The first thing Ashaf noticed wasn't the pain. It was the sound.

  It was the sound of a winter window cracking in a house that had been empty for a hundred years. A dry, high-pitched skree that vibrated through his vertebrae and settled in the marrow of his jaw. He looked down and saw the shard of glass protruding from his sternum. It was perfectly clear, save for the edges where his blood—thick, dark, and smelling of copper—was beginning to frost over the transparency.

  Guideau was still holding the hilt. Her grip was steady, almost tender.

  "See?" she whispered. Her voice was a soft lullaby, the kind a mother sings to a child who is finally, mercifully, falling asleep. "The Master said you were the knot that held the whole tapestry together. Now that you’re unpicked, look at how the threads want to run."

  Ashaf tried to breathe, but his lungs felt like they had been filled with wet sand. He reached out with his left hand, his fingers clawing at the glass floor. The "Bond" in his right arm wasn't a pulse anymore; it was a scream. The green root was thrashing beneath his skin, trying to find a way into the glass blade, trying to bridge the gap between his failing heart and the hollow girl standing over him.

  "Guideau... stop," he wheezed.

  She didn't stop. She twisted the blade.

  The world turned into a white-hot void. Ashaf felt his consciousness peel away from his body like wet skin from a drum. He wasn't on the floor anymore. He was everywhere.

  In the center of the Cathedral, Ashkael laughed. It wasn't a sound of joy; it was the sound of a million mirrors being crushed under a giant's heel.

  "Look at them, Ashaf," the God's voice boomed, echoing from every shard in the orbit. "Look at the beauty of the break."

  Ashaf’s vision, fractured and bleeding, was forced toward Reina.

  The scholar was no longer standing. She was on all fours, her fingers digging into the glass dust of the floor, dragging herself toward a house-sized shard that was floating just inches above the ground. Inside the shard, the image of her father was changing. He wasn't just disappointed anymore. He was rotting. His face was a mask of weeping sores, his eyes replaced by black beetles that scurried across his forehead.

  "The logic is flawed, Reina," the reflection hissed. "There is no order. There is only the sequence of the rot. Why do you keep trying to name the things that want to eat you?"

  Reina let out a high, thin wail. She wasn't fighting. She had taken one of her silver coins and was pressing it into the soft flesh of her own ear canal. She was trying to deafen herself to the truth, to push the "logic" so deep into her skull that it would kill the voice.

  "I can calculate the distance," she whispered, her voice a frantic, rhythmic chant. "The distance between the sun and the stone. The weight of a soul in the dark. If I can name it, it isn't real. If I can name it, it isn't real..."

  Her fingernails were gone, replaced by jagged splinters of bone as she clawed at her own head. She wasn't a woman anymore; she was a panicked animal trying to escape a cage made of her own thoughts.

  Next to her, Morrigan was undergoing a different kind of mutilation.

  The beast-side had won. Her skin had split across her back, thick, black fur erupting through the muscle in wet, bloody clumps. Her jaw had unhinged, her teeth growing into long, serrated yellow spikes. But she wasn't attacking. She was huddled in a ball, her massive, clawed hands wrapped around her own throat.

  She was trying to strangle the wolf inside her.

  "The child," she gurgled, her voice a wet, guttural mess. "The baby... the hands were... so soft..."

  In the shard in front of her, the image of the mother and child was flickering. Every time Morrigan’s grip on her throat tightened, the child’s face turned into a wolf’s snout. The soft hands turned into claws. The lullaby turned into a snarl.

  "You aren't a mother, Morrigan," Ashkael mocked. "You are the thing that eats mothers. You are the hunger that never sleeps. Why fight the iron? Why not just bite?"

  Morrigan let out a howl that shattered the nearby shards, a sound of such pure, unadulterated agony that Ashaf felt his own mind crack. He saw her sink her teeth into her own shoulder, tearing away a chunk of fur and meat in a desperate, mad attempt to punish herself for existing.

  "Enough!" Ashaf’s voice rang out, but it didn't come from his throat.

  It came from the shadow.

  On the floor of the Cathedral, the real Ashaf felt the darkness rising.

  The glass blade in his chest was still there, but it wasn't hurting anymore. It was feeding. The black ichor of Severis—the "Blooming" corruption—wasn't just leaking out; it was being sucked into the glass. The shard was turning from clear to a deep, bruised purple.

  And through the Bond, Ashaf felt the "Attention" shift.

  Ashkael wasn't looking at Reina or Morrigan anymore. He was looking at the shard in Ashaf’s chest. The God’s black-glass pillar flickered, a moment of genuine divine hesitation.

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  "What is this?" Ashkael whispered. "The rot... it has a weight. It has a memory."

  "It’s the bird," Ashaf said. He forced himself upright, his hands trembling as they gripped the glass blade. He didn't pull it out. He pushed it deeper.

  The pain was a physical wall, but he walked right through it.

  "You want to see the truth, Ashkael?" Ashaf’s voice was a low, vibrating growl. "The truth isn't a mirror. The truth is the meat underneath."

  He reached out with his right hand—the one with the root—and grabbed Guideau’s face.

  She didn't flinch. She didn't even blink. She just looked at him with those vacant, blue eyes. But as his fingers touched her skin, the green root didn't burrow into her. It transmitted.

  Ashaf didn't send her a memory. He sent her a sensation.

  He sent her the feeling of the paring knife entering the bird’s breast. The wet slurp of the internal organs. The cold, final realization that the life was gone, and only the machine remained.

  "Wake up," Ashaf commanded.

  The Bond didn't snap this time. It exploded.

  A wave of black ichor and green light surged through the copper wire of their nerves. It hit Guideau like a physical blow. Her head snapped back, her body jerking as the "empty" space Ashkael had created was suddenly flooded with the visceral, disgusting reality of Ashaf’s trauma.

  She didn't scream. She gagged.

  A thick, black liquid began to leak from her eyes, her nose, her mouth. It wasn't blood; it was the "rot" of the world, the truth that Ashkael’s light couldn't hide.

  Inside her mind, the "Comb" shattered. The mercury figure of Ashkael was swept away by a tide of feathers and bone.

  Guideau’s mirror-eyes cracked. The blue returned, but it wasn't the vacant blue of before. It was a dark, storm-tossed sea of terror and recognition.

  "Ashaf?" she gasped, her hands flying to the glass blade in his chest. "I... I did this? I..."

  "Don't look at it," Ashaf said, his vision starting to gray at the edges. "Look at him."

  He pointed toward the pillar of black glass.

  Ashkael was no longer a pillar. The God was losing his shape. His surface was covered in cracks, and from the fissures, the voices of a million victims were screaming—not in unison, but in a chaotic, maddening cacophony.

  "You... you would poison the divine?" Ashkael’s voice was a jagged shriek. "You would bring the filth of the earth into the Hall of Seconds?"

  "I'm not bringing the filth," Ashaf said, his legs finally giving out. He slumped against Guideau, his blood staining her white dress. "I'm just opening the window."

  Ashaf reached into his pocket and pulled out the one thing he had kept from the beginning. The original shard of the mirror from Oakhaven—the one that held the "roomy" Kai.

  He didn't look at it. He held it out toward Ashkael.

  "Kai," Ashaf whispered. "He wants to meet you."

  The shard didn't just reflect light. It drew it.

  The silver light of the Cathedral began to spiral toward the small piece of glass in Ashaf’s hand. Inside the shard, the reflection of Kai wasn't smiling anymore. He was standing in that sunlit cave, but he was holding a hammer.

  Clang.

  The sound echoed through the Cathedral. It wasn't a sound of breaking glass; it was the sound of a foundation being struck.

  Clang.

  Ashkael’s black pillar erupted. Thousands of shards of the God himself were blasted outward, tearing through the air like shrapnel.

  The orbit of the seconds failed. The floating mirrors fell from the sky, hitting the floor with the sound of a thousand crystal chandeliers shattering at once. The light died. The violet, the white, the silver—it all vanished, replaced by a thick, suffocating darkness.

  In the silence that followed, there was only the sound of heavy breathing and the rhythmic drip of blood on glass.

  "Ashaf?"

  It was Reina. Her voice was small, shaky, but it was her voice. She wasn't chanting anymore. She was just a woman in the dark, terrified and alone.

  "Here," Ashaf croaked.

  A match flared.

  Morrigan was crouching a few feet away. The beast-side had receded, but she was a ruin. Her skin was torn, her hair matted with blood, and her eyes were hollow pits of exhaustion. She held the match with trembling fingers, the light casting long, flickering shadows against the piles of broken glass.

  They were in the center of a crater.

  The Cathedral was gone. The Spire was gone. There was only a massive, jagged hole in the earth, and around them, the remains of the City of Glass were slowly turning to ash in the morning wind.

  Guideau was still holding Ashaf. She was staring at the glass blade in his chest. It hadn't disappeared when Ashkael fell. It was still there, rooted in his bone.

  "I have to pull it out," she whispered. Her hands were covered in his blood.

  "If you pull it... I’ll bleed out in seconds," Ashaf said. He looked at Reina. "The suppressants. Now."

  Reina scrambled over, her hands fumbling with her bag. She pulled out the final vial—the one she had been saving for Guideau. She didn't hesitate. She jammed the needle into Ashaf’s neck and emptied the contents.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  Ashaf’s world went cold. Not the cold of the cave, but the cold of the grave. His heart slowed until it was barely a thud every ten seconds. The green root in his arm turned gray, shriveling beneath his skin like a dead vine. The pain vanished, replaced by a numb, heavy void.

  "Now," Ashaf whispered. "Pull."

  Guideau gripped the shard. She looked into his eyes, and for a second, the old Guideau—the one who would tease him, the one who would wink—flickered in the darkness.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  She pulled.

  The sound was wet and horrific. Ashaf didn't scream. He didn't have the breath for it. He just felt a sudden, massive vacuum in his chest, and then... nothing.

  He fell backward into the glass dust.

  As his vision began to fade into the final black, he saw the sky. For the first time since they had entered the Outer Fringe, the clouds were gone. The stars were visible—cold, distant, and uncaring.

  And in the very center of the sky, a single, new star was beginning to pulse. It was a deep, bruised purple.

  "Two down," Ashaf whispered to the stars.

  "Ashaf? Ashaf, stay with me!" Guideau’s voice was fading, drifting away like smoke in a gale.

  He closed his eyes.

  He was back in the room with the bird. But he wasn't the boy with the knife. He was the bird. And as he looked up at the boy’s face, he realized the boy wasn't Ashaf.

  The boy was a god he hadn't met yet.

  And the god was smiling.