Green Threads that build spiraled upward, a thousand thousand blades of new life to replace the ash wasteland of the Hell-Bard Loom. And it was like the old rhyme Iseult had once sung to Aeduan:

Dead grass is awakened by fire,

Dead earth is awakened by rain.

One life will give way to another,

The cycle will begin again.

No more Threads that break. Only Threads that build, on and on for as far as Iseult could see, as far as she could feel. And with each Hell-Bard she healed, Corlant grew weaker.

Living, living, breath and living. Iseult didn’t stop until she saw only a realm of green. Threads that heal, Threads that thrive. Until she had healed Caden and Lev and Zander. Until she had healed Eron and every guard she’d ever met. Until they had all been healed and there was only one spirit left.

“Safi.” Iseult smiled at her other half, bright and beautiful and golden. “Be free, Light-Bringer. Be free.” Then she carefully unbound her Threadsister from the Loom. Here was Safi’s Truthwitchery, if only half, and here were the colors and brilliance of her being. The bursts of laughter. The crass swears. The eternal loyalty and moral compass always aimed true.

Initiate, complete.

Safi and all the other Hell-Bards were finally free.

And Iseult finally turned to face Corlant. Like a corpse left to deflate in the rain, he had shrunk in on himself, an empty, desperate body huddled within the basin. She could cleave him with just a thought. He was too weak to fight her. The daughter with a Void power he’d passed on.

But Iseult did not want to cleave him. He would be the last life she would willingly claim, and she would not twist it or sever it. Not the man who was her father.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and imagined the forest and the snow she had left behind. No other thought, no distraction to keep her from doing what she had struggled so long to do. True stasis guided her, grounded her. All the way into her fingers, all the way into her toes.

The Loom disappeared.

She found her father curled in on himself upon the snow. He was inside the tower. No more storm, no more stolen Threads. Simply a man drained to his true essence.

And she’d been right: it contained only fear—and fear had so easily become hate. Hate for oneself, hate for the world that had rejected you. She had lived a lifetime with it; she understood that concept well.

Corlant unfurled from beside the altar as she approached. Then dragged himself to his feet. He couldn’t escape; he knew that, and his Threads wore weary resignation.

Hell-Bards, newly freed, flared like fireflies at the edges of her magic. The shadow wyrm was nowhere she could feel. With its master weakened, it had returned to the darkness in which it thrived.