So, Valens thought, this is what the end of the world will look like.

The night-side was an eternally-sunless, frozen land of oddities and horrors. There could be sublime beauty here, in the radiant forests of massive treelike plants, bioluminescent ice geysers, and the star-strewn black sky. But the night-side could also be deadly.

Out here, the Trellis loomed in the sky in fragmented shards. Rather than the day-side net, the promenia—sickly greenish blue without the crimson sun to make the lattice appear golden—hovered as floating Isles of light. Each sat high over the land, tethered at regular points like buoys bobbing on a black sea.

In the in-between places where the Trellis's light did not touch, temperatures plummeted and bestias hunted. The frozen soil teemed with inedible crimson plants, thick cyan vines, and black flowers that crowded out food crops, constantly threatening the night-side provincias with famine.

But however harsh the night-side proved, these Blightlands were far worse.

No Trellis-light lit the sky here, not because there were no Isles of light in this region, but because rogue promenia had destroyed them. As the Blightlands expanded, bringing rogue promenia to fresh territories, each new Isle the twisted magic touched grew corrupted, unraveling from the Trellis and merging with the rogue clouds.

Valens spotted one of the clouds now, roiling above a mesa on the distant horizon. It was glorious, a stunning mass of writhing, brilliant golden light. It was also one of the most destructive forces in the world.

In the shadow of the mesa, a crop of hairgrass and pearlwort had been burned and uprooted. Not only uprooted but hauled five hundred feet into the air, along with an enormous chunk of the soil and bedrock beneath it. The mass of stone and scorched crops hung suspended over the mesa, and above it, rogue promenia writhed as the luminous ball crept across the landscape. In the floating promenia cloud's wake, the earth lay twisted, jagged, and broken.

"Have you been to Eiulatus Vorago before?"

Valens turned to glance at the Trueborn man who met him here a half-hour ago. The Rex's contact, a forgeholder in his early thirties named Ausus, stood dressed for the frigid weather in a heavy hooded paenula with a generous fur trim.

Something about the man, perhaps the expressions that passed over his wind-chapped face, kept giving Valens pause. Ausus seemed familiar somehow, but he didn't think he'd met the black-haired forgeholder before. He would remember someone who shared his own love of the wilds and commitment to the Rex's project there.

In fact, Ausus might love the wilderness more than Valens did. Valens performed most of his work in the day-side and night-side borderlands, whereas Ausus tended to receive assignments deep in the frozen heart of the true night-side wilds. One needed to love the wilderness to dare venturing over and over into such dangerous places.

The Rex had made it clear Ausus was in charge here due to his superior experience, and Valens had not protested. In the field, true expertise was more essential than Compendium ranks.

"I've been to Eiulatus Vorago only once," he said in answer to the man's question.

Ausus nodded. "How long ago?"

"About a year."

The forgeholder drew a deep breath. Valens smiled inwardly. He knew how troublesome it felt to work with a less experienced sorcerer. After a moment, Ausus only nodded. "All right," the older man said, "do you remember all the rogue promenia out there?"

"Hard to forget." The Rex had sent him to Eiulatus Vorago in the hope Valens might rehabilitate the rogue promenia that compromised the ancient ruins, where some forgeholder scholars claimed the Eternal Radiance first kindled human life. Valens had succeeded, purging the rogue promenia and replacing it with fresh particles. But wind carried more corrupted promenia back into the area, and the malign particles tainted Valens's new promenia within days, transforming it into more raw, chaotic power. There was simply too much rogue promenia in the Blightlands for restorative efforts to prove fruitful.

"There's about twice as much of it now."

"Delightful."

Ausus chuckled with grim humor, and again, the sense of recognition passed over Valens. There was something about the other Trueborn. He could not put his finger on it. He studied the man. Wavy black hair. Olive skin. High cheekbones. Eyes devour, what was it? Gray eyes. Violet laurel.

The last made him frown. "You're a forgeholder, not a worldholder. How have you managed to survive so many journeys through the Blightlands?" The man could not dissolve promenia.

"A ton of running." Ausus laughed at his expression. "Just kidding. I made this." He pulled something from his paenula pocket.

The sight of the man holding up the crystalline consecturum sent another wave of recognition through Valens. It was driving him to distraction, and he shoved it down. He needed to focus on the task at hand. "Those only work on living creatures."

"I made a few changes," Ausus said, tossing the amethyst tree from hand to hand with a smug smirk on his wind-chapped face. "Tricked it into thinking promenia is alive. Which was easier than I thought it would be, believe it or not."

"How so?" Valens asked.

It was a mistake. He learned long ago not to ask an enthusiast about their favorite topic unless he was prepared to listen to excited prattle on dull minutia.

Ausus's gray eyes lit up. "In Eiulatus Vorago, I found a few schematics on the inner workings of promenia. You'll never guess what the stuff is made of. No really, because it turns out there are things in promenia the mind can't imagine. Like atoms, but composed of particles I have never heard of. But one thing might be a bit more familiar to us both."

Valens sighed inside but forced himself to entertain the man as Ausus paused and gave him an expectant glance. "Do tell," he said, unable to keep the flatness from his voice.

The forgeholder complied, of course. "Promenia is structured a bit like prometus. It possesses a diopetes, among other things. It's alive," he said, leaning forward and arching his brows. "Somewhat."

"If we survive this," Valens said, "I would love to hear all about it. I have an alumna who may put such information to effective use one day." With luck, Aix would get the boy off to a good start in Valens's absence, assuming Cerasus placed Domi with the Gardener as Valens hoped and not someone less suitable. Regardless of his own dismay about his alumna's impurity, someone still needed to train the forgeholder side of the boy's gifts. Valens could not; he knew next to nothing about the lineage.

The Rex's disgraced cousin might have been unorthodox, but Valens's aedificans was a gifted teacher and well-versed in all five of the magical lineages despite only possessing the lifeholder and worldholder ones himself. There were reasons the Rex charged Aix long ago with the duty of training night-side technicians to respond to this crisis; the man's research spanned as deep as it did wide.

Ausus smiled. "My son also finds this stuff interesting."

Valens nodded absently. That grin... What was it about—

The forgeholder frowned at him, and it was only at that moment Valens realized he was staring. Again. He shook his head. "Sorry, you just look familiar."

Ausus offered a lopsided smile. "You've likely run into me at some observance or another. I'm the Princeps Worldholder's father." Valens blinked. Well, that explained it. "And..." The man swallowed hard, the shadow of grief passing over his face.

"And the late Princeps's husband," Valens said quietly.

"Yes."

Valens had not met Ausus at any observances—he took the liberty of skipping them as often as possible—but he remembered the man now. Years before, they had overlapped for a brief time at the Silvula Salutis conservatory. Ausus Viarius had been eighteen and about to finish his studies and Valens twelve and beginning his own. No wonder the forgeholder looked so familiar.

"My condolences." Losing a spouse over such a horrible secret must have been agonizing. Now the man's young son was the Princeps Worldholder, who would soon need to confront this crisis on his own. Valens hoped the kid would be stronger than his mother. There was no one else.

"Thank you," Ausus said, voice choking. Valens was not surprised when he changed the subject. "Shall we?" The worldholder nodded. "All right. We're taking the shortest path through the Blightlands. Still, we'll need to hustle. You dissolve any promenia that comes near us. I'll deal with whatever you miss. If we both miss, run, and we'll meet at the ruins. Let's go."