The city of Nur lay spread out before Karux, dark empty and silent, like a dream after the dreamer had awakened. Corpses no longer filled the streets and the sky remained an untroubled dull gray.

From the top of the building of steps, he searched the gloom for the woman of light. Was she really Eiraena? It didn't seem possible. How could he have lived with her so long and understood her so little? He summoned up the memory of their first meeting in this place and an unexpected tug of longing pulled at him. Had that been her true form all along?

A bright gleam flashed from the top of the sacred mountain. Karux took a step toward it, found his left leg worked inexplicably well, and was soon hopping down the steps at a reckless pace.

The sacred mountain abruptly rose before him and Karux raced up its side as if he were falling into the sky. Near the top, sprays of light shot out from between enormous stone pillars.

The air trembled with an invisible weight. Its reverberation shivered deep inside Karux, his skin vibrating like the membrane of a drum. He paused and listened to the directionless rumbling surrounding him until it became the song of countless voices. 

They sang in such perfect harmony that individual tones merged into a solid chord that shook the world like a force of nature. It was a song of pure joy and it held the promise of infinite possibilities. The song pulled him upward effortlessly. At the top of the mountain, a flash of light blinded him.

The woman of light appeared before him, very real and very solid. Karux reached for her and halted in sudden fear that his hand would pass through her radiant flesh as if he were no more than smoke.

"Now is not the time for your return, my love." The woman smiled wistfully and Karux was struck again with the impossibility that this was Eiraena.

Laughter boomed out from beyond the lighted pillars. "That's my adra and my uncle!" Karux said. "And I think I hear my aunt and my madra with them! I must go to them!"

The woman of light leaned in close so that her bright honey-colored irises filled his vision. "You are not yet finished; there is more for us to do."

More laughter rang out, but this time the voices sounded like Theris and Macander's. "No! That cannot be. They're not dead!"

Eiraena laughed. "No one here is dead. This place is only for the living."

"But—" a third voice answered the laughter, and Karux froze with suspicion. "That cannot be my voice!"

Eiraena gave him a gleeful grin. "There is no time here. No matter how we start on the journey, we all arrive at this place and in this moment. Time is only the barrier that separates us from our true selves. You will return and be reunited to your true self, but first there are more tasks awaiting you.

"I don't understand...how is this...?"

Eiraena gestured along the circle of pillars ringing the top of the mountain. Karux squinted into the glare. A shadowed form, as of a person trying to hide, moved furtively in the shade of a pillar. It looked familiar.

"Amantis?"

The figure flinched and shrank against the stone. "Karux? Is that you?"

"It is."

"Are you dead too? I tried to cut you...and then...I remember falling."

"I'm not sure," Karux said.

"I think we must be dead. What is this horrible place?"

"Horrible? This is the top of the mountain!"

"What is that terrible noise?"

"Do you mean the singing?"

Amantis shook his head. "It is disgusting! It is the wail of madness, the sound of people who have lost their minds and become no more than animals."

Stunned, Karux paused as the chorus of joy and promise swelled. "How can you say that? It is our families, it is all of creation. E'yom, our creator, is here as well. We can at last fully become what we were meant to be."

Amantis backed away from the pillar, carefully staying in its shadow. "By destroying what we are? To be remade into someone else? I think not! Whatever else I am, I am me. I refuse to be destroyed."

"It's not like that—" Karux moved toward him, stepping into the light, but a woman's hand on his shoulder stopped him.

Amantis receded into his shadow, moving with increasing speed as if falling away.

"You can no longer reach him," Eiraena said.

Darkness swallowed Amantis' form.

"Is there no hope for him?" Karux asked.

"His sliver of shadow is all the mercy he will accept. To a soul that has rejected its creator, this light of that love is like a consuming fire." Eiraena hesitated, peering into the darkness. "Their souls are too brittle to be remade. I think it is only because of something like nostalgia that E'yom doesn't unmake them."

Karux stared at her profile, searching for Eiraena's likeness. The light of her substance washed out the details of her flesh, so he concentrated on the shape of her face. "Eiraena?"

She turned a smile back at him and held out her hand. "Come. There is much to do."

The end of
The Stone King

and the first part of
The Chronicles of the First Age

Coming soon: Kingdom of Shadow