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“That’s the fun of it, isn’t it?” he says as he slides me slowly down the front of his body to the forest floor. The friction of our bodies could ignite an entire wildfire. “Fuck, I missed you.”

I lean up and kiss him sweetly on the corner of his mouth. “I missed you too.”

“Every day, I wake up with thoughts of you.”

I kiss the other side of his mouth.

He continues, “I’m haunted by the memory of you.”

My lips brush his for a short, sweet kiss. His eyes bore into mine with such intensity.

“I cannot bear it.” His Adam’s apple dips.

“What?”

“Being apart from you, my Sunrise.”

I look at him. Really look.

While he stands tall, there is an extra aura about his stature, like the weight of the entire world is on his shoulders. No matter how strong they are, eventually that pressure would consume anyone. Human or Underling.

“How is Terraguard?” I ask gently.

Almost imperceptibly, Atlys winces. “It’s… not great. Attacks from the Jord are coming more frequently, the infection is spreading, the entirety of Baiabella is in quarantine, and I…” He looks over my shoulder, unfocused. “I’ve had to summon the worst parts of me to counteract this, Akemi. Parts of my powers I’ve suppressed for years.”

Tears well in my eyes just thinking about the pressure that Atlys is facing. The horrors he is witnessing his own people experience. I blink away the tears angrily. “We need to do something about this. It’s the moon. It has to be. It has to be affecting the Underlings in some way like it is the humans—well, Moon’chers.”

His brows pull together, contemplative.

I continue, “Selene and Gryphon—Damaris’s and Cadex’s champions last year—are both Moon’chers, and they are having a harder time channeling. Last time we talked, they said it felt like they were working twice as hard to pull the Source into their channeling stones with a less effective cast.”

Atlys leans forward. “It’s all connected. The moon is fading away, and the Source is fading.”

I nod. “Though it seems like the Underlings have it worse.”

Atlys voices his frustration in the slight reverberation of the forest. A tree creaks and sways from the small quake but doesn’t fall. He takes a deep breath, and the earth stills. “My father mentioned a story to me long ago. Even in Terraguard, our memories can be short compared to the billions of years that passed since the collision of my planet with yours. Similar to Tellings, our stories are passed along, generation by generation, but as the years pass, the stories change, until it’s a fraction of the truth it started with. Even though my father was… less than desirable, he was always sure to remind me that we didn’t belong here.”

I choke on the realization, the pieces all clicking at once. “Wait, so it’s real? Your planet collided with mine?”

Atlys smirks at me. “Yes.”

My jaw hangs agape.

“You may have heard of it. The moon. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now,” he says, pacing a few steps. “In the origin stories my father passed down, the moon collided with Earth, which is why the crust is so large.”

“And full of Underlings!” I blurt, remembering an Old World History class.

Atlys nods encouragingly. “The remnants of that collision went into Earth’s atmosphere, which eventually formed the moon as we see it now.”

“Your home,” I whisper, never really thinking of it this way until now.

“Apparently.”

“Is drifting away.”

“Yes.”

“Oh Gods.” He paces back in the other direction while I stand there, stunned at the realization. “That’s why it’s affecting the Underlings more deeply.”