First appearance: Into the Mirror 17, The Way Out · watch it on YouTube
The heart is a vast hidden city built inside the hollow shell of an enormous soul gem. The way in is to whisper to the sand and ask it to take you there. It first appeared in Into the Mirror 17, The Way Out, when Sky brought an army down beneath the sand and into the glittering cavern.
Description
From the inside, the heart is a huge hollowed-out cavern of green and blue gems and crystals, “like being inside a giant hollow crystal.” It is no ordinary rock. It is a colossal hollowed soul gem, “the remnants of a vast soul” that still holds “a lot of unspent time.” Soul gems are said to grow larger the more life their owner had left when they died, so a gem big enough to hold a city is an unsettling thought.
Hundreds of thousands of people live there in stilt houses with pulley elevators. The people make their living mining the crystal around them. That is a trade with an expiry date, because the mining can only go so far before the whole place collapses.
Among the landmarks are Sky’s carved hall and Cyrus’s shop. A small cave also holds a polished patch of soul gem that works as a reflective surface.
History
The heart was revealed in Into the Mirror 17. Out in the green blowing sand under the celestial sky, Sky halted the army and whispered. Flynry caught the words: “Take me to the heart.”
This was no portal like Motorios’s. Instead the sand cracked, parted and fell away into a staircase leading down into a chasm. At the bottom, an archway opened onto the enormous gem-lit cavern.
Notable Figures
- Sky: knows the words that open the way to the heart, and has a carved hall there.
- Cyrus: keeps a shop in the cavern.
- Flynry: overheard Sky’s whisper on the way in.