The Shattered Lands were exactly what their name suggested.
Three hundred years ago, when the silver mother cracked and the Hollow King first reached into Tenmon, the lands around the impact site had been unmade. Not destroyed unmade. The laws of physics didn't apply here. Gravity reversed itself at random. Time flowed backward in some places, forward in others, and not at all in most.
Lee felt it the moment they crossed the border a wrongness in the air, a thickness in his bones, a sense that reality itself was holding its breath.
"Stay close," he said. "Don't touch anything. Don't eat anything. Don't drink anything. And whatever you do, don't look at the sky."
They walked for hours through a landscape that couldn't decide what it wanted to be. One moment they were crossing a field of glass smooth and black and reflective. The next they were wading through a river of sand that flowed upward, defying gravity. The next they were climbing a staircase that spiraled into nothing, each step vanishing behind them as they climbed.
"How much further?" Kira asked, her voice strained.
Lee checked the map or tried to. The parchment had gone blank, the ink fading as if it had never existed.
"The map doesn't work here," Lee said. "We're on our own."
"Great. Fantastic. I love being lost in a place where reality has a headache."
Taro pointed ahead. "What's that?"
A building. Not a ruin an intact building, standing alone in the middle of a field of glass. It was made of white stone, with pillars and arches and a dome that gleamed like polished bone.
"That wasn't on the map," Ren said.
"Nothing is on the map anymore," Lee said. "But we need to find shelter before nightfall. The Shattered Lands are worse in the dark."
They approached the building cautiously. The door a massive thing made of bronze, covered in writing that Lee couldn't read swung open before they reached it.
Inside, the building was... a tavern.
A tavern. With tables and chairs and a bar and a fireplace and everything. A woman stood behind the bar, polishing a glass with a rag. She was beautiful too beautiful, with skin like moonlight and eyes like stars.
"Welcome," the woman said. "We've been expecting you."
Lee's hand went to Onyx Tempest. "Who are you?"
The woman smiled. "I'm the innkeeper. This is my inn. You're travelers in need of rest. That's all you need to know."
"Innkeepers don't have eyes like stars."
"These ones do."
Lee studied her. The mark on his chest was burning not with pain, but with recognition. This wasn't a demon. This wasn't a ghost. This was something else. Something older.
"You're the Mausoleum," Lee said slowly. "Aren't you? You're the test."
The woman's smile widened. "Clever boy. Yes. I am the first guardian. The Welcomer. The one who decides whether you're worth the trouble of killing."
"You're going to kill us?"
"Only if you fail." She set down her glass. "The test is simple. You must answer three questions. Answer correctly, and you may pass. Answer incorrectly..." She gestured to the walls. Lee hadn't noticed before, but the walls were covered in faces screaming, silent, frozen in agony. "You join the collection."
Kira stepped forward, flames licking at her fingers. "And if we refuse?"
"Then you die anyway." The woman shrugged. "The Mausoleum doesn't care how you die. Only that you do."
Lee put a hand on Kira's shoulder. "We'll answer the questions."
"Lee "
"Trust me."
Kira's flames died. She stepped back.
The woman clapped her hands. "Wonderful! First question: What is the name of the sun that died?"
Lee thought about it. The silver mother. Sol Umbra. The twin sun that had cracked and shattered, unleashing the Hollow King.
"Sol Umbra," Lee said.
The woman tilted her head. "That's what the world calls it. But that's not its name. Its name is older. Deeper. What did the Sun Kings call the silver mother before the Shattering?"
Lee didn't know. He'd never read that in any scroll, never heard it in any story.
But Inyocha did.
"Lunari," Inyocha said quietly. "The silver mother was called Lunari. It means 'the watching one' in the old tongue."
The woman's eyes flicked to Inyocha. "Interesting. The Shadow Weaver knows the old tongue."
"I had a lot of time to read in the Sunken City."
"And you remember?"
"I remember everything."
The woman nodded. "Correct. Second question: What is the Hollow King's true name?"
Silence.
Lee looked at Inyocha. Inyocha shook his head. "I don't know. No one knows. The Hollow King has hidden his name for eons."
"Then you fail," the woman said.
"Wait," Ren said. Everyone turned to look at him.
Ren stepped forward, his calm eyes meeting the woman's star filled gaze.
"The Hollow King's true name is Nihilos," Ren said. "It means 'the hunger that precedes existence.' I know this because I was there when he first spoke it. I was there when the stars went dark."
The woman's smile vanished. "You... you're a Sun King."
"I was the last one," Ren said. "Before the Shattering. Before everything fell."
Lee stared at his friend his calm, quiet, mysterious friend and felt the world shift beneath his feet.
"You're the last Sun King," Lee repeated. "The one who died in the Ashen Mausoleum."
"I didn't die," Ren said. "I changed. I became something else. Something less. Something that could survive in a broken world."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Kira demanded.
Ren looked at her at all of them with eyes that held three hundred years of grief.
"Because I was ashamed," he said. "Because I failed. Because I watched my kingdom fall and my people die and the sun crack open, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I ran. I hid. I survived while everyone else perished."
"You didn't run," Inyocha said softly. "You changed. There's a difference."
Ren's eyes glistened. "Is there?"
The woman the Welcomer watched this exchange with something like wonder.
"Three hundred years," she said. "Three hundred years I've been asking those questions. No one has ever answered the second one correctly. No one has ever known the Hollow King's true name."
She stepped back from the bar.
"You pass. All of you. The Mausoleum welcomes you."
The walls stopped screaming.
The faces went silent.
And a door appeared at the back of the tavern a door that led down, into darkness, into the heart of the Ashen Mausoleum.