He gave a small nod. “Just woke up. We were ambushed.”

I bit off a groan, trying not to wonder what had happened to those scouts. They’d been killed, probably. Or captured before they could return to warn us.

Beyond Aaru, I could see Gerel, Ilina, Chenda, Safa, Hristo, Zara, Altan, and several others I recognized from the caravan of dishonored and the port. Still more seemed to have been laid out in the wagons, not enough of an annoyance for Paorah to put on display.

He was still talking, still addressing the people gathered before him.

“I was a young man at this time, and no one listened to me.” Paorah’s voice tilted, like we were all supposed to empathize with him. “So I developed a new plan: I would convince the other governments of another danger—an immediate danger. The Algotti Empire. The threat of imminent invasion encouraged cooperation, but I knew that spirit would only last so long, and then the Great Abandonment would be upon us.”

A shiver ran through me, because I could see it. I could understand his frustration, knowing the Great Abandonment was coming but being unable to convince anyone of the danger. But to separate oneself from everyone else, to use fear to motivate rather than hope and love . . . That was the difference between him and me.

“So I made more plans,” he said, “covering every possible scenario. I struck bargains with our enemies. I arranged to destroy an empire and build one anew. I did everything within my power to fight for the survival of the Fallen Isles, but when my scholars returned from their studies of The Book of Destruction, they offered a different interpretation of Anahera’s will—one I hadn’t been prepared to hear, and still shocks me. But that is why we are here today.

“The Great Flame Anahera is a goddess of life and death and life again. She is the light of Noore, the goddess of beginnings and endings.” The high magistrate sounded rapturous, his words ringing across the desert like a prophecy. “Though it is counter to everything I set out to accomplish in my youth, I’ve embraced Anahera’s will, and I urge you to do the same.

“How, you ask? How can we take actions that seem opposed to what we wanted? I answer you: If we are followers of the Great Flame, then we do it gladly. We let go of our attachment to the Fallen Isles, our dependence on the Fallen Gods, and forge a new land of our own. Though our time with Anahera has ended, her teachings live on through us. A new beginning waits just beyond today’s eclipse, fulfilling her divine promise.

“But to earn it, we must be willing to let go of the past—to relinquish what makes us weak. That is why sacrifice is required. In the words of our holy book, ‘It is sacrifice that enables change.’ So that is what we will do today. When the moons begin to cross before the sun, our old world will fall away.”