The glow becomes so intense that it turns to light, white light shafting through the holes in the cave’s roof. One beam shines down directly on me, and it feels warm. I can see a six-eyed face in it, a celeon maw and a wise smile, a paw reaching for me. To help me.

Never alone.

The light consumes my eyes—pure white. No matter which way I glance, all white, and the heat of a thousand suns bearing down on me, full to bursting, full to burning me alive. Or burning me undead, as it were.

I laugh at my own joke, here at the end of everything, and hold the First Root together tighter. Nothing can escape the light—the sound of my laugh scorched away instantly.

together, my hunger—the Glass Tree—sobs.

TOGETHER, the Bone Tree shrieks.

I look up. “Together.”

Never alone.

A wolf to end the world, Evlorasin said. And it was right. I’m here, at the end of the world.

And the beginning of a new one.

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

It is said that in the year 34EA, in the very middle of the summer season, a powerful earthquake rocked the Mist Continent as far as the Gold Shore in Avel and as high as the scholar-city of Breych. This cataclysmic earthquake, whilst capsizing much of the land surrounding it, heralded the rise of the King Without Crown, who went on to build the greatly peaceful and greatly influential Vetrisian Empire and who, by scheme or by purpose, has lost his name to the sands of time.

But in what scraps remain of the seminal history annals entitled Recordings and Observations from the War of Trees by Yorl Farspear-Ashwalker, there resides significantly more detail on the event, and it is as follows: in 34EA, on Highmoon day 17, a category three earthquake gripped the Mist Continent for exactly seven seconds, the epicenter of which was the beneather city-fortress of Pala Orias. When it subsided, there were approximately 142 aftershocks over the course of five days. Yet this ushered in a prominent era of peace for the major nations of Arathess, politically spearheaded by the newly formed Vetrisian Empire, and such a time of growth and prosperity as we now live in is referred to as “the Contentment.”

—Excerpt from Archsage Tessal Miroux’s dissertation, entitled A History of the War of Trees, or, an Attempt to Trace the Five-Hundred-Year-Old Origins of Arathess’s Great Change.

…

Lucien,

Try not to get too angry at the polymath who’s delivering this to you. I asked him to. He’s just the messenger. Shoot me, if you must. With an arrow of love. Ha-ha!