After I take a normal picture, we swim back to shore, dry off as much as we can, and follow the path upriver. It gets steep next to the waterfall, but levels out at the top. Farther ahead, a white bridge crosses the river, and the path zigzags up a less-steep section of the ravine. At the top, we stop to catch our breath and drink some water, then keep hiking. The river’s roar fades when the path veers to the left and toward a sloping hill. The forest opens into a field on the other side of the hill, but the trees return after another two hundred yards at the base of a large ridge. Sweat soaks our foreheads as we climb the trail, and I take gulps of water every few minutes. This trail doesn’t zigzag like the first incline. Step-by-step, we work our way to the peak. It’s only three hundred yards to the top, but feels like a thousand.

My feet finally touch flat ground. I stop and look back down the hill while Glacia follows the trail a bit farther. The pinkish sky is turning to crimson, and the air is chilly this high up. There aren’t trees at the peak, but slabs of stone sticking out at odd angles.

“Arman, look at this.”

Glacia’s beckoning me toward her. She takes me to the cliff, and I suddenly feel small again, even smaller than when we walked on Undil. A gray mountain runs to the edge of the world. Forested hills and rocky ridges poke up from the valley, and the Hania River twists through them, disappearing in one spot and emerging from another. Belvun’s sun—now a dark red circle—balances on the horizon. The sky radiates a fluorescent pink glow over the hills, each half-alight in the sunset and half-hidden in shadow.

“This doesn’t feel real,” Glacia whispers.

I look at her and perk one of my eyebrows. “Are you crying?”

She wipes the side of her nose. “No.”

I pull out my holotab and take a picture of the valley and sunset, then turn around to take a picture of the hill we climbed up—but stop when I see the sky.

“Glace.”

I point above the trees. Hundreds of stars glitter in the western sky, even though it’s still relatively bright. It’s just like Captain Blitner said. And as the sun sinks, more dots twinkle in the darker patches of the night. We studied Belvun’s constellations on the StarPad, so I recognize a few. Bicorne the Hat bends over the southeast, and Mizzen the Sail stretches from west to north. The arm of the Milky Way arcs up from the southern horizon and fades near the top of the sky.