Page 52 of The Sunlit Man

Some general rules were followed, however. Larger ships in the middle. Smaller, faster ships on the outside. And this hub structure at the very center. He’d taken it for a large meeting room, but as they stepped inside, he realized it held something far different: an enclosure for the dead.

They had configured it like an aquarium. An enormous glass drum, twenty feet tall and twice that wide, dominated the room, leaving only a narrow circle around it for observation. They’d filled the central column with smoke. A shifting white mist, like—

Like leaking souls,he thought, walking up to the glass, hands inthe pockets of his long brown leather coat. He was accompanied by Rebeke and Zeal—who had gotten permission from the Greater Good to bring him to this hallowed ground. A rack on one wall, opposite the large aquarium, held depleted sunhearts.

“Have you ever,” he asked, glancing at the tens of lifeless sunhearts, “left those out again in the sunlight?”

“Of course we have,” Rebeke said. “They don’t recharge. We can’t even find them afterward most of the time, but the few we’ve recovered were as dull as when we left them.”

Damnation. That made sense, though. They’d of course tried that—probably one of the first things they had tried. He looked back at the aquarium—they called the enclosure itself the Reliquary. He found that name oddly inappropriate. These weren’t relics. Those were usually the bodies or body parts of holy ones whose souls had departed. This was presumably the opposite.

He didn’t see them at first. He only saw that shifting mist. It was light and effulgent, but thick. If the dead existed inside that chamber, he couldn’t—

A face formed from the mists and pressed up against the glass, eyes glowing red, hands—made of smoke—slamming against the barrier. It had a gaunt face with a drooping jaw and sunken cheeks.

Nomad jumped despite himself. Even though he’d been expecting it, seeing a shade was unnerving. When he’d been on Threnody, these things had been incredibly dangerous. Society contorted around their existence, living by strict rules to avoid angering them. When the eyes went red, these things were deadly, seeking to kill. Yet here, the people of Beacon kept them like…pets?

“We fled the Evil,” the ghost said in a whispering voice, like rustling papers. Another appeared over its shoulder, just a vague, smoky outline of a person with red eyes. “Then we fled Threnody. We are your Chorus. We remember. We came here, to the land of the twilight rings, to make our own world. Do not forget. Adonalsium will claim us eventually. Live. And remember.”

Well, the knight says, at least we know how they keep their lore straight through the generations.

“On your homeworld,” Nomad said, “these things kill people.”

“They’d kill us,” Zeal said, “if we went into the Reliquary.”

“Are they self-aware?” Nomad asked.

“I sustain an uncertainty in that regard,” he replied. “They’ll answer questions sometimes. Other times they give no answers, only recitations.”

“They mostly only talk about the past, though,” Rebeke said. She’d stepped up beside him and watched intently through the glass. “About lore, history. Almost nothing about themselves. Each member might as well be interchangeable. We don’t know if they remember their individual lives. They’re like…living history books.”

“‘Living’ being a loose term,” Zeal added.

Nomad nodded, thoughtful. “That’s far more than what I’d expect from them, knowing the shades of Threnody.”

“We were the first who died on Canticle,” a shade whispered to him. “The first to live in this land and devise the designs of flight—based on the ships that brought us here. But then we died and rose as shades. Remembering.”

“Shades do not remember,” another said. “We are not shades. We are the Chorus of the people.”

“But others,” another said, pressing against the glass, “must be given to the sun. This is the sun’s land.”

“Do this not,” the first said, “and shades will overrun the world. Such a small planet. They will take everything. They would rip and destroy you.”

“As we would,” another added, “if allowed. To taste the flesh of the living. To drink their heat.”

“So sweet,” another said.

“So sweet,” the first agreed.

“They…do that too,” Zeal added. “Talk about killing us. It’s rather unnerving.”

Such invigorating places you take me, Nomad.

“There!” Rebeke said, pointing. “There, it’shim.”

“You don’t know that, Rebeke,” Zeal said softly.

“What?” Nomad asked, noting the way she stood so close to the glass, peering into the mist. “Him?” It took him only a moment to realize. “Your brother?”

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