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He couldn’t tell if Karkash had purposely avoided his brain or if it was purely coincidence, but with his body in tatters, Stoker plummeted back to the ground. He could see Hector struggling on his own now, but the kid could barely protect himself. The lightning ripped the metal apart on impact.

Stoker put a ruined arm forward, scratching at the dirt and trying to crawl toward Nize.

But it was too late.

The last of Hector’s defense was stripped away from her, and Karkash thrust two fingers toward Nize.

Stoker watched the lightning tear into her.

She vaporized.

He just stared, wide-eyed. His hearing was already shot, eardrums in the midst of repairing themselves, so it was all a numb sight, making it somehow harder to believe.

He’d failed. She was dead. His body was still regenerating, but he could already feel the shift taking place in his mind. Stoker blinked, eyes blurring and then refocusing. And he saw Karkash and Hoyohté there, both looking back at him.

He wondered if they would even bother to finish him off. It would make little difference, so he doubted it. For all this chaos, Stoker knew that Karkash took no pleasure in killing him. This had all been Karkash’s duty, nothing more.

Sure enough, after a few moments of their silent deliberation, Karkash leapt into the sky with booming force, and they flew off together. They soon vanished beyond the horizon.

Stoker climbed onto his knees and elbows. The reverberations in his chest were growing stronger, stealing his breath away in increments, and his whole body flashed between sweltering warmth and shivering cold.

His muscles convulsed. Everything went dark. And he saw a life.

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A boy. Growing up in Vaeland. A country of water. More sea than land. The city of his birth floats more than it stands. He learns to swim. He learns to fish.

It was once a prosperous nation, he hears, back when his parents were young.