I’m sorry, she said, as she continued to expand her awareness. I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t—I didn’t know you were alive. She knew now. Something lived here. She couldn’t sense any of the usual features she expected from living bodies—lungs, heart, limbs—but she did find a head, a face, something that might have been the remnants of a person, trapped here and suspended somehow in a tangle of stone and steel. Had it been a corpse, she wouldn’t have been surprised; there was only so much damage and shock a body could take.

It wasn’t a corpse. She felt the truncated nerves and bones where limbs might have once been: four, all absent. The scalp had been scarred, the skin abraded so badly the flesh had rippled beneath it; she found a mouth, and the stub of a tongue, evidence of teeth, where teeth might have once been. Only the eyes—two eyes—were whole.

There was no word here, no True Name. Just what remained of a person of indeterminate race. Human, Barrani, Aerian, Tha’alani; the jaw was wrong for Leontine.

“Kaylin?”

“I’ve—I’ve found a person. But...their blood shouldn’t be golden.”

“You’ve found a person?”

She nodded. “I don’t think I can heal them—they’re really badly injured—but I’m not sure fixing those injuries when they’re stuck in whatever this stonelike substance is will work.”

Spike clicked.

“It is not stone, Spike says.”

“What is it?”

“Carapace.”

“But—it’s not their shell. I’d swear it.”

“Carapace can be removed.”

She nodded, and reached for the external skin of the entrapped entity. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

She shook her head. It was never wise to act in anger, but she was beyond anger now, and well beyond wisdom. Whatever was entrapped here wasn’t human. The sides of this pillar weren’t stone; they were calcified scabs. She couldn’t tear them off—it would take days, equipment, and manpower, none of which she had. But she could heal the skin beneath them; could try to force the body into its ideal, healthy state.

That is not wise, Hope said. You are expending far too much power.

But the marks were now glowing, and as Hope’s words trailed off into unanswered silence, they began to rise from her skin, flat forms becoming three dimensional forms that grew in size. They were all True Words—this much she recognized, in part because she could hear them, and the language felt familiar—a tongue she felt she should know, or could. She’d tried to speak True Words, but had never succeeded without aid; she did not try now. But she trusted the marks of the Chosen; she trusted their power to heal anyone who wasn’t dead yet.

It had always been borrowed power.