Robb caught his footing and spun back just as the rings snapped back into motion with a thunderclap, whirling faster and faster. They trapped Jax inside. The bright, ravenous light of the crystal lit the entire cavern like an inferno. The power it gave off made it hard for him to breathe. His metal arm twisted and jerked, but he didn’t care—he didn’t want to leave Jax. He couldn’t leave Jax—

He screamed his name over and over again, but Jax never turned around. He never looked back.

The Solani prince walked up to the crystal, a shadow against the blinding light, Koren Vey barely an outline beside him. The wind created by the swooping rings fluttered at his hospital gown and undid his loosely clasped hair, fluttering around him like silver streamers. The strange energy from the crystal didn’t seem to affect him, or if it did he pushed through it and swiped his fingers against the console at its base.

“Robb!” Siege shouted above the sound of the astrolabe, vaulting out of the skysailer to get him and drag him into it.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off Jax. He was talking to Koren Vey, and there was a surprise on his face that Robb couldn’t quite understand. He wanted to hear what they were saying. Was Koren Vey telling him that it was hopeless? That he was sacrificing his life for nothing?

Tears burned in his eyes, and he was helpless. The wind picked at his clothes and hair and stung at his eyes so badly they teared up. He didn’t want to face the Great Dark. Not without him.

It all felt so meaningless without someone to fight with.

Without Jax.

No, he thought, no no no—

Siege grabbed him by the shoulder to take him to the skysailer, but he wrenched away from her.

Koren Vey lifted up her hand, palm out, to Jax, and he did the same.

Suddenly, the astrolabe gave a terrible cry, and a radiant light swept through the cavern, swelling like an expanding sun—

One moment, he was watching the light fill the ark until only the shadow of Jax remained, and the next he was lying on his back a few feet from where he’d been standing, Siege covering him with her body. The skysailer Ana, Talle, and Elara were in had been pushed back against one of the bone-white pillars, and there it sat smoking. His ears rang, his head spinning.

“C-Captain?” he whispered.

She slowly unfurled herself from over him, bits of ivy and ancient ark sloughing off her back. She sat beside him, bleeding from her hairline. Her hair simmered a soft, hesitant blue. “Are you okay?”

He nodded.

And realized, quite suddenly, that the roar of the astrolabe’s rings was gone. The air was thick with silence.

The ark was still there, standing, despite whatever happened.

That could only mean—

“Jax,” he gasped, coughing as he inhaled the dust lingering in the air and scurried to his feet.