She gasped and choked, struggling to breathe. Heat swept across her skin in painful waves, and with a burst of terror, she wondered if this was the beginning of the end. She would lose her body just as the angels did, her skin peeled away by the Deep.

Eliana, listen to my voice.

She fumbled for the Prophet’s faint, distorted words as if they were handholds she could use to climb free of the darkness. What’s happening? I don’t understand!

Listen to me and concentrate on what I’m saying. Remember the city you saw, the road you walked upon? You must recreate the illusion, use it to steady yourself and find your footing once more. Your little river, Eliana—remember it. How it anchors you to your own power. How it protects you from anything that would hurt you.

Eliana struggled to think of the city and its black spires, the boy with the white braids, the juggler’s glowing orbs. The images rushed at her, tumbled and frantic, and she grabbed for them, imagining her castings and the power they carried as anchors that could pin the world back into place. And with each image she caught and held came a relief from the roaring noise battering her ears. The brilliant lights dimmed; the spinning blackness slowed and steadied. She began to feel the edges of herself return—the hem of her nightgown kissing her legs, her hair brushing her shoulders, the cool embrace of her castings.

There you are. The Prophet’s voice was steady, no longer so distant. Take a step.

Eliana obeyed and placed her foot on the wet cobblestones of the spire-city’s rain-slicked road. For a moment, she did nothing but stand on her own shaky legs and breathe. She clung to the feeling of her own physicality, hoping it would ground her.

Trust the illusion, she told herself. She held onto the song of her power, thrumming in every vein, and in her mind she drew a picture of the world she had seen. Rebuild it.

The boy with the white braids sprinted past her. Dizzy, she turned to watch him as he plunged into the crowded street and crashed into the arms of a man who knelt before a shop front, waiting to embrace him. The man’s white hair was bound in many knots. He was, Eliana thought, the boy’s father.

Her eyes filled with tears as she watched them. How long it had been since she had been held by someone who loved her.

Come home now, the Prophet ordered. I should never have allowed this.

Eliana turned away from the narrow green light in the distance that marked her way home. I can’t. Not yet. I haven’t done what I came to do.

Eliana, you nearly lost yourself to the Deep just then. This is new to me too. If that happens again, or something worse, I may not be able to help you.

Eliana flexed her fingers. The chains of her castings shifted gently around her hands. But if I go back now, I could die there just as well, so I might as well stay here and finish.

The Prophet fell silent, their quiet anger a cloud on the horizon of Eliana’s mind, but she ignored that and closed her eyes. She concentrated on the slight weight of the gold discs resting in her palms, slowly urging her power to rise until a gentle force tugged at her chest. That same instinct had brought her to the courtyard garden, where the air was thin.

Now, this pull at her chest, at her shoulders and fingers, urged her to move forward. Slowly, she opened her eyes and found the black city painted in incandescent shades of empirium gold. Brightest where she focused her gaze, dimmer at her vision’s periphery.

The empirium is luminous here, she thought to the Prophet. Brighter than anything I have seen in Avitas.

As it should be. The Deep is the empirium unburdened by physicality. The Prophet’s voice softened. I think this is why you, daughter of Rielle, can walk there without pain. The empirium is the footprint of God. It is the thing that made the worlds. And you carry more of it inside you than any being that has ever lived.

Except for my mother.

A fluttering pulse, as if the Prophet felt a slight pain. Yes, little one. Except for your mother.

As Eliana walked through the winding city streets, following the empirium’s call, the buildings grew taller and closer around her. She kept her mind sharp, used it to create a path that was real even if the road underfoot was not. Even if this was an illusion, a mere echo of a world that lived far beyond her reach, she would believe in it. The path led her up a narrow staircase of stone, into a house with its doors thrown open to the night.

Hurry, Eliana, the Prophet said at last. Hours had passed in a blink. He will come soon. We can try another day, if we must. Do not allow stubbornness or pride to—

Here, Eliana thought. Inside the house, in the corner of a sitting room that existed in a distant world that was not her own, she had found what she sought.

Oh, the Prophet said, their thoughts soft with amazement, for they could see through Eliana’s eyes the place she had found: a thinness in the fabric of the Deep, a pliancy of the empirium itself, just as she had discovered in Avitas. Only here, in the Deep, it manifested as a slight watery sheen in the air. It was made of a thousand colors, as if it were a prism catching sunlight.

Eliana waited another moment, letting her eyes unfocus and turning her thoughts inward, so the empirium could guide her golden sight through the gleam to what lay beyond. She smiled to see it, then called up her power, brought her hands to blazing, and pushed aside the air shimmering before her until a small seam hissed open, spitting white-hot blue light against her fingers.

Past the seam and below her, as if she looked down upon it from a low cloud, stood a city, sprawling and white. Spiraling towers capped with wings reached for a brightening dawn sky. There was the wide chasm circling the city, the bridges spanning it.

And there was Corien’s palace, its burnished domes and elaborate parapets resplendent in the creamy light of sunrise.

Eliana sank to the ground and sat back hard on her heels. She braced her hands against her thighs, afraid to breathe too hard, though her head spun from her exertions. The world around her shimmered precariously. She blinked hard and, through a glittering haze, stared at the hole she had made. How weak it seemed, how small and pale. Fingers of light branched out from its perimeter, but so slowly and faintly that Eliana feared the tear might soon repair itself.

That’s enough for today, the Prophet said. Hurry home, little one, I beg you.

Eliana stood, swaying slightly. I must make it wider. Wedge it open farther. It’s too small now. The cruciata will never get through. Once I leave, it might mend.

There’s no time for that now. We will come back and try again and again until it is done. Or we will craft another plan entirely.

Staring at the faint shapes of Elysium, Eliana felt frantic. I cannot wait any longer!

If you try to push your power too hard all at once, you might lose yourself to the Deep, or you could draw the cruciata to you before you’re ready—before I’m ready—or you may alert Corien to our work, and he will come for you, and for me, and all will be lost. The Prophet’s voice was stern. You must ruthlessly measure out the use of your power, or you will leave yourself vulnerable when you most need the strength. We must work slowly, and all the while continue our exercises and rebuild your stamina. We decided this when you first presented your plan to me.