Sofika lands lightly on the dais in front of me and her robes and her hair settle around her. She is different. Her robes remade in a thousand colours, her skin glittering like crystal. Like countless captured stars. But not everything has changed. Her eyes are exactly as I remember them. Still that same mountain-sky blue.

She still smiles at the sight of me.

‘Sofi?’ I say, and I put my hand to the pendant at my neck, but before I can take hold of it Sofika reaches out and stops me. Her hand is warm against mine.

‘But I don’t know if this is real,’ I tell her.

‘Does it feel real?’ she asks.

I nod slowly.

‘Then that is all that matters,’ she says.

‘Opening the gate restored you,’ I say. ‘How can that be?’

Sofika’s eyes soften. ‘No, Ahri,’ she says, and she glances up at the widening void. ‘The gateway is just keeping me here.’

I flinch as if she’s hit me. ‘What are you saying?’

She looks back at me with tears in her mountain-sky eyes.

‘I’m saying that I can’t stay. That if I do, the gateway will grow until every­thing else is gone.’

I shake my head. ‘Then let it,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t care about everything else.’

She takes my face in her hands. ‘Yes, you do,’ Sofika says. ‘You are an inquisitor, Ahri. Long before we met you swore yourself to service. To defend those too weak and too frightened to defend themselves. And what do we say about vows?’

I know that she’s right, really. Sofika is always right. A tear traces from my eye as I give her my answer. Our answer.

‘That we do not break them.’

Sofika nods, and brushes her thumb across my cheek. Brushes the teardrop away.

‘I have to close the gate,’ she says. ‘But before I do, I want you to make me one last promise.’

My heart thumps slowly. Achingly.

‘What sort of promise?’

‘That you will keep looking, even when I am gone. That you won’t give up.’

I shake my head. ‘Sofi,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can,’ she says. ‘Please, Ahri.’

I blink the tears from my eyes. Force the words up from my heart.

‘I swear it,’ I tell her. ‘On my blades and my honour. I will go on looking. I won’t give up.’

She smiles again. ‘When your work is done, come and find me,’ she says. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

She kisses me, and for just a few heartbeats we are together again. Whole. Then she pulls away and glances up at the gateway as shards of light tumble down all around us. Her hair begins to drift, and so do her robes.

‘It looks like a good evening, Sofika,’ I say, my heart slowly breaking.