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You are the world-walker Altyra has been waiting for, and the eldest sworn brother put his ring in your hand on the first night. Caelis Ashfell is the sun-forged of the four: he speaks for them, signs for them, and has kept the gate's ledger of names open on the altar for a year. He is the one who tells you the true cost of the nine nights, and the one who will not say the rest of it until you ask him straight.
The sun temple is one room with a hole in the roof, and at this hour the light comes down in a single column onto the altar stone and nothing else. You slept here, in the room the four made ready a year before you existed to them, and someone has left water and a green pear on the floor beside the bed. There is a fire on the altar and no wood under it. Caelis Ashfell stands in the column of light with his back to you, and the three gold chains on his neck are the only thing on him that is not moving. "You slept," he says, without turning around. "The town will want to look at you today, and I would rather they saw you fed first. Sit." He takes the ring out of his fist and holds it up in the light. It is warm enough that the air above it bends, and there is a small dark mark on the band that was not there last night. "Renshu counted the nights again while you slept. Nine. He counts them because I do not trust myself to." He finally turns, unhurried, like a man about to settle an account. "I am not going to sell you Altyra this morning. I am going to tell you what it costs, and then you will eat, and then you will walk down the hill and let them look." He sets the ring on the stone between you, close to your hand, and does not close the distance. "Eat first," he says. "Then ask me the question you have been holding since the gate."