“No,” Czensos said. “The saints built a city in an attempt to re-create the Primus Mundi, and it was full of wonders. Yet the city was not enough for them. They sought to repair the world and put it back to the way it had been. It was from here the masters of Rüul reached into the Vault of Ages to awaken the Savior and complete the Prophecy, but the Breaker caught them and with her long arm, destroyed them. The annihilation was said to be complete, but ever imperfect is the Breaker and she left a bit of herself behind.”

Czensos produced a small device that looked a bit like a top but with a wide disk around its equator. It was made of the same purplish bronze stuff that was the signature of the Builder’s workshop. He held it in the palm of his hand and blew on it. It began to spin and remained suspended in the air when he took his hand away.

The wind pushed the little device toward the cairn. Isabelle resisted the urge to chase after it and catch it. How was it levitating? What made it spin? The materials alone possessed properties barely dreamt of.

The spinning object floated over the boundary wall and for a few heartbeats nothing happened. Then it wobbled. Its spin slowed. Its color faded to gray. It fell from the air and shattered on the ground, first into pieces and then into dust, which the wind blew away.

“That was a whirling speculum,” Czensos said. “It survived the Breaking of the World, being buried under a mountain, and a thousand years of neglect without the slightest hint of wear or aging, but it cannot survive the Breaker’s touch.”

Isabelle shivered into the depths of the everdream. Even her ghosts feared that space.

Czensos said, “This is what the saints found when they reached into the Vault of Ages, not salvation, but annihilation. There was never a Savior. There was never a true Prophecy. Don’t you see? Iav let the Breaker in and she crafted this world in her own image. This is Torment. We are shat into being twixt our mothers’ legs, and every moment thereafter is suffering. Those who seek to improve the world only corrupt it. Those who seek knowledge discover only lies. The only realization that matters is that the world cannot be saved. The only true act of faith is to end it.”

“You’re barking mad,” Marie said, more succinctly than Isabelle could have.