I stepped out into absolute, unhindered chaos. The chamber was filled with a thunderous, fracturing moan, fading screams and furious shouts.
Berin threw an arm around me as soon as I appeared and braced his shield over our heads. Dirt and crumbling wood, still tainted with foxfire, drummed down like rain.
I blinked dust and disorientation from my eyes. The Fith had fled, leaving only the dead strewn on the ground. Logur too was gone and the chamber contained only our companions, Thray, Arune and some of the Windwalkers, a handful of legionaries and Estavius.
“They’re coming!” I shouted to Estavius, his own shield held over his head. “Make room!”
His expression of calm determination did not change. He nodded and shouted in Arpa. His legionaries poured out of the chamber, leaving the blood-soaked dirt open for the army to come.
My mother stepped through the rift as the great Binding Tree crackled above us. Muffled light spilled through the roots and, outside, pieces of the tree fell away with earth-shuddering impacts.
Seera shrieked through gritted teeth and jerked Esan under the cover of her shield.
Hessa threw up her shield too, weathering the barrage. My father came after her, ducking under her shield and resting a protective arm across her back as more and more figures poured through the rift after them—Vynder priests and Winterborn, Nisien and Aita and Gadr and Esach.
As dazed by magic, pain and blood loss as I was, I found Isik’s searching gaze. Then more dirt rained down between us, and the ground trembled.
“Effa!” Kygga bellowed.
With a ripple and a hiss, a great shield of ice formed over our heads. I felt all moisture leave the air and the barrage of debris ceased, contained by the silvered power of a dozen Winterborn Icecarvers.
“Clear the way!” Estavius commanded us, but his eyes were pinned on Nisien. My uncle met his gaze and smiled a warm, nostalgic smile as dust rained down between them. He unsheathed his curved sword and wove through the press to the Ascended Emperor’s side.
Estavius issued orders and instructions, directing the newcomers out of the chamber, but when Nisien took up position at his side, their shoulders brushing, his posture eased.
We fled the shattering Binding Tree and burst outside in a cloud of dust, disintegrating wood, and falling ash.
I expected to find daylight, but it was gone. Ash smothered the sun and the only illumination now came from a rippling, pulsing network of golden threads across the sky, and the blaze of foxfire from pieces of the crumbling tree.
Revenants hit us in a screeching, clambering rush. There was no time or space to form up—the flow of westerners kept coming, the Revenants kept attacking, and Berin was torn away from me.
A blur of moss, fur and rot bowled me over. Claws pierced my shoulders, a jaw unhinged in my face and—
A wordless shout filled the air. The creature collapsed on top of me in a plume of black mist, revealing Thray running my way. Another figure joined her, dark-haired, lightly armored and armed with a long sword. Vistic, the Vestige of Thvynder, her half-brother by a mortal mother.
They were still half a dozen paces away, chaos between us. The creature’s long claws pinned me to the earth, prying skin from muscle and muscle from bone. My breath thin with shock and horror, I fought to pull the claws from my flesh. Blood squelched and pain washed over me in hot, fevered waves, but even in death, the creature seemed intent on holding me down.
Another shadow fell over me, but it wasn’t Thray. An unnaturally long mouth opened to reveal rows of mismatched teeth, set in a face that had once been a woman’s. Now it looked as though it had been inhabited by beetles and termites, its skin pocked and putrefied and patched with mold.
With a flash, I remembered my staff. I fumbled for it through the frigid mud and swung at my new attacker. Another claw popped free of my shoulder in a wash of warm blood and I ground my teeth.
The new creature stumbled—right into the beheading arc of a sword. Its skull cleaved, and Vistic, the Vestige of Thvynder, bent to pull me free.
“Thank you,” I gasped, panting on the snowy ground.
Vistic nodded and wordlessly vanished back into the fray. Thray was nowhere to be seen. Berin was still gone and my parents were out of sight. For a breath I was alone with my staff in the haze of running figures, falling ash and snow, and the reek of rot. Then the wind came.
Isik materialized on his knees before me. I folded into him, arms momentarily too weak to lift. He bundled me close, his chin atop my head, his chest a solid barrier between me and the turmoil.
In that moment, what remained of the Binding Tree exploded. Isik and I moved as one, scrambling into the shelter of the nearest root. I was crushed, nearly blinded and deafened by his shielding bulk—but what I did glimpse beyond him was a vision from a nightmare. The realization of a child’s tale of the end of the world.
Over his shoulder, I watched two legionaries bring down a charging Revenant stag. The beast hit the earth but didn’t cease to move, instead unleashing a dozen smaller monsters from its belly—weasels and snakes and rodents that burrowed under armor and leapt for exposed eyes. The legionaries fell screaming, writhing, until Thray dispatched the Revenants with a shout.
Someone joined her, pulling the legionaries to their feet and speaking to her, nodding away into the chaos. The Windwalker, Kygga. Then a huge branch crashed down between us in a thunderhead of ash and dust, shards of wood and scattering combatants.
The dustwave hit us. Isik buried my face in his chest, his face in my neck. Dust and splinters assailed us, choking me even through the press of fabric and the nest of his beard. His body was wracked with a suppressed cough.
Without thought, I grabbed the back of his neck and let magic flow from my body to his. Our wounds knitted and his coughing eased.
When the barrage of debris passed, we peeled apart. But dust lingered in the air, so thick I could barely see more than a few meters—dirty, blood-churned snow, walls of roots and swirling ash on my tongue.
It took me a moment to realize that the pressure against my ears was no longer sound, but silence. Only a few shrieks and calls trailed through the clouds, each bizarrely muffled. All I truly heard was the rustle of the ash’s fall, the rattle of Isik’s and my breaths, and the creak of settling wood.
A once-human Revenant stumbled by, tearing off and discarding its own jaw with talon-like claws. Then they were gone, and Isik and I stood alone at the end of the world, a mountain of bodies at our feet.
For the end of the world was surely what this was. The rampant death. The presence of the Unmade, so close beyond the veil of ash. The joining of armies from across our world. Imilidese, freed, somewhere out in the murk.
The Gods are coming. All is as it should be. Ursk’s words slipped through my mind, devoid of comfort in the midst of so much destruction. For all I knew, the gods wanted the world to end today.
A dead legionnaire lay nearby, eyes half-lidded and chest speared by a long shard. Silently, I stole the cloth that protected the man’s throat from his armor, tore it and pressed half into Isik’s hands.
We bound the rags over our faces, then I slipped my hand into Isik’s. There was a trembling deep in my core, making my teeth chatter and my body shiver, but my mind was clear. I was not afraid—not for myself. My thoughts flicked through all the faces, all the loved ones I could not see. My family. My friends. Nui. I hoped they were alive, but that hope felt too fragile, so small and lacking in the face of this. A pebble dropped into a sea of dread.
Isik’s fingers cinched around mine. As we anchored one another, the ash began to move. Its steady billowing changed direction and seeped back in upon itself, revealing a golden light at the heart of it— the healed rift, surrounded by the silhouettes of hundreds of moving figures. The army of the west, still flowing out of the High Halls.
The fragile hope in me strengthened.
“They’re still coming through,” I whispered to Isik.
Wind came with sudden, staggering force. No, not a wind. An inhalation. Ash rushed inward from all directions, reforming into a swirling pillar near where the Binding Tree had been—a pillar that stretched from the sullied snow to the crest of the sky. At its feet, the rift flickered but held strong, continuing to funnel westerners onto the island’s devastated ground.
The rush of ash was over in an instant. The rest of the world became clear in its wake: ruptured roots, fallen branches, scattered bodies and the huddled forms of survivors. Revenants began to flee north, south, and west, scrambling and clawing and leaping back toward the shores of the island. Their number was punctuated by knots of Fith. The humans shouted to one another, coordinating, and the Revenants followed their lead—or responded to the same, unseen directive.
“What are they doing?” I whispered to Isik. “Can you understand?”
“They’re hemming us in, along the shore,” he replied, his tone far too light, far too distracted for the information it communicated. “Yske, look.”
I followed his gaze not toward the pillar of ash, but toward the Unmade. The abyss snaked out above us in tendrils, as if it were wool and the pillar a distaff. Its progress was slow, so slow my watering eyes could barely perceive its movement. But it was thickening. Advancing. Swallowing the eastern edges of the island.
The golden light of the rift, still pulsing at the foot of the pillar, suddenly dimmed and closed. I looked back, fearful that my magic had failed, but the doorway to the High Halls was simply no longer in use. Our army had arrived.
Several figures lingered at the rift. They were caked with dust and ash, just as Isik and I were, but there was no mistaking the woman with axes framing her head, or the men at her side. Both their bodies held a deep inner light to my Sight. Omaskat, the Watchman of Thvynder, and Vistic—together Thvynder’s representation in creation, all that remained of our absent god.
My mother raised a warhorn to her lips and let out three sharp blasts, followed by one long one.
“A rally,” I said to Isik. “Hurry.”
We started off at a careful run, picking our way across bodies and joining a flow of survivors. I caught sight of Arune and Thray in a knot of Winterborn. Seera sprinted beside the woman I recognized as her mother, Uspa. Three dogs ran with them, and one of those darted toward me with a frantic, happy whine.
My heart felt as though it would rupture at the sight of Nui’s ash-clotted fur and desperately wagging tail, but all I could do was breathe her name and urge her on.
“Where are the others?” I called to Seera. “Berin?”
She looked behind her, her eyes grim but not grieving. “Coming!”
They outpaced us as Isik and I skirted a great mound of root so thick with ash I could barely see the wood. The tendrils of the Unmade spooled out at our backs and over our heads, and where they reached the pillar, they began to ignite in a fiery, crackling light. It washed over us in an eerie, oscillating illumination—burned red and bloody brown.
I was so focused on the Unmade that I barely noticed a mound beside me shift. A jaw opened, right next to my running feet, and teeth snapped toward me.
An enormous paw slammed into the Revenant’s head. Aegr roared and lunged, bowling the massive Revenant over as if it were a cub, even though it was bigger than he. He tore out the undead beast’s throat with a savage shake of his head.
Isik and I bolted but I couldn’t help staring backward, transfixed by the awesome sight of the god-bear planting his paws atop his kill and roaring again across the battlefield.
We scrambled over a rise and there, in the shallow hollow where the base of the Binding Tree had been, the remnants of the army of the west gathered by the thousands. Eyes raked us as we joined, hope flaring and dying in the faces of strangers as we too searched for loved ones.
I did not see Berin.
Eiohe.
The word was a physical force in the air, prying into my mind. Every single person reacted, flinching and covering their ears, and staring up at the pillar of ash that was Imilidese.
Up ahead, I saw Estavius take up position beside the rift, at the very foot of the pillar. His eyes blazed the bloody copper light of his aforementioned god in his veins.
Eirine.
A second name scoured our minds, this the Duamel title for Fate. A smaller form I recognized as Ursk settled himself near Estavius, his body radiating the softest blue light, powdery and threaded with amber.
Thvynder.
The third name came as a hiss. Something inside my body tugged toward it, but I held myself back.
Vistic and Omaskat joined Ursk—Eirine—and Estavius—Eiohe. Everyone else withdrew from the rift, leaving the four of them alone, framed by shattered roots and lorded over by the swirling, darkening pillar.
A new pressure began against my ribs. The tug I’d felt when Imilidese spoke Thvynder’s name came again, but this time it was stronger and pulled me not toward Omaskat and Vistic, but upward.
I tilted back my head. The sky was still a haze of smoke, punctuated by swirling tendrils of the Unmade. But beneath the arch of the sky, a blinding new light began. Opalescent and milky, it seeped down toward Vistic and Omaskat, and when it touched them, my heart ceased to beat of its own accord. Something else compelled it—a rush of life-force not my own, accompanied by a presence I hadn’t felt since childhood.
“Thvynder returned.” I couldn’t move, my feet pinned to the grit-darkened snow by my god’s presence. I should have felt fear, I knew. Fear of the scars on my arms and the magic in my blood, and the accounting I must make. But I felt only relief, and an understanding that in the face of current events, I was blissfully irrelevant.
This will not be. Thvynder’s voice made my blood surge, light and fast. They sounded like Vistic and I sensed the voice came from him, the man who, as a child, had instigated the downfall of the Miri and the release of Thvynder themself.
It will be. Imilidese’s response made the shattered roots of the trees shudder and dead Revenants twitch. Distantly, I could see the circle of living Revenants and Fith warriors hemming us in along the shorelines, silent and shuffling and careless of their tattered limbs.
“Form up!” The unmistakable voice of Gadr cracked out over the island, inhumanly loud in its own right and carried to every ear by threads of Winterborn wind. “They will try to kill the vessels of Thvynder, Eiohe, and Eirine. Do not let them!”
Legionaries and western warriors alike began to fan out, raising battered shields into a wall around the pit where the rift glistened and the gods manifested through their mortal vessels. I glimpsed Seera again, and Esan and Askir and Ittrid, but Berin, Sedi, and Bara were still out of sight.
My heart churned. I bent to whisper in Nui’s ear, “Find Berin.”
The dog cocked her head, huffed deep in her chest, and took off through the crowd. I set off in the opposite direction and Isik followed behind, his eyes straying to the gods.
As we searched, the Four Pillars of the World continued to speak.
All will be as it should have been, Imilidese said, still disembodied in her churning pillar of ash. Scoured and made new, these poisoned bloodlines ended.
You have no right. This voice was Estavius’s, and when he spoke I tasted copper on the air. We are the ones who remained and suffered their rebellion. I bled. Thvynder was bound. Eirine gave herself up. But you left us and did not return. We will decide the fate of this creation. Not you.
I did return, Imilidese raged. There was a direction to her voice now, outside the swirling pillar and near the ground. I sensed it drawing closer. Had she taken a vessel, like the others?
I returned to find my siblings bound and vanished. I would have reforged the world then and saved you, and returned all to the way it should have been. I could not do it then. But I will now.
I stopped walking, transfixed by the power and reality of Imilidese’s threat. Would Thvynder concede, as I’d feared before? They all had the power to do as they pleased, these gods who had woven life and creation long ago. That truth chilled me to the bone.
I picked up my pace, desperately seeking Berin with Isik on my tail. Still he was nowhere to be found.
Very little in this world is as it should be, Thvynder replied. Vistic stepped aside and a fifth figure joined them beside the rift. But that does not make it worthless.
The newcomer was Feen. Reverted to her true woodmaiden form with its birch skin, she appeared listless, her head sagging slightly and her hands limp at her sides. If Vistic, Omaskat, Estavius, and Ursk willingly acted as conduits to their gods, Feen certainly did not. Imilidese puppeted the woodmaiden, whose skin glowed with twining, insidious foxfire.
The woman hadn’t precisely been an ally, but the sight shook me. Beside me, Isik made a pitying sound.
A new sound began with the arrival of Feen. It was a chattering, yelping chorus, and the coordinating shouts of Fith warriors preparing for attack.
The protective circle of Arpa and westerners thickened, shields locking and weapons leveling. Arpa cavalry milled behind, horses stomping and snorting around the snow- and ash-dusted monstrosity that was Aegr. The Great Bear roared. The sound had no words, but I felt its alarm like the rumble of distant thunder.
Beyond our lines, the regathering horde of Revenants and Fith began to advance.
“How are so many of them still alive?” I breathed to Isik.
“They’re already dead,” he replied, stepping back and drawing his short sword. He glanced up at a swirl of silver as Windwalkers streaked overhead. “I must help. I’ll keep watch over you, and if I see Berin, I’ll bring him to you.”
I swallowed the selfish urge to stop him and nodded instead.
A dull determination overtook me as Isik disappeared into the wind and I joined the flow of warriors and legionaries to the shield circle. I grabbed the arm of a man I thought was Berin, and was rewarded by a blank stare from a stranger. I didn’t dare call for my brother, or raise the horn at my belt—not when the gods still spoke, their voices filling the entire island. But I wove my way to the spot where I’d last glimpsed Seera and Esan, and prayed he would be there.
I came face to face with my mother instead. One eye still on the gods in their human hosts, she took my arm.
“Where is your brother?” she asked, her shield and one of her axes clenched in her other hand.
“I’m looking for him.”
That wasn’t the answer she wanted. After a momentary pause she released me, pulled her second axe from her back with a swift tug, and offered the weighty weapon to me.
I stared at the axe, from its hooded head to its iron-wrapped haft replete with runes. Its name glistened there—Galger, the weapon of Eang’s right hand. The weapon my mother had slain her false goddess with, when she was barely more than a girl.
Beyond the lines, the Revenants and Fith continued their approach.
“I know you don’t want this,” Hessa said, her voice low, gentle without being soft. “None of us do. But our world is broken—that is the simple, unavoidable truth. And if we do not act, if we do not use every tool available to us and sacrifice our own desires, there will be no one left to heal.”
Slowly, I laid my staff down and took the axe instead. I untied the hood and clipped it to my belt, leaving the long, bearded blade exposed to the muted light.
There was power in peace and a gentle hand. I knew that with the same surety that I knew my mother loved me, that Berin was alive and that, today, the price of peace would be blood.
My mother passed me her shield, painted with a leaping lynx, and I took it without question. Then she reached out, cupped the back of my head, and kissed my forehead.
I closed my eyes, bowed to her touch, and grasped my weapons with hands that did not shake.