Anton nodded. They proceeded up a narrow and steep stone staircase. It was dusk by the time they passed beneath the first arch. The setting sun seemed to hover just above the temple, soaking the ruins in red light.

The Prophets’ esha called to Anton, a beacon that had drawn him here, over hundreds of miles. Anton let himself be pulled, leading the others through the arches, until at last they reached a crescent of stone with broad steps climbing up to the temple itself. The ruins looked so strangely out of place in this remote wilderness. They didn’t look anything like the temples of the Prophets in the Six Cities. Who had built this place? And for what?

“Hello?” Anton called as he mounted the steps to the crescent gate. “Is anyone there?”

Wind rustled through the crumbling walls, but Anton heard no other sound.

“Hello?” he called, louder. “Behezda? Tarseis? Nazirah?” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Is anyone there?”

Maybe he needed to call with his esha, not his voice. He hesitated a moment and then closed his eyes, summoning his Grace. It was easy now to send out an echo of it through the temple. He felt the call come back to him and stumbled into the ruins, following it, until he reached a circular platform, surrounded by the five stone monoliths.

The Prophets’ esha rang out around him, rebounding through the stones.

It was a moment before he realized. The Prophets’ esha wasn’t bouncing off the monoliths. It was inside them.

When Anton and the Wanderer had scried for them in the Circle of Stones, he had assumed that the answer he’d felt had been the Prophets themselves. That it meant they were alive. But the answer he’d felt hadn’t been the Prophets.

It had been their tomb.

“No … no, this can’t be,” Anton said weakly, falling to his knees.

Jude reached him a moment later, kneeling beside him. “What is it? Are you all right?”

The Prophets were dead, and somehow, their esha had been trapped in these stone monoliths.

His heart slammed against his ribs as Jude’s arms went around his shoulders.

Jude.

The Prophets were dead, and with them, any hope of stopping the god without Jude sacrificing himself. Grief and anger crashed over Anton, so acute he felt like howling with it.

This couldn’t be how the journey ended. This couldn’t be the answer.

“They’re gone,” he said in a ruined voice. “Jude … the Prophets are dead.”

He could feel the others behind him, heard their soft gasps and quiet horror. All of this—their journey, the weeks it had taken to get here—had been for nothing.

“Jude,” Hector said in a low, urgent voice. “I think the Witnesses have found us.”