NOLAN POVI woke with a blade against my throat, a woman kneeling on my chest, and my own blood drying into a stiff crust beneath my back."You were supposed to stay dead," she said.Her voice was quiet and perfectly calm, which frightened me far more than shouting would have. I tried to swallow and felt the edge of the steel bite into my skin, so I went completely still. Silver-black hair fell across her shoulder, her amber eyes glowed faintly in the gloom, and two curved obsidian horns rose from her temples like something carved for a throne."I think you have me confused with someone else," I said."Do I?" She tilted her head toward my left. "Then explain him."I turned my eyes as far as the blade allowed. A man lay on the broken stone a few feet away with his chest torn open and his face gone gray. It was my face, down to a crooked scar through the left eyebrow that I had never owned until now.My stomach dropped. The last thing I remembered was a flickering monitor and a message

NOLAN POVThe black bolt was already in the air when I understood that these men had not come to arrest me. They had come to erase me.Veyra slammed into my side before it reached my chest, and we hit the ground together as the bolt struck the rock behind us. A burst of dark energy bloomed outward and ate through the stone, leaving a smoking crater where my back had been a moment earlier.She stared at it. "That was meant for your heart.""Good to know someone thinks I'm important.""That was not a compliment.""Neither was the bolt."She dragged me into a tangle of broken boulders while the mercenaries fanned out below. "Anti-demon steel on the blades," she said, "but those black bolts were made for something more specific than me.""For me, then." I peered over the rock. Their leader hung back beside the wagons with his crossbow, two men were circling toward the lower path, and a fourth carried a brass device on his belt that pulsed in time with the markings on my wrist. "That box i

NOLAN POVThe man in the silver-trimmed coat said my name as though he had waited a long time to say it. He did not sound surprised that I was alive. He sounded like someone ticking an item off a list.I kept my face neutral. "Should I know you?"His smile widened. "No. The man you replaced certainly did."Veyra's hand drifted toward her sword, and the emissary noticed at once. "Careful," he said mildly. "If you kill me, you will never learn why the Quiet Meridian chose you to murder him."Her fingers stopped an inch from the hilt. Her fury rolled through the bond like heat from a forge."I serve High Inquisitor Odran Pell," he went on, "and I have come with an offer. Surrender peacefully, Nolan, and we will remove the resonance bond, answer your questions about the transfer, and allow Miss Noxen to walk away unharmed."It was a very good offer, which was exactly what bothered me. "You know a lot about a bond that's an hour old.""We know a great deal about many things.""Then why bar

MIRETH POVI have three rules for surviving a Quiet Meridian excavation. Never enter alone, never touch anything that recognizes your soul, and never bring a demon like Veyra Noxen anywhere near your hiding place.Today I have broken all three.Black mist was already creeping through the passage behind me, and the structure had recognized the man trailing Veyra. I had no wish to learn what it would do once it finished identifying him. I glanced over my shoulder and found him standing in the corridor with his head tilted, like someone who meant to demand a full explanation while the ceiling fell on him."Run!" I shouted."Which way?""Away from the mist! Follow my light!"I had come into these ruins days earlier to steal a ledger from a Quiet Meridian courier, so I knew the passages well enough to lead them. My lantern burned violet and exposed carved markings that ordinary light could never reveal, and I used them to steer us around the unstable sections. Every few steps I checked the

THESSARI POVI have watched Nolan Rhyse die eleven times. In one future a blade finds his chest, in another the Hollow Gate collapses on top of him, and in the worst of them he survives long enough to become something that no longer remembers why it wanted to save the world.I have tried to change those visions, and I have tried to ignore them. I once even tried to kill him before he could reach the gate, but every choice I made changed one thing while making another worse.Now the Quiet Meridian has chained me to the First Seal, and the woman who once promised to help me escape stands beside the machine that will open it. I close my eyes as the eleventh vision ends and the twelfth begins.In this one the Meridian wins. Its researchers bend the mechanism to their will, and the gate obeys them like a well-trained hound. In the next they die screaming, torn apart by the force they woke. In the third Nolan stands on the central platform with both palms pressed to the ancient anchors whil