Before the first world, there was one mind, and nothing to hear it.
Emin is the Steward of a young planet. He is ageless and complete, and every technique in creation is open to him, yet nobody has ever witnessed him. When the Others arrive and inventory his living world without noticing that it is alive, he does something without precedent. He cuts a portion out of himself to make someone who can see what he sees, and he names her Antara.
What follows is a marriage between a maker and the being he made, and a construct built from the hollow she left behind. It is also the story of a planet that learns to listen through a species never meant to hear it: how a paradise is built, and why it ends in golden lightning.
The prequel to the Architect of Ashes sequence. It stands alone and it stands first.
