“I won’t let you do it,” Nexin said to Sol, the man standing just inches in front of him. Small crystals of ice seemed to float in Sol’s irises—a reminder of the terrible power the man carried—but Nexin didn’t back down. “If you try, I will stop you.”

  “You’ll attempt to,” Sol clarified, likewise not backing down in the least.

  “Reconsider.”

  “No. It has to be done.”

  “Nothing has to be done.”

  “This does. And, if you continue to stand in my way, I may need to reconsider our… arrangement. I was content to leave things as they were as long as they were mutually beneficial. This… however…”

  “I’m stopping you for your own good. You will regret this.”

  “No. There are many things from my long life I regret—that I wish I could change—but this is most certainly not be one of those things.”

  “If El finds out…” Nexin threatened.

  “I believe she, more than anybody else, would agree with my choice here. You are in the wrong. Now, move aside so I can do what I must. Before it’s too late.”

  “Sol…”

  “Nexin! The soup needs more salt! Can’t you see that? It’s… it’s… bland. It has no flavor. It’s barely more than hot water,” Sol said, gesturing with his free hand to the pot Nexin guarded carefully behind him.

  “The amount of salt you add to your food is not healthy,” Nexin countered.

  “I’m practically immortal as long as my goddess empowers me,” Sol said. “A little salt is not going to hurt me.”

  “In the three months I’ve gotten to know you better, I’ve never seen you use a little salt. You empty whole shakers on your meal. I won’t let you do that to our dinner.” Nexin’s hand snapped out to catch Sol’s wrist as he spoke, the other man trying to sneak the saltshaker past while distracting him.

  Sighing, Sol looked down to where Nexin held his wrist. “Fine. Fine! We’ll eat your hot water for dinner and call it a meal.”

  Nexin held the other man’s wrist a second longer, then let him go, and Sol backed away. “You can add salt to your own bowl if you really feel that way,” he compromised. “Though, really, maybe ease up on it a bit?”

  “It’s not the same if the salt doesn’t have the time to soak into the ingredients,” Sol whined, but nodded like he’d accept it. “You are… right, though. Since we’re sharing the pot, I shouldn’t flavor it beyond what you find acceptable.”

  “I appreciate that,” Nexin said, turning back to the pot and giving it a bit of a stir, then lifting the spoon to his lips. Burn it, it did need salt. Just a pinch, though. “Why don’t you grab some bowls? This is almost ready.”

  “Of course,” Sol said, and turned to dig in a nearby cabinet.

  As soon as the man’s back was to him, Nexin threw in a pinch of salt—then a second for good measure—and took another taste. Much better. Then, taking the bowls from Sol, he served them each a portion, and the pair sat on benches on either side of the stone table.

  It hadn’t taken them long to find the capital city, the massive library stretching for the sky impossible to miss. Sol said the egg-shaped building made of green stone held—or used to hold—millions of books on every topic imaginable. Hundreds of rooms honeycombed the building, made up of classrooms, study and lecture halls, labs for book restoration and translation, and wide balconies offering unparalleled views, just to name a few.

  And now it sat empty. Dead, like a great, stone corpse. The same as the rest of the city, as far as they could tell. They hadn’t seen a single living person as they flew in, with only miniature, wolf-like creatures scrambling away at the sight of them.

  Where was everybody? They couldn’t have all been killed when Pycrin had stolen their Ember, could they? No, according to Sol, there had been people here when he’d brought the storm. So, did that mean the long winter had killed them all?

  If it had, there would be bodies. Except, there were none of those either.

  Did everybody just up and leave? If they had, they’d done so without most of their belongings. The house Sol and Nexin basically squatted in now had cupboards full of dishes and still-fresh food. Upstairs, they’d found closets packed full of clothing, and a room with a dozen children’s toys.

  Perhaps they’d found the city uninhabitable as the snow melted, and had left with as few belongings as possible? Even that didn’t make sense, though. The buildings—and not just the great library—had weathered the storm exceptionally well. Thick stone walls continued to stand proud and strong, and the wide streets would’ve made getting around easy. If the amount of food in this single home was any indication, starving wasn’t a major threat.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The only answer that made sense was the people had fled the city. Or, fled from something within the city. Was there some new danger he and Sol didn’t know about?

  “We’ll have to search the city at bit more tomorrow,” Nexin said. “We’ve got a week until El comes to get us, we might as well figure out what happened to everybody.”

  “The city’s emptiness is very unusual,” Sol said. “I… hope it’s not my fault.”

  Nexin dipped one of his energy bars in the soup, took a bite, then pointed what was left in his hand towards the door leading from the kitchen to the back yard. “Look at those jackets on the hooks there. Heavy duty winter clothes, if you ask me. No, the snow isn’t the reason everybody vanished. It’s something else. And, before we bring anybody else here, we should figure out this little mystery.”

  “Logically, I agree with you. It doesn’t stop the guilt when I look at what this once-great city has become,” Sol said, gently spooning soup into his mouth. A glance at the bowl, and he half-dumped his saltshaker in. Another sip and he nodded to himself.

  “Can I ask you something?” Nexin asked. When Sol gave him a nod over another spoonful of soup, he continued. “If you feel guilty about it now, why did you do it then? Was it just because your goddess asked you to? Actually, before that, this goddess of yours, does she have a name? You’ve only ever called her ‘my goddess’ or the Creator.”

  “Ah, she has many names, but much like ‘the Creator,’ they are all names given by people, and not actually hers,” Sol said.

  “Uh huh, and…?” Nexin prompted.

  “She has never shared her name with me,” Sol continued. “And I’ve never asked. To be more precise, until recently, I never considered I could ask. If the answer were to be found anywhere, though, it would be within the library at the center of the city. They were famous for all the secrets they’d uncovered throughout history.”

  “I don’t think a week is long enough to look, if what you said about millions of books is true,” Nexin pointed out.

  Sol just shrugged.

  “Back to what you said, though, why didn’t you think you could ask her name?”

  The spoon on the way to Sol’s mouth paused, though his eyes stayed on the liquid, until he finally looked up to meet Nexin’s gaze. “The answers to all your questions are actually the same. Why I didn’t ask her name. Why I didn’t feel guilty about bringing the storm. Even why I add so much salt to my food. All the same.”

  “You’re lucky El isn’t here,” Nexin said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Teasing half-answers like this would drive her crazy.”

  “She already knows the answer,” Sol said. “Before I arrived in Balacin, I was… numb. My goddess’s power didn’t just draw the storm or freeze the things around me, it also froze my emotions. I went through the motions, but I didn’t feel anything from them. You know, I lived in Salid for… more than ten years while I waited for the storm to cross the ocean. Ten years of the people looking at me like I was Sparkless—pitying and bullying me alternatively for it—and it didn’t matter.

  “I worked on my fishing boat to get by—to do something—but it was more mechanical than necessary. I think I found peace out there on the water, sometimes. It reminded me of the time I spent with my family before…” Sol trailed off, though his eyes lingered on Nexin’s uniform.

  It was pretty clear what he meant—before the Firestorm took the Ember and killed everybody he loved.

  “Anyway, when the storm finally arrived, it was time for me to continue towards Balacin. Without the storm feeding me power, I wouldn’t have been able to approach the seat of the Pyre’s power. The strangest thing happened, though, when I got there, and even more when I began fighting the Firestorm.

  “The Pyre’s flames began to thaw out my emotions. Like the heat from one god balanced the ice of the other. It started to bring me back to who I was. I didn’t feel any guilt when I brought the storm here because I didn’t feel anything back then. I didn’t ask my goddess her name because it didn’t serve a purpose to know it. I had no curiosity.”

  “And the salt?” Nexin asked.

  “Before I thawed, I still needed to eat, but nothing had taste. Or, maybe it did, but it just didn’t matter? It’s hard to remember some of it. Eating a bowl of soup was no different than eating a fish, or a salad, or… or a rock.”

  “You ate rocks?”

  “No, it was just an example.”

  “Then why did you even use it?”

  “Fine! No different than eating your cooking. Better?”

  “Harsh. Back to the salt?”

  “It has taste. I don’t know if you can imagine it, but try living for hundreds of years—eating meals for hundreds of years—and having all of them taste exactly the same. Taste like nothing. As soon as I recovered the concept of flavor… well, I can’t stand the idea of going back. Salt—or some of the spices like your sister’s fiery pork bomb—are a wonderful experience.”

  “I guess, when you put it that way, I can understand a bit better why you’d have a problem with my cooking,” Nexin said, stirring his soup without actually eating any of it.

  “So, you’ll let me…?”

  “No,” Nexin interrupted immediately. “It still isn’t healthy.”

  Sol rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.

  “Back to the city, is there anything around here you can think of that would chase everybody away? They can’t have been gone long.”

  “Nothing.” Sol shook his head. “One of the reasons this country could focus on academia was because of how secure it was. The landscape to the west of us is nearly impassable other than a few, very specific trails. To the east, as you can see, is the sea, and this city is protected by a calm bay. The closest nation is an island hundreds of miles off the coast, but I believe they were trade partners.”

  “That was a long time ago. Maybe the storm hit them harder than these people. They could’ve come here with something other than trade in in mind, if you know what I mean,” Nexin suggested.

  “It’s possible. If that’s the case, I’m sure we’ll find evidence while we’re searching the city over the next few days,” Sol said.

  “You think we should start tonight? It’s dark, but…”

  Sol was already shaking his head. “Despite Nidina’s suggestion, if we’re going to search, we’d be better off doing it from the air. Tonight, now, we wouldn’t be able to see anything. The sun will be up soon enough, and we can begin our search.

  “Until then, we should eat and get some rest while we can.”

  Nexin looked up from his soup, then sighed at the meaning behind Sol’s words. “Yeah, I’ve got a bad feeling about this too.”