And so we come to the end in the same place we started, in the desert that has no name, an arena where time has no meaning, a place where a story has been told. It hangs between our two figures like the ribs of a divine beast, and in its wake they reckon with the path that they have chosen. The roles that they have played. The wind has fallen silent as though it too has been listening, and is now part of the narrative, woven into place.

The smaller of the two figures steps back from hir companion. “There,” zie says. “That is all you wanted to know. Were your questions answered? Are you satisfied?”

The tall man, thin as a rail, doesn’t answer immediately. He sinks onto the weathered nacelle of an old constructor mech, and sighs. Thoughts and events cloud his mind. “Yes to the first,” he says, “and no to the second.”

The smaller figure—who at one time called hirself an angel, a messenger, an emissary of the Larex Forge—merely tilts hir head, content to let hir companion take all the time he needs.

“For every question answered, I have five new ones in their place,” says the tall man. “I thought it strange, too coincidental, the way events played out. I even thought, from the cold of the cell on Rootsdown, that there might have been some truth to Misery’s claim she was being guided by divine insight, but that was mostly you—wasn’t it, Ruin? As well as other convergences. There’s a psychic bridge between the Archbishop and their sibling, isn’t there? One which she got sucked into.”

The creature called Ruin simply says: “If that is what you believe, then that is what you believe.”

Jericho shakes his head and laughs. “Ah. To think I imagined you would give me a straight answer.” Another moment of contemplation. “I wonder if Misery believed me about the telepathy, in the end? I tried to tell her, you know. But she’s a stubborn one, isn’t she? No one can convince her of a truth she doesn’t sell herself.”

“All that you’ve seen is all that I know,” Ruin says. “With that, do you think they did?”

“Hmm. In my hearts of hearts, I do think so.” He gazes into the distance and allows himself a brief flare of hope, which dims like a candle. “I suppose I’ll find out.”

“They are a difficult one,” Ruin says. “Hard to sway when their mind has been made up.”

“And yet you directed her very well.” Jericho hefts a disc of stone in his hand, the facsimile of a real object that forms the heart of an archangel mech that a woman once found on a stone-scrimmed asteroid. “You judge me for the lies I told, but why didn’t you tell her the truth? About what you are. About what you did to her.”