Chapter 1
Kovan
SanctuaryIslehasonlyone entrance, and it’s blocked to me.
Not because the tide is up, covering the land that attaches the island to the rest of the empire.
Because I am weak.
Even this far out from the temple where just weeks ago the Sage of Wrath created the magical dampening field that now prevents magic from being worked inside, I can feel its strength eclipsing my own.
Whispers have started calling it the Quiet.
Only Learned Muka, first among my mentors—my handlers, whispers my traitorous mind—is here to watchme fail as the water rises at my feet where I stand on the Precipice, the line where the Quiet extends to.
I’m one man facing the biggest magical working I’ve ever felt, which normally would energize me.
Not today.
Learned Muka supported my request to send away the audience, to allow me space to meditate on the huge task before me.
But leaving me alone on a magical and existential precipice, both physically and with my thoughts, is not helping. Quite the opposite.
The priesthood wants the dampening field down. The military arm of priests who were deployed with the sage on Sanctuary Isle must all be dead, but no one can confirm that or offer them burial rites, because no government officials can reach any villagers who still live at Crystal Hollow, the town at the foot of the mountain where Celestial Sanctuary Temple sits.
I am powerful enough to cross the Precipice, at the very least, even if it would leave me powerless on the other side.
The Quiet side.
But am I powerful enough to tear down Wrath’s final work?
Possibly. Other sages have tried and failed, which is why I, the strongest remaining sage of our generation, have been taken from my duties to make the attempt.
The problem is that as the Sage of Resolve, my strength depends on my determination.
And for once, I have mixed feelings about the task assigned to me.
Not just because I have always thought of my power as one of augmentation: strengthening roots to support greater growth.
But because the priests fear the talk that the Sage of Wrath’s repudiation is a sign the gods have turned away from them. That without the unified front of the living avatars of the gods, and Wrath especially, the empire’s threat is weakened. They want her, and all the sages, under tighter control than ever.
At first, I resented what her action had cost the rest of us.
Now, I wonder if she revealed a truth that I have been willfully denying for years.
That my resolve has enabled me in the doing.
Quiet steps behind me; damning.
Learned Muka has long since learned that sound will not crack my resolve—this is another sign of the priesthood’s desperation.
“Sage Kovan,” she chastises. “You will not firm your strength by holding still.”
Which is exactly why I am not moving through one of my katas, the movement patterns sages use to build and flow our divine power through to the world.
I fear I will not find my resolve at all. That I do not have the strength ofcharacterto match Wrath.
Or, more egregious: I will find it, and my resolve will make everything worse.
