She spoke through a tight throat. “When I got an opportunity, I ran with my father. They didn’t leave much of a watch on us, but they suddenly cared about us once we ran. They’ve been looking for us ever since…and I haven’t seen my mother in years.”

Kelsa had intended to trade that story for Orthos’ story about her brother, but she didn’t trust her voice anymore. While she took deep breaths, cycling her madra and getting control of herself, Orthos spoke.

“He isn’t Unsouled,” the turtle said.

Kelsa’s heart was still in turmoil, but somehow hearing that Lindon wasn’t Unsouled was stranger than hearing he might be alive.

She had already accepted his death. She and her father had dreamed of other possibilities, but they both knew it was true. As soon as the Heaven’s Glory School had decided he was an enemy, he was dead.

It relieved her to hear that he was alive, of course, but if that were true, then why hadn’t he come home? Did he really rebel against Heaven’s Glory and escape? Or did he give in to them to save himself?

“He made it to Copper?” she asked quietly. That would help explain how he had survived.

Orthos reached out and uprooted a small, dry bush with his mouth. He began to chew, speaking around a mouthful of splinters. “He was Iron when I met him.”

“Iron?” That was difficult to believe. “How did he make it so high?”

The turtle stopped chewing and gave her a strange look. “Outside of this…death-trap…Iron is nothing. If he had stopped at Iron, I would not be here.”

She wanted to hear the full story, but this was such an absurd claim that she had to hear the end of it. “You’re saying he’s Jade?”

“Jade…If Lindon returned today and saw what I’ve seen, he would leave every Jade in the Heaven’s Glory School as a pile of ashes.”

Kelsa’s hopes receded. She had somewhat believed him at first, but this was too ridiculous. To begin with, his claim contradicted itself. “You said that entering the Valley made your spirit weaker. If that’s true, he couldn’t be any stronger than a Jade.”

Red-and-black eyes met hers. “I said what I said.”

He was a confident liar, she had to give him that. But he had known her name. She settled onto the ground, leaning her back against a nearby tree. “All right, Orthos. I think you owe me a story.”

Chapter 1

Outpost 01: Oversight

Makiel, the Hound, stood at the center of creation and watched the past. He had finally caught his prey.

He drifted in the arctic air, surrounded by the home he had carved in the north pole of the planet he'd created. Every atom and idea in this place was focused on enhancing his sight, like a great telescope at the heart of existence.

There were only a few criminals in all existence that could steal from him. He knew exactly who to look for. He just hadn't known where.

Until this morning, when Suriel reported a world missing.

That was the thread he followed backward in Fate. Back, to find where he'd failed.

He reached out, tapping into the Way Between Worlds, and opened a celestial lens. It formed into a rectangular screen of purple-tinted light only a few feet from him, but the image was fuzzy and indistinct. Her wards, veils, and shields, protecting her from detection. The same ones that had stopped him from seeing her in the future.

They had done their job. She had slipped by unnoticed.

But no one could defy the Hound once he caught their scent.

Her wards crumbled, and the image snapped into focus. He could watch the image play out with nothing more than his eyes, but he needed as much information as possible. His attention sunk into the lens, and he became the criminal.

[Target Found: the Angler of the Crystal Halls. Location: Iteration 002 Haven, approximately one standard year ago. Synchronize?]

[Synchronization set at 99%]

[Beginning synchronization...]

Iri was robbing the Abidan.

She stayed focused on her excitement to distract her from the fact that she was packed inside a box buried beneath one of the most secure Abidan facilities in their vault-world of Haven. The box was ten meters by ten—hardly a coffin—but it was so packed with shining amplification crystals, gold rune-boards, tubes of fluid, and matter condensers that she had almost no room to move.

Not that she needed much room. She had always been small and skinny, and ascending out of her original world hadn't changed that about her. It had turned her hair a bright, electric blue—not the most subtle color—and marked each of her eyes with a shining blue triangle inside her irises. It was the stamp of the Endless Pyramid, the artifact that had made her who she was.

The last thing she'd stolen as a mortal.

Iri's bare feet stuck out from the end of frayed pants. She braced one foot against the cold metal, hauling on a lever in the ceiling with her whole body weight. She could have drawn it down easily with her will, but she was trying not to draw attention. That meant acting physically as much as possible. Lines of runes and symbols flared all over the ceiling, and a hologram bloomed in the center of the room.

It was a map of the Way. It started as a single blue light in the middle, shining like the core of a galaxy. Rivers of sapphire light snaked out from it, forming branches, until it was a tangled nest of blue with little white spots hanging on it like berries. The Iterations.

She waved her hand through the light on the outer edge of the orb of branching lines. A cluster of lights shone...and two of the Iterations darkened from white to a swirling gray. Corruption in Sector Seventy-two, and both worlds were still there. The Reaper hadn't come for them.

Iri cackled to herself and swept the map away. As she'd suspected, Ozriel was gone. The Abidan were spread too thin.

Her operation was a go.

She reached out and grabbed Ziomachus, an obsidian wheel packed with the energy system of a long-dead world. It was with this artifact that she had earned her name and built her worlds-famous collection.

She held her hands apart and the black wheel hovered between them. Gold symbols shone on both sides as it responded to her will, filling the room with another shade of light.

Invisible, a strand of her authority slipped up through the soil. It slithered undetected past the detection-wards and patrolling energy constructs that protected against incursion from below.

The line of power slid easily through the foundation, composed of an ore intended to disperse such power. It oozed up, past the Abidan Hounds and Spiders and Ghosts, guided by the force of Iri's intentions.

The vault was a seamless cube of mirrored steel bigger than the box in which Iri waited. Suspended in the center of a sealed room, it floated in midair, guarded by such workings of the Way that even Iri and Ziomachus could never penetrate it.

If the Abidan fell and the guards plundered the rest of the Iteration and returned home, Iri could spend a millennium trying and find no purchase. It was the perfect defense.

So the Angler sat with her power extended like a fishing-line, dangling outside the impenetrable vault. Waiting.

She knew what was locked in the vault, and she knew that with Ozriel dead or missing, the Hound would send for its contents. He would never come himself—that would leave too much of a trail—but this vault would soon open. She only had to be patient.