Elara pulled a dusty schematic from her satchel—a drawing no one had seen in generations. “My grandmother was the last Zorcha-Keeper before the Monks. She wrote that the Zorcha is fed by willing memories. But you’ve been feeding it stolen ones. Regrets. Fears. Sorrows scooped from the dying.”
Vellis frowned. “The Zorcha doesn’t choose. It is .” zorcha
In the floating city of , where islands drifted through a permanent sunset, there was no sun. The light came from a single, slow-pulsing orb called the Zorcha —part lantern, part heart, part forgotten god. Elara pulled a dusty schematic from her satchel—a