Karsa fought back an urge to scream, to unleash a warcry – as if such a challenge might force back the approaching darkness. He could make no sense of his own impulses, the torrential emotions threatening to engulf him. He stared at the carved likeness of his tall friend, the awareness in those unmarred features – Delum Thord before the Forkassal – the Forkrul Assail named Calm – had, on a mountain trail on a distant continent, so casually destroyed him.

Bairoth Gild spoke. ‘We failed you. Do you now ask that we walk with you?’

‘Delum Thord. Bairoth Gild.’ Karsa’s voice was hoarse. ‘It is I who failed you. I would be your warleader once more, if you would so permit me.’

A long moment of silence, then Bairoth replied, ‘At last, something to look forward to.’

Karsa almost fell to his knees, then. Grief, finally unleashed. At an end, his time of solitude. His penance was done. The journey to begin again. Dear Urugal, you shall witness. Oh, how you shall witness.

The hearth was little more than a handful of dying coals. After Felisin Younger left, Heboric sat motionless in the gloom. A short time passed, then he collected an armload of dried dung and rebuilt the fire. The night had chilled him – even the hands he could not see felt cold, like heavy pieces of ice at the end of his wrists.

The only journey that lay ahead of him was a short one, and he must walk it alone. He was blind, but in this no more blind than anyone else. Death’s precipice, whether first glimpsed from afar or discovered with the next step, was ever a surprise. A promise of the sudden cessation of questions, yet there were no answers waiting beyond. Cessation would have to be enough. And so it must be for every mortal. Even as we hunger for resolution. Or, even more delusional: redemption.

Now, after all this time, he was able to realize that every path eventually, inevitably dwindled into a single line of footsteps. There, leading to the very edge. Then ... gone. And so, he faced only what every mortal faced. The solitude of death, and oblivion’s final gift that was indifference.

The gods were welcome to wrangle over his soul, to snipe and snap over the paltry feast. And if mortals grieved for him, it was only because by dying he had shaken them from the illusion of unity that comforted life’s journey. One less on the path.

A scratch at the flap entrance, then the hide was drawn aside and someone entered.

‘Would you make of your home a pyre, Ghost Hands?’ The voice was L’oric’s.

The High Mage’s words startled Heboric into a sudden realization of the sweat running down his face, the gusts of fierce heat from the now raging hearth. Unthinking, he had fed the flames with piece after piece of dung.