Page 78 of The Sunlit Man

She repeated the words softly. “Why those words?”

“It will siphon off a smidge of your soul and put it into the sunheart. Not enough to power the thing, unfortunately, but your soul will naturally abandon the pieces that are less…less you, I guess. Either way, it should help keep you sane. That’s how I helped make you become more aware.”

He nodded at her encouragingly, then unlocked one of the manacles. She looked at him hungrily, a certain savagery still lurking within. He smiled at her, but pointedly left the other manacle on. One hand free was the most he was comfortable giving her right now.

He left her studying that sliver of her mother’s soul. Hopefully he hadn’t somehow just handed her the power she needed to energize herself and break free in order to destroy him. Storms, he thought he’d gotten past trusting people who were that dangerous.

He walked away with a sense of dread. But—as he’d grown proficient at doing—he ignored it for now. Instead he returned to the cab because he heard thunder.

He arrived just in time to see the great maelstrom through the windshield as it broke the darkness ahead.

It was on fire.

The sudden brightnessmade him blink, his eyes watering. He kept forgetting that the Beaconites kept their lights uncommonly low, even indoors.

At first, the landscape ahead looked like a mess of undulating oranges and yellows—an abstract painting, like the Nalthians loved. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he made out the nuances. Most of the burning portions were below, but swirling whirlwinds of flame rose from the ground in churning, fiery vortexes. The light glowed primarily from the center of these cyclones, but where each hit the clouds, bright bursts set the very sky afire.

“It’s on fire?” Nomad said. “Whyis it onfire?”

“It’s the great maelstrom beyond sunset!” Zeal said, crowding up into the cabin beside him. “You said you’d been in one before.”

“Storms shouldn’t be on fire!” Nomad exclaimed. “They’re wet! Full of wind and rain.”

“You suggested this plan,” Rebeke said, frowning, “and you didn’t know it would be on fire?”

He gaped at the inferno. They were still on the dark side of the planet, in night, but dangerously close to the day—now just on this side of sunset. Maybe that should have told him what he’d find, but storms. He’d heard tens of different descriptions of hell from tens of different cultures and lores. His own planet’s Damnation was a cold place, but so many others talked of eternal fire. A place where flames lashed the soul and heat melted the very fat under the flesh.

He’d never thought he’d look upon such a place. The ship turned and curved along the perimeter, flying at a slight angle to trail the storm—which retreated before them, chasing the setting sun. At least, at ground level, there didn’t seem to be many open magma vents. Indeed, he noticed something. The ground grew cool with unusual speed. Almost like…

“Something is drawing the heat away,” he whispered. “Like your bodies can draw it from one another…”

They gave him blank stares, but this seemed a likely explanation. Something about the core of the planetwasodd. It created far more gravity than it should have for its size—so either it was incredibly dense or incredibly Invested. He suspected the latter. And now that core was drawing out that heat, cooling the ground.

That unnaturally fast cooling cracked and shattered the landscape. Releasing…

“Gases,” he guessed. “Flammable gases, as a by-product of the sun blasting the landscape. But how… Normally methane is released by decomposition, whichcertainlyisn’t happening here…”

“We’re getting close to the border of the corridor,” Rebeke said,tapping a few dials that were tracking their progress. “We made good time. Beacon has maybe an hour and forty-five minutes until sunlight reaches it.”

Nomad nodded, checking the time.

“We’ll soon encounter the Cinder King’s scouts,” she continued, “unless we duck into the storm. You sure you want to do that?”

“Can this ship handle it?” he asked as a cyclone of fire sprang up beside them—a whirlwind of smoke and ash snaking down from above, then bursting aflame.

“Maybe?” Zeal said. “It has as much insulation as we could stuff in it, and some cooling mechanisms as well. That, plus the armor…well, maybe?”

“The clock is ticking,” Nomad said, and Zeal nodded. The clock, for Nomad, was always ticking. “Take us in.”

Rebeke flicked a switch—bringing up the thick blast shield to protect the windshield. She flew them in via instruments, something Nomad had never been good at doing. He much preferred flying with his hair in the wind, throttle in his fingers.

He’d foolishly anticipated a storm like at home. A darkness thick with chaos, occasionally sliced by lightning. He’d anticipated rain—which always reminded him of Roshar in the best ways. There was something comforting about the sound of water on metal or stone; it had a primal, rhythmic quality. The sound of a world’s heartbeat, racing fast with excitement.

His friends from back then had loved the wind, and he couldn’t blame them. But for Nomad, therainhad become his favorite manifestation of a storm. He loved stepping out in it, feeling it wash him clean.

He’d assumed, if it was raining, he could survive any storm.But here he experienced something different. The ship was buffeted and tossed, but without that comforting sound of water on the roof. This maelstrom was wrong. Like a breakdown with no tears, where you curled in the corner and struggled to contain your emotions, but somehow—despite the pain filling you to bursting—couldn’t get any of it to come out.

Dials on the dash went wild. Zeal pointed out two heat gauges—one indicating the temperature of the hull and a smaller one indicating the temperature inside of the ship. Both were rising steadily.

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