Noli and I leave early the next morning for Trenevalt’s cabin. She watches me carefully in a way she probably thinks is subtle.

“Noli, I can literally see out the side of my head,” I sign. And the back, for that matter, but I have the vision in that pane turned off currently.

“I just want to make sure you’re doing alright,” she signs. “Being back in Peakshadow couldn’t have been easy.”

“I don’t think either of us wanted to come here because we thought it would be easy,” I point out. I think about her words anyway. “But actually, I’m doing okay. Peakshadow only ever existed as this broken place in my mind. I only remembered it as I last left it. Seeing it last night, as just a normal town… That was good for me. Just like seeing Attiru was good, too. I have to remind myself that things move on.”

“The rest of the world keeps spinning,” Noli agrees. “Even the times when your own seems to grind to a halt.”

I tip my head. Is she referring to anything specific there? She doesn’t let me dwell on it.

“So about Zyneth,” she ventures.

I shrug. “Like you said: I’ll talk to him when we get back. It’s a surprise, but it’s not like it was a bad secret. It doesn’t change who he is.”

Noli gives a mischievous smile. “It does a little.”

“How?”

She clasps her hands together as if swooning. “Oh, my prince!” She throws a hand dramatically across her forehead.

“I hope that’s not an impersonation,” I sign. “I don’t even talk like that.”

She spins in a circle, fanning out her skirt. “Come to sweep me off my feet!”

“Have you even met us?”

“My savior!”

I playfully shove Noli, and she devolves into a fit of laughter.

I watch her, amused. “You’re going to use this to make us feel extremely uncomfortable, aren’t you?”

She beams. “Isn’t that what friends do?”

The morning passes pleasantly, and I even dig Caecius’s glasswork book out to read while we walk. I bring out some signing glass as well, forming a second disembodied set of hands to speak with Noli while I still carry and flip through the tome. (Backup hands are useful, no matter how much Rezira teases me for using them.)

It isn’t even noon when we reach the cabin. How long had it taken us to hike this path before? Two days? The world doesn’t seem quite so vast anymore.

We stop when the cabin comes within sight, standing there at the edge of the glade and quietly taking it in.

Wild grass has grown up around his cabin. Some weeds creep up the side of the small workshed nearby. A few early autumn leaves have scattered across the yard. Otherwise, it’s exactly as we left it. Like nothing has changed at all.

Noli steps forward first, and I hurry to catch up.

We pause at the front door. It’s cracked open three inches—just enough for us to squeeze out.

“Maybe you should wait outside,” I offer.

She gives me a sad smile. “I was going to say the same to you.”

Noli pushes the door open, and we both duck in.

It’s dark. I summon a cluster of glass from my bag, and they tessellate together as I activate a Glow spell. I float the ball of glass and light ahead of us.

The predator watches through me. This place feels familiar.

The remains of the shattered glass homunculus lay strewn across the ground. All the pieces I couldn’t pick up before I left. Book pages are scattered across the floor. The desk is covered in a layer of dust. It feels like I’d spent years on that desk. Claw marks are scratched across the surface.

My perspective flips.

There’s a crack in the void. Light spilling through. A tether which leads us from the dark. We grab the seams and strain, squeezing, dragging, forcing our essence into reality. The hunger is driving us mad, its jaws clenched around us like a vice. The pull of Between is already threatening to claw us back. But there’s a source of magic before us. Energy. A soul.

I shake my head, dislodging the predator’s memory. Not now, I think. I don’t want to feel all that now. Not here.

The predator doesn’t withdraw, and I can feel it still pondering over its memories of this place, but I distance myself enough that I don’t have to experience them, too.

I stop in the doorway of the bedroom. Noli hovers at my shoulder.

Bones. White and clean.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” I admit.

“I wasn’t sure there would be anything,” Noli signs. Her movements are smaller, more subdued. It feels like she’s speaking softly. “There must not be many scavengers in the area. Kept away by the necrotic creatures in these woods, I suspect.”

“What about the nightbanes?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “The Dead only hunt the living.”

We stare for a moment longer, neither speaking. I feel… sad, I guess? I don’t know if that’s right. Subdued. Regretful. He’s why I’m here. He’s the reason all this happened to me. Yet, I can’t find it in me to feel resentful. He’d been an old man, his body and mind failing him, only trying to get by. A simple mistake in a spell meant to make things easier had instead cost him his life.

Pity. I’m feeling pity.

“We should bury him,” I sign.

“No!” Noli objects.

I turn to her in surprise. “Isn’t that why we came here?”

“Yes,” she signs. “To put him to rest. But we can’t bury him. Not so close to the Spire. It would take time, but eventually…” She shivers, and I don’t need her to complete the thought.

“Right, no grave, then. A pyre?” I suggest.

“Perhaps.” She frowns. “It might not be hot enough.”

“We can try anyway.” I run my hand along the glassworking book. “And I might be able to find a spell circle that could help.”

Noli nods, but doesn’t move, continuing to stare into the room. Perhaps she’s lost in her own memories of this place. Hesitantly, I reach for her hand. She takes it, and gives mine a squeeze, leaning against my shoulder. It’s nice to have someone leaning on me for a change. Finally, she sighs.

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“Okay,” she signs, letting go. “Let’s get to work.”

I head outside as Noli sees to his bones. I’d found a couple forge related spells in the book while on the way here. Since it is a book on glasswork, most of the heating spells are specifically targeting glass, or require a fire affinity, but there’s a handful that are more generic. More generic spell circles, that can be activated by any affinity, generally seem to be less powerful. But I think for our purposes this might be enough.

I find one that augments the heat of a flame. It doesn’t require an affinity, just a lot of mana. That should do.

The lawn in front of his cabin is overgrown, but wide and flat. I activate a Void Whip, and I don’t even need to ask the predator for what I want next; it was already listening. I add glass to the limb, giving it strength, and the void around it sharpens along one side like the edge of a blade. We sweep the Whip around us, slicing through the grass and clearing a wide circle. I use a second limb of void to clear away the loose grass, then we cut again, closer to the ground. A third swipe gets us down to the dirt.

[Spell Obtained,] Echo says, abruptly. [Shade Scythe, Level 1. A combination of glass and void, this sharpened limb can be used to cut through targets with precise efficiency. Mana cost: 10 per limb per minute. If all elements are Attuned: None.]

The predator is highly pleased with this.

Let’s try to stick to agricultural applications, I say.

Dismissing the spell, I set about recreating the relevant spell circles from my book.

It takes time. Noli gathers dried kindling and wood. I begin placing them about the clearing, careful not to disturb the spell circle and runes I’ve been carving into the ground. Noli instructs me to cut away the grass in an even wider circle to help contain the fire. By the end, Trenevalt’s entire yard is cut to the ground. The sight fills me with a sad amusement. I guess I got around to doing some of his yard work after all.

I help Noli move the bones onto the pyre. I couldn’t tell you what any of them were, but Noli seems to know, and we arrange them in much the way we found them. The skeleton looks far too small.

“Alright.” Noli wipes a sheen of sweat from her forehead. “I think everything is ready.”

I take the clustered orb of glass I’d been using for a Glow spell and turn it into a Light Beam instead. I keep the power low, just feeding a few points of mana into the sphere, and point it into the kindling. Soon, a line of smoke snakes up from the dried grass and wood shavings. Flickers of flame follow quickly after.

Noli points out a few more locations around the pyre’s base for me to set alight. The flames begin to crackle, and some wood pops, as the fire grows higher.

“Should I activate the spell circle now?” I ask.

“Let’s wait until the flames are at their peak,” Noli signs. “It will have the most effect then. Give it some time.”

Noli walks around the fire, making sure everything is to her liking. But as it becomes clear that “some time” will be more than a handful of minutes, I decide to step away.

There’s not much to salvage in the cabin. The books that had been caught up in the fight between Trenevalt and the predator are practically destroyed—and the loose pages that survived are strewn about so thoroughly, it would take considerable effort to re-organize and make sense of.

Besides that, there’s not much of value. A simple bed. A simple kitchen. All so much smaller than I remember. I duck back outside, visiting the workshed next.

It’s even smaller than his cabin. Close and cluttered. Motes of dust hang in the air as orange firelight slants through the windows. A set of figurines are lined up on the sill. Glass and clockwork toys in the shape of various small creatures. My gaze falls to the table beneath it, where a spell circle has been drawn on its surface. I graze my fingers over the lines. I’ve drawn this spell circle so often by now, I know it on sight. A Core Bond spell.

The desk is covered in a variety of magic tools I’ve by now read about. Calipers, protractors, and compasses, all for precise measurements and circle drawing. An assortment of charcoal and chalk. I give the last of these a Check.

[Null-Arcana Enriched Chalk,] Echo says.

I quietly laugh.

There’s books, too. Books about runes, and homunculi, and artificing. A couple smaller, more specific texts on glass, null arcana, and clockwork designs. I wish I could take them all with me. There’s sure to be a wealth of knowledge here. But I only have one inventory slot, currently taken up by the large Chained cluster of all my spare glass, and my bag is likewise full with the text Caecius lent me. Perhaps Noli would be able to carry a couple for me, and I could take a few more—we’d only need to carry them to Peakshadow, at which point I could maybe find something else to help carry them in.

I spend a half hour flipping through the books, trying to gauge their usefulness to me and my affinities. In the end I settle on a book that focuses on rune meanings, another that’s on spell circle theory, one that deals with null arcana spells, a fourth that delves into glass artificing, and a fifth that is about homunculi crafting and theory. I also grab a book about clockwork artificing, something I wonder if Zyneth might find useful.

I can’t actually carry all these at once, so I move them outside a couple at a time to figure out how to approach later. Before I leave, I cast one last look around the room. My attention is drawn back to the window.

There’s a gap in the assortment of creatures that are lined up on the ledge. I wonder if that’s where Noli’s little clockwork octopus had been. On either side is a little clockwork bird and a glass wolf pup. It’s sitting, head cocked, ears perked, tail arced as if mid-wag. On impulse, I pick it up.

Outside, the fire is burning high. It’s past noon. We’ll need to leave in the next few hours if we want to get back to Peakshadow before nightfall.

“What have you got there?” Noli asks, circling around the bonfire toward me.

I offer her the little glass dog.

She gasps in delight. “It’s so cute! Did you make this?”

“No,” I sign. “Trenevalt did. I thought you would like it, though.”

She turns the little statue over in her hands. “Is it alright to take it, do you think?”

“There’s so many other little pieces in there just like it,” I sign. “I think he would have preferred for someone to enjoy them rather than being left here to be forgotten.”

Noli runs a finger between the wolf’s ears, as if scratching it. “I think you’re right.”

She pockets the trinket, then gestures to the fire. “I think it’s ready for your spell.”

“Right.”

I step toward the pyre and feel the faintest heat. From my experience with Caecius, this means it actually must be pretty damn hot. I pause to strip off my coat, cautious of singing its sleeves, then kneel at the edge of the spell circle. Flames lick out toward me, and I curiously run a hand through them. They’re warm. Maybe if I walked into the middle of it they would start to get uncomfortable. Not that I have any interest in testing that theory.

I touch my hands to the circle and press my mana into the lines.

[Spell circle activated,] Echo says. [Heat augmentation in effect.]

I continue to feed my magic into the circle, not wanting to risk the temperature being too low and all this effort being for naught. I think I can feel the heat grow, but I’m not certain until I notice Noli take a step back. After the rest of my mana has been consumed, I stand to join her.

She watches me instead of the pyre as I head over. The faintest frown flickers over her expression.

I stop. Using some signing glass, I look at myself.

The firelight warps as it passes through my body, refracting through all the different pieces in a flickering scatter of light. It almost looks like the fire is inside of me.

Yet, it’s the way the light interacts with the shadows that draw my attention. The void, which is usually hidden beneath my coat, is now exposed. It clings to all my joints, of course: strips acting as tendons and supporting my structure. But there’s much more of it now than is needed to augment my glass. The rest of the void coils about my body, shifting between indistinct shapes. Like the glass, it’s transparent, somewhere between smoke and shadows, but in the firelight it’s apparent now more than ever that it is something alive and thinking. The interplay of glass and fire and shadows is as mesmerizing as it is extremely unsettling.

I quickly grab my coat and shrug it back on.

“Sorry,” I tell Noli. I hesitate to move back toward her, so she comes to stand beside me.

“You don’t have to apologize,” she signs. “It’s beautiful in a way.”

“I just…” I struggle to find the words. “I don’t want to dig up any painful memories. Especially not here.”

“Things can be both,” Noli signs. “Painful and beautiful, I mean.” She turns back to the pyre. Trenevalt’s bones have vanished beneath the flames. I watch, too.

“Do you think it’s inappropriate for me to be here?” I ask. “With the predator. After what it did.”

“Unless you can send it away, I don’t think there’s much point in wondering about that,” Noli signs.

I probably could, actually. At least as far as the treeline at the edge of the clearing. I know that’s not what Noli means.

“But I’m glad you’re here with me,” Noli signs. “I’m glad we could do this much for him. I’m glad we could find some closure.”

Is it closure? I guess in a manner of speaking. I agree with her that I’m glad I could help lay his bones to rest. Prevent them from becoming something like the nightbanes. It’s a small reassurance.

But like with Peakshadow, I’m glad that I could come back here and see things from a different perspective. Create a new memory of this place, so I don’t only have the old ones to return to.

It’s giving the predator a different perspective as well. It’s not the same beast that first latched itself to my soul. Still a beast, perhaps, but a changed one. There’s something comforting about being reminded that all things change.

A log pops, and a flurry of sparks spiral into the sky.

She’s right. Sad and beautiful.