The valley felt impossibly still as the last fragments of dust drifted away from the rising structure. The Heartline crater glowed beneath us like a wound torn open across the earth, pulsing with waves of slow silver fire that rose and fell in uneven rhythms. The ground beneath my boots throbbed with a heat that felt as old as the first breath of the world. My mark responded to that heat with an agonizing pull that grew stronger with every passing second. Talon held my arm securely, but even his powerful grip could not silence the tug dragging at my bones.
The throne stood at the center of the revealed vault, fully emerged now from beneath the shifting earth. Its pale marble surface gleamed with spirals of silver veins running through its structure like captured moonlight. Carved figures
