Up, above the Plinth, at the summit of a set of jaggedly-hewn steps, the tall, cold doors of the Throne Room lie open. While clashing, fermenting chaos reigns down below, up here is mute, dead. Not even wind stirs between the doors, dust refusing to pass its barrier, pass over the quiet, still bodies lying on the floor.

There's movement in the city, movement rushing up toward here, and as it rustles, as it grows, the doors slide open a little more, like arms outstretched, waiting. But at its center is no beating heart, no pulsing veins, no stirring limbs or blinking eyes. Only emptiness echoes out of the heart of the Throne Room, flat and blank.

And even as the first one, the long forgotten son, darkens its door, fear thundering in his heart, all is silent.

It's all darkness here, all darkness. And it sits on Lei Chaudri's heart, heavily, even as it thrums, twitches frantically against his ribs. He hasn't heard anything, seen anything since Isati fled but he's afraid. So very afraid.

[You are such a child.]

These doors, doors Abadi Chaudri has always held jealously closed, hang open, frame around him like a window, but Lei doesn't want to peer inside. There's a small, narrow beam of light running down the floor, stopped just a few paces in. Cut short, he senses, just before... something.

Who should he call to? Should he call at all? He thinks not... just in case, just because there's something about this place that makes his voice die in the back of his throat. He knows this hall.

[Get out of my sight! Get out! Get out!]

It shivers along his spine. Lei pushes forward, and as he does, the doors beside him open wider.

The light grows longer.

The gasp expels itself from his lungs, which seize and contract, because the light has crept in, the light has fallen upon...

Lei's knees hit the cold floor even as he leans over, as his hands—shaking so hard now—pass over the ugly metal helmet, pawing fruitlessly at it as his breathing hitches and spasms. It's all blind panic now, all pounding blood and cold sweat as it repeats in his head:

Get it off get it off, have to get it off—

And then he sees the blood.

No. No, he tells himself, but his hand still shakes as he pulls it down to the small, exposed neck. No.

He presses two fingers at the jugular for a moment and waits.

No. This denial comes with tears this time, hot, burning like simmering embers, like melted steel. No... please.

He drops his hand, his head bowed down, a pantomime of prayer.

It's done. You have to get up.

His breath is quavering now.

You have to get up. There's still a chance she's alive.

Lei Chaudri looks up, into the echoing black, and for once truly wishes he could conjure fire. Wishes he could illuminate this carcass of a place, burn it to stubs, to ashes. He grips that small, cold arm one more time and then pulls himself to his feet and steps in further.

He doesn't have fire, but his eyes begin to adjust after a time, adjust enough to see a dark form lying, inert, several paces away, and terror floods through his veins again.

He stumbles hurriedly not toward the body but the side of the hall, hands outstretched, feeling in the dark, for latches, for levers.

He finds one, twists and pulls and a groan rumbles through the hall, like a dusty maul, as light spills in from the unshuttered window.

He pulls another one, just to be sure, just to get enough light, and he turns, palms sweating, stomach churning—

And Lei Chaudri sees the cold, dead gaze of his mother.

He's just made it to the Plinth—Plinth, that's what Lei called it, wasn't it? Hiran can't quite remember. It's all bleeding together now.

Finn, where are you? he thinks, gaze darting around this hollow city. Where is anyone? If he can just find Finn, just find him. And then Allayria and Lei, maybe Lei, if his monster of a sister hasn't quartered him up yet.

But there's no one here, no one at all, not even the soldiers...

Down below, the things—the Jarles—are all just sitting on the fields, motionless in the dust, kneeling to nothing. It was like an unhallowed gust had blown through, had suddenly tipped them like paper cards, or dominos on a bar table. The machines went on, whirled on, bursting up, burrowing down, but the soldiers just sat there. Still.

Hiran swallows, glancing around.

When the Jarles first fell Dost and Wren's soldiers had just stared, like men pulled out of dreams, animals doused in cold water. And then one stepped forward.

One raised his sword.

One swung.

When the kneeling opponent fell down, unresisting to the last, Hiran thought that would be that, a sign of some kind of truce working it's strange way up on the mountain above. A sign to stop.

Instead, another soldier swung.

And another.

And another.

Hiran doesn't know how many of those kneeling Jarles are left now; he doesn't want to know. At the time, he grabbed Tara by the hand, pulled her up, intent on dragging her out of that hellhole, but she had pulled back.

"Dost is dead," she had said, as if she hadn't told him before. "Marron is missing. Someone needs to take control of this. Someone needs to lead the Roften troops."

What she meant seized his insides, squeezed, and he gripped her hand harder. "Someone else—" 

"There's no one else. I've got this," she said. "Find Finn."

Find Finn.

Chaudri had said the Imperator would be in the Throne Room—Hiran looks up to that dark, ugly cave hewn on the mountain side. It leers down at him, glinting and glaring, the climbing stairway and entrance like an open maw, the black windows set below its twin peaks like two glittering eyes.

Don't come up here, it seems to say to him. Don't even try.

If they're still here, Allaryia and Finn will be up there. Lei said there was a path...

It's the path with the glowing stones, Hiran remembers. And he remembers how pale the Halften man had been when he said it, how his hands had shook.

Finn is up there, he thinks. Finn first, then everyone else. If we can all find each other, we'll be okay.

Lei is climbing, climbing the stairs to the Dais, like he did 12 years before, stumbling, disoriented, as if he is again lost in the dark. Though its broad daylight, he can barely see the stones in front of him, barely clutch onto them as he climbs. And the silence, the silence pounds into his ears, blasting, deafening—

He's left the Throne Room, left—

Oh gods, he thinks, he heaves, crouched down on the mountainside. Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't.

He's dashing through, running through the mouth. There were three sets of footprints up to the Throne Room, two going in but only one coming out, only one—

There are footprints at the Dais, footprints inside, and he goes to follow them but doesn't, rooted to the spot. Something prickles at the back of his neck and, despite the bright sunlight, there's a heaviness that seems to have settled around the entryway, an unseen shadow, hovering. The Throne Room leers behind him and his palms are slick with sweat.

Allayria could be in there, he reminds himself, Allaryia could be in there and Isati could have followed her inside—

From inside the dais, Allayria looks up, sensing someone at the door.

Around her, the voices are humming underneath the rocks, the roots, the stones in this place. And she feels them in her veins, like an old song she could only ever catch snatches of, unearthed, through dust and time and everything else, like a dead memory. They sing in these glowing stones, just as they sang in the ones buried beneath the cold library. They sing in the Skill currents that swirl, unhidden to cloaked eyes, around her.

Never has her purpose seemed so clear, so destined, and she waits, watches for who might be on the other side.

She knows before he enters.

If this is how it must be, she thinks, then so be it.

He stares.

And stares.

And stares.

"You're hurt," Allayria says, somewhere in the distance. "Did she do that?"

Did she split your head open? Did she crack your head back? Did she knock you to the ground, swipe at your throat? But she stopped, she stopped and she ran.

Lei opens his mouth, but nothing comes out—it's his knees that give out instead, once more sending him to the ground like a child at prayer, a child playing at adult games, with a bucket helmet and practice sticks—

"Lei," she says, kinder than she should be, than they have ever allowed. "Lei, I'm sorry."

She stopped, she stopped, and she became Isi again. It's Isi lying over there, Isi.

"I had to, Lei."

Lei stares at his sister's body.

"I know," he croaks. "I know."

Allayria must have come nearer because she's crouched at his side, hands pressed to the sides of his face.

"I won't ever let anything happen to you," she says. "You know that, don't you, Lei? No one's going to sacrifice us for anything anymore. No one."

He blinks, gaze flicking from Isi to Allayria, her ghostly white face, her steady stare.

"As long as I am alive, you'll stay alive," she promises, echoes.

"My mother—" he gets out.

"Finn's work," she answers. "You saw..."

He flinches.

"He sacrificed himself for everyone," she says. "He leapt out in front of me—"

The door crashes behind them and Lei stumbles to his feet, staggering back as a white-faced Hiran fumbles into the room. Lei only needs to look at his face to know what he's seen, and Hiran—

Hiran charges at Allayria.

"You did this!" Hiran shouts, scrambling even as Lei grabs him around the midriff and hauls him back. "You did this, you bitch, you fuc—"

"Hiran," Lei rasps, holding tighter even as his brow crumples, comprehending, understanding. "Hiran, no—"

He screams in Lei's arms, struggling, flailing, and Allayria just watches him for a moment, face blank.

"You—" he seethes. "You—"

"I understand you are in pain, Baulieu," Allayria says, voice even, almost... cold. "I won't hold this against you."

"Hiran," Lei tries again. "Hiran, stop. Stop."

The man is gasping, panting, but he stops struggling, gaze fixed on Allayria.

"Ruben is dead," he states and another slice of pain shoots through Lei's heart, pain he had thought he was too numb to feel. He lets go of Hiran, sinking back onto his knees with a groan, hands curled into shaking fists.

No, no, no, no, no—

Allayria's brow twitches, but she's holding it together better than him.

"We've suffered great losses," she says.

"Yes," Hiran says, his chest still shuddering, his handsome face still white, but there's something sharp in his eyes now as he stares at her, the Paragon, unwaveringly. "We lost the best of us."