As she watched, a bit of the sky tore above the ships, like something from a fantastic nightmare. She had a glimpse of some… other place where the sky was a murky amber-orange, as if on fire. A rippling shadow crossed the sky there, a black mass that made her skin crawl and her breath catch. The sky shimmered again, and the seams between her world and… the other closed. She let out her breath. She pointed at the sky. “The world is ready to come apart on its own. There’s an omajista more skilled than you who can control it.”

They had started seeing those mad tears in the sky eight years before, in the far, far north. She had not believed the sightings at first, thought it was just some drunk tuber farmer enchanted by especially brilliant northern lights. But no. Oma, the dark star, was creeping back into orbit. The worlds were coming together again far sooner than anyone anticipated.

“There will be an omajista among the Dhai people who can open the way,” she said. “There always is, when Oma rises. You don’t have that many Dhai to pick through. We only need one.”

“The Dhai are weak-minded cannibals. Let the invaders take that maggoty country and their omajistas with it.”

Maralah had fought the invaders on every coast, in every province, at the height of every snowy peak. When she sought out her father’s house in Albaaric after the fighting, she found only a weeping ruin and the slimy remnants of red algae smearing the walls at knee height, where the highest tide had reached. She and her brother had not spoken to her father or sisters in twenty years, but she went to the house in search of living kin – a near-cousin, a second-mother, even a village brother – despite the silence. She found nothing but the taste of smoke. They never left the bodies, these invaders. What they did with them… Maralah did not care to guess. But rumor had it they had a taste for blood.

“The city is done, Taigan,” Maralah said. “Now you must decide if you’ll perish with it.”

“May your roads run long, then,” Taigan said, grimacing.

“And yours,” Maralah said. “Don’t come back without an omajista. A real one. You understand?”

“They’ve reached the walls,” he said.

Maralah looked. Black, slithering plant flesh swarmed the shimmering blue walls, even as the structure spat and hissed at them. The sanisi standing at the top of the walls raised their hands to call on the ascendant star Para, Lord of the Air, for protection.

When she looked back, Taigan had gone.