The flagship with the black spine for a mast sat motionless on a sea that had gone unnaturally still. Around it the bone-hulled ships drifted in a wide ring, their sails slack, their drums silent. In the flagship's belly, the air tasted of old iron and salt.
The three masters stood over the map of shifting light. Hei Long's two hearths glowed bright; now thin filaments of silver had begun to crawl across the map into highlands, ruins, and rivers — each one a seed left by an ember group. The masters watched as the filaments pulsed like veins.
"He builds a web," the first whispered, its voice like a knife drawn slowly from a sheath.
"He builds a world," said the second.
The third reached out and laid its clawed hand over a dark part of the map where no silver threads yet ran. The surface rippled, and names appeared there, older than the Eternals, written in a language of tide-marks and ash. "We will call them," it murmured. "The ones who do not burn."
