The sun had long since set, and the light from the giant mirrors had dimmed along with it. The village had grown dark, though the yellow lights filtering through windows cast a soft glow here and there. They flickered like starlight, making the night seem vast and unfamiliar. In the canopies of the trees, I could hear animals settling down to sleep, and others awakening, readying themselves to roam the night. An unfamiliar animal looked down at me from its nest, its eyes wide and orange. Its soft, black-and-white-striped tail wrapped tightly around the branch, steadying it. The two of us stared at each other, silently, for a long while, before the creature gave up and scurried off on its way.

I dipped my hand into the creek, feeling the cool water swirl around my fingers. A small psara swam up, nibbling my fingertip before darting away. I smiled softly. There was more life here on the inside of the mountain than the entirety of the Iamos I’d known.

The anger I’d felt earlier had dulled by now into a small, dimly-glowing ember. I’d spent the afternoon talking with Gitrin about everything—the time postern, Ceilos, the geroi and their plan for Isaak. She’d shown me the village, and the farmland, and the forests that framed the cavern’s edge; and slowly, reluctantly, I had come to realize that maybe this wasn’t the den of terrorists the geroi had insisted the anarchists were. Many of the refugees I met today were scientists like Gitrin, whose research had been halted by the geroi. They didn’t want to destroy Iamos—they wanted to heal it. And they had the technology to do so, right here and now. They knew how to reverse the atmospheric degradation, to revive the world, make it like it was before. But the gerotus had told them no. Just like when Gitrin and I had shown them our plans for the time postern. And today, finally, after all this time, I realized why.

Because healing Iamos would mean that the geroi weren’t needed anymore. And they couldn’t have that. They would rather have no world at all than a world where they didn’t hold the power.

It made me feel sick.

The one thing I didn’t understand was how Ceilos fit into all this. If the Elytherioi didn’t have him—if Eos was not the one who had commed me—then where was he? Who was behind his disappearance?

As I sat beside the water, thinking, I heard footsteps on the worn-dirt path behind me. I glanced up. Isaak stood under an arch of tree branches, tangled together at the entrance of the clearing. He waved halfheartedly as I got to my feet.

“You didn’t come to the evening meal. Where have you been all day?” I asked him as he drew closer.

He snorted, a small, forced laugh through his nose. “Hiding from my dad.”