For a long moment, nobody on the thrones moved.
The heart hung below them like a red mountain. The gray seam ran down its center, and it stayed open just a little, waiting.
Kael was the first to speak. "You know this thing."
"We fought it," Rudra said. His eyes never left the seam. "Thirty-seven years ago. At the Year-End Convergence."
"It opened the gates that year," Lily said quietly. "We broke three of its shapes. We never broke the thing wearing them."
"And now it's back," Ainen said.
"You knew I would be," the voice answered from below. "You said so yourself, Lily Regalon. You stood at the edge of the Gutwrack Span and told your husband I would return with a fourth shape that already knew everything you had done. You were right."
Lily's face went pale.
"It heard that," she said.
"I hear most things," the voice said.
