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Sophia takes up the stylus to chronicle the League of Star Bearers’ passage from the Arabian coast into the Nabataean lands and their mystical capital of Petra. After landing on the red-tinged shores of Arabia, the companions are welcomed by Nabataean guides who recognize Balthazar and pledge safe passage through Hegra, Dedan, and the desert cisterns. At a caravanserai carved into rose-red cliffs, they share songs, visions, and quiet conversations that reveal Adam’s growing burden of prophetic dreams and Sophia’s own need to set their journey into words. The travelers witness the majesty of a wild Arabian horse herd—creatures treated as sacred vessels of memory and covenant—and receive mounts for the arduous crossing.

Led by their guide Hamrath, the caravan survives the merciless heat thanks to hidden Nabataean cisterns, vast underground reservoirs that offer life-giving water and a sense of ancestral mystery. In the cool depths of one such cistern, Loukia sings a haunting hymn to the Cistern, the “flame beneath the sand,” echoing the timeless bond between desert, memory, and divine promise. Continuing north, the party reaches the silent rock-cut necropolis of Hegra, where carved stars and facades remind them of the impermanence of human glory.

A fierce sandstorm scatters the travelers, and Adam is drawn onto a basalt ridge where the archangel Gabriel names him witness and bearer of the flame. He beholds visions of the Child of Light, the cross, and the triumph of divine love over darkness before being found at dawn by Loukia and Targitus. Reunited with Sophia, Adam speaks of the battle already won despite the suffering to come.

At last the caravan enters Petra through the narrow Siq, emerging before the rose-red Treasury and the bustling markets, temples, and water-filled terraces of the hidden city. Amid the city’s grandeur Sophia reflects that Petra’s beauty lies in its transience: the carved facades are mortal masks proclaiming both human longing and inevitable decay. As night falls and Loukia sings beneath the wheeling stars, the companions rest in Petra’s splendor while the guiding star continues to call them eastward toward the deeper mystery they seek

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