Lucien took them out now: a bracelet of amethysts in the beneather funerary style, and a golden heart locket embossed with stars and the three moons. The locket was so familiar and dear to him, like seeing an old and wonderful friend. The bracelet was a sadder friend, one spoken to in whispers and tears.

He’d found the jewelry on his return to the Tree of Souls. After the great quake subsided, after the surviving valkerax came pouring out of the earth and flew in all directions, freed at last, he’d been the first to lead a party down again. Down to the massive crater that yawned into darkness. Malachite and Fione had convinced him to rest for only an hour, but eventually caved and went with him. Yorl opted to stay with Lysulli and patch the wounds of the surviving soldiers. It was a long trek, and a furious one on his part. He didn’t remember any of it, or even how he navigated, but he remembered how it felt—the searing rush of terror, the frantic praying unending that went through his mind until he stepped foot yet again on Pala Orias.

Or what was left of it.

The ground was still unstable, and Malachite had to hold him back. The bottom of the massive crater was so deep and wide that only the faintest suffusing of light managed to illuminate the destruction. Rock. Nothing but rock, and stone, and dust, for miles in a ruined radius.

But through it, in the center of it, the Tree of Souls still stood.

Tall white branches splayed out, greedily soaking in the light, the sun, as it hadn’t for maybe thousands of years. Magic pulsed beneath its snow bark, rainbow flashes of light traveling up and down and back again. Only the highest golden flowers still peeked from the rubble, white manes and white bones of valkerax crushed beneath.

He’d tried to reach out, to use the Tree’s great imprint of magic to teleport himself to its roots, to the First Root. But it wouldn’t let him. There was a block, an iron door closed between tree and witch, now.

So he tried to walk.

He took four steps, then collapsed from the exhaustion. Malachite hadn’t taken nicely to it, and with Fione’s help, they took him to Pala Amna and rest. In the following weeks of his recovery, and even after, they tried to get him to leave each day—to return to Vetris, to rebuild. After all, Fione said, there was no chance anyone survived. It was just miles of rock, miles of earth.

And besides, her heart was gone.