A hundred thousand lives and more, teeming throughout my body, expanding in my soul like rice absorbs water, rising until the pot threatened to overflow.

Too late, the abiku realized what I was doing. They screeched, filling the sky with their wrath, but all in vain. I was still a living, breathing human, and they could not touch me.

Once I had stolen every last story from the Warlord’s shrine, I broke contact with the spear, gasping with pain. I collapsed, too weak even to thrust my arms out and break my fall.

“Ye Eun,” I croaked, barely loud enough for her to hear me on the opposite bank. “It . . . it’s your turn now.”

Faintly, I sensed Ye Eun splashing through the lake, swimming to my aid on the island mound. She knelt at my side in her dripping clothes, Hwanghu flapping anxiously on her shoulder.

“You can save them,” I told her. “The Redemptors. All of them.”

“How?” she asked, voice breaking with sobs. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“It’s like you always said.” I smiled. “You’ve never needed me. Just like Songland never needed Aritsar. I had to undo what my ancestors did, but the song of the Redemptors was never mine to finish.” I gestured toward the plateau’s edge, where far below, droves of hollow-eyed children marched into battle. “You’re the hero of their story, Ye Eun,” I whispered. “This has always been your fight.”

Then I dropped my head, spent, and thrust my hand over the edge of the island. My fingers dangled in the water, and with my last ounce of strength . . . I released them. All hundred thousand lives’ worth of memories, surging into the lake with a gurgling roar.

Ye Eun stiffened with understanding, then rose to her feet, crying out Hwanghu’s name. The bird let out a jubilant shriek before plunging into the lake, disappearing into the amethyst depths. Then Ye Eun lifted her hands high above her head. The island shook as the entire lake rose into the air, water floating and twisting in a dripping mass until at last, beneath Ye Eun’s masterful control, it took the shape of a giant, broad-winged bird. Moving her arms with fluid grace, Ye Eun directed the bird down into the ravine of Redemptors.

“No!” screamed the abiku, but they could do nothing as the bird broke shape, dissolving into a flood of memory.

As I lay on the island, I could not see the Redemptors. But later, through Ye Eun’s memory, I would witness thousands of children gasping with joy and pain as their souls were restored. Released at last, their cloud of laughing shades flew to Egungun’s Parade, letting the prison-like cages of their bodies crumble to dust. Outside Ebujo City, the Army of Twelve Realms would watch in confusion as their undying adversaries dropped one by one, bodies washed away by a cleansing river of amethyst.

When Hwanghu returned and Ye Eun knelt by my side again, she was grinning and laughing, eyes as bright and childlike as the day I’d first met her. “It’s over,” she said. “I did it, Lady Empress. They’re free . . . we all are.”