Chapter 31

Amina awakens in a nightmare recreation of Asif’s death, realizes it is an illusion, and vows to save Asif’s child before headbutting the attacker. The glamor breaks, revealing a halved nasnas feeding at her neck. She interrogates and then kills the creature, accepting her grief but focusing on rescuing Dunya.

Following the nasnas’s directions, Amina enters a vast chamber crawling with imprisoned monsters. When the floor becomes a starry void, she chooses faith over fear and sprints along a razor-thin golden beam to the far archway, evading the creatures and collapsing onto solid rock beyond.

There, Amina finds Dunya levitating before a cuneiform-covered pillar, blindfolded and carving with a stylus amid swirling lights. Falco warns her not to interfere, claiming a disturbance could collapse the cave. The marid screams a warning in Amina’s mind, but Amina rises, revealing newfound speed and strength, and prepares to face Falco.

Amina taunts Falco, then attacks. She smashes through a sulfurous stalagmite and overpowers him, cutting through his mail and bloodying his face. Before she can finish him, Dunya’s ritual crescendos: the salt flashes to mist, the stone column explodes with water, and Dunya crashes to the ground, injured and murmuring spells.

Amina rushes to Dunya, who briefly wakes to ask if the ritual worked. Across the chamber, Falco gleefully cradles the newly revealed Moon of Saba—a silver basin gleaming with water. Amina hurls a boot to knock it away, but too late: Falco has already seen his reflection.

Light fills Falco’s eyes as he exults, claiming mastery of hidden sciences. At his call, swarms of vermin and other creatures stir from the darkness, signaling that the Moon’s power now answers to him.