CHAPTER 29

…So It Will End.

Fin burst from the forest, its whispers still clinging to his brain like cobwebs. Across from him, far past the great spire, the other side of the chasm had rent open, the very ground yielding to the void that grew like a slow rip in the fabric of reality. Above the hum and roar of the waterfalls, lightning crashed and thunder boomed from the windows of the building perched at the tip of the spire.

A battle was raging.

Fin’s heart squeezed. The Lost Sun was up there with Marrill and Ardent—they needed his help, fast. Not that he knew how to help, but he had to try.

There was no sign of a bridge, and no time to try to find one. Acting before he had the chance to talk himself out of it, Fin leapt off the cliff edge, yanking the strings in his jacket sleeves to fan out his skysails. He plummeted into the mist roiling up from the depths. Magic danced across his skin, sometimes literally. The corners of his eyes felt like they wanted to trade places and the inside of his nose smelled. The air tasted like cardamom and longing.

Just as the magic reached dangerous levels, the force of the rising mist caught him, buoying him upward. Fin let out a shout of joy as he rode the updraft around the spire. But any sense of relief was short-lived.

The higher he climbed, the more he realized just how close they were to utter destruction. A wedge of nothingness widened from the point of the Lost Sun’s path outward into the distance, as though the world was a cake and someone had taken out a massive slice.

Fin wheeled toward the highest windows of the towering building, snagging the sill of one with his fingertips. For a moment, he clung to the side of the spire, a thundering torrent of Stream water far beneath him, and beneath that, the seemingly endless drop of the chasm. He took a deep breath, steeling his resolve, then hauled himself up into the room.

He thought he’d been prepared for anything. But there was no way he could have anticipated the chaos that greeted him inside the great chamber. Before him, a sea of shadows seemed to be playing out a thousand different scenes from a thousand different times, all at once. Some of them were full and dark, like the ones he’d seen from the path in the forest, but others were half faded, as if bleached by the light of the Lost Sun. Still others spoke to partners who were no longer there at all.

Cautiously, Fin dropped from the window onto the stone floor by the base of a raised dais. At his feet, the shadow of a young man who looked suspiciously like Ardent crouched by a weeping younger Serth, jotting furiously as the Oracle spouted Prophecy. An equally young Annalessa hovered over them, trying to comfort the madman and shoo away Ardent all at once. A shredded pile of drawings lay nearby, edges already beginning to curl. Beyond that, in the center of the dais, a font bubbled Stream water, surrounded by ink-stained scraps of dream ribbon.

That’s where Marrill stood—beside the Font, her face white with terror. Next to Ardent, his chin sagging, looking broken. And past them, tall and sinister as he mounted the stairs, came Serth.

Not Serth, Fin reminded himself. The Lost Sun of Dzannin.

“What did I miss?” Fin murmured.

“Fin!” Marrill cried. They rushed toward each other, and she leapt at him to wrap him in a huge hug. “We’re in trouble,” she explained under her breath.

“Looks that way,” Fin said, gesturing to the shadows filling the chamber.

Marrill waved a hand. “Those are just echoes—old memories magicked into place.” He started to ask her to explain but she cut him off. “The plan didn’t work. Ardent couldn’t fix the Map.”

Fin scarcely believed what he was hearing. If Ardent had failed, then their last chance at stopping the end of Stream… was gone. It didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t be. Could it?

Marrill’s eyes met his, and his gut clenched as he recognized the defeat twisting her features. “What do we do?” she breathed.

Fin turned to Ardent. There had to be a backup plan. A secret solution to their problem that would come through at the last minute and save the Stream. But the wizard merely shook his head.

“I don’t know,” the old man murmured.

A hole opened up inside Fin, and his knees buckled. It wasn’t just Ardent who’d failed. It was all of them. After everything they’d done—after all the fighting and struggling, after finding his mother only to lose her again—they’d accomplished nothing. The Stream would still be destroyed.

Fin watched, heart pounding, as the Lost Sun climbed the last of the steps to the dais.

“Do not feel shame,” the Star of Destruction told them. His arms spread wide, as though they offered a welcoming embrace instead of a quick death. “You fought hard and well. But your task was never achievable. From the first time I shone my cleansing light into the raw madness of creation, this day was inevitable. For everything, and everyone, there must be an ending.”

To Fin’s surprise, Marrill jumped forward, hands clenched in fists. “No,” she shouted. “You’re wrong! The Pirate Stream doesn’t have to end. It doesn’t have to be this way!”

The Lost Sun’s head tilted to one side, his eyes focusing on her. Even from where they stood, Fin could see the dark star’s power pulsing under his skin, seeping through tiny, almost invisible cracks. As though it was too much energy for a human vessel to contain.

“It does have to be this way,” the Lost Sun told Marrill. “The chaos of the Stream yearns for my light to give it shape, to define it with certainty. I am drawn to its purest waters, the last concentrated vestige of raw, unchained possibility. They call to me to leave this vessel, to shine my light into them, and through them touch—and end—all possibilities at once. There is no way around it. It is destiny. It is certain.”

“Enough!” Ardent shouted. His expression had grown darker, hard and harsh like a weathered rock face. The temperature in the room dropped, sending chill bumps racing down Fin’s arms. Energy sparked along Ardent’s knuckles. “The Pirate Stream is not yours to destroy,” he growled. “And if you want to try, you’ll have to go through me to do it.”

The Lost Sun did not look at him or speak. He merely swatted a hand through the air, a gesture as gentle as a cat pawing at a loose piece of paper.

The impact, though, was enormous. Ardent was lifted from his feet and thrown across the room, smashing against the far wall so hard that it sent cracks screaming up the thick stone. He dropped limply to the ground, rolling over with a groan.

“Ardent!” Marrill’s screech seemed to come from far away. Fin stood paralyzed, struggling to absorb what was happening as she raced to their fallen mentor.

“That should have destroyed him,” the Lost Sun mused. “Your friend truly is powerful. Perhaps he would have made a better vessel than this one.…” His cold eyes looked down at Serth’s porcelain hands. “No matter, I leave this body soon enough.”

Fin scarcely heard him. Everything about the moment felt hollow and wrong. In his mind the same vision repeated over and over again: The moment blood had blossomed on the Crest’s fingers. The way she’d clutched at Fin as she’d fallen. The sound of her voice—so familiar and foreign at the same time.

The heaviness of her body in his arms when she’d died.

Down in some small, wounded place, part of him wondered if the Lost Sun was right. An end to everything meant an end to pain, too. It meant an end to all the anguish and all the suffering that people felt every single day. It meant that no one would see their mother die, that no Fade would be kept in a pen or told they were nothing.

The Lost Sun swept across the dais, pausing as the birth of the Prophecy replayed itself before him. Black tears poured from Serth’s eyes as he recounted the images implanted in his mind. The echo of Annalessa struggled against his frozen robes, trying to comfort him.

“The Lost Sun of Dzannin is found again.…” Serth muttered, clutching at Annalessa.

“The Dzane believed they could contain certainty in a prison of endless possibility,” the Lost Sun said, his voice coming through Serth’s lips. “But in endless possibility, there must, too, be the possibility of an end.”

“Help me with him,” Annalessa begged a young Ardent.

“I’m writing as fast as I can,” the echo of Ardent snapped.

“What he’s saying doesn’t matter! He needs our help,” she insisted.

The shadow of young Ardent didn’t even bother looking over at her. “What he’s saying is all that matters.”

“And as in the beginning…”

The Lost Sun reached out Serth’s hand to his former self. With hardly a touch, the echo vanished from existence.

“So it will end,” the Lost Sun finished, moving at last to stand before the Font of Meres. The glow of the Stream’s purest water lit his face, causing the black grooves etched along his skin to stand out in stark relief. His empty eyes grew wide and eager. His hand raised, held out toward the Font.

Fin forced down the pain, the despair. He looked back to Marrill, cradling Ardent gently. If the Lost Sun destroyed everything, she would never be hurt again.

But then, she would never smile again, either. An end to pain also meant an end to happiness. A world without fear was a world without laughter. A world without tears was a world without friends.

Fin shook his head, breaking the paralysis that had gripped him. He had to do something. He had to stop the Lost Sun. But how? There wasn’t any more time!

Serth’s raised hand began to crack and glow, the power of the Lost Sun gathering. The room hummed with energy. Light coalesced around his fingertips, preparing to pour forth. “They call to me even now,” the Lost Sun intoned. “The pure waters of the Stream, their chaos begs for order—I am drawn to them!”

Suddenly, that phrase triggered something in the back of Fin’s mind. Pure waters. The Lost Sun said it over and over; that’s why it had gotten stuck in Fin’s head. The pure waters of the Pirate Stream. They call to me… I am drawn to them. But that wasn’t the only time he’d heard that phrase recently.

Fin’s eyes widened, remembering the lines of the Dawn Wizard’s will, recited via Karnelius:

To the King of Salt and Sand, I leave a wish ungranted, an ambition unfulfilled, an army leaderless…

“…and an orb of gold,” Fin finished, “its waters as pure and true as the headwaters of the Stream itself!” He patted through his jacket frantically, finally pulling free the wish.

The Lost Sun’s hand glowed like white-hot metal, blasting away the shadows of Meres with its bright light. The power seemed to drain from Serth’s body, focusing into his palm.

Outside, the wind howled, the void growing feverishly as the Lost Sun approached the moment of his triumph. The end was here.

It was now or never.

Jumping to his feet, Fin thrust the orb into the air above his head. His heart pounded furiously. He had no idea if what he was about to do was incredibly brilliant or incredibly stupid.

If it was the latter, at least he wouldn’t be around long enough to regret it.

“Hey, Sunshine,” he called. “Catch!”

And then, with all of his might, he hurled the wish orb straight at the Lost Sun’s porcelain face.

The power barely contained in Serth’s body surged, flowing forth toward the Font of Meres. But the last bit of Serth’s humanity reacted out of reflex. Before it could strike him, the Lost Sun snatched the hurtling orb out of the air with his raised hand.

The Lost Sun shook and trembled. The blinding light rushed forward and faded, pulled in by the purified waters of the wish orb. The essence of the Lost Sun drained from Serth’s body, but never reached the Font of Meres. The wish orb captured it first, sucking it in greedily.

Serth’s body convulsed as the power bled from it. The silver faded from the wizard’s black robes. The stony face softened to pale flesh as the Star of Destruction left it.

“This prison… will not hold me.…” The Lost Sun’s voice was a thin rasp, draining away along with his power. “It cannot contain me.…”

Serth’s body dropped to its knees. The wish burned bright in his hand, thrust into the air as though it were the orb that held up the man.

“The end… can only be… delayed,” the Lost Sun gasped. “Soon I… will… be… free.…”

The last light drained from his lips, his eyes. Then the body that had once held the Lost Sun of Dzannin, the Star of Destruction, the Dzane’s most powerful creation, collapsed flat onto its face.