She was babbling. Taking a deep breath, she drew Moghedien behind her off the staircase. This was as high as it went.

This hall was empty. She went to where it met the crossing corridor, peeked. And there he was. A tall black-clad man, large, with wings of white in his dark hair, peering through the curving slots of one of the stone window-screens at something below. There was sweat and effort on his face, but he seemed to be smiling. A handsome face, as handsome as Galad’s, but she felt no quickening of her breath for this one.

Whatever he was staring at—Rand perhaps?—had his full attention, but Nynaeve gave him no chance to notice her. It might be Rand down there. She could not tell whether Rahvin was channeling or not. She filled the corridor around him with fire from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, pouring into it all of saidar she held, fire so hot the stone itself smoked. The heat made her flinch back.

Rahvin screamed in the middle of the flame—it was one flame—and staggered away from her, back to where the hallway became a columned walk. A heartbeat, less, while she still flinched, and he stood, inside the flame but surrounded by clear air. Every scrap of saidar she could channel was going into that inferno, but he held it at bay. She could see him through the fire; it gave everything a red cast, but she could see. Smoke rose from his charred coat. His face was a seared ruin, one eye milky white. But both eyes were malevolent as he turned them on her.

No emotion reached her along the a’dam’s leash, only leaden dullness. Nynaeve’s stomach fluttered. Moghedien had given up. Given up because death was there for them.

Fire thrust through the carved window-screens above Rand, fingers of it filling every hole, dancing toward the colonnade. As it did, the struggle within him ceased abruptly. He was himself so suddenly it was almost a shock. He had been drawing desperately at saidin, trying to hold onto some of it. Now it rushed into him, an avalanche of fire and ice that made his knees buckle, made the Void tremble with pain that shaved at it like a lathe.

And Rahvin stumbled backwards out onto the colonnade, face turned to something inside. Rahvin wreathed in fire, yet somehow standing as though untouched. If untouched now, it had not been so before. Only the size of the figure, the impossibility of it being anyone else, told Rand it was him. The Forsaken was a figure of char and cracked red flesh that would have strained any Healer to mend. The agony of it must have been overwhelming. Except that Rahvin would be inside the Void within that burned remnant of a man, wrapped in emptiness where the body’s pain was distant and saidin close at hand.