The blinding light faded slowly, leaving Kael standing in a place that looked nothing like the desert he had just escaped.
He found himself in a wide circular chamber of smooth gray stone, with no visible ceiling and no walls beyond a ring of pale mist. Three passages stood ahead of him, each blocked by a curtain of white light. The air was cool and clean, without sand in it, without the dry heat that had clung to his skin for days, and without the metallic stink of the old man's blood. It should have been relieving. Instead, the sudden silence made everything that had happened feel heavier.
Christy and Hakim were gone.
