Seeing this, Saladin said frantically, "What are you trying to do? I already told you I don't know."
Murphy didn't look at him.
The enormous wings beat slowly in the night sky. With each flap, the dragon carried the two men across a vast expanse of wilderness.
In the distance, the Golden Threads enveloped Eira Village like a dome.
No people, objects, or houses could be seen inside.
All that was visible in the night was a brilliant golden light.
"You've seen so many villages and towns destroyed. Can you still be moved by the fall of a single one?"
Saladin fell silent.
Three thousand years ago, he had indeed seen too much. In the years after Ephialtes opened the rifts, invaders had swarmed out like locusts. Wherever they passed, villages became ruins and towns were reduced to ash. The towns where he had once drunk, traded goods, and driven away wild beasts for the locals—they all vanished from the map, one after another.
