[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"I can’t breathe, Lyon. It’s not the air—there’s too much soul in my lungs. Every time I blink, I’m living ten thousand lives at once. I’m a starving child in the Gobi, a dying soldier in the Atlantic, a mother in a bunker singing to a baby that won't stop crying. The Golden Line is vibrating so hard I think my atoms are going to drift apart. Please, just make the voices stop whispering their secrets to me."

Sofia’s voice was a jagged, desperate rasp that echoed through the hollow majesty of the Northern Throne Room. She was slumped in the crystalline chair, her body arched in...