They caught sight of the Restoration Tower at First Glare.

The instant the third planet appeared above the listing spire in the western sky, the voices plaguing Domi off and on for two hours grew constant. And deafening.

He gasped as the world fell away, leaving only the crimson Devouring Eyes dominating the diamond-specked heavens. The glaring trio thundered between his ears, their voices hissing like a billion snakes. You unchained us, Liberator.

"No." But he did. He knew he did. He destroyed the Trellis, and now the world had no protection from the Eyes, just as he had no protection.

"Aedificanti," he whimpered but could not hear his own voice.

His body lurched, and then before his face, Valens's urgent eyes bore into him. His aedificans's lips moved, but Domi could not make out a single word the older worldholder said.

You must finish what you started.

"N-no."

Valens clutched his face, trying to pull Domi's gaze from the sky, but his weak mortal eyes stayed riveted to the monstrous Eyes in the heavens no matter how much he wanted to look away. They loomed like red balloons over a shattered nightmare-scape of obsidian shards, golden cyclones, and distant swarming clivias.

Destroy it all. End this new world.

He pressed his palms over his ears atop Valens's mittens, shaking his head frantically in his aedificans's grip. "No!"

The voices could not be shut out. End it, or we will tear you asunder and fling what remains of you to the winds.

"Valens!" Domi wailed.

His aedificans's brow furrowed, amber gaze darting over Domi's shoulder. Then the man's hands fell away. The worldholder stepped aside, leaving Domi all alone with the three malign planets.

Your quest is hopeless, Liberator. We will never allow you to restore your golden cage.

Pressure on his shoulders. Something ruffled his hair.

This world belongs to--

The voices ceased.

Domi gasped as the world plunged into ringing silence. Then, gradually, sounds, real sounds, filled the emptiness. Heaving breaths--his breaths--and the irregular failing heartthrob of hunting clivias. His own heart hammered a desperate rhythm in his chest.

He blinked up into Aix's mahogany face as the old man grasped his shoulders.

"Did it work?" Valens asked, voice tense. He stood just behind the older worldholder, arms clutched over his chest. Behind him, Daedalus--who had dropped Buccina's illusion hours ago after they left the last remnants of civilization behind--fumbled fretfully in his sled, trying without success to rise.

Aix's gray eyes searched Domi's face, and then he smiled. "Yes, Alumna, I believe so." He gave Domi's shoulders a reassuring squeeze. "Right, young Erus?"

"Y-yeah," Domi managed. He glanced down, taking in the familiar sight of his wooden bulla dangling around his neck where it belonged. Relief rushed through him as he grasped the carved tri-hand. Suppressed again, he could not hear the promenia within, but faint heat from the amulet radiated through his mitten. He tried on a teasing smile. "T-took you long enough."

Aix chuckled, ruffling his hair. "Apologies, young Erus. I did not want to rush such and risk getting it wrong."

"Are you all right now, Brother?" Daedalus asked. He tried again to rise from the sled, good arm shaking. The journey here over icy hills and winding paths left Domi's body aching with echoes of his twin's fatigue and pain.

"I'm fine now," Domi said with a shudder as he remembered the howling voices and the unrelenting pressure of an alien mind. "But that was awful."

"Sit down, Alumna," Valens said. It took Domi a moment to realize his aedificans wasn't speaking to him but Daedalus, shaking his head with sternly narrowed eyes.

Domi's twin frowned but did as he was told. "I merely wished to check on him."

"I know, and I don't care. We face a hard journey. Rest until we're ready to leave."

"Leave?" Daedalus cast a doubtful glance at the land sprawled ahead of them.

Domi didn't blame him. Pulse racing as he looked out at the heart of the Blightlands, he gulped. A broken expanse of ice, obsidian and great whirlwinds of rogue promenia stretched to the horizon. Reflecting the Eyes' crimson light on their polished surfaces, colossal shards of black glass hung suspended like bloodied thorns beneath smaller writhing golden eddies. Below, the icy expanse shifted like the sea where thousands of clivias stalked between the sleds and the Restoration Tower. A shadow against the starry sky, the spire tilted sideways at a precarious angle.

"But what about the dogs?" Daedalus went on, patting one of the huskies with his good arm. "The glass will shred their paws, and the clivias--"

"The dogs will remain here to hunt while we fly, Basiluculus," Aix said. He chewed a shoot and extended the jar of white sprigs to Valens, then began unharnessing the huskies.

Daedalus frowned as Valens took a shoot and passed another to Domi. "Fly? We cannot hope to make it. Clivias surround the tower. Reus and I were forced to turn back, and there are now far more than when I was last here."

"Reus?" Domi asked.

"The man who saved me," Daedalus said, dark eyes intent on Domi's throat as the warmth seeped into the younger twin's bones. His laurel must be returning, judging by his brother's longing expression. Domi hoped Aix was right that Dae would rekindle soon. "After Trellis Descent, we tried to return to the camp at the base of the Restoration Tower, but watched clivia overrun it."

"Forgive me, Basiluculus," Aix said, returning to Daedalus's sled and patting the older twin's shoulder before beginning to free the dogs there as well. "But you and Reus are not Valens. And I am no slouch myself."

"Flying will be the easy part," Valens said, giving Domi an assessing glance before reaching into their pack. He pulled out a familiar object, only the crystalline consecturum's amethyst leaves were black-specked instead of solid purple. He passed it to Domi, amber eyes meeting the boy's gaze. "Keeping the rogue particles from corrupting the promenia we use to fly will be the tricky part." He carried another of Radix's prototypes over to Daedalus.

The older twin took it in his good hand with a clumsy grip and smiled apologetically from Valens to Aix. "I do not mean to besmirch your skill. But I was the highest ranked worldholder on the planet. If such was a challenge for me..."

"You were the highest ranked because you held the Trellis," Aix pointed out gently. "But your aedificans is the most skilled worldholder aedilis on Aquarius. I trained him and many others, and he far exceeds me. You have never seen such power, I am sure."

"I know what an aedilis can do," Daedalus said, his brow furrowing. "It was my responsibility to know what all my worldholders are capable of. Still..."

"You know it in theory," Aix said as Valens returned to Domi's side and reached down to help him from the sled. "Now watch it in practice."

<>

"There!" Valens snapped. He jerked one arm to the side. With the other, he gripped his alumna about the middle to keep the boy from slipping and plummeting from the air.

Corrupt particles shrieked. Buffeted away by Aix's warding windstream somewhere below, the rogue promenia rushed along the updraft toward where Valens held his alumna two hundred feet above the ground.

"Eternal Rad--" Domi yelped. He threw the crystalline tree up, elbowing Valens's side in the process. Black, violet, and gold promenia stormed forth from the artifact.

Parting his flight particles around the blast to prevent them from dissolving with the rogue promenia, Valens grunted. The wind currents holding him and his alumna aloft grew lopsided, their bodies lurching.

Caught by the weapon's discharge, the deadly golden wisp flared white and showered from the sky in a cascade of sparks. The dissolving particles briefly illuminated Daedalus and Aix where they flew a few feet below, then faded.

But not before Valens saw what lurked underneath his aedificans and older alumna.

He was not the only one. "W-what was that?" Domi asked, craning his neck to peer into the inky blackness below. His voice was high and choked.

The night-side dark had swallowed the disturbing sight anew, but not Valens's knowledge of what he'd just seen: among the feathery blue and white waves of stalking clivias, humanoid figures strode amid the swarm.

"People, Alumna," he said, breath stalling in his throat and rendering the words low and tense. "Those are people."

Eternal Radiance, there were humans down there with the teeming clivias below. Valens caught another glimpse of a young man, then an older woman, as Aix drove another wave of floating clivias back down to the ground with a crack of lightning. Hostages? No, that couldn't be it. The bestias were not quite intelligent enough to take hostages.

Aix's lightning flashed anew with a deafening concussion, throwing clivias and people alike in several directions.

Domi squirmed in his hold. "Why are there--Watch out!"

Valens did not see what made his alumna's eyes widen and the boy scream. But he felt it. As an uneven pulse sounded behind him, fire lashed across his back, cutting into his shoulder and hip. His entire body convulsed in shock.

The world lit up, pain instead of light filling his vision with searing white, then angry red. Air rushed around him as his body went limp.

Valens plummeted.

Lightning flashed again and a scream, young and terrified, filled his ears. In the flood of white light above, his own aedificans's gray eyes, rapidly receding, widened as they met his gaze. Aix threw out a hand before the incandescent brilliance faded, and air gripped Valens's body.

The ground rushed to meet him, slower than before but still too swift. He squeezed his screaming alumna to his chest.

Then his back slammed into something that drove away breath and consciousness alike.

<>

Landing atop Valens hurt. Domi could only imagine how much worse the collision with packed snow and stone battered the man who cushioned his landing. But Valens lay still and silent beneath him.

Wheezing as lungs emptied by the fall struggled to draw oxygen, Domi slid off his aedificans, every limb shaking. Then something white swept over him, passing inches from his face, and he rolled aside with a gasp.

Pale filaments whipped the air where his head had just been.

"Hold on!"

Aix's voice barely registered as Domi sprang to a crouch and got his first good look around him.

Clivias. He was surrounded by pearly white and milky blue clivias. And not just clivias.

They were human, but not. Maybe they had once been human. The figures striding unmolested among the milling bestias wore tunicas and paenulas like human beings. But beneath the pink-tinged light of the Eyes, they sparkled like beings of ice. Pale--not ashen but light blue--with crystal-crusted scars across stone-still faces, they gazed at him through narrowed human eyes. But these eyes glinted in the dark with traces of strange silver light and alien intelligence.

The gleaming alien eyes watched with dispassion as the clivia attacking him sent a throb into the night and reared back, filaments spreading every direction before pulling in tight. The bestia shot toward him.

Lightning flashed with a deafening explosion, throwing the clivia--and several of its friends--aside. With two thuds in the snow, Aix and Daedalus landed in the open space they'd created.

The old man reached out a hand. "You two, come with me!"

Domi darted to Valens's side. He patted his aedificans's cheek, but the man's eyes remained closed. Beneath the worldholder's head, crimson blood seeped into the snow. "He's hurt. A clivia hit him, and then the fall--"

Aix's face twisted. At first, Domi thought it was in dismay or concern. Then he sank to his knees, eyes rolling back, and a man stepped out from behind him.

At least, he had been a man, once. Now, bluish even in the reddened light from the Eyes' light above, he was something else.

His hand fell away from Aix's neck as the lifeholder collapsed, revealing far too many fingers. No, Domi realized with a chill as Daedalus, jerking his consecturum up, stumbled away with a gasp. Not fingers. A short filament extended from the creature's wrist, glistening pale blue in the eerie light.

The creature waved a hand. With a hum of promenia, Daedalus's consecturum jerked in his grip and tumbled to ice and stone. "Sorry, Daedalus," the man murmured as two more people, these woven of humming glitter and gold, stepped from amid the lurking clivias to flank him. "I can't let you do that."

Daedalus stared, and even in the dim light of the Eyes, Domi saw his face pale several shades. "Father?"

Domi blinked. Then he lifted his consecturum and fired.

The feminine figure beside the man flicked her fingers. With a groaning hum, Domi's promenia blast veered sideways in the air.

He gaped as it streaked off into the night. Domi shrank closer to his twin. "I don't know what these freaks are, but don't listen to them, Dae." One looked a bit like their mother's eidolon, but the man reminded him of Epileus and Gemma when they'd fallen ill from clivia poison. There was no way he could be Daedalus's missing father... or Domi's. No way. It must be a trick of the Eyes or something.

"B-but--" His twin trembled against his side, still staring wide-eyed at the man even as he and Domi backed slowly away. "But he's--"

The man stalked forward, lifting his hand. "I'm sorry it came to this, but you will understand soon."

Two small wisps appeared at his side. Deep sapphire instead of the normal pale blue, the pair were barely larger than the man's hand. It took Domi several seconds to realize they were clivias.

The wisps streaked toward him.

"No!"

As lightning sizzled across the sky, it took Domi a moment to connect his brother's shout with the ripples of crackling white energy above. But as the strange man, eyes widening, threw up a hand to stall the two clivias, Daedalus stepped in front of Domi.

"Leave," the older twin said lowly, good arm nudging Domi behind him. "Or I will burn this place to glass." A bolt struck an obsidian shard hovering beneath a rogue promenia cloud, sending it crashing to the snow and scattering clivias and their humanoid allies every direction. On the horizon, lightning lit the night in a solid wall of searing blue-white energy. "You know I can do it, Father."

The man eyed the former Princeps, still holding an arm up to restrain the pair of small blue clivias. "You cannot hope to defeat us all, Son. Even Cercitis and Astricus fight at our side. We are too many."

"You are two less, now," the shimmering feminine figure beside the man said, stepping aside. Blue lightning streaked across the sky, weaving with Daedalus's light show. "Leave them be."

The man frowned as the woman's silent companion joined her, fire coiling in its palm, its pink hair flaring electric blue. "You said you would support us," he snapped.

"Not like this." She shook her head. "This was not part of the deal. We go our own way."

The man gritted his teeth, turning back to Daedalus and Domi. "Even if you claim the tower, you cannot use it. You may be powerful, but the magic is too advanced, and you are not forgeholders. Nor are your protectors. You cannot repair artifacts."

Daedalus shook his head and reached up to his scarf. "Take a closer look at my laurel, Father."

Domi was not the only one to gape as his twin pulled down his scarf, revealing the black-speckled violet laurel glowing beneath. "How?" the man demanded.

Daedalus released the fabric. "I was always an impure worldholder, no matter how much everyone tried to look the other way." He shrugged. "Now, it seems, I shall get to know the other side of my heritage better."

"Son--"

Anger contorted the twin's older face. Daedalus took a menacing step forward. "Do not force me to explore our shared lineage right now, Father. I would love to try my first fireball today."

"This is not over." But the man was already retreating, and the clivias and their allies followed, the bestias' throbbing pulse fading into stillness.

When they were at last gone, Daedalus swayed, sagging into Domi's side.

"Let the lightning go," Domi told his exhausted twin, looping an arm around Dae's waist to help hold him upright.

Daedalus gasped, and the blazing light in the heavens blinked out, leaving only the glowering Eyes, the stars, and the rogue promenia to light the night.

Domi rubbed his twin's shoulder, nibbling his lip. "Was that really our father?"

"Not anymore," Daedalus said, a world of pain in his voice that Domi suspected was not all physical. "He is no more our kin now than those eidolons are." He dipped his chin towards the pair of promenia creatures.

The strange woman glanced from one boy to the other, then down at Valens and Aix where they lay sprawled and still in the snow. She tilted her head. "These men are too heavy for you to carry. We will help." With a flick of her hand, the pair rose from the ground to hover, still unconscious, in mid-air. She cast the eddies and cyclones of corrupt golden light a glare. "Do keep the rogue promenia away from us, please. Now, come."

Domi and Daedalus turned and stared at each other. Domi saw his own exhaustion and fear written on his twin's face.

"Can we trust them?" Domi asked.

"No," Daedalus whispered, strength rapidly fading from his hoarse voice. "But if they meant to hurt us..."

"They could have already," Domi said with a nod. He tightened his grip on his twin. "And we've got to get Valens and Aix out of the cold."

They followed the creature and her smaller companion to the Restoration Tower.