text: When Gian and her retinue had gone, Kirana went down to the Sanctuary to spend time with her children. They were alone at a far table. Their nursemaid was picking through the library stacks, presumably for something appropriate, considering their position here. As Kirana sat with them, Tasia nattered on brightly about what they had been learning, mostly Tai Mora history, which all three found fairly interesting, as it was largely about their immediate ancestors.
  
  Tasia, Kirana thought, smoothing back the girl's dark hair from her face, my Tasia. Surely her children were the best versions possible. The only ones worth saving. Surely.
  
  Corina and Moira, the elder two, were engaged in some memory game that Kirana only half paid attention to.
  
  "When will Mam be with us?" Moira said as they finished their game. She had asked every day.
  
  "Soon," Kirana said.
  
  "You keep saying that," Corina said. "It's never happening, is it?" Brash, that one, little chin jutting toward her, dark eyes defiant.
  
  "Hush, now," Kirana said. "I got you all over, didn't I? I saved us all, haven't I? When have I ever lied?"
  
  Tasia smiled brightly. "You never did, Mama," she said. "You came for me too!"
  
  Kirana kissed her forehead. "Of course I did. I always keep my promises. Always."
  
  Dhai servants brought in dinner, and they ate together under the light of Oma streaming through the dome above. When they were done, their nursemaid took them up for baths and rest. Kirana watched them go, and then sat alone in the vast chamber, relishing the silence.
  
  Kirana did not believe in any gods. Perhaps that was her personal failing. They were useful ways to explain the horror of the skies, and the random chance that gave one person unconscionable power and another a terrible craving for drink that murdered their guts and ruined their lives. It wasn't fair. It was simply life.
  
  She pulled over one of the books Tasia had been reading. Something about raising dogs. Kirana realized that what she wanted more than anything was simply to raise daughters who were happy farmers and herders. Maybe a village elder or two.
  
  The light in the room flickered, as if a great cloud were passing over Oma's eye. She squinted, still peering into the book. The lights began to flicker more intensely. She had to cover her eyes, fearful of a headache.
  
  Hurried footsteps came from the hall. She opened her eyes, shielding her vision as she closed the book. One of the big Sanctuary doors creaked open.
  
  Yivsa came in, breathless. "Did you see the sky?"
  
  "What?" Kirana raised her gaze to the ceiling. The sky seemed to be spinning. She had to look away, overcome by vertigo. "What is–?"
  
  "It's time," Yivsa said
  
  Kirana stood, still a little wobbly. The light in the chamber flashed: red, blue, green, purple lightning. She needed to get out of here before it made her sick. "Give the order. Get them all into place. Is Gian still here?"
  
  "Already en route back to the ark, but I can get a runner."
  
  "Do it. Tell Madah I want a report from her assault on that camp full of Saiduan."
  
  Kirana cast one last glance back into the room. She rested her hand on the skin of the temple. "Let's finish this, you fucker," she muttered, and closed the door behind her.
  
  The sky shimmered.
  
  Lilia had to shield her eyes. Something winked at them, a flickering blue star. A cracking boom filled the air.
  
  The ground shuddered.
  
  When Lilia looked again, Para gazed back at her, the three satellites sitting diagonally in the sky, with the larger, spinning mass of red Oma whirling closer and closer to them, as if threatening to burst them apart.
  
  A brilliant cascade of bluish-amber light filled the sky. It was eerie, like something from a dream. The great face of Oma winked at her as the other satellites began to fall into orbit around it, blinking and flashing like something alive. Tira, Para, Sina, three pieces broken away from a much larger object, lining up again for the first time in two thousand years.
  
  Cries came from the camp, all around them. The world looked, collectively, to the sky.
  
  The satellites began to pulse and dance. They aligned themselves into orbit around Oma.
  
  "Oh no," Lilia breathed.
  
  Zezili ran up to her, huffing. "What the fuck…?" she said, and moved to shield Lilia, as if expected the stars to explode.
  
  Maralah, from the head of the cavern trail, climbed back up into the camp. "We knew this was coming!" Maralah called. Behind her, Kadaan helped Roh up, both of them scrambling across the camp.
  
  But no one could have known this was coming, really, Lilia thought. No one had seen this happen in two thousand years.
  
  Sina, Para, and Tira began to slowly rotate around Oma, so near it was as if they were creating a new sun in the bleary violet sky.
  
  "If those things collide, we might be fucked," Zezili said. "I mean, shit, nothing you can do now, huh?"
  
  "The hand of Oma," Lilia said. "If only they would."
  
  The three satellites, rotating around the fourth, instead came so close to one another's orbits that they had the appearance of a single flickering eye spilling ghostly red-violet light across the world.
  
  Maralah strode across the camp toward them. Lilia took her gaze away from the sky, glanced back at Taigan.
  
  "You!" Maralah said, and while the sky seethed, the air all around Lilia grew heavy as spoiled milk.
  
  Taigan waved at Maralah. "Hello, Maralah! It's been an age. Isn't this delightful? No one has seen such a show in two thousand years! What a time to be alive."
  
  Lilia's ears popped.
  
  "Maralah!" Lilia called. "Don't! He's here to… help. Inasmuch as Taigan helps. Don't start using your gift here! Not now!"
  
  Maralah stared at Lilia as if she were mad. "I'm not!" she said. "Who is… Are you pulling, Taigan? I'm not calling Sina."
  
  The smell of smoke grew stronger. Lilia turned back to the woods. "Taigan?" she said. "How far back were those people coming from Meyna and Yisaoh's camp?"
  
  "Oh, a day," he said. "But I told the scouts I encountered that it would be nice to blink them over here instead of making them walk. It turns out you have an omajista here who's very good with winks, they said. A Dorinah boy? Remarkable."
  
  The air crackled. Voices came from the woodlands. The wind picked up.
  
  Lilia shivered. The sense of foreboding had to do with more than the sky. All this power, all these omajistas in one place, these gates opening and closing… they were painting a target on this beachhead.
  
  "Stop them," Lilia said. "Maralah! Have everyone drop their star! Stop pulling on your stars!"
  
  As she cried out, the spill of refugees came up from the woods, bringing with them the smell of burnt hair and smoke. Kai Ahkio walked at the front, Meyna behind him. Ahkio carried a child – Meyna's? Lilia's heart clenched. Where was Tasia? Namia?
  
  "Drop your call on the stars!" Lilia said, limping toward them, half-hoping for good news, for a miracle.
  
  A roaring blur knocked into her, putting her onto her back. Namia lay on top of her, squeezing her tightly.
  
  "Namia!" Lilia held her as the others streamed past. "Emlee?"
  
  Namia made the sign for "taken."
  
  "Tasia? Oh no, Tasia."
  
  "Death," Namia signed.
  
  Lilia got to her feet. Namia loped after her.
  
  The smoke overhead grew lower and thicker as the wind shifted. Meyna, face blushed from exertion, sweaty tendrils stuck her forehead, hurried to Maralah's side, one hand pressed against her burgeoning belly.
  
  "Shao Maralah!" Meyna said. "You must know. We were attacked. The camp, the whole camp, as if they knew exactly where it was. Who would have told them, after all this time? We never–"
  
  "You fool," Maralah said. "You've led them right here! How many are with you?"
  
  "Not many," Meyna said. "Maralah, I know it's too soon, but our partnership–"
  
  Maralah slapped her. Meyna fell heavily, clutching at her belly. Ahkio put the child down and ran to her, as did her husbands Rhin and Hadao. Hadaoh drew an infused weapon. Maralah burnt it from his hand. He cried out, clutching at his seared skin.
  
  Lilia held Namia close.
  
  "We were careful," Meyna said. "No one was–"
  
  "You bloody fool," Maralah said. "As if you ungifted wretches would be able to tell if a Tai Mora scout trailed you."
  
  The air thickened again, so heavily this time Lilia lost her breath.
  
  This wasn't just the people in the camp drawing on the satellite's power, or even the Dhai refugees. This was something far worse. Far, far stronger.
  
  Oh, Oma, she thought.
  
  The air around the camp began to shiver and ripple like water. Lilia knew exactly what this was, and if she had any breath at all in her aching lungs, she would have screamed.
  
  All around them, reality began to tear away. A dozen searing gates parted the woodlands surrounding the camp, cut tents in half, sawed through unlucky bystanders. Their yawning mouths vomited forth a wave of Tai Mora soldiers, all shiny in their chitinous armor, their infused weapons held aloft.
  
  The smell of burning intensified. Lilia heard someone screaming, screaming. The trees above them lit up, instantly torched. Bits of char and winking embers rained from the sky.
  
  Namia tugged at her hand, but Lilia found herself rooted to the spot, unable to move, frozen in some nightmare. It was all happening again, an endless cycle. One fiery raid after another, on this very spot, in some other world, and now here, with infused weapons: Kirana's army, invading world after world. She imagined a whole slew of Kiranas from a hundred thousand, a million worlds, cutting through these people, torching this same wood, again and again, as they had done to her people before, as they were doing to their people now.
  
  Lilia reached. She was not sure what she reached for, something deep within her long lost. For so long she was filled with only revenge, hatred for these people. For everything they had done, were doing, again and again.
  
  But as she watched it all happening again, here, on the same spot, she saw it for what it was. Something terribly broken. One people, ripped apart into a million, trillion pieces.
  
  How could they ever be put back together again?
  
  Screaming. The woods themselves were screaming.