Teo heard the stream burbling past the cabin. Through his open window, the magnificent Ardoras sky stretched out, a solid, clear blue, sprinkled with millions of stars that seemed to twinkle back at him. Noel lay curled up on his chest, utterly indifferent to the events of the past few hours, sleeping like a king with his head tucked under his tail. Teo envied him, having not slept a wink all night. He wasn’t the only one restless, though.

  “Pssst, Teo... you awake?” Tiziano whispered. “I can see you are, so don’t try to tell me you’re not.”

  “Then why ask if you can see he is?” Baruch scolded him, replicating Tiziano’s voice. “Besides, if he wasn’t awake, how could he tell you? He wouldn’t even hear you.”

  “Hey, mind your own business! And stop copying my voice!” Tiziano continued in a hushed tone. “I told you it creeps me out!”

  “Sorry, Tizi,” Baruch apologized, again using Tiziano’s voice.

  “You did it again!” Tiziano hissed. “And you called me Tizi! You know I hate that! It makes me sound like an idiot!”

  Suddenly, they both noticed Teo sighing.

  “Cheer up, Teo! Don’t worry... she’ll be fine!” Tiziano tried to reassure him.

  “How can you be so sure?” Teo asked, turning to him.

  “You heard Isgalis, Milena just had a temporary setback, she’ll recover.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yes, we do!” Tiziano said, sitting up. “Isgalis has never lied to us. She’s brave, honest, and wise! That’s why she’s our guardian.”

  “But she could be wrong,” Teo said skeptically.

  “Maybe... sometime... someday... but not this time!” Tiziano said firmly. “Look, Milena has the abilities of a revitalizer. That’s why you saw that dying inex fly out of her hands. Revitalizers can channel their kanach into other living beings, but as you know, the law of conservation of energy states that…”

  “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another,” Baruch finished, in Tiziano’s voice.

  “Or transferred from one place to another,” Tiziano added. “Don’t you get it? Milena can’t create new energy to revitalize, she can only transfer her own.”

  “So, you’re saying the inex could fly only after Milena filled it with her kanach?” Teo asked, stunned.

  “Leaving her drained of enough vital energy to stand... Exactly! That’s why she passed out.”

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  “Still, how can we be sure she’ll recover?”

  “Revitalizers’ cells are like solar panels,” Tiziano explained. “When exposed to sunlight, they convert light energy into electrochemical energy, which restarts their metabolic functions.”

  “It’s like your phone battery dying,” Baruch added, using Tiziano’s voice. “You need to plug it in to recharge. Only, instead of plugging Milena into a wall outlet, we need to expose her to the sun.”

  “How do you two know all this?” Teo asked, amazed.

  “Hey, we didn’t get the ’nerd’ title at school for nothing!” Tiziano said, trying to look serious. “Besides, someone has to read the physics books in the Library. Otherwise, they’d just collect dust and cobwebs.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Teo clarified, trying not to sound rude. “I meant, have you met a revitalizer before?”

  The two boys fell silent.

  “His name was Egmont,” Baruch said, in Teo’s voice. “He was shy and withdrawn. He came to the village a few months after us. He was friendly and kind. He came to Ardoras looking for his older sister, who raised him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “About a year ago, he vanished without a trace,” Tiziano said, his voice trembling. “We think the Necropters took him.”

  “What the hell’s a Necropter?” Teo asked, startled.

  “We don’t know their Ardorian name,” Baruch said, in Teo’s voice. “We call them that: in ancient Greek, nekrós means ‘death,’ and pterón means ‘wing.’ ‘Winged death.’”

  “They’re terrifying creatures, like decaying bodies with bony, membranous wings,” Tiziano added. “They live in the Mohr Forest, on the edge of Luria. Necropters have never come to Mantra before. They need to be summoned and offered a sacrifice.”

  “Are you saying someone summoned them and sacrificed Egmont?”

  The boys nodded silently.

  “Why him?”

  “Teo, you need to know something important before you go to Luria,” Tiziano said, his voice serious. “There is no death in Ardoras, but if you cross over, you’ll wish you were dead.”

  “If I cross over?” Teo asked, confused.

  “Ardorians call it ’crossing over’ to a state of limbo, where you neither exist nor cease to exist,” Baruch explained, in Teo’s voice.

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “The Necropters, before they became the monsters they are now, were human,” Tiziano said.

  Teo shuddered. A horrible feeling of dread spread through him. Now he understood Sir Phleas’s words: “Death is neither the last nor the worst fate.”

  When he regained control of his thoughts, Teo spoke again.

  “But it doesn’t make sense! Why would they turn into monsters? How is that possible?”

  “Isgalis told us a curse is buried deep within Ardoras,” Baruch answered.

  In Teo’s head, Sir Phleas’s words echoed again: “The Continent is a miracle built on the remains of many ghosts that do not rest in peace.”

  “We don’t know how or why the Necropters lost their humanity, but we know how they try to regain it: by feeding on the kanach of revitalizers. That’s why they took Egmont.”

  “This is awful!” Teo exclaimed, shocked. “But who would do something like that? Who would sacrifice an innocent child? And why?”

  “Whoever offers a revitalizer to the Necropters as a sacrifice can become immune to time, fire, and weapons. No spell could hurt them, no beast could take them down, because their body would always heal.”

  “In other words,” Baruch concluded, “they’d become a regenerator.”

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