Lucian stood, his legs shaking. He ventured out into the corridor, looking both ways only to see lines of metallic cell doors. There was no sign of any warden. Only the empty corridor extending for at least a hundred meters.

  “Turn left,” the voice said, coming from the speaker directly above Lucian. “Continue to the end of the corridor until you reach the open pod door. Step inside and strap yourself in. Do nothing more on pain of death.”

  This was how they were going to do it, then. Risk-free, not putting any lives on the line. If Lucian resisted, they would kill him. No doubt, some had tried. But the fact that the ship was still here, and those mages weren’t, told Lucian everything he needed to know.

  There was only one real option.

  He followed the corridor, past twenty or so cell doors. The corridor ended in an alcove lined with viewscreens. Every one of those viewscreens looked out onto a misty, violet-clouded surface. This must be it, then. Psyche. After the sensory deprivation of his cell, so much color was the most beautiful sight of his life. Tears filled his eyes.

  He didn’t pause to look long; he didn’t know if staring down at that hazy surface counted as “doing something more” that might get him killed. He stooped his shaggy head below the frame and entered the small, confined pod.

  From the small porthole in the pod, Lucian could discern only a small part of the surface. It was lost in a violet-tinged haze. If there were oceans or mountains down there, he’d have no way of knowing. He wondered if every mage was being sent to the same place, or if they were just letting the pods fall where they may. For some reason, Lucian thought it was the second option. Even if they were shooting off a pod every five to ten minutes, the rotation of the moon meant he’d likely never run into another prisoner from this ship.

  He sat in the pod’s seat and strapped himself in. Despite the harness, he knew that this very well could be his last few minutes alive.

  As soon as he settled in, the pod door hissed shut. There was a moment’s pause, followed by a foreboding creak. Finally, there was a hiss and a snap as the pod disengaged from the LBS Worthless. Trails of fire issued from the back of his pod, pushing Lucian against his seat. The purple surface crawled toward him even as he was pushed against his restraints. It was only a matter of time until he entered Psyche’s atmosphere.

  The pod shook as a corona of fiery light surrounded it. There was only the surrounding purple air, impossible to see into. Lucian clenched his hands and forced himself to keep his eyes open. Any amount of information could help him survive.

  Assuming he could endure the landing.

  Something was already materializing from the haze, what looked like a pointed mountain peak. As he dove deeper into the thick atmosphere, more peaks revealed themselves. They were impossibly elongated and sheer, a nightmarish vision. There were entire ridges of them. They looked like needle teeth on the upside-down jaw of a primordial beast. The whole surface was like that. Though he was closer to the ground now, he could easily discern the curvature of the world itself. Psyche was a moon, and like most moons, it was a good deal smaller than Earth. He was falling more slowly than he had expected. The gravity wouldn’t be much compared to Earth or Volsung. It was impossible to say at this moment, but it felt close to Martian gravity.

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  He realized this might be less of a crash and more of a hard thud, judging by the air resistance rushing past the pod.

  Lucian had sunk below the tallest of the mountains. As their shadows fell across the pod, he realized Psyche would be a dark world. As he sank lower and lower into the narrow valley between, the mountains loomed ever taller. Impossibly tall, their dark slopes were sheer. Is this why they were placing him here? There was no chance he would be able to escape from this valley—assuming he survived the landing.

  He sank into deeper twilight. He could no longer see the tops of the wicked peaks outside the porthole. The atmosphere looked poisonous out there.

  He had to be getting close. He felt like a caged animal in here. Even if the surface was dangerous, he wanted out of this death trap of a pod.

  The pod’s thrusters burned, pushing Lucian into his seat. He lifted for a moment before the craft landed lightly on the dark surface. The porthole revealed a dark, gloomy landscape. The only plants he saw were a few low things that might have been trees. They stooped over as if bearing an invisible, oppressive weight. Lucian couldn’t see how anything could grow in this darkness.

  He unstrapped himself and weighed his options. He’d have to go outside at some point, and he had nothing but the clothes on his back and his wits to keep him alive. And, of course, the Orb. He could never forget the Orb.

  If the air were poisonous, death would come for him either way. When he stood, he felt light on his feet. He had been right about the gravity, that it was close to Martian standard. Now, the only question was whether the atmosphere was breathable.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Before he could think about it, Lucian pressed the button next to the door. With a hiss, the door rolled back and a rush of cool, dry air flooded in. Lucian held his breath for a moment, but the air did nothing to harm his skin. Given the way it rushed inside, he supposed the air pressure was quite high. But it didn’t seem to be harmful in any way, at least not obviously so.

  He released his breath and inhaled. It was air. Normal, breathable air. It smelled of earth and rock, but the smell of vegetation was all but absent. He wasn’t sure of the exact composition, of course, but it couldn’t be too far off from Earth or Volsung. If there were any nasty surprises—like an undetectable but lethal amount of carbon dioxide—he’d have to wait for the results.

  For now, there was one thing left to do. To walk out and survive on a new world.

  Lucian didn’t know where to begin. He was in the same situation as the Isle of Madness when the Psions first left him. Only now, the Isle of Madness was an entire moon.

  And unless he somehow found a way to get off Psyche, the Starsea Cycle would only continue, leaving desolation in its wake.

  He had a mission and a purpose. It was most likely impossible, but he had lost everything—his mother, his friends, his home. His mission to find the Seven Orbs, and then find the Heart of Creation to stop magic and the Starsea Cycle, was all he had left.

  He was aware of the brutal fact that it was impossible. And he worried that his determination to see it through was already evidence of growing madness.

  He couldn’t think about any of that now. He had a more immediate concern: survival.

  Lucian walked away from the pod. He headed into the dark rifts of Psyche, toward horrors unknown.