Jake sagged. Maybe he had. Besides, they’d never believe him.

His friends hugged him and drew him around a spit of rock to where the others had gathered. Jake noted two things immediately. The party seated in the sand was far smaller. Many had not escaped the Crackles alive. Jake noted a particular absence. Skymaster Horus, always stately and tall, was nowhere in sight. Politor stood a step away, his head hung in grief.

All this death to bring me here.

Too heavyhearted to speak, Jake faced the second sight that caught his gaze. How could it not? It demanded his attention.

Fifty yards ahead, the desert ended. A massive dark storm rose like a swirling wall of sand, stretching up toward the stars that were just beginning to twinkle. Sand spit from the maelstrom, stinging Jake’s cheeks and eyes. As he watched, lightning crackled silently across the storm’s surface in violent, spectacular displays.

Jake knew that sandstorms occasionally sparked with static electricity, but never on this scale. How could they even consider entering that savage storm? It was pure madness.

He turned away and watched Politor fall to his knees, covering his face, grieving. There was his answer. Lives had already been lost. He could not balk now.

Still, he suddenly felt hopeless.

“You all might want to see this,” Shaduf called behind him. “Since it’s about the bunch of you.”

Jake was happy to turn away from the storm. Shaduf and Nefertiti stood before a sheer cliff, the same spit of rock he’d rounded a moment ago. The old man held a torch up toward the stone’s surface.

Curious, Jake and his friends joined Nefertiti and her uncle. Lit by the torch, a few lines of hieroglyphics that were carved into the stone glowed. Unadorned and without paint, they looked crude and hastily written. Still, there was a simple artistry that Jake found appealing, deeply so. For some reason, his eyes welled with tears.

Feeling stupid, he wiped them away, but he could not escape a feeling of profound loss. The grief hit him unexpectedly. He shook his head. A part of him still struggled to cope with Kady’s death. He had bottled it away, plugged it with the thought of killing that murderous witch—but it was still there.

Shaduf held up his torch. “Here is written the Prophecy of Lupi Pini.”

Jake stepped forward. He kept hearing about this prophecy and wanted a closer look. Shaduf’s torchlight reflected off a prominent cartouche carved at the top.

Such ringed sets of hieroglyphics were used by the Egyptians to highlight special names: pharaohs, queens, and gods. In this case, the cartouche enclosed the name of the one who had written this prophecy.

Running his torch along the writing below the cartouche, Shaduf translated. “The prophecy states: ‘There shall come from Calypsos another group of wanderers. When that day rises, the great storm will blow its last, and new worlds will open for all the peoples of Deshret.’”