He turned to the circular entrance to the temple. The Skull King had wanted something inside this pyramid, but he’d been thwarted, stopped just inches from his goal. And now, centuries later, he was trying again. Whatever he wanted here, Jake would not let him have it.

But what was it? What source of power did this pyramid possess?

Any hope of an answer lay inside.

Jake lifted a palm toward the opening. Back in Calypsos, the temple had been guarded by an energy shield. But he felt no tingle of warning here.

“Can we enter?” Marika asked from one step below, standing with Bach’uuk.

“Nothing’s stopping us.” That concerned Jake. The pyramid felt as dead and haunted as the city. Jake had counted on some revelation, some weapon to use against the Skull King. What if there was nothing here?

Together they entered the dark pyramid, Jake leading with the raised emerald crystal. Its glow offered some light. Bach’uuk followed Marika, carrying the staff with the ruby crystal. It shone softly with its own fire.

The tunnel descended at a slight angle, heading toward the pyramid’s heart. Their footsteps echoed off the walls, sounding hollow and lost. But the way was not far. The tunnel emptied into a cavernous domed chamber, as large as a ballroom, with a roof that stretched high overhead. A light glowed near the back wall, revealing an archway leading out.

The light drew them across the room.

“Careful,” Jake warned, but didn’t stop.

As they got closer, Jake saw that the archway—tall enough for an elephant to pass under—did not open into another tunnel. It just framed a huge plate of metal, the same shiny substance he’d seen back at the royal pyramid of Ka-Tor. Only this one didn’t have any writing or a picture of a wisling on the metal. It was blank and featureless, though again it held a strange translucence that made it look as if it was constantly flowing.

As odd as this feature was, it failed to hold his attention. Instead he stared above the arch, to a perfect sphere of crystal—ten feet across—imbedded halfway into the wall.

“A crystal heart,” Marika said.

Jake had seen such an object before, back in the great Temple of Kukulkan. It had hung suspended in a similar chamber, rotating slowly in midair. It had glowed steadily, but Jake had felt a pulse burst out with each full spin. The crystal heart of Kukulkan had really been three spheres—one inside the other—spinning in opposite directions: one spun left to right, the other right to left. The third spun from top to bottom. Atlantean letters had been carved across the surface of all three spheres and spun to form all manner of combination, like a crystal computer.

As Jake crossed the chamber, he saw those same letters here—but this heart had gone cold, dark, and lifeless.

As dead as the city.

The glow that drew them onward came instead from the floor. A giant triangle had been carved at the threshold to the archway. It was marked with cryptic arrows: one pointed left, another right, a third circled in on itself.