The first lantern went dark at exactly seven minutes past sunset.

Lyra Vale knew the exact time because she had been watching the clocktower above the market square, waiting for the evening bell.

She was standing on a narrow wooden platform suspended three hundred feet above the clouds, with one boot balanced on a ladder rung and the other dangling rather dangerously over empty air.

Below her, there was nothing.

Nothing but clouds.

Great rivers of silver cloud rolled beneath the floating island of Aetheria, glowing pink where the setting sun touched them. Far beyond them, mountains drifted in the distance, their peaks rising from the mist like the backs of sleeping giants.

Above Lyra, hundreds of lanterns swayed gently from silver cables.

They came in every shape imaginable.

Round lanterns.

Star-shaped lanterns.

Long glass lanterns filled with blue flame.

Enormous brass lanterns decorated with curling vines.

Tiny lanterns no larger than apples.

And the great floating lanterns - so enormous that a person could stand inside them - hung over the market like golden moons.

Aetheria was famous for its lanterns.

People came from distant floating kingdoms just to see them.

Lyra had never understood why.

To everyone else, they were beautiful.

To Lyra, they talked.

Not always.

Not loudly.

But sometimes, when the wind was quiet and the evening was still, she could hear them whispering.

Tonight, one of them said her name.

"Lyra."

She froze.

Her hand tightened around the brass lantern hanging from her belt.

She looked over her shoulder.

Nobody.

Below, the evening market was bursting with life.

Children chased glowing moths through the stalls.

Merchants shouted prices.

A baker carried a tray of honey cakes.

A pair of musicians played fiddles beside a fountain filled with floating blue flowers.

Nobody appeared to have heard anything.

"Lyra."

The voice came again.

This time it sounded frightened.

She turned toward the lantern beside her.

It was an old thing, made from cloudy glass and tarnished copper.

She knew that lantern.

It had been hanging over the market for seventy-three years.

Her mother had told her so.

"Old lanterns remember more than young ones," her mother had once said.

"And memories are not always kind."

Lyra reached toward it.

"Show me."

Her fingertips touched the glass.

The world vanished.

For one heartbeat, she was somewhere else.

A garden.

Sunlight.

A little girl laughing.

A young man kneeling beneath a flowering tree.

A woman's hand covering her mouth as she began to cry.

Then the young man held out a ring.

The memory flickered.

The garden disappeared.

Lyra pulled her hand away.

The market returned.

She gasped.

The lantern trembled.

Then its flame went out.

The little golden light inside the glass vanished.

Lyra stared.

"No."

She climbed the last rung and reached for the lantern.

Cold.

Completely cold.

Then another lantern went dark.

Ffft.

Lyra turned.

A small blue lantern on the opposite cable had extinguished.

Then another.

Ffft.

A brass one near the clocktower.

Ffft.

A silver one above the fountain.

The market slowly noticed.

A woman screamed.

Everyone looked upward.

More lanterns were dying.

One.

Two.

Five.

Ten.

Within seconds, a whole row of them had gone black.

The music stopped.

The market fell silent.

Lyra stepped onto the platform.

Something was wrong.

Not broken.

Not ordinary.

Wrong.

The lanterns weren't simply losing their flames.

They were being emptied.

She could feel it.

Something was pulling the memories out of them.

A cold breeze swept through the market.

Lyra looked toward the western horizon.

The sunset was almost gone.

Behind the distant mountains, a strange bank of clouds had appeared.

Black.

Not gray.

Not storm-blue.

Black as ink.

Lightning moved silently inside it.

Lyra's brass lantern began to shake at her waist.

She slowly unhooked it.

Its tiny blue flame burned brighter.

Then the lantern whispered.

Not her name this time.

A single sentence.

"The Heart is dying."

Lyra's blood went cold.

She knew exactly what the Heart was.

Everyone did.

The Heart Lantern.

The oldest lantern in Aetheria.

The source of the kingdom's magic.

The reason the islands floated.

The reason the bridges glowed.

The reason the rivers flowed upward between worlds.

The reason Aetheria existed at all.

And if the Heart Lantern was dying...

Lyra looked at the black storm.

For just an instant, she thought she saw something moving inside it.

Something enormous.

Something with two golden eyes.

Then it disappeared.

The evening bell rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

But the sound was strangely weak.

As though the bell itself were becoming tired.

Lyra whispered the words her mother had taught her when she was a child.

Words she hadn't spoken in years.

"When the lanterns go dark..."

She swallowed.

"Follow the light that remains."

Her brass lantern suddenly flared.

A beam of blue light shot from its flame.

It pointed west.

Toward the storm.

Toward the forbidden mountains.

Toward the ruins of the Temple of First Light.

Lyra stared.

Then she smiled.

It wasn't a happy smile.

It was the smile of someone who had just discovered that her quiet little life was over.

"Well," she whispered.

"That seems inconvenient."