text: Roh saw her move the orrery: a long sweep of stars. No one else was watching. Kirana's reinforcements broke his defensive wall so forcefully he lost his grasp on Para. The room seethed and buckled, tilting wildly beneath their feet as the temple slid off the sand bar and deeper into the sea. Water rushed in from massive cracks in the walls. Roared from the ceiling. They were going to drown in here.
  
  "Lilia, don't!" Roh lurched toward her. She was going to murder the Tai Mora, murder herself.
  
  Lilia held the green piece aloft, and glanced over her shoulder. For the rest of his life, he would think about the expression he saw in her face: fear, triumph, resolution, defeat… All of them, and none.
  
  "Li!" He reached for her, fingers grasping, trying to make it across the distance as fast as his legs would carry him, breaking apart the misty worlds, his skin bathed in pinpricks of light.
  
  Li.
  
  Light.
  
  Zezili hung from the platform, screaming. The light suffusing the pedestal became nearly blinding. Lilia was lifted high in the air, hair streaming behind her.
  
  She released the sphere back into its orbit, and swung her left arm around, drawing all the smaller orbs up into a whirling mass above her head. The ground trembled beneath them. She stumbled, but did not fall. Raised her right hand, and pulled the larger set of spheres from their orbits as well.
  
  The misty worlds all collided above her.
  
  Light.
  
  Roh covered his eyes. The light was so powerful it overwhelmed. It pierced his consciousness even through his closed lids. Pierced him to the bone, like a physical force. But there was no boom. No rush. Just blazing light.
  
  Then… darkness. Water rushing up below him, carrying him. Saradyn shouting, grabbing for him. Roh called to Kadaan, trying to draw on Para, finding… nothing.
  
  Roh opened his eyes, but the light had been so intense that he was still blind. He blinked, reaching, swimming back toward the dais where Lilia had stood. His fingers met the lip of the dais, and as his vision returned, his sight confirmed what his fingers discovered – Lilia was no longer there.
  
  The great beast of the temple was tilting, tilting, collapsing under its own weight, sliding off the sandbar and back into the ocean whence it came.
  
  He swept his gaze across the room, now dim and dull, lit only by a ring of blue and green phosphorescence along the ceiling, the orrery only a brilliant memory. Others bobbed and gasped in the water all around him. Light pierced his vision again, light and pain in his head.
  
  He gasped. The sea rushed in from the crumbling wall, pushing him and the others across the cavern. Roh bobbed and splashed, forced against the far wall, which gave under the pressure.
  
  He was sucked out of the chamber and into the sea. Heaving, desperate, he tried to swim, but he was dizzy and overwhelmed. He vomited. His mind became clouded. Memories. Vertigo. Flashes of something, light – memory:
  
  He was a farmer in a field, married to Kihin. He nursed his mother Naori through the yellow pox. He died in Saiduan, cut through by Kadaan and torn apart by bears. He and Luna ran off together across the tundra and lived to be old people, settled alone along the far northern sea. His father barred him from going to Saiduan, and instead he died next to Kai Ahkio, fighting shadows in a clan square while the world burned around them.
  
  Split apart, he thought. They split us all apart.
  
  Lilia hadn't murdered them.
  
  Lilia had pulled them all back together.
  
  Every single one of them.
  
  Roh tried to reach for Para – and found… nothing. Panic seized his heart. Para! He reached again, but could not even sense his star. Had it winked back out of existence? Was it descendant again? Who had an ascendant star?
  
  He was going to drown.
  
  Strong arms around him, moving him up, up, up. His lungs were near to bursting.
  
  I'm going to die, he thought. What a time to die.