She briefly met Safi’s eyes, and there was that vicious smile again. “You can steal all the power you want,” Iseult called, striding to Safi’s side, “but your magic can’t touch a Hell-Bard.” Then, a flip of her hands and the Hell-Bards around her shot into guarding positions around Safi and Iseult. Six bodies to block Corlant.

Another flip and more Hell-Bards shoved out from the trees. They too encircled Safi and Iseult, more and more of them by the second. Row upon row, until Safi lost sight of Caden and Corlant. All she saw were forest-camouflaged uniforms and empty, controlled eyes.

She didn’t like those eyes. Didn’t like how her Truth-lens reacted to Iseult now, saying wrong, wrong, wrong. And suddenly, she remembered that Iseult had controlled her too. On the flying machine, Iseult had taken over her muscles and her eyes and it had been as wicked as Corlant, as foul as the cleaving lines that wormed over her hands.

Yet before she could plead with Iseult to find a different way, Corlant spoke. A frostbitten whisper that filled the entire clearing.

“Oh but my daughter,” he said, “I can hurt a Hell-Bard. I can hurt them very badly indeed.”

As one, the Hell-Bards collapsed to the snow. As one, black lines of the doom laid claim to their bodies, to their faces, to their eyes. And beside Corlant, Caden screamed.

“Do something,” Safi begged Iseult, but Iseult only shook her head and grappled at the air. As if reaching for Threads she could no longer see.

So Safi dropped her sword and grabbed for her belt. The tongue, protect the tongue. Her frozen fingers fumbled. Her brain tried to remember what Zander had told her to do. She couldn’t save them all, but she could at least try to reach Caden.

Yet as she twisted toward him, she found Iseult had grabbed the fallen sword and was now sprinting toward Corlant. No grace, no control, only erratic desperation like Safi had never seen her stoic Threadsister wear.

Corlant’s laughter came again. “Nice try, Dark-Giver.” He tossed out his hand. Wind hit her, a funnel to smash ribs and lift Iseult high. Then he turned his focus toward Safi. With long steps with spider-like legs over each fallen Hell-Bard, he walked. And as she moved, he killed them. A snap of fingers, a widening smile, and they stilled upon the snow-thick earth.

Safi could do nothing but watch. Her muscles were no longer her own.

“I told you it was useless,” he said. “Now I believe I will take back all these souls I worked so hard to claim.” He snapped again.

Pain shattered through Safi. A cold pain borne on knives made of ice—and with it was a laughter to fill her, to crush her, to end her. The snowy clearing faded. The doom closed in.