Her nose wiggled, skin stretching with cold. All she had wanted these past weeks was more power. All she needed right now was more power, and it rested before her. Yet something pricked at the back of her mind. Not her conscience, but her logic. As if there might still be one nail missing.

Thunder rolled from Corlant’s storm, audible even in the Dreaming. So without another thought, Iseult grabbed the first stone’s Threads and chomped down. Hard. And as her teeth cut in, she felt no resistance. No fiery pain like cleaving a person, no frozen ice like hurting a Hell-Bard.

These were ocean shallows on a hot day, tender and soothing. Welcoming and warm. Sheer pleasure to touch. Then the power washed over Iseult, a wave of strength to buoy her toward some nearby shore she hadn’t known she’d been swimming toward. Her chest swelled with a feeling she didn’t recognize. Her muscles and blood relaxed.

She had never felt so good in her entire life. It was as if there was nowhere else to be. As if past, present, and future all rested inside this moment and these Threads.

So content was she, she almost missed the chanting, cascading upward, carried on currents of power directly from the stones. Finally, they seemed to say, swelling in Iseult’s veins and in her eardrums. Finally, finally we are saved.

“What are you?” Iseult tried to ask, but the Threads had no answer. The stones had no real voice. All they could say was Finally, finally we are saved. Then they rushed against the Windwitch souls, not simply swallowing them but rubbing them away. Smoothing them down like waves to a stone.

And for a fraction of a moment, the clouds parted—in the Dreaming and in life. Both sun and moon beamed down, sharpening the endless gray and revealing faces within the Threads. They smiled at Iseult, as familiar as her own pulse even though they were unknown.

Use us well, they seemed to sing. Then the last of the Threads, the last of these lost and forgotten dark-givers, fused into Iseult’s being. A vast piece of her soul she’d never known she was missing.

Ah. So that was the nail she’d lacked. That was why Corlant wanted these stones and why he’d kept Iseult so near. That was why no Cahr Awen had been seen in so many years and why Aeduan had declared the Water Well only half healed. Corlant had killed and bound their souls—many of them only children—leaving each reincarnation weaker. Smaller.

Until now.

Iseult smiled at the altar. At Safi’s stone still shining. She would release those Threads too, let them flow into the light-bringer. Then she would leave the Dreaming and use her new power, ancient as the ruins around her, keen as a blade honed by moonlight.