Is there not one person in this world besides Schaffa who cares about you?
And I watch Nassun hesitate, fingers curling and small face tightening in a frown even as the Obelisk Gate weaves itself into completion. I watch the shiver of energies beyond comprehension as they begin to align within her. I lost the power to manipulate these energies tens of thousands of years ago, but I can still see them. The arcanochemical lattice—what you think of as mere brown stone, and the energetic state that produces it—is forming nicely.
I watch as you see this, too, and understand instantly what it means. I watch you snarl and smash apart the wall between you and your daughter, not even noticing that your fingers have turned to stone as you do it. I watch you run to the foot of the pylon steps and shout at her. “Nassun!”
And in response to your sudden, raw, incontrovertible demand, the onyx blasts out of nowhere to appear overhead.
The sound of it—a low, bone-shaking blat—is titanic. The blast of air that it displaces is thunderous enough to knock both you and Nassun down. She cries out and slides down a few steps, coming dangerously close to losing her grip on the Gate as the impact jolts her concentration. You cry out as the impact makes you notice your left forearm, which is stone, and collarbone, which is stone, and left foot and ankle.
But you set your teeth. There is no pain in you anymore, save anguish for your daughter. No need within you but one. She has the Gate, but you have the onyx—and as you look up at it, at the Moon glaring through its murky translucence, icewhite iris in a scleral sea of black, you know what you have to do.
With the onyx’s help, you reach half a planet away and stab the fulcrum of your intention into the wound of the world. The Rifting shudders as you demand every iota of its heat and kinetic churn, and you shudder beneath the flux of so much power that for a moment you think it’s just going to vomit out of you as a column of lava, consuming all.
But the onyx is part of you, too, right now. Indifferent to your convulsions—because you’re doing that, flopping along the ground and frothing at the mouth—it takes and taps and balances the power of the Rifting with an ease that humbles you. Automatically it links into the obelisks so conveniently nearby, the network that Nassun assembled in order to try to replicate the onyx’s power. But a replica has only power, no will, unlike the onyx. A network has no agenda. The onyx takes the twenty-seven obelisks and immediately begins eating into the rest of Nassun’s obelisk network.
Here, though, its will is no longer paramount. Nassun feels it. Fights it. She is just as determined as you. Just as driven by love—you for her, and she for Schaffa.
I love you both. How can I not, after all this? I am still human, after all, and this is a battle for the fate of the world. Such a terrible and magnificent thing to witness.
It is a battle, though, line by line, tendril by tendril of magic. The titanic energies of the Gate, of the Rifting, whip and shiver around you both in a cylindrical aurora borealis of energies and colors, visible light ranging to wavelengths beyond the spectrum. (Those energies resonate in you, where the alignment is already complete, and still oscillate in Nassun—though her waveform has begun to collapse.) It is the onyx and the Rifting versus the Gate, you against her, and all Corepoint trembles with the sheer force of it all. In the dark halls of Warrant, among the jeweled corpses of the Guardians, walls groan and ceilings crack, spilling dirt and pebbles. Nassun is straining to pull the magic down from what’s left of the Gate, to target everyone around you and everyone beyond them—and finally, finally, you understand that she’s trying to turn everyone into rusting stone eaters. You, meanwhile, have reached up. To catch the Moon, and perhaps earn humanity a second chance. But for either of you to achieve your respective goals, you will need to claim both Gate and onyx, and the additional fuel that the Rifting provides.
It is a stalemate that cannot continue. The Gate cannot maintain its connections forever, and the onyx cannot contain the chaos of the Rifting forever—and two human beings, however powerful and strong-willed, cannot survive so much magic for long.
And then it happens. You cry out as you feel a change, a snapping-into-line: Nassun. The magics of her substance are fully aligned; her crystallization has begun. In desperation and pure instinct you grab some of the energy that seeks to transform her and fling it away, though this only delays the inevitable. In the ocean too near Corepoint, there is a deep judder that even the mountain’s stabilizers cannot contain. To the west a mountain shaped like a knife jolts up from the ocean floor; to the east another rises, hissing steam from the newness of its birth. Nassun, snarling in frustration, latches onto these as new sources of power, dragging the heat and violence from them; both crack and crumble away. The stabilizers push the ocean flat, preventing tsunami, but they can do only so much. They were not built for this. Much more and even Corepoint will crumble.
“Nassun!” you shout again, anguished. She cannot hear you. But you see, even from where you are, that the fingers of her left hand have turned as brown and stony as your own. She’s aware of it, you know somehow. She made this choice. She is prepared for the inevitability of her own death.
You aren’t. Oh, Earth, you just can’t watch another of your children die.
So … you give up.
I ache with the look on your face, because I know what it costs you to give up Alabaster’s dream—and your own. You so wanted to make a better world for Nassun. But more than anything else, you want this last child of yours to live … and so you make a choice. To keep fighting will kill you both. The only way to win, then, is not to fight anymore.
I’m sorry, Essun. I’m so sorry. Goodbye.
Nassun gasps, her eyes snapping open as she feels your pressure upon the Gate—upon her, while you dragged all of the terrible transforming curls of magic toward yourself—suddenly relax. The onyx pauses in its onslaught, shimmering in tandem with the dozens of obelisks it has claimed; it is full of power that must, must be expended. For the moment, however, it holds. The stabilizing magics finally settle the churning ocean around Corepoint. For this one, pent moment, the world waits, still and taut.
She turns.