suddenly filled with potential; a drawn breath before a shout, a hanging blade before a cut. He gasped and fell to the ground, tried to curl into a ball. His old bones ached.

We are the Nax, the thing said, and this time its voice came from outside Jossua’s mind. It echoed in the rock of the tunnel wall, vibrating the ground beneath him, shook the air, bursting farther along the tunnel in a thunderclap of sound. Jossua cried out but his voice was lost in the cacophony, swallowed by the echo of the Nax’s final, violent utterance.

His torch burst alight and Jossua screamed again, able to hear himself this time. The darkness pulled away. He tried to stand, but his legs were weak. From way down the tunnel—deeper than he had been and farther than he would ever go—there came the sound of rock being crushed, pulverized, scorched. Heat blasted back at him, stealing breath from his lungs . . . and then coolness rushed in once more.