The stone warmed.
Letters—no, not letters—impressionssurfaced under my fingertips, and the air around me thickened. Fog rose out of the rock like breath in winter, coiling into a slender column that hovered at eye level. Selkaris straightened, the light from his console washing off his face as the fog turned from gray to starless black shot through with embers.
A voice followed the smoke or, possibly, swirled within it; it was hard to tell. It was deep and old. Not spoken so much as remembered.
“When the first worlds fell, their fire had no river. All that lived bled into the wound. The wound learned to hunger.”
My skin prickled. The fog swirled, forming the rough impression of a map, rings curling inward toward a dark heart. Holding my breath, I realized it was a replica of the Dark Abyss.
“Centuries upon centuries, light without source pooled in Nox Eternum, filled it with knowledge, energy, and tragedy. But what devours, learns. What gathers, awakens. Deep in the hollows between dying worlds and stars, a will took shape. We named it Nhal’Vareth.”
Selkaris’ head snapped toward me. His lips shaped the word silently—Nhal’Vareth—like it might bite.
The voice went on, uncaring about its audience or their feelings.
“Not mind. Not soul. Butwill. It drank heat, and then thought, and then breathed. Those who drifted close felt the pull to look, to know, to enter. Then came the first Arkhevari, to stare into the wound that calls.”
The fog flexed. For a heartbeat, it suggested figures haloed in light, standing on the edge of an endless black sea.
"Then another and another. They all succumbed to its lure, to its promise of endless knowledge. All but one.”
A figure broke away from the others, smaller against the dark, hand linked to a second shape wreathed in soft glow.
“He turned and, with his Aelyth, fled the call. Their names were written once and then erased: Caelor and Ashera. They vanished into the living veil. Never to be heard from or seen again.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. This had to be a coincidence, right? It just had to. A shudder moved through me, shaking my body as if I had a fever chill. Selkaris looked at me, concerned, "Ella?"
Ashera. The name echoed inside my head. Bounced from one end of my brain to the other, back and forth, like a ball in a tennis match. No, racquetball, because this wasn't just a ball moving back and forth; this ball was brutally hitting every which way.
"Ella?" Selkaris called out again.
And then out of nowhere, as if he had felt my discomfort, there was Zaph.
"What is it? Ella?" He pulled me into his arms and snarled at Selkaris, "What did you do to her?"
"Nothing. He did nothing," I managed to put a soothing hand on his arm and watched distractedly as the black in his aura retreated. I even forced up a smile. "We found something." I stared at Selkaris. "That name. Ashera. She is mentioned in Earth’s history. Well, someone with just about the same name is…" I was aware I was rambling, but I couldn't stop. "She was… a goddess, a very old goddess, a mother goddess. The wife of El…" I broke off. El. Caelor. Was it possible that our ancestors had shortened his name?
I barely noticed that the rock shivered, and the fog pulled back into the stone with a soft hiss, as if the rock had exhaled for the first time in ages. The hall’s normal sounds crept back in the low thrum of the archives, the faint chime of Selkaris’ console.
My mouth was dry. “On Earth, Asherah was erased,” I said, softer now, as if the hall might judge me for speaking a forbidden name. “Scrubbed out of scriptures, turned into anidolinstead of… instead of what she was, a goddess. But there are fragments, inscriptions that sayYahweh and his Asherah. AndEl—El is one of our oldest words for god.” I looked between them. “What if Caelor became El? What if Ashera… is Asherah?”
Selkaris didn’t breathe for a count of heartbeats. Then his eyes lit in a way I hadn’t seen before, memory kindlinginto wonder. “Names erode,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Stones keep their bones; tongues keep their breath. Caelor to El. Ashera to Asherah.” His gaze found mine. “Your world remembered them, even as it forgot.”
Zaph’s hold gentled, the growl in his chest unwinding. He brushed a knuckle along my cheek, the gold in his eyes chasing out the last ring of black. “If these are your first seeders,” he said, “then Earth is not an accident. It is a sanctuary.”
A thrill of fear and awe slid through me. “A sanctuary planted by runaways.” I swallowed. “By the ones who refused the Abyss.”
Selkaris moved with sudden purpose, palms sweeping across the console. Glyphs rose and rearranged, a star-map peeling open like a flower. “If they fled into the living veil, there will be residue,” he said. “Bent routes. Quiet lanes. Places where memory thins.” He flicked me a quick, conspiratorial smile that made him look younger. “You and I will chase their wake through archives and artifacts. We will test your Earth stories against our broken songs.”
Zaph’s thumb traced the pulse at my throat. “You will not do it alone,” he said to both of us. “While you hunt their path, I will prepare the others.”
A draft of cooler air kissed the back of my neck. I didn’t have to turn to know a shadow had lengthened at the far archway.
“Good,” came Dravok’s voice, low and amused in that unnerving way of his. “Chase your saints through dust and lullabies.” His silhouette cut loose from the pillar. “I willchase the ones who profit from forgetting. The Ohrur keep ledgers longer than their consciences. Somewhere in their accounts is the first sale that wasn’t a sale at all.”
Zaph didn’t release me, but his chin lifted a fraction. “I thought you were hunting Nythor.”
“If he is still Nythor to hunt,” Dravok replied, and the corner of his mouth bent like a knife’s smile. His attention skimmed me for a beat, assessing, approving, then gone. “When your myths point to a door, little historian, send for me. I prefer to open such things from the inside.” And then, after a little pause, not looking at all like the self-assured Dravok I'd met so far, he continued, “Tell me something, little historian.”
