The portal beneath Cloud City has opened onto a wounded world beneath twin suns, and the answers waiting there may change everything Mêrgdá believes about the World-Destroyers. A living sapling offers hope, but Nova, Zyphar, Pamina, Kenzar, and their allies refuse to mistake hope for certainty. As the influence of all four World-Destroyers spreads, ancient evidence suggests that the monsters they fear may be connected to something once necessary, and catastrophically broken. If that is true, defeating them may require more than strength. It may require understanding what was broken in the first place.