“Only two,” Kiel said. If he was taken aback by the girl’s horror, he didn’t show it. “Like you, they were a threat. A foe.”

“Akalla,” Kaden said, tasting the strange syllables. “Korin.”

Kiel nodded. “Those were the names they took. I do not know their provenance.”

“And so they’re just . . . what? Gone?”

Kiel pursed his lips as though considering a thorny question of translation. “Perhaps not fully or forever. Gods are not Bedisa’s creation. Ananshael cannot unknit them. Even the young gods are . . . larger than us, more complete than this creation.” He shook his head. “Really, the language does not serve in discussing them.”

“So you didn’t kill them,” Kaden said, frustration fraying the fabric of his calm.

Kiel met his gaze for a moment, then held up a hand, studying it in the lamplight. “Tan’is destroyed the flesh while they were trapped inside, before they could be released. The gods may be eternal, without end or limit, but their touch on this world is not. That is what Tan’is killed—their hold on and influence over those born into their thrall.”

“But,” Kaden said, “if what we are, if the makeup of our minds and hearts comes from the touch of the young gods, there must have been an effect. . . .” He trailed off, trying to understand what such an effect might be, trying to hold the notion in his head.

“There was.”

The historian paused, so long this time that Kaden wondered if he had given up trying to explain.

“Imagine you are blind,” he said finally. “That you were born blind. That all your life you have lived in darkness among others like you. If you were suddenly and momentarily shown color, how would you explain it to your sightless race? What words would you use? What formulations of logic or reason? Analogy fails. Induction and deduction fail. This is the best I can do—

“Your ancestors, the first among you, felt differently about the world. Not just differently, but more. It was as though the stones and rivers, the sea and sky, the physical world and the transcendent notions that emanate from it were as crucial to those first, broken Csestriim children as their own human families, their own selves. They would die to avoid unnecessary destruction. They acted and spoke as though the earth itself were a part of them, woven into the fabric of their minds. This world of cities and roads—” He gestured to the walls of the chamber and beyond. “Your ancestors would not have recognized it. They would have loathed it.”

“And after you killed the gods?” Kaden asked, voice thin as the last smoke from a spent fire.

“You changed.