The climb to the western rim of the Great Astral Crater took five hours of grueling, painful ascent across ridges of glass-fused fiery glass.
The sun sank below the horizon. Then, painting the desert in bruised streaks of crimson, indigo, and gold, the caravan finally hauled the last baggage cart up onto the crest of the rim.
Ren Vale stepped out onto the dark rock overlook. Then, the breath left his lungs in a sharp, reflex gasp.
Before him lay the grandest, most terrifying deep-rock scar on the face of the continent.
The crater was three miles wide. A huge, circular tiered arena plunged eight hundred feet into the world-size crust. Its sheer inner walls were composed of layered, rainbow-bright black glass and glass-fused sandstone, fused into smooth, mirror-like planes by the unimaginable heat of an astral impact that had occurred ten thousand years ago.
And at the bottom of the deep-sea bowl lay The Crying Wells.
They weren’t muddy desert water-holes or stone-lined water tanks.
They were seven nested, stepped sinkholes filled with living-glow sapphire-blue salt water that radiated a soft, sky glow into the twilight. Above the surface of the pools hovered columns of rainbow-bright stone steam, shimmering with shifting ribbons of violet, turquoise, and gold. And from the depths of those glowing waters rose the sound that gave the wells their name:
