Shouts rose up, buried under the rush of fire.

I found my friends and met their eyes. Chenda’s hands rested protectively on Safa’s shoulders, while Gerel stood guard nearby. Hristo clutched at his heart as he gazed up, while Ilina and Zara stood near Mother, who was bleeding but might live. Then there was Aaru, wearing that same expression as before. A smile, all sadness and perfect understanding.

“Remember,” I whispered, as the world began to rattle beneath us, “‘Hate cannot abide where many stand in love.’”

Then I dropped back to the dragon, breathed in, and reached through the noorestones to the goddess of destruction herself.

It was bold. Presumptuous.

But the gods had given me this power. It was their will that I use it, that I fight for the survival of my people. So I reached, my thoughts plunging downward through pure noorestone fire—bright, hot, flawless in every way.

People had long speculated that these noorestones were still connected to the world, to the gods, and as I followed the path that blazed ahead of me, I wished I could tell them that they’d been right.

At last, I landed in a place neither light nor dark, neither loud nor quiet. A between world, burning with brilliant noorestones and images of every part of the Fallen Isles.

This was what the gods saw:

Coins exchanging hands as men and women tried to buy their way onto ships.

People reaching out to pull strangers aboard, and others pushing the helpless into shuddering waters.

Mothers and fathers gathering children into their arms as the island began to tremble and they had no way to escape.

Birds taking flight, all their feathers black against the sun.

Ground-dwelling animals tunneling deep into their burrows, while deer and squirrels and other creatures ran for safety they wouldn’t find.

Dragons all over screaming in anguish as yet another god prepared to pull herself free of the ocean floor.

Two moons closing in on the sun.

Dozens of people standing in front of ruins, some in flame-blue jackets, others in their regular clothes. The dust around their feet shivered upward. Their weapons littered the ground, and many wept openly as they stared at the biggest dragon any of them had ever seen, wreathed in noorestone fire.

I saw everything: the good and the bad and all the reasons the gods might want to leave.

The stars. The vast and perfect darkness between them. The holes in the sky where these seven deities used to dwell.

The Upper Gods and their longing to reunite with their Fallen brethren.

Stay, I prayed. Stay, stay, stay.

With every beat of my heart, I begged her to listen. The first and the last were here, together. Wasn’t that what she and the other Fallen Gods wanted?

Please, stay.

I came to the goddess of destruction as a child might a mother: yes, people had behaved poorly, and yes, we deserved to be punished, but maybe, more than anything, we needed mercy—a chance to do better.