It’s sunset when Nassun decides to change the world.

She has spent the day curled beside Schaffa, using his still-ash-flecked old clothes as a pillow, breathing his scent and wishing for things that cannot be. Finally she gets up and very carefully feeds him the last of the vegetable broth she has made. She gives him a lot of water, too. Even after she has dragged the Moon into a collision course, it will take a few days for the Earth to be smashed apart. She doesn’t want Schaffa to suffer too much in that time, since she will no longer be around to help him.

(She is such a good child, at her core. Don’t be angry with her. She can only make choices within the limited set of her experiences, and it isn’t her fault that so many of those experiences have been terrible. Marvel, instead, at how easily she loves, how thoroughly. Love enough to change the world! She learned how to love like this from somewhere.)

As she uses a cloth to dab spilled broth from his lips, she reaches up and begins activation of her network. Here at Corepoint, she can do it without even the onyx, but start-up will take time.

“‘A commandment is set in stone,’” she tells Schaffa solemnly. His eyes are open again. He blinks, perhaps in reaction to the sound, though she knows this is meaningless.

The words are a thing she read in the strange handwritten book – the one that told her how to use a smaller network of obelisks as a “spare key” to subvert the onyx’s power over the Gate. The man who wrote the book was probably crazy, as evidenced by the fact that he apparently loved Nassun’s mother long ago. That is strange and wrong and yet somehow unsurprising. As big as the world is, Nassun is beginning to realize it’s also really small. The same stories, cycling around and around. The same endings, again and again. The same mistakes eternally repeated.

“Some things are too broken to be fixed, Schaffa.” Inexplicably, she thinks of Jija. The ache of this silences her for a moment. “I… I can’t make anything better. But I can at least make sure the bad things stop.” With that, she gets up to leave.

She does not see Schaffa’s face turn, like the Moon sliding into shadow, to watch her go.

***

It’s dawn when you decide to change the world. You’re still asleep in the bedroll that Lerna has brought up to the roof of the yellow-X building. You and he spent the night under the water tower, listening to the ever-present rumble of the Rifting and the snap of occasional lightning strikes. Probably should’ve had sex there one more time, but you didn’t think about it and he didn’t suggest, so oh well. That’s gotten you into enough trouble, anyway. Had no business relying solely on middle age and starvation for birth control.

He watches as you stand and stretch, and it’s a thing you’ll never fully understand or be comfortable with – the admiration in his gaze. He makes you feel like a better person than you are. And this is what makes you regret, again, endlessly, that you cannot stay to see his child born. Lerna’s steady, relentless goodness is a thing that should be preserved in the world, somehow. Alas.

You haven’t earned his admiration. But you intend to.

You head downstairs and stop. Last night, in addition to Lerna, you let Tonkee and Hjarka and Ykka know that it was time – that you would leave after breakfast in the morning. You left the question of whether they could come with you or not open and unstated. If they volunteer, it’s one thing, but you’re not going to ask. What kind of person would you be to pressure them into that kind of danger? They’ll be in enough, just like the rest of humanity, as it is.

You weren’t counting on finding all of them in the lobby of the yellow-X building as you come downstairs. All of them busy tucking away bedrolls and yawning and frying sausages and complaining loudly about somebody drinking up all the rusting tea. Hoa is there, perfectly positioned to see you come downstairs. There’s a rather smug smile on his stone lips, but that doesn’t surprise you. Danel and Maxixe do, the former up and doing some kind of martial exercises in a corner while the latter dices another potato for the pan – and yes, he’s built a campfire in the building lobby, because that’s what commless people do sometimes. Some of the windows are broken; the smoke’s going out through them. Hjarka and Tonkee are a surprise, too; they’re still asleep, curled together in a pile of furs.

But you really, really weren’t expecting Ykka to walk in, with an air of something like her old brashness and with her eye makeup perfectly applied, once again. She looks around the lobby, taking you in along with the rest, and puts her hands on her hips. “Catch you rusters at a bad time?”

“You can’t,” you blurt. It’s hard to talk. Knot in your throat. Ykka especially; you stare at her. Evil Earth, she’s wearing her fur vest again. You thought she’d left that behind in Castrima-under. “You can’t come. The comm.”

Ykka rolls her dramatically decorated eyes. “Well, fuck you, too. But you’re right, I’m not coming. Just here to see you off, along with whoever goes with you. I really should be having you killed, since you’re effectively ashing yourselves out, but I suppose we can overlook that little technicality for now.”

“What, we can’t come back?” Tonkee blurts. She’s sitting up finally, though at a distinct lean, and with her hair badly askew. Hjarka, muttering imprecations at being awake, has gotten up and handed her a plate of potato hash from the pile Maxixe has already cooked.

Ykka eyes her. “You? You’re traveling to an enormous, perfectly preserved obelisk-builder ruin. I’ll never see you again. But sure, I suppose you could come back, if Hjarka manages to drag you to your senses. I need her, at least.”

Maxixe yawns loudly enough to draw everyone’s attention. He’s naked, which lets you see that he’s looking better at last – still nearly skeletal, but that’s half the comm these days. He’s coughing less, though, and his hair’s starting to grow fuller, although so far it’s only at that hilarious bottlebrush stage before ashblow hair develops enough weight to flop decently. It’s the first time you’ve seen his leg-stumps unclothed, and you belatedly realize the scars are far too neat to have been done by some commless raider with a hacksaw. Well, that’s his story to tell. You say to him, “Don’t be stupid.”

Maxixe looks mildly annoyed. “I’m not going, no. But I could be.”

“No, you rusting couldn’t,” Ykka snaps. “I already told you, we need a Fulcrum rogga here.”

He sighs. “Fine. But no reason I can’t at least see you off. Now stop asking questions and come get some food.” He reaches for his clothes and starts to pull them on. You obediently go over to the fire to eat something. No morning sickness yet; that’s a bit of luck.

As you eat, you watch everyone and find yourself overwhelmed, and also a little frustrated. Of course it’s touching that they’ve come like this to say goodbye. You’re glad of it; you can’t even pretend otherwise. When have you ever left a place this way – openly, nonviolently, amid laughter? It feels… you don’t know how it feels. Good? You don’t know what to do with that.

You hope more of them decide to stay behind, though. As it is, Hoa’s going to be hauling a rusting caravan through the earth.

But when you eye Danel, you blink in surprise. She’s cut her hair again; really doesn’t seem to like it long. Fresh shaving on the sides, and… black tint, on her lips. Earth knows where she found it, or maybe she made it herself out of charcoal and fat. But it’s suddenly hard to see her as the Strongback general she was. Wasn’t. It changes things, somehow, to understand that you go to face a fate that an Equatorial lorist wants to record for posterity. Now it’s not just a caravan. It’s a rusting quest.

The thought pulls a snort-laugh out of you, and everyone pauses in what they’re doing to stare. “Nothing,” you say, waving a hand and setting the empty plate aside. “Just… shit. Come on, then, whoever’s coming.”

Someone’s brought Lerna his pack, which he dons quietly, watching you. Tonkee curses and starts rushing to get herself together, while Hjarka patiently helps. Danel uses a rag to mop sweat from her face.

You go over to Hoa, who has shaped his expression into one of wry amusement, and stand beside him to sigh at the mess. “Can you bring this many?”

“As long as they remain in contact with me or someone who’s touching me, yes.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Weren’t you?”

You look at him, but then Tonkee – still chewing something and shouldering her pack with her good arm – grabs his upraised hand, though she pauses to blatantly stare at it in fascination. The moment passes.

“So how’s this supposed to work?” Ykka paces the room, watching everyone and folding her arms. She’s noticeably more restless than usual. “You get there, grab the Moon, shove it into position, and then what? Will we see any sign of the change?”

“The Rifting will go cold,” you say. “That won’t change much in the short term because there’s too much ash in the air already. This Season will have to play itself out, and it’s going to be bad no matter what. The Moon might even make things worse.” You can sess it pulling on the world already; yeah, you’re pretty sure it’ll make things worse. Ykka nods, though. She can sess it, too.

But there’s a long-term loose end that you haven’t been able to figure out yourself. “If I can do it, though, restore the Moon…” You shrug helplessly and look at Hoa.

“It opens room for negotiation,” he says in his hollow voice. Everyone pauses to stare at him. By the flinches, you can tell who’s used to stone eaters and who isn’t. “And perhaps, a truce.”

Ykka grimaces. “‘Perhaps’? So we’ve gone through all this and you can’t even be sure it will stop the Seasons? Evil Earth.”

“No,” you admit. “But it will stop this Season.” That much you’re sure of. That much, alone, is worth it.

Ykka subsides, but she keeps muttering to herself now and again. This is how you know she wants to go, too – but you’re very glad she seems to have talked herself out of it. Castrima needs her. You need to know that Castrima will be here after you’re gone.

Finally everyone is ready. You take Hoa’s right hand with your left. You’ve got no other arm to spare for Lerna, so he wraps an arm around your waist; when you glance at him he nods, steady, determined. On Hoa’s other side are Tonkee and Hjarka and Danel, chain-linked hand to hand.

“This is going to blow, isn’t it?” Hjarka asks. She alone looks nervous, of the set. Danel’s radiating calm, at peace with herself at last. Tonkee’s so excited she can’t stop grinning. Lerna’s just leaning on you, rock-steady the way he always is.

“Probably!” Tonkee says, bouncing a little.

“This seems like a spectacularly bad idea,” Ykka says. She’s leaned against a wall of the room, arms folded, watching the group assemble. “Essie’s got to go, I mean, but the rest of you…” She shakes her head.

“Would you be coming, if you weren’t headwoman?” Lerna asks. It’s quiet. He always drops his biggest rocks like that, quietly and out of nowhere.

She scowls and glares at him. Then throws you a look that’s wary and maybe a little embarrassed, before she sighs and pushes away from the wall. You saw, though. The lump is back in your throat.

“Hey,” you say, before she can flee. “Yeek.”

She glares at you. “I hate that rusting nickname.”

You ignore this. “You told me a while back that you had a stash of seredis. We were supposed to get drunk after I beat the Rennanis army. Remember?”

Ykka blinks, and then a slow smile spreads across her face. “You were in a coma or something. I drank it all myself.”

You glare at her, surprised to find yourself honestly annoyed. She laughs in your face. So much for tender farewells.

But… well. It feels good anyway.

“Close your eyes,” Hoa says.

“He’s not joking,” you add, in warning. You keep yours open, though, as the world goes dark and strange. You feel no fear. You are not alone.

***

It’s nighttime. Nassun stands on what she thinks of as Corepoint’s town green. It isn’t; a city built before the Seasons would have no need of such a thing. It’s just a place near the enormous hole that is Corepoint’s heart. Around the hole are strangely slanted buildings, like the pylons she saw in Syl Anagist – but these ones are huge, stories high and a block wide apiece. She’s learned that when she gets too near these buildings, which don’t have any doors or windows that she can see, it sets off warnings composed of bright red words and symbols, several feet high apiece, which blaze in the air over the city. Worse are the low, blatting alarm-sounds that echo through the streets – not loud, but insistent, and they make her teeth feel loose and itchy.

(She’s looked into the hole, despite all this. It’s enormous compared to the one that was in the underground city – many times that one’s circumference, so big that it would take her an hour or more to walk all the way around it. Yet for all its grandeur, despite the evidence it offers of feats of geneering long lost to humankind, Nassun cannot bring herself to be impressed by it. The hole feeds no one, provides no shelter against ash or assault. It doesn’t even scare her – though that is meaningless. After her journey through the underground city and the core of the world, after losing Schaffa, nothing will ever frighten her again.)

The spot Nassun has found is a perfectly circular patch of ground just beyond the hole’s warning radius. It’s odd ground, slightly soft to the touch and springy beneath her feet, not like any material she’s ever touched before – but here in Corepoint, that sort of experience isn’t rare. There’s no actual soil in this circle, aside from a bit of windblown stuff piled up along the edges of the circle; a few seagrasses have taken root here, and there’s the desiccated, spindly trunk of a dead sapling that did its best before being blown over, many years before. That’s all.

A number of stone eaters have appeared around the circle, she notes as she takes up position at its center. No sign of Steel, but there must be twenty or thirty others on street corners or in the street, sitting on stairs, leaning against walls. A few turned their heads or eyes to watch as she passed, but she ignored and ignores them. Perhaps they have come to witness history. Maybe some are like Steel, hoping for an end to their horrifyingly endless existence; maybe the ones who’ve helped her have done so because of that. Maybe they’re just bored. Not the most exciting town, Corepoint.

Nothing matters, right now, except the night sky. And in that sky, the Moon is beginning to rise.

It sits low on the horizon, seemingly bigger than it was the night before and made oblong by the distortions of the air. White and strange and round, it hardly seems worth all the pain and struggle that its absence has symbolized for the world. And yet – it pulls on everything within Nassun that is orogene. It pulls on the whole world.

Time for the world, then, to pull back.

Nassun shuts her eyes. They are all around Corepoint now – the spare key, three by three by three, twenty-seven obelisks that she has spent the past few weeks touching and taming and coaxing into orbit nearby. She can still feel the sapphire, but it is far away and not in sight; she can’t use it, and it would take months to arrive if she summoned it. These others will do, though. It’s strange to see so many of the things in the sky all together, after a lifetime with only one – or no – obelisks in sight at any given time. Stranger to feel them all connected to her, thrumming at slightly different speeds, their wells of power each at slightly different depths. The darker ones are deeper. No telling why, but it is a noticeable difference.

Nassun lifts her hands, splaying her fingers in unconscious imitation of her mother. Very carefully, she begins connecting each of the twenty-seven obelisks – one to one, then those to two apiece, then others. She is compelled by lines of sight, lines of force, strange instincts that demand mathematical relationships she does not understand. Each obelisk supports the forming lattice, rather than disrupting or canceling it out. It’s like putting horses in harness, sort of, when you’ve got one with a naturally quick gait and another that plods along. This is yoking twenty-seven high-strung racehorses… but the principle is the same.

And it is beautiful, the moment when all of the flows stop fighting Nassun and shift into lockstep. She inhales, smiling in spite of herself, feeling pleasure again for the first time since Father Earth destroyed Schaffa. It should be scary, shouldn’t it? So much power. It isn’t, though. She falls up through torrents of gray or green or mauve or clear white; parts of her that she has never known the words for move and adjust in a dance of twenty-seven parts. Oh, it is so lovely! If only Schaffa could —

Wait.

Something makes the hairs on the back of Nassun’s neck prickle. Dangerous to lose concentration now, so she forces herself to methodically touch each obelisk in turn and soothe it back into something like an idle state. They mostly tolerate this, though the opal bucks a little and she has to force it into quiescence. When all are finally stable, though, she cautiously opens her eyes and looks around.

At first the black-and-white moonlit streets are as before: silent and still, despite the crowd of stone eaters that has assembled to watch her work. (In Corepoint, it is easy to feel alone in a crowd.) Then she spies… movement. Something – someone – lurching from one shadow to another.

Startled, Nassun takes a step toward that moving figure. “H-hello?”

The figure staggers toward some kind of small pillar whose purpose Nassun has never understood, though there seems to be one on every other corner of the city. Nearly falling as it grabs the pillar for support, the figure twitches and looks up at the sound of her voice. Icewhite eyes spear at Nassun from the shadows.

Schaffa.

Awake. Moving.

Without thinking, Nassun begins to trot, then run after him. Her heart is in her mouth. She’s heard people say things like that and thought nothing of it before – just poetry, just silliness – but now she knows what it means as her mouth goes so dry that she can feel her own pulse through her tongue. Her eyes blur. “Schaffa!”

He’s thirty, forty feet away, near one of the pylon buildings that surround Corepoint’s hole. Close enough to recognize her – and yet there is nothing in his gaze that seems to know who she is. Quite the contrary; he blinks, and then smiles in a slow, cold way that makes her stumble to a halt in deep, skin-twitching unease.

“Sch-Schaffa?” she says again. Her voice is very thin in the silence.

“Hello, little enemy,”Schaffa says, in a voice that reverberates through Corepoint and the mountain below it and the ocean for a thousand miles around.

Then he turns to the pylon building behind him. A high, narrow opening appears at his touch; he stagger-stumbles through. It vanishes behind him in an instant.

Nassun screams and flings herself after him.

***

You are deep in the lower mantle, halfway through the world, when you sense the activation of part of the Obelisk Gate.

Or so your mind interprets it, at first, until you master your alarm and reach forth to confirm what you’re feeling. It’s hard. Here in the deep earth, there is so much magic; trying to sift through it for whatever is happening on the surface is like trying to hear a distant creek over a hundred thundering waterfalls nearby. It’s worse the deeper Hoa takes you, until finally you have to “close your eyes” and stop perceiving magic entirely – because there’s something immense nearby that is “blinding” you with its brightness. It is as if there’s a sun underground, silver-white and swirling with an unbelievably intense concentration of magic… but you can also feel Hoa skirting wide around this sun, even though that means the overall journey has taken longer than absolutely necessary. You’ll have to ask him why later.

You can’t see much besides churning red here in the depths. How fast are you going? Without referents, it’s impossible to tell. Hoa is an intermittent shadow in the redness beside you, shimmering on the rare occasions when you catch a glimpse of him – but then, you’re probably shimmering, too. He isn’t pushing through the earth, but becoming part of it and transiting the particles of himself around its particles, becoming a waveform that you can sess like sound or light or heat. Disturbing enough if you don’t think about the fact that he’s doing it to you, too. You can’t feel anything like this, except a hint of pressure from his hand, and the suggestion of tension from Lerna’s arm. There’s no sound other than an omnipresent rumble, no smell of sulfur or anything else. You don’t know if you’re breathing, and you don’t feel the need for air.

But the distant awakening of multiple obelisks panics you, nearly makes you try to pull away from Hoa so you can concentrate, even though – stupid – that would not just kill you but annihilate you, turning you to ash and then vaporizing the ashes and then setting the vapor on fire. “Nassun!” you cry, or try to cry, but words are lost in the deep roar. There is no one to hear your cry.

Except. There is.

Something shifts around you – or, you realize belatedly, you are shifting relative to it. It isn’t something you think about until it happens again, and you think you feel Lerna jerk against your side. Then it finally occurs to you to look at the silver wisps of your companions’ bodies, which at least you can make out against the dense red material of the earth around you.

There is a human-shaped blaze linked to your hand, heavy as a mountain upon your perception as it forges swiftly upward: Hoa. He is moving oddly, however, periodically shifting to one side or another; that’s what you perceived before. Beside Hoa are faint shimmers, delicately etched. One has a palpable interruption in the silverflow of one arm; that has to be Tonkee. You cannot distinguish Hjarka from Danel because you can’t see hair or relative size or anything so detailed as teeth. Only knowing that Lerna is closer to you makes him distinct. And beyond Lerna —

Something flashes past, mountain-heavy and magic-bright, human shaped but not human. And not Hoa.

Another flash. Something streaks on a perpendicular trajectory, intercepting and driving it away, but there are more. Hoa lunges aside again, and a new flash misses. But it’s close. Lerna seems to twitch beside you. Can he see it, too?

You really hope not, because now you understand what’s happening. Hoa is dodging. And you can do nothing, nothing, but trust Hoa to keep you safe from the stone eaters who are trying to rip you away from him.

No. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re this afraid – when you’ve been merged into the high-pressure semisolid rock of the planet’s mantle, and when everyone you love will die in slow horror should you fail in your quest, and when you’re surrounded by currents of magic that are so much more powerful than anything you’ve ever seen, and when you’re under attack by murderous stone eaters. But. You did not spend your childhood learning to perform under the threat of death for nothing.

Mere threads of magic aren’t enough to stop stone eaters. The earth’s winding rivers of the stuff are all you have to hand. Reaching for one feels like plunging your awareness into a lava tube, and for an instant you’re distracted by wondering whether this is what it will feel like if Hoa lets go – a flash of terrible heat and pain, and then oblivion. You push that aside. A memory comes to you. Meov. Driving a wedge of ice into a cliff face, shearing it off at just the precise time to smash a ship full of Guardians —

You shape your will into a wedge and splint it into the nearest magic torrent, a great crackling, wending coil of a thing. It works, but your aim is wild; magic sprays everywhere, and Hoa must dodge again, this time from your efforts. Fuck! You try again, concentrating this time, letting your thoughts loosen. You’re already in the earth, red and hot instead of dark and warm, but how is this any different? You’re still in the crucible, just literally instead of a symbolic mosaic. You need to drive your wedge in here and aim it there as another flash of person-shaped mountain starts to pace you and darts in for the kill —

— just as you shunt a stream of purest, brightest silver directly into its path. It doesn’t hit. You’re still not good at aiming. You glimpse the stone eater stop short, however, as the magic all but blazes past its nose. Here in the deep red it is impossible to see expressions, but you imagine that the creature is surprised, maybe even alarmed. You hope it is.

“Next one’s for you, bastard cannibalson ruster!” you try to shout, but you are no longer in a purely physical space. Sound and air are extraneous. You imagine the words, then, and hope the ruster in question gets the gist.

You do not imagine, however, the fact that the flitting, fleeting glimpses of stone eaters stop. Hoa keeps going, but there are no more attacks. Well, then. It’s good to be of some use.

He’s rising faster now that he is unimpeded. Your sessapinae start to perceive depth as a rational, calculable thing again. The deep red turns deep brown, then cools to deep black. And then —

Air. Light. Solidity. You become real again, flesh and blood unadulterated by other matter, upon a road between strange, smooth buildings, tall as obelisks beneath a night sky. The return of sensation is stunning, profound – but nothing compared to the absolute shock you feel when you look up.

Because you have spent the past two years beneath a sky of variable ash, and until now you had no idea that the Moon had come.

It is an icewhite eye against the black, an ill omen writ vast and terrifying upon the tapestry of stars. You can see what it is, even without sessing it – a giant round rock. Deceptively small against the expanse of the sky; you think you’ll need the obelisks to sess it completely, but you can see on its surface things that might be craters. You’ve traveled across craters. The craters on the Moon are big enough to see from here, big enough to take years to cross on foot, and that tells you the whole thing is incomprehensibly huge.

“Fuck,” says Danel, which makes you drag your eyes from the sky. She’s on her hands and knees, as if clinging to the ground and grateful for its solidity. Maybe she’s regretting her choice of duty now, or maybe she just didn’t understand before this that being a lorist could be fully as awful and dangerous as being a general. “Fuck! Fuck.”

“That’s it, then.” Tonkee. She’s staring up at the Moon, too.

You turn to see Lerna’s reaction, and —

Lerna. The space beside you, where he held on to you, is empty.

“I didn’t expect the attack,” Hoa says. You can’t turn to him. Can’t turn away from the empty space where Lerna should be. Hoa’s voice is its usual inflectionless, hollow tenor – but is he shaken? Shocked? You don’t want him to be shocked. You want him to say something like, But of course I was able to keep everyone safe, Lerna is just over there, don’t worry.

Instead he says, “I should have guessed. The factions that don’t want peace…” He trails off. Falls silent, just like an ordinary person who is at a loss for words.

“Lerna.” That last jolt. The one you thought was a near miss.

It isn’t what should have happened. You’re the one nobly sacrificing yourself for the future of the world. He was supposed to survive this.

“What about him?” That’s Hjarka, who’s standing but bent over with hands on her knees, as if she’s thinking about throwing up. Tonkee’s rubbing the small of her back as if this will somehow help, but Hjarka’s attention is on you. She’s frowning, and you see the moment when she realizes what you’re talking about, and her expression melts into shock.

You feel… numb. Not the usual non-feeling that comes of you being halfway to a statue. This is different. This is —

“I didn’t even think I loved him,” you murmur.

Hjarka winces, but then makes herself straighten and take a deep breath. “All of us knew this might be a one-way trip.”

You shake your head in… confusion? “He’s… he was… so much younger than me.” You expected him to outlive you. That’s how it was supposed to work. You’re supposed to die feeling guilty for leaving him behind and killing his unborn child. He’s supposed to —

“Hey.” Hjarka’s voice sharpens. You know that look on her face now, though. It’s a Leadership look, or one reminding you that you are the leader here. But that’s right, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s running this little expedition. You’re the one who didn’t make Lerna, or any of them, stay home. You’re the one who didn’t have the courage to do this by yourself the way you damn well should have, if you really didn’t want them hurt. Lerna’s death is on you, not Hoa.

You look away from them and involuntarily reach for the stump of your arm. This is irrational. You’re expecting battle wounds, scorch marks, something else to show that Lerna was lost. But it’s fine. You’re fine. You look back at the others; they’re all fine, too, because battles with stone eaters aren’t things that anyone walks away from with mere flesh wounds.

“It’s prewar.” While you stand there bereft, Tonkee has half turned away from Hjarka, which is a problem because Hjarka’s currently leaning on her. Hjarka grumbles and hooks an arm around Tonkee’s neck to keep her in place. Tonkee doesn’t seem to notice, so wide are her eyes as she looks around. “Evil, eating Earth, look at this place. Completely intact! Not hidden at all, no defensive structuring or camouflage, but then not nearly enough green space to make this place self-sufficient…” She blinks. “They would’ve needed regular supply shipments to survive. The place isn’t built for survival. That means it’s from before the Enemy!” She blinks. “The people here must have come from the Stillness. Maybe there’s some means of transportation around here that we haven’t seen yet.” She subsides into thought, muttering to herself as she crouches to finger the substance of the ground.

You don’t care. But you don’t have time to mourn Lerna or hate yourself, not now. Hjarka’s right. You have a job to do.

And you’ve seen the other things in the sky besides the Moon – the dozens of obelisks that hover so close, so low, their energy pent and not a single one of them acknowledging your touch when you reach for them. They aren’t yours. But although they’ve been primed and readied, yoked to one another in a way that you immediately recognize as Bad News, they’re not doing anything. Something’s put them on hold.

Focus. You clear your throat. “Hoa, where is she?”

When you glance at him, you see he’s adopted a new stance: expression blank, body facing slightly south and east. You follow his gaze, and see something that at first awes you: a bank of buildings, six or seven stories high that you can see, wedge-shaped and blank of feature. It’s easy to tell that they form a ring, and it’s easy to guess what’s at the heart of that ring, even though you can’t see it because of the angle of the buildings. Alabaster told you, though, didn’t he? The city exists to contain the hole.

Your throat locks your breath.

“No,” Hoa says. Okay. You make yourself breathe. She’s not in the hole.

“Where, then?”

Hoa turns to look at you. He does this slowly. His eyes are wide. “Essun… she’s gone into Warrant.”

***

As Corepoint above, so Warrant below.

Nassun runs through obsidian-carved corridors, close and low ceilinged and claustrophobic. It’s warm down here – not oppressively so, but the warmth is close and omnipresent. The warmth of the volcano, radiating up through the old stone from its heart. She can sess echoes of what was done to create this place, because it was orogeny, not magic, though a more precise and powerful orogeny than anything she’s ever seen. She doesn’t care about any of that, though. She needs to find Schaffa.

The corridors are empty, lit above by more of the strange rectangular lights that she saw in the underground city. Nothing else about this place looks like that place. The underground city felt leisurely in its design. There are hints of beauty in the way the station was built that suggest it was developed gradually, piece by piece, with time for contemplation between each phase of construction. Warrant is dark, utilitarian. As Nassun runs down sloping ramps, past conference rooms, classrooms, mess halls, lounges, she sees that all of them are empty. This facility’s corridors were beaten and clawed out of the shield volcano over a period of days or weeks – hurriedly, though it isn’t clear why. Nassun can tell the hurried nature of the place, somehow, to her own amazement. Fear has soaked into the walls.

But none of that matters. Schaffa is here, somewhere. Schaffa, who’s barely moved for weeks and yet is now somehow running, his body driven by something other than his own mind. Nassun tracks the silver of him, amazed that he’s managed to get so far in the moments that it took her to try to reopen the door he used and then, when it would not open for her, to use the silver to rip it open. But now he is up ahead and —

— so are others. She stops for a moment, panting, suddenly uneasy. Many of them. Dozens… no. Hundreds. And all are like Schaffa, their silver thinner, stranger, and also bolstered from elsewhere.

Guardians. This, then, is where they go during Seasons… but Schaffa has said they will kill him because he is “contaminated.”

They will not. She clenches her fists.

(It does not occur to her that they will kill her, too. Rather, it does, but They will not looms larger in the scope of her reality.)

When Nassun runs through a door at the top of a short stair, however, the close corridor suddenly opens out into a narrow but very long high-ceilinged chamber. It’s high enough that its ceiling is nearly lost in shadow, and its length stretches farther than her eye can see. And all along the walls of this chamber, in neat rows that stack up to the ceiling, there are dozens – hundreds – of strange, square holes. She is reminded of the chambers in a wasp’s nest, except the shape is wrong.

And in every one of them is a body.

Schaffa isn’t far ahead. Somewhere in this room, no longer moving forward. Nassun stops too, apprehension finally overwhelming her driving need to find Schaffa. The silence makes her skin prickle. She cannot help fear. The analogy of the wasp’s nest has stayed with her, and on some level she fears looking into the cells to find a grub staring back at her, perhaps atop the corpse of some creature (person) it has parasitized.

Inadvertently, she looks into the nearest cell. It’s barely wider than the shoulders of the man within, who seems to be asleep. He’s youngish, gray-haired, a Midlatter, wearing the burgundy uniform that Nassun has heard of but never seen. He’s breathing, although slowly. The woman in the cell beside him is wearing the same uniform, though she’s completely different in every other way: an Eastcoaster with completely black skin, hair that has been braided along her scalp in intricate patterns, and wine-dark lips. There is the slightest of smiles on those lips – as if, even in sleep, she cannot lose the habit of it.

Asleep, and more than asleep. Nassun follows the silver in the people in the cells, feeling out their nerves and circulation, and understands then that each is in something like a coma. She thinks maybe normal comas aren’t like this, though. None of these people seems to be hurt or sick. And within each Guardian, there is that shard of corestone – quiescent here, instead of angrily flaring like the one in Schaffa. Strangely, the silver threads in each Guardian are reaching out to the ones around them. Networking together. Bolstering each other, maybe? Charging one another to perform some sort of work, the way a network of obelisks does? She cannot guess.

(They were never meant to continue.)

But then, from the center of the vaulted room, perhaps a hundred feet farther in, she hears a sharp mechanical whirr.

She jumps and stumbles away from the cells, darting a quick, frightened look around to see if the noise has awakened any of the cells’ occupants. They don’t stir. She swallows and calls, softly, “Schaffa?”

Her answer, echoing through the high chamber, is a low, familiar groan.

Nassun stumbles forward, her breath catching. It’s him. Down the middle of the strange chamber stand contraptions, arranged in rows. Each consists of a chair attached to a complex arrangement of silver wire in loops and spars; she’s never seen anything like it. (You have.) Each contraption seems big enough to hold one person, but they’re all empty. And – Nassun leans closer for a better look, then shivers – each rests against a stone pillar that holds an obscenely complicated mechanism. It’s impossible not to notice the tiny scalpels, the delicate forcepslike attachments of varying sizes, and other instruments clearly meant for cutting and drilling…

Somewhere nearby, Schaffa groans. Nassun pushes the cutting things out of her thoughts and hurries down the row —

— to stop in front of the room’s lone occupied wire chair.

The chair has been adjusted somehow. Schaffa sits in it, but he is facedown, his body suspended by the wires, his chopped-off hair parting around his neck. The mechanism behind the chair has come alive, extending up and over his body in a way that feels predatory to her – but it is already retracting as she approaches. The bloodied instruments disappear into the mechanism; she hears more faint whirring sounds. Cleaning, maybe. One tiny, tweezer-like attachment remains, however, holding up a prize that still glistens, faintly, with Schaffa’s blood. A little metal shard, irregular and dark.

Hello, little enemy.

Schaffa isn’t moving. Nassun stares at his body, shaking. She cannot bring herself to shift her perception back to the silver threads, back to magic, to see if he is alive. The bloody wound high on the back of his neck has been neatly stitched, right over the other old scar that she has always wondered about. It’s still bleeding, but it’s clear the wound was inflicted quickly and sealed nearly as fast.

Like a child willing the monster under the bed to not exist, Nassun wills Schaffa’s back and sides to move.

They do, as he draws in a breath. “N-Nassun,” he croaks.

“Schaffa! Schaffa.” She flings herself to her knees and scooches forward to look at his face from underneath the wire contraption, heedless of the blood still dripping down the sides of his neck and face. His eyes, his beautiful white eyes, are half-open – and they are him this time! She sees that and bursts into tears herself. “Schaffa? Are you okay? Are you really okay?”

His speech is slow, slurred. Nassun will not think about why. “Nassun. I.” Even more slowly, his expression shifts, a seaquake in his brows sending a tsunami of slow realization across the rest. His eyes widen. “There’s. No pain.”

She touches his face. “The – the thing is out of you, Schaffa. That metal thing.”

He shuts his eyes and her belly clenches, but then the furrow vanishes from his brow. He smiles again – and for the first time since Nassun met him, there is nothing of tension or falsehood in it. He isn’t smiling to ease his pain or others’ fears. His mouth opens. She can see all his teeth, he’s laughing although weakly, he’s weeping, too, with relief and joy, and it is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. She cups his face, mindful of the wound on the back of his neck, and presses her forehead against his, shaking with his soft laughter. She loves him. She just loves him so much.

And because she is touching him, because she loves him, because she is so attuned to his needs and his pain and making him happy, her perception slips into the silver. She doesn’t mean for it to. She just wants to use her eyes to savor the sight of him looking back at her, and her hands to touch his skin, and her ears to hear his voice.

But she is orogene, and she can no longer shut off the sesuna than she can sight or sound or touch. Which is why her smile falters, and her joy vanishes, because the instant she sees how the network of threads within him is already beginning to fade, she can no longer deny that he is dying.

It’s slow. He could last a few weeks or months, perhaps as much as a year, with what’s left. But where every other living thing churns forth its own silver almost by accident, where it flows and stutters and gums up the works between cells, there is nothing between his cells but a trickle. What’s left in him mostly runs along his nervous system, and she can see a glaring, gaping emptiness at what used to be the core of his silver network, in his sessapinae. Without his corestone, as he warned her, he will not last long.

Schaffa’s eyes have drifted shut. He’s asleep, exhausted by pushing his weakened body through the streets. But he isn’t the one who did that, is he? Nassun gets to her feet, shaking, keeping her hands on Schaffa’s shoulders. His heavy head presses against her chest. She stares at the little metal shard bitterly, understanding at once why Father Earth did this to him.

It knows she means to bring the Moon down, and that this will create a cataclysm far worse than the Shattering. It wants to live. It knows Nassun loves Schaffa, and that until now she has seen destroying the world as the only way to give him peace. Now, however, it has remade Schaffa, offering him to Nassun as a kind of living ultimatum.

Now he is free, the Earth taunts by this wordless gesture. Now he can have peace without death. And if you want him to live, little enemy, there is only one way.

Steel never said it couldn’t be done, only that it shouldn’t. Maybe Steel is wrong. Maybe, as a stone eater, Schaffa won’t be alone and sad forever. Steel is mean and awful, which is why no one wants to be with him. But Schaffa is good and kind. Surely he will find someone else to love.

Especially if all the world is stone eaters, too.

Humanity, she decides, is a small price to pay for Schaffa’s future.

***

Hoa says that Nassun has gone underground, to Warrant where the Guardians lie, and the panic of this is sour in your mouth as you trot around the hole, looking for a way in. You don’t dare ask Hoa to simply transport you to her; Gray Man’s allies lurk everywhere now, and they will kill you as surely as they did Lerna. Allies of Hoa are present, too; you have a blurry memory of seeing two streaking mountains crash into one another, one driving the other off. But until this business with the Moon is settled, going into the Earth is too dangerous. All of the stone eaters are here, you sess; a thousand human-sized mountains in and underneath Corepoint, some of them watching you run through the streets looking for your daughter. All of their ancient factions and private battles will come to a head tonight, one way or another.

Hjarka and the others have followed you, though more slowly; they do not feel your panic. At last you spot one pylon building that’s been opened – cut open, it seems, as if with an enormous knife; three irregular slashes and then someone has made the door fall outward. It’s a foot thick. But beyond it is a wide, low-ceilinged corridor going down into darkness.

Someone’s climbing out of it, though, as you reach it and stumble to a halt.

“Nassun!” you blurt, because it’s her.

The girl framed by the doorway is taller than you remember by several inches. Her hair is longer now, braided back in two plaits that fall behind her shoulders. You barely recognize her. She stops short at the sight of you, a faint wrinkle of confusion between her brows, and you realize she’s having trouble recognizing you, too. Then realization comes, and she stares as if you are the last thing in the world she expected to see. Because you are.

“Hi, Mama,” Nassun says.