Chapter 59: The Road South

THE MAER SAID GOODBYE in private.

Not in the great hall, where courtiers might witness and wonder. Not in the receiving room, where protocol would demand certain performances. He came to the stables himself, in the grey hour before dawn, wrapped in a cloak that hid his face from the few servants moving through the shadows.

“I would come with you,” Alveron said, his voice stronger than it had been in weeks. Whatever poison had been eating at him seemed to have loosened its grip—or perhaps the knowledge of what we faced had burned away the weakness in him. “If I were younger. If my presence wouldn’t draw every spy in the kingdom to your trail.”

“You’re needed here, Your Grace.”

“I’m needed everywhere and nowhere.” He smiled thinly. “The privilege of power.” He reached into his cloak and withdrew something small, wrapped in blue velvet. “Stapes insisted I give you this.”

I unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a signet ring—not the Maer’s official seal, but something older. The stone was dark, almost black, carved with a design I couldn’t quite make out in the dim light.

“The ring of Calanthis,” Alveron said. “The wandering line. Given to those who walk where roads don’t go, who carry the weight of what must not be spoken.” He closed my fingers around it. “Show it to the right people, and doors will open. Show it to the wrong ones, and you’ll wish you’d kept it hidden.”

“How will I know which is which?”

“You won’t. That’s part of the test.” He stepped back. “May Tehlu hold you close, Kvothe. May the road rise to meet your feet. And may the doors you seek stay closed until you’re ready to open them.”

He turned and walked back toward the main estate, his figure fading into the morning mist until he was just another shadow among many.

Stapes appeared beside me, silent as always.

“You’ll take care of him,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve been taking care of him since before you were born.” The old retainer’s voice was gruff but fond. “I expect I’ll continue until one of us dies.” He pressed something into my hand—a small leather pouch, heavy with coin. “For the road. And this.” A folded paper, sealed with wax. “A letter of introduction. The Maer has allies in Renere. People who owe him favors. If you need help—”

“I’ll find it.”

“See that you do.” He looked at me with those sharp old eyes. “You’re young, Kvothe. Brilliant, yes. Brave, certainly. But young in ways that matter. Don’t let pride make your decisions.”

“I’ll try.”

“Do more than try.” He gripped my arm with surprising strength. “Come back alive. The Maer has few enough people he trusts. It would grieve him to lose another.”

He released me and walked away without looking back.

And I mounted my horse, joining my friends on the road that led south.

The Great Stone Road ran straight as a blade through the heart of the Commonwealth.

Built during the height of the old empire, it stretched from Tinue to Renere in an unbroken line of fitted stone, each block carved to interlock with its neighbors so perfectly that not even centuries of neglect had broken its surface. Our horses’ hooves rang against the granite in a steady rhythm, the sound carrying through the early morning silence like bells calling the faithful to prayer.

Devi rode beside me, her hair still wild from sleep, her eyes scanning the surrounding fields with the practiced wariness of someone who expected trouble and was rarely disappointed.

“You’re quiet,” she observed. “For you.”

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

I looked at the road ahead, at the fields stretching to either side. “About how ordinary everything looks. How peaceful. As if the world isn’t about to tear itself apart.”

“That’s the nature of catastrophe.” She adjusted her pack. “It doesn’t announce itself. No trumpets, no heralds. Just a moment that seems like any other, until suddenly it’s not.”

Simmon rode up on my other side, his face showing the strain of the past weeks. He’d been quiet since leaving Severen, lost in thoughts he wasn’t sharing.

“How far to Renere?” he asked.

“Ten days. Twelve if the roads are worse than expected.” I glanced at the sky, where clouds were gathering on the southern horizon. “Fourteen if the weather turns.”

“And the ball?”

“Sixteen days from now. We should arrive with time to spare.” I didn’t mention the other concerns—that Cinder might have agents watching the roads, that the boundary between worlds was thinning with each passing hour, that every mile we traveled brought us closer to a confrontation none of us might survive.

Sim nodded, accepting the answer. Behind us, Wil and Fela rode in companionable silence, their horses walking close enough that their stirrups nearly touched. Denna rode alone at the rear, her eyes fixed on some distant point only she could see.

We rode through the morning, stopping only to water the horses and stretch our legs. The Great Stone Road was busy with travelers—merchants heading to market, pilgrims seeking shrines, soldiers in the Maer’s colors patrolling for bandits. They passed us without comment, their eyes sliding over our small company as if we were just another group of traders making the journey south.

Good. Anonymity was our best protection.

By noon, the clouds had spread across the sky like a bruise, and the air smelled of coming rain.

The storm caught us in the open.

Not rain—something else. The clouds split with a sound like tearing silk, and light poured through, but it was wrong. Too vivid. Too sharp. The colors of the world seemed to shift, becoming more vivid in ways that made my head ache.

“Don’t look up,” Devi said, her voice tight. “Don’t look at the sky.”

“What is it?”

“The boundary. It’s thinning faster than I expected.” She pulled her hood up, shadowing her face. “The light you’re seeing isn’t coming from our sun. It’s… bleeding through. From the other side.”

I looked anyway. Just a glance, just long enough to see—

The sky rippled. Like water disturbed by a stone. And through the ripples, I caught glimpses of something else. Another sky, darker, lit by stars that burned in colors I’d never seen. A moon that was too close, too large, its surface marked with patterns that might have been writing.

Then clouds closed over the tear, and the world was normal again.

Normal except for the silence.

The birds had stopped singing. The insects had gone quiet. Even the wind had died, leaving us in a pocket of stillness that felt like the moment before a blow.

“It’s happening everywhere,” Denna said. She’d ridden up beside us, her face pale. “All over the world. The seams are coming undone.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it.” She touched her chest. “The song he wrote in me—it resonates with the openings. Every time the boundary thins, the music gets louder.” She looked at me with eyes that held more fear than I’d ever seen. “It’s getting harder to think around it. Harder to remember who I am.”

I reached for her hand. Held it.

“You’re Denna. You’re the woman who pulled me back from madness in the Fae. The woman who faced Cinder’s influence and didn’t break.” I squeezed her fingers. “Whatever happens, that’s who you are. Not the song. Not the channel. You.”

“What if I forget?”

“Then I’ll remind you.”

She didn’t look convinced.

But she held onto my hand as we rode, and slowly, the silence lifted, and the birds began to sing again.

We made camp that night in a hollow beside the road, where ancient oaks provided shelter from the wind that had risen with sunset. The fire crackled and popped, sending sparks rising into darkness like earthbound stars.

Wil was cooking—a simple stew of dried meat and vegetables, stretched with foraged herbs he’d gathered as we traveled. The smell was comforting in a way that seemed almost absurd given what we were riding toward.

“Tell me about Renere,” Fela said. She was sitting close to Sim, their shoulders touching in that easy way of people who’d become accustomed to each other’s presence. “What’s it like?”

“Old,” I said. “Older than Imre, older than the University, older than almost anything in the Commonwealth. The stories say it was built before the Empire, in the days when the world was young.”

“But what’s it like?”

I thought about the stories I’d heard, the descriptions in books, the few fragments of firsthand accounts from travelers who’d actually been there.

“They say the streets are paved with the same stone as this road—fitted so perfectly you can’t feel the seams. The buildings are made of a pale marble that glows in moonlight, so on clear nights the whole city seems to shine.” I poked at the fire with a stick. “There’s a palace at the center—the Seat of Kings—where the throne has sat empty for three hundred years, waiting for someone to claim it. And underneath the city…”

“Underneath?”

“Tunnels. Catacombs. Miles and miles of them, dug by people who lived there before the current buildings were built.” I looked into the flames. “Some of the stories say the tunnels connect to other places. Other cities. Other… worlds.”

“The doors,” Denna said quietly. She’d been silent since we stopped, staring at nothing. “Some of them are in Renere. Beneath the palace. I’ve seen them in my dreams.”

“What do they look like?”

“Like doors.” Her voice was flat. “But wrong. The proportions are strange—too tall, too narrow, as if they were built for people who weren’t quite people. And they’re covered in writing. Old writing. The kind that moves when you try to read it.”

“Yllish?”

“Older.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Much older. I think it’s the language they spoke before they had mouths. Before they had bodies. The language of pure will.”

Nobody asked who “they” were.

We all knew.

The fire burned low, and we sat in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts about what we were riding toward.

On the third day, we saw something that wasn’t natural.

It came at sunset, when the light was dying and shadows stretched long across the fields. A shape in the distance, moving parallel to the road, keeping pace with our horses despite moving at what seemed a leisurely walk.

It might have been a traveler.

It might have been an animal.

But it wasn’t either of those things.

“Don’t look at it,” Denna whispered. Her voice was urgent, afraid. “Don’t acknowledge it. If you pretend you can’t see it, sometimes they leave you alone.”

“What is it?”

“Something that came through. When the boundary thinned.” She stared straight ahead, her jaw tight. “There are more of them every day. They’re drawn to… to places where the singing is loudest. To people who carry the resonance.”

“To you.”

“To me.”

I looked anyway—I couldn’t help myself. Just a quick glance, peripheral vision, enough to get an impression without truly seeing.

The shape was wrong.

Not wrong like a cripple, not wrong like a deformity. Wrong in a way that made my mind skip. It had limbs, but too many of them, bending in directions that violated geometry. It had a face, but the features were distributed across surfaces that shouldn’t have been able to hold features. It moved through space without quite touching it, as if it existed in a different relationship with reality than the rest of us.

My head began to ache.

I looked away.

“It’s following us,” Wil said. His voice was remarkably calm—but then, Wil was always calm. “Has been for the last hour. I’ve been watching its shadow.”

“Can we outrun it?”

“I don’t think running matters to things like that.” He urged his horse a little faster anyway. “But we can try.”

We rode until darkness fell, pushing the horses harder than was wise, and when we finally stopped to make camp, the shape was gone.

But that night, I dreamed of faces that shouldn’t exist.

And I woke to find Denna beside me, trembling, her lips moving in silent song.

The fourth day brought us to a village.

I’d passed through it months ago, on my way north to Severen. A quiet place called Threepenny Rise, named for the fee the local lord charged travelers to use his bridge. It had been prosperous then—clean streets, well-kept buildings, people going about their business with the comfortable confidence of those who expected tomorrow to be much like today.

Now it was a ghost of itself.

Half the buildings stood empty, their windows dark, their doors hanging open on rusted hinges. The streets were empty except for scattered debris—a broken cart, an abandoned doll, a stack of firewood that had been knocked over and left to rot. The bridge was still standing, but the toll booth was empty, its door swinging in the wind.

“What happened here?” Fela whispered.

We found the answer at the inn.

It was the only building that showed signs of life—smoke rising from the chimney, lamplight flickering behind closed shutters. We tied our horses at the rail and went inside, hands on weapons, every sense alert for trouble.

The common room was empty except for the innkeeper.

He was a heavy man, grey-haired and grey-bearded, sitting behind the bar with a mug of ale he wasn’t drinking. He looked up when we entered, and for a moment something flickered in his eyes—hope, maybe, or fear, or some complicated mixture of both.

“Travelers,” he said. “Didn’t expect travelers anymore.”

“What happened to this place?” I asked. “There used to be people here.”

“Used to be.” He poured ale into mugs, set them on the bar without being asked. “Used to be a lot of things. Roads used to be safe. Nights used to be dark. Dreams used to be just dreams.”

He gestured for us to sit, and we did, because refusing hospitality would have been rude, and because we needed information more than we needed to maintain our schedule.

“Started about six weeks ago,” the innkeeper continued. “The dreams. Everyone having the same ones, every night. Images of fire and shadow. Doors opening in places where there weren’t any doors. Voices speaking words that crawled inside your head and made a home there.”

“What kind of voices?”

“Old ones.” He shivered despite the warmth of the room. “Voices that had been silent for so long they’d forgotten what silence was. They said things—not words, exactly, but meanings. Ideas that didn’t fit in human minds.” He looked at us with haunted eyes. “Some people couldn’t take it. Went mad. We found Miller’s wife walking in circles in her kitchen, drawing the same symbol on the walls over and over. The blacksmith’s son started speaking in a language no one recognized—and then his tongue turned black and fell out.”

“Tehlu have mercy,” Simmon muttered.

“Tehlu wasn’t listening. Or if he was, he didn’t care.” The innkeeper drained his ale. “The rest started leaving. Families who’d been here for generations. Just packed up one day and headed north.” He laughed bitterly. “As if there’s anywhere the dreams can’t reach.”

“Why did you stay?”

“Where else would I go?” He looked around at his empty inn, his empty village, his empty life. “This is my home. My father’s home. His father’s before him. I’m not going to abandon it just because of bad dreams.”

“The dreams didn’t affect you?”

“Oh, they affected me.” He reached under the bar, pulled out something small and round—a clay disk covered in symbols that looked almost familiar. “But I found a way to manage. A traveling scholar came through about a month ago. Sold me this. Said it would muffle the voices, make the dreams less… coherent.”

I took the disk from him, examined it. The symbols were Yllish—crude, barely literate, but Yllish nonetheless. They were arranged in a pattern designed to dampen resonance, to create interference in whatever frequencies the dreams were using.

“Where did the scholar come from?”

“Didn’t say. But he was heading south.” The innkeeper’s eyes were sharp. “Toward Renere. Same as you, I’m guessing.”

“Why would you guess that?”

“Because no one goes south anymore unless they have to. The dreams are worse that way. The… things… are more common.” He leaned forward. “Whatever you’re going toward, it’s not going to be pretty. I hope you know that.”

“We know.”

“And you’re going anyway.”

“We have to.”

He nodded slowly. “There’s rooms upstairs. Clean sheets, warm beds. You look like you could use the rest.”

We took the rooms, though none of us expected to sleep well.

We were right not to.

The dream was waiting for me.

I found myself in a corridor that stretched beyond sight in both directions. The walls were stone—ancient, worn smooth by the passage of countless hands—and they were covered in doors.

Not ordinary doors.

These were the doors from the stories. The doors from the worst kind of stories, the ones that mothers tell children to keep them from wandering into dark places. Each one was different—wood and iron, stone and crystal, bone and shadow—but they all shared the same wrongness that Denna had described. The proportions were subtly off, designed for bodies that didn’t move the way human bodies moved.

And they were all opening.

One by one, slowly, as if whatever lay behind them was savoring the moment. Hinges that had been frozen for millennia were beginning to turn, and ancient seals were beginning to crack, and the light coming through the widening gaps was the wrong color for any light that had ever touched mortal eyes.

Come, the voices whispered. Come and see. Come and know. Come and become.

I walked forward, because in dreams you don’t have the option of running away. You move toward what awaits you, drawn by something deeper than fear.

The first door opened fully.

And I saw—

Nothing.

Not darkness. Not light. Not emptiness. Nothing. A complete absence of everything, even the concept of absence. My mind recoiled, unable to process what it was experiencing, and for a moment I felt myself beginning to unravel, the threads that made me me starting to fray—

Then hands grabbed me. Pulled me back.

Denna.

She was standing beside me, her face pale, her eyes wide with terror that matched my own. But she was solid. Real. An anchor in the chaos.

“Don’t look into them,” she said. “The doors. Once you look through, once you really see—”

“You become part of what’s behind them.”

“Yes.” She held my hand tighter. “The boundary goes both ways. They can look into us. And if we look back…”

“We invite them in.”

The corridor stretched around us, infinite and terrible, and the doors kept opening, and the voices kept whispering, and somewhere in the distance something was beginning to stir—

I woke gasping.

Denna was beside me, her hand on my arm, her eyes wide.

“You felt it too,” she said.

“Yes.”

“They’re getting closer.” She looked toward the window, where grey light was just beginning to seep through the shutters. “Every day the boundary thins. Every day they get a little more real.”

“Can we stop it?”

“We can try.” She lay back beside me, and for a long moment we just held each other, two people clinging to sanity in a world that was slowly going mad. “That’s all anyone can do. Try, and hope it’s enough.”

I didn’t tell her about the door that had opened. About what I’d almost seen.

Some things are too terrible to share, even with those you love.

On the seventh day, we met the Amyr.

She stepped out of the trees as if she’d been waiting for us—an old woman, bent and weathered, wrapped in grey robes that made her nearly invisible against the forest. Her face was lined with age and weariness, but her eyes were sharp, clear, alive with an intelligence that had nothing to do with her apparent frailty.

“You’re the ones Bredon told us about,” she said. Her voice was stronger than I expected—the voice of someone who had spent decades giving commands and expecting them to be obeyed. “The Namer and his companions.”

“You know Bredon?”

“I’ve known him longer than you’ve been alive, boy.” She fell into step beside our horses, matching their pace with surprising ease. “He sent word ahead. Told us what you’re attempting. Told us what we can expect when the doors finally open.”

“And what can we expect?”

“The end of everything you’ve ever known.” She said it without drama, without emphasis, as if she were describing the weather. “The beings behind those doors were locked away because they couldn’t coexist with what we call reality. When they emerge, they’ll remake the world in their image. Not out of malice—they don’t have malice, don’t have any emotions we’d recognize. They’ll do it because that’s their nature. The way fire burns. The way water flows.”

“Then how do we stop them?”

“You don’t.” She glanced up at me with something that might have been pity. “The doors are opening. Nothing can prevent that now. They’ve been sealed for three thousand years, but seals wear down. Everything does, given enough time.”

“Then why are we bothering?” Devi demanded. “If we can’t stop it, why ride all the way to Renere? Why not just find a hole somewhere and wait for the end?”

“Because there are different kinds of failure.” The old woman’s voice softened. “You might fail to stop the ritual. But you might succeed in changing its outcome. In bending its purpose toward something less catastrophic.”

“How?”

“The channel.” She nodded toward Denna. “She was meant to direct the energy into Cinder. To fuel his transformation. If she directed it somewhere else instead—into the doors themselves, into the seals that are already failing—it might not close them. But it might slow their opening. Buy the world another few centuries.”

“I’m not his puppet anymore,” Denna said. Her voice was tight, controlled. “The binding is broken.”

“Is it?” The old woman stopped walking, forcing us to halt our horses. “Bindings of that power don’t simply break. They stretch. They thin. They wait for an opportunity to reassert themselves.” She looked at me with eyes that had seen centuries of failure. “You spoke her name. Called her back from the edge of becoming. That gives you temporary protection. But names can be stolen. Rewritten. When you face Cinder in Renere, he’ll try to reclaim her. And if he succeeds…”

“Then we’re back where we started.”

“Worse. Because you’ll have given him everything he needs while believing you were fighting him.” She began walking again, and we followed, drawn by the gravity of her knowledge. “Listen to me carefully. The ritual requires three components: a door, a channel, and a key. The door is opening regardless—nothing can stop that now. The channel is your friend Denna. And the key…”

“The Lackless box.”

“Yes. Cinder needs all three. If you can keep even one from him—”

“He can’t complete the transformation.”

“The transformation will still happen. But it will be… different. Smaller. Perhaps controllable.” She stopped again, turning to face us fully. “He wants to become something more than mortal. To merge with what lies behind the doors. To make himself into a god, or something worse than a god. But that level of transformation requires perfect conditions. All three components, aligned precisely, at the exact moment the boundary thins enough to allow passage.”

“And if the conditions aren’t perfect?”

“Then the transformation is incomplete. He becomes something powerful, yes, but not omnipotent. Something that can still be fought. Still be stopped.” Her eyes found mine. “Remember: he needs all three. The door, the channel, and the key. Keep even one from him, and there’s a chance.”

“The key is at the University,” I said. “Hidden. Protected.”

“Is it?” She smiled thinly. “You’re certain of that?”

I wasn’t.

But I couldn’t show doubt. Not now.

“Where are you going?” I asked, as she stepped back toward the trees.

“To prepare.” She was already fading into the forest, becoming indistinct. “The Amyr who remain are gathering. When the doors open, we’ll do what we can. It won’t be much—we’re old, and few, and tired beyond measure. But it might buy you time.”

“How many of you are left?”

“Fewer every year.” Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “We were never many. Just the ones who knew the truth. The ones who were willing to do what had to be done, regardless of the cost.” She paused. “Bredon says you have that quality. I hope he’s right.”

“And if he’s wrong?”

“Then the world ends a little sooner than it would have otherwise.” Her smile was sad. “In the long run, everything ends. The only question is whether the ending has meaning.”

She was gone before I could respond.

The forest stood silent around us, and for a long moment none of us spoke.

We made camp early that evening.

The light was failing faster than it should have, shadows lengthening with unnatural speed, and none of us wanted to be riding when full darkness came. We found a hollow in the hills, sheltered by ancient stones that might have been natural and might have been placed there deliberately, and we built our fire and set our watches and pretended we weren’t all thinking about the old woman’s words.

It was Wil who finally broke the silence.

“We should split up.”

The words fell into the quiet like stones into still water.

“Why?” Simmon asked.

“The old woman was right. Cinder needs all three components. If we’re all together, he only has to catch us once.” Wil’s face was steady, calm, the face of someone who had thought through a problem and arrived at a conclusion he didn’t like. “But if we split up—if some of us carry the key while others take Denna to Renere—”

“He knows we have the key?” Fela interjected.

“He knows everything Denna knows.” Wil looked at her apologetically. “That’s how the binding works. Every memory, every conversation, every piece of information she’s gathered—it’s all accessible to him. I’m not blaming her. But it’s a fact we have to work with.”

“The key is with Auri,” I said. “At the University. She’s hiding it in places even Cinder can’t reach.”

“Then we need to make sure it stays there.” Wil stood, began pacing. “I’ll go back. Make sure Auri is safe. Make sure the key stays hidden in her between-places.”

“That’s a week’s ride. You’ll never make it back before the ball.”

“I wasn’t planning to come back.”

The words hung in the air.

“I’ll stay at the University,” Wil continued. His voice was quiet, steady, the voice of someone who had made peace with what he was saying. “Guard the key. Draw attention away from you. If Cinder sends people to find it, they’ll find me instead.”

“You’d sacrifice yourself?”

“I’d do what needs to be done.” He met my eyes. “You taught me that, Kvothe. A long time ago. In that card game where you bet everything on a pair of sevens. Sometimes the right choice is the one that costs the most.”

“That was just a card game, Wil.”

“Was it?” He smiled slightly. “You bet on the person across from you folding. You bet on them believing you had more than you actually did. And you were right.” He gripped my shoulder. “You’re going to face Cinder. You’re going to try to save everyone. Let me help, the only way I can.”

“There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t. And we both know it.” He looked at the fire. “I’m not brave, Kvothe. Not like you. I can’t face down gods and monsters and walk away. But I can guard a door. I can make sure the key stays where it belongs. And I can buy you time to do what you’re going to do.”

I didn’t want him to go.

But I understood why he had to.

“Be careful,” I said.

“Always.” His smile was genuine this time—the rare, warm smile that he so seldom showed. “Tell Sim I expect him to survive this. We have unfinished card games. And I’m still ahead by thirty talents.”

“Thirty-two,” Simmon said, his voice thick. “You cheated in that last hand.”

“I prefer to call it creative probability management.” Wil embraced him, quickly, fiercely. “Take care of Fela. Take care of yourself. Take care of the idiot who thinks he can save the world.”

“Someone has to.”

Wil turned to the rest of us. Hugged Fela, who was crying. Nodded to Devi, who nodded back, her face carefully blank. Took Denna’s hands and held them for a long moment.

“You’re stronger than you know,” he told her. “Whatever happens in Renere—whatever choices you have to make—remember that. The binding doesn’t define you. The song doesn’t define you. You define yourself.”

“I’ll try to remember.”

“Do.” He released her hands. “And Kvothe?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t do anything stupid.” He smiled. “Or rather, don’t do anything too stupid. I know you can’t help yourself entirely.”

I laughed, because if I didn’t laugh I would cry.

He left at first light.

And our company grew smaller by one.

The last three days of travel passed in a blur of grey skies and empty roads.

The world was changing around us—more obviously now, more urgently. We saw things that shouldn’t have existed: shadows that moved against the light, sounds that came from no direction, patterns in the clouds that looked almost like writing. The boundary between here and there was tissue-thin, and growing thinner with every passing hour.

Simmon stayed close to Fela. They didn’t speak much, but they didn’t need to—their silences were comfortable, full of the understanding that comes from years of friendship turning slowly into something more. I watched them and felt something complicated: happiness for them, grief for myself, fear for what was coming.

Devi rode ahead, scouting the road, her sharp eyes catching details the rest of us missed. She’d been to Renere before, she said. Knew the streets, knew the players, knew where to find allies and where to avoid enemies. I was grateful for her competence. It let me focus on other things.

On Denna.

She was quieter with each passing day, lost in thoughts she wouldn’t share. The song inside her was growing louder—I could see it in the way she sometimes stopped mid-sentence, her head tilted as if listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear. The binding that connected her to Cinder was thinning, yes, but it wasn’t gone. It would never be entirely gone.

“Tell me about the ball,” she said, on the ninth night. We were camped in the shadow of an ancient waystone, one of the markers that had guided travelers on this road for centuries. “What are we expecting?”

“A formal event. The King’s Midwinter celebration. Every noble in the Commonwealth will be there, along with ambassadors from Atur, Vintas, the Small Kingdoms.” I poked at the fire. “And Cinder. Somewhere in the crowd, wearing someone else’s face.”

“How will we find him?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”

She was silent for a long moment. “I can feel him,” she said finally. “The resonance between us. It’s… it’s like hearing your own heartbeat in a quiet room. You can ignore it most of the time. But when you focus…”

“You can find him.”

“I can point in his general direction.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “But he can feel me too, Kvothe. The connection goes both ways. When we get to Renere, he’ll know exactly where I am. Every moment. Every step.”

“Then we use that.”

“Use it how?”

“If he knows where you are, he’ll come to you. We won’t have to search for him in a crowd of thousands.” I looked at her. “We set a trap. Bait it with you. And when he comes—”

“I become the channel again. Whether I want to or not.” Her voice was bitter. “That’s what you’re not saying. That when he gets close enough, the binding will reassert itself. I’ll be his puppet again, singing his song, opening his doors.”

“Not if I speak your name first.”

“And if you can’t? If he’s faster, or stronger, or simply prepared?” She shook her head. “You’re gambling everything on your ability to beat him to me. And he’s had three thousand years to learn how to win.”

“Then we’ll cheat.”

“Cheat how?”

I didn’t have an answer.

But I had to hope I’d find one.

On the tenth day, Renere appeared on the horizon.

A smudge at first, just a darkening where the road met the sky. Then towers, rising like fingers against the grey clouds. Then walls, vast and ancient, circling a city that had stood since before the Empire was born.

Renere. The ancient capital. The seat of empty thrones and forgotten kings.

The place where everything was about to end.

“There it is,” Simmon said. His voice was quiet, awed despite everything. “The center of everything.”

“The center of nothing.” Devi’s voice was sharp, cutting through the moment. “It’s just a city. Old, yes. Important, yes. But in the end, just stone and wood and people.”

“People who are about to be at the heart of something terrible.”

“They’ll survive. Or they won’t.” She urged her horse forward. “We need to find lodging. Make contact with whoever Bredon has in the city. Get information about the ball, the palace, the ritual.”

“And Denna?”

She’d been silent for hours, staring at the city with an expression I couldn’t read. The song inside her had grown louder as we approached—I could see it in the way her fingers moved unconsciously, tracing patterns in the air that might have been notes.

“Denna?” I rode closer. “Are you alright?”

“I can feel him,” she whispered. Her voice was thin, strained. “Cinder. He’s already here. Already preparing.” She looked at me with haunted eyes. “He knows we’re coming, Kvothe. He’s been waiting for us.”

“Let him wait.”

“You don’t understand.” She shook her head. “He’s not worried. He’s not preparing defenses. He’s…” She struggled for words. “He’s happy. Happy that we’re coming. Happy that everything is playing out exactly as he planned.”

“Then we’ll have to surprise him.”

“How? He knows everything I know. Everything I saw, everything I learned—it’s all in his mind too.” Her voice cracked. “I’m not a weapon, Kvothe. I’m a liability. And he’s going to use me to destroy everything you’re trying to save.”

“Then we’ll find a way to protect you.”

“There is no protection.” She looked toward the city, toward the towers that seemed to glow faintly in the grey light. “There’s only the choice. The door, the channel, or the key. One of them has to break before the ritual can fail.”

“The key is with Wil. He’ll keep it safe.”

“Then it’s between the door and me.” She met my eyes. “And we both know you can’t break a door, Kvothe. Not one that’s been sealed for three thousand years.”

I understood what she was saying.

I just wasn’t ready to accept it.

“We’ll find another way,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

And we rode on toward Renere.

Toward the ball.

Toward the end of everything.