Tendrils of black weaved in and out across Dorian’s skin. A shadow descended on him, merging with his shape, and yet it seemed desperate to break free. It rocked against his skin and bubbled up in pockets under his flesh, and sometimes shadows of arms and legs rose up, like solid things, to lash out at Aletheia.

But she summoned a bright light and held it over his head, and she ran her hand up and down his beard, and her eyes glowed bright gold as she channeled mana into his body.

He lurched upright, turned over, and threw up. He screamed in pain, and boils of red and blue flashed up and down his arms.

“Numb his pain,” Mother commanded.

“I’m trying—I can’t. It doesn’t—I did!” Aletheia said.

But he screamed anyway. He screamed in agony, thrashing every way about himself, and Trito stepped up behind Mother.

“His soul is not so human after all,” Trito said. He spoke quickly and angrily. “This suffering is perverse. He does not deserve it. His soul was never meant to occupy this form. Kill him and put him out of his misery. Eris!”

Mother stayed still. She shook her head.

“I will do it if you will not,” he said.

“You will not!” Mother shouted. She turned to Trito and raised her staff, and with a blast of mana she sent him flying across the room, tumbling over himself, until he hit the wall. “You will wait!”

She looked back to Dorian—to Skios, who was Dorian no longer.

Aletheia rolled him onto his back.

His body began to change. His hair darkened, from brown to deep black. His eyes were open and became so deep in hue that his pupils might have been black as well, and his face twisted, changing from the features of Dorian to those of someone else entirely. His skin went from tan to pale, and another tendril of shadow lashed out from his arms, as if rising up from the pores in his skin.

Then he stilled. He stopped fighting. He caught his breath.

He blinked, and he looked to Mother.

He rose.

Aside from that he was a man, he looked nothing like Dorian. He was tall and lanky and young, raven-haired and dark-eyed. There was something in his look that was not quite human—that did not quite seem right.

But he made no sound now, no screams of pain or agony, and with Aletheia’s help he stood upright.

He wobbled on his feet.

He was almost seven feet tall. Dorian’s ragged clothes barely fit him.

“Am I human?” he whispered. His voice was a wheezing spasm, like he did not know how to control his vocal cords. But there was no doubt in Corvo’s mind that it was not Dorian’s voice. It was the voice of the Shadow Man.

Mother shook her head. “Not quite. But close.”

Behind them, Trito righted himself. Yet he stayed on the ground, staring their way.

“What happened?” Aletheia said. “I don’t understand—what happened to him?”

“I do not know,” Mother said. “Perhaps—the magic in the acorns, or perhaps that of your healing spells, knows when a body does not match its soul. Or perhaps a body must change to reflect its soul. I—do not know. I have never used this spell before. Nor do I plan to again.”

Skios stumbled forward. Aletheia and Mother both caught him and set him down.

He raised a hand to block out the bright lights over them. But then he stopped, and he looked at his own pale flesh, and he marveled at the sight of his body.

“I am in the light,” he said. “And it does not burn.”

Mother smiled. “No. But the sunlight may, with skin like yours.”

Skios panted heavily. He looked over to Trito.

“Will you still kill me?” he asked.

“I should,” Trito said. “Leaina would want me to.”

Aletheia stepped in front of him. So did Mother, and then Corvo.

“…but for this final time,” he concluded, “I will use my own judgment, rather than hers.”

Aletheia returned to him. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Are you—can you—do you still know how to move the darkness?”

Skios frowned. He looked to Aletheia’s shadow, and he concentrated.

Nothing happened.

Then, it moved.

It drifted from her side. It walked, as though she walked, even as she stood still, and found its place at the room’s center—before returning to her.

“Is that normal?” he said.

“We have seen stranger things,” Mother said. “You are in luck. It seems you and the dark will not be strangers after all. That may bring you some comfort.”

“I cannot see what is beyond my eyes. I used to always know. I used to see everything the dark saw, for miles. Yet now… I see only light.”

“That’s what eyes are for,” Aletheia said, smiling.

A bright shape of amber moved beyond one of the windows. A swath of its light cut through the room, shining across Mother’s skin like rays from the sun before vanishing again.

“We have lingered here too long already,” she said. “I am tired of Seneria. It is time for us to depart.”

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“What will happen to me?” said Skios.

“I will send you wherever you should like to go.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere I have been before, yes.”

“I have dwelled so long in the darkness. I do not know how to live in the light.”

Aletheia put a hand on his shoulder. She let her fingers rest near his arm, and she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll show you what to do.”

“You are going with him?” Mother said.

Aletheia looked into Skios’ dark eyes. Then she nodded.

“Someone has to,” she said. “I think I found my next calling. For a while, anyway.” Next she and Trito looked at each other. “I can never make up my mind. It’s kind of my thing.”

“What does that mean?” Mother said.

“Aletheia told me she wished to join the Mortalists,” Trito said. “But I understand why she has changed her mind. That was this morning, after all, and so long has passed since then.”

With that he smiled, and he reached into his pocket and withdrew is pipe. He lit it with his arcane tinderbox while he leaned against his spear.

“How is it you justify using that device?” Mother said. The question had clearly been on her mind for weeks. “After so many sermons of the evils of mana, you still light your pipe with an enchanted firestarter. Are you a repentant hypocrite, or is there some reason you tell yourself why this is acceptable?”

A flame jumped from the lighter’s tip. Smoke began to pour from the pipe. Trito took a puff.

“You should know by now that there are always exceptions to the rules,” he said. Then he gazed at the box. He considered it for a long while—and then tossed it to Corvo.

Corvo caught it, clumsily, almost getting hit in the head, but he brought it into his hands with a sense of awe anyway.

“There,” Trito said. “I’ve been meaning to give it up for centuries. Keep it as a reminder of me. I know how it is to be human. You forget everything.”

“Only if we are lucky,” Mother said.

Corvo pressed the side of the lighter. A flame jumped from an opening.

Mother snatched it from his fingers.

“That is not a toy,” she said. “I will hold on to it, for now.”

Trito walked up to them. Despite their cordial conversation a moment prior, they gazed at each other warily, their muscles tensing—but relaxing again soon enough.

“Then you aren’t staying,” he said to Aletheia. “I doubt you’ll find any way to remove Astera from your Essence elsewhere.”

Aletheia gazed at Skios again, who was preoccupied with moving his own muscles, one at a time, up and down his body.

She shook her head.

“I meant what I told you. Someday I promise I’ll be back. And I want to serve the Lioness. But for now—I don’t think Seneria is the right place for a boy who’s just learned to walk.” She patted Skios’ shoulder again. “Besides—if she really does send visions—she’ll tell me what to do next. Right?”

“She will. If you mean what you told me.”

“I will not be able to use Mass Recall to teleport you far once we are back in Esenia,” Mother said. “It requires a great deal of mana. You must tell me where you wish to go now, for if you come with me, you will have to walk the rest of the way.”

“You’re sick of me already?” Aletheia said. “We could stay together. For now.”

Mother shook her head. “I am glad you have survived, Skios. But I do not wish to be near you for a very long time yet to come. So if Aletheia will stay with you—then so be it. We must part.”

“Don’t go, Aunt Aletheia!” Corvo said. He was so tired that he stumbled rather than ran to her, but he did go to her, and he hugged her where she sat.

She hugged him back.

“It’s okay, Corvo,” she said. “It’s just for a little while.”

“We have to play swords,” he whispered. “And bows. And everything else.”

“Mom will find you new teachers. Better teachers than me. But I promise I’ll visit.” She roughed his hair.

“Make your choice,” Mother said. “To where?”

Aletheia glanced to Skios. She thought for a moment.

“Send us to the docks at Katharos,” she said. “I want to show him a real city.”

“Very well. Come to me, Corvo.”

Corvo felt tears forming in his eyes. They had been so busy while they were together. He felt like he had hardly played with her at all. So he hugged her one last time, and he tried to make it last.

And then he saw Skios. Skios, staring at him, his expression blank and unreadable.

He pulled away.

Skios cocked his head.

“It is time to go, Corvo,” Mother said. “Come to me. Now.”

But Corvo didn’t yet. Instead he looked for his glass rider, still on the ground near the room’s center. He scrambled to it and brought it back to Skios, then kneeled down in front of him.

“I’m sorry we can’t play again,” he said. He lifted the glass rider up in his hands. “I want you to have it.”

Skios’ eyes narrowed. He leaned forward, and gently he took the rider. His arms dipped as though it weighed a hundred pounds.

He brought it to his chest.

“Thank you,” he said. And for the first time his voice was not a whisper, or a wheeze, or an echo from the dark, but the tenor of a young man. “Thank you, my… Corvo.”

With that Corvo hugged him quickly, and then he stood up to go.

He saw Mother frown and shake her head. But she said nothing, except to call him to her side one final time. This time, he obeyed.

“All things settled,” she said, “I account this a happy ending.”

“Except for Gob,” Corvo said. “Can we bring her back, too?”

“I will get you a new goblin, my son. One with better hygiene.”

“And for Melitas,” Aletheia said.

“Happier than he deserved, I think,” Mother said.

“And for Dorian,” Trito said.

“No. Not for Dorian.” For a moment Mother’s eyes shrank, as though she were about to cry. But she snorted them away. “Yet he sought redemption for his curse. And, in the end, ‘tis redemption he received, in a way.”

“Would he have sacrificed himself without your spell?” Trito said.

“I do not know. And I will have to bear the weight of that question for the rest of my days. I—will always wonder.” She sighed. “This will be quick, but disorientating. You may wish to stand up.”

So Aletheia and Skios both stood again, and they stayed still beside each other.

Mother extended her arm. She pinched her fingers together, and from her hand fell sparks of green light. She traced them in an arc, over Aletheia and then past Skios, and where her fingers went there was cut a line of bright mana through the air, hanging like a burned spot in the eye after staring for too long at the sun.

She stepped around them in a circle, until the line was like a halo surrounding them. It radiated around their heads.

“If you should need to find me,” Mother said, “we will be in Ganarajya.”

“Ganarajya?” Aletheia said suddenly. “That’s where—"

But her voice cut out. Mother’s hand closed, and from the line in the air descended a curtain of pure, blinding white. The two were enveloped.

Corvo closed his eyes and looked away. And when he looked back, the curtain was gone.

And so too were Aletheia and Skios.

Corvo knew it was going to happen, but he deflated to see them gone anyway.

Mother turned to Trito.

“You are certain you wish to stay here?” she said.

“I will find my way home,” he said.

They stared at each other for a long while.

“I do not like you, Prince Trito,” Mother said at last. “Nor do I like your religion. You know this already.”

“I do. And you know how I feel about you.”

“But—and I will feel regretful should I not be honest—I may owe my son’s life to you. Coming here was the second most lunatic thing I have ever done, and yet, like the first, it worked. I do not know what may have happened without you. So—thank you. That is what I mean to say.” Quickly she added, “Yet I hope with some sincerity that we never encounter each other again.”

“As do I, Young Mother,” he said. “But you may not be so lucky as that.” He smiled at Corvo. “Hold on to my lighter. I have kept it with me for a very long time. I hope it serves you well.”

With that he made for the elevator. He stood atop the disk at the nearby wall, and he pressed the button.

He took one last puff of his pipe as he descended, and he waved, and he was gone.

“You are cheating again!” Mother called after him. “That lift is enchanted. You should jump, if you wish to stay true to your Lioness!”

But he could not have heard her.

Then Corvo and Mother were alone.

“Pick up your pack, Corvo,” she said. “Come to me.” He did, and she continued, “There will be a bright light. It will be scary. But you must stay still.”

“Where’s Ganarajya?” he asked, looking up at her face.

“It is the land of elephants,” she said, “far to the east. Of the Tigermen, and the great princes. There is an old friend I wish to find there. He will teach you much. But for now, we will go someplace warm, and safe.”

“I just want to go to sleep,” he said.

She smiled. “Me too, my son. We will rest soon. And you will go back to your studies.”

That was a thought as horrific as any monster. Corvo sank again. “I don’t want to study. Can’t we play?”

She was casting the spell already. Another halo of green was carved, this time around the both of them, and soon a white curtain descended from the light.

And she opened her mouth to respond; but when she did, the curtain had fallen, and they were both already gone.