Had we stopped Janan? The temple was so bright, it seemed unlikely. And though dragons flew from Heart as fast as they could, they wouldn’t outrun the eruption. There’d be another, soon. And another.
I didn’t want to talk to Sam about any of that, though. I faced him. Blood poured from a wound on his head, matting down his black hair to his skin. Scrapes and bruises marred his face, but he was still the handsomest man in the world to me.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you.” He kissed me softly. Grit brushed between our lips.
The temple burst apart.
Shards of brilliantly lit stone flew in all directions, hitting my back and arms and face. Agony flared across my entire body as Sam shoved me down and held himself over me, as though he could protect me from what was happening.
Sam cried out, but neither of us could move. Rock piled up around us, shining with templelight. Dust rushed up, making me cough and gag, no matter how I pulled my shirt collar over my face to filter each gasp.
The rain of stone went on forever. It was a race: what would kill us faster? The eruption fire speeding its way here, or Janan’s ascension.
When the noise dulled, Sam sat up, and I followed. The explosion had been violent, but quick. Rocks lay strewn across the roof, and the city below looked as though it had been covered in fine white powder, which glowed.
And the prison—it was gone.
I glanced southward, checking on the wave of fire and ash and pyroclast. A gray-and-black cloud of debris and fire rushed upward and outward. We had minutes at best.
“Come on.” I scrambled to my feet and helped Sam up. His movements were stiff and pained, and we picked our way around glowing rubble, toward the crater on the east side of the Councilhouse. We were lucky the force of the temple’s explosion hadn’t destroyed the Councilhouse, too.
“You’re too late.” Deborl’s voice was scratchy and weak from the opposite end of the Councilhouse. He just wouldn’t die. “There’s no stopping Janan.”
I ignored him and held tighter to Sam’s hand as we gazed at the bright pit below. People huddled around it, their voices muted as they wiped blood off their faces, or swept shining grit off their clothes. Some hadn’t gotten up after the blast, but most had survived. They gaped at the place where the temple used to be.
“Oh, Ana.” Anguish filled Sam’s voice. “I’m so sorry.”
At first, I saw only light.
The white stones resolved themselves into stairs. Or tiers. And skeletons. Silver chains shone in the strange illumination, glimmering as a dark figure in the center shifted and stood.
He looked small from this far above, but I remembered seeing him before: short and thick, bushy brown hair on his head and face. He’d looked strong, then, even dead or asleep or whatever he was.
Now, power surged through his movements as he grasped the chain linking the skeletons to one another—to him—and strode out of the temple ruins, dragging the dead behind him.
Janan had returned.
30
PROMISES
I ROCKED BACK on my heels. Sam’s hands dug into my sides to keep me upright, and he said something by my ear, but I couldn’t understand the words. All I could think was that we’d failed.
Janan had returned. Ascended. Both, because he was here and he was powerful.
We had failed.
Below, as Janan strode out of the decimated temple, the crowd split in two, leaving a wide, rubble-strewn path to the phoenix cage. They were silent, save the awed whispers and weeping. Stones continued pattering to the ground like the last moments of rain.
Silver chains clanked and clattered, and bones chattered as Janan heaved almost a million skeletons out of the pit. He dragged all the skeletons I’d seen inside the temple before; there’d been one for everyone in Heart, everyone who reincarnated.
Janan dragged nearly a million skeletons by those chains. He was impossibly strong. Impossibly alive.
As the crater emptied, I found dozens of skeletons left behind: darksouls.
The world roared and trembled as the pyroclastic flow burned through the forests of Range, rolled across the valley of Midrange Lake, and thundered toward Heart.
This was it.
I wanted to close my eyes, but I watched my death coming. It would be fiery and immediate, and terrifyingly beautiful.
The black wave crashed against Heart and split around the city wall, as though the stone were a blade. The particles of rock and ash and fire surged, blocking out the moon and stars. Everything beyond Heart was dark, burned away as the eruption blast continued, but inside Heart was bright with thrown temple stones and the glare of spotlights.
Heat poured through the city, a flood of sulfuric summer that made me shake and sweat.
But we weren’t dead.
I turned toward Sam, sure I wanted to say something about the way the pyroclastic flow split, unsure what exactly.
Deborl stood behind Sam, a jagged piece of stone raised over his head. Blood and grit poured down his face and clothes, and his expression was distorted into something savage and raw.
“Sam!”