Grazim looked exactly as Kaylor remembered him.
That was the first impossible thing.
Not younger. Not restored to the human body he had possessed before the mirror killed him. Not changed into some radiant servant of whatever power ruled this place. He was the halfling who had walked beside them after reincarnation had given him a second body for a life that had already contained more than one ending.
Armor. Holy symbol. Familiar face.
Grazim Von.
Dead.
Kaylor stood several paces from him and discovered that there were questions too large to ask quickly.
Fendor solved that problem in the traditional way.
“You look terrible.”
Grazim smiled.
It was not a grand reunion.
No thunder rolled across the strange sky. No choir announced that death had temporarily loosened one of its rules. Grazim simply smiled at Fendor the way he had smiled a hundred times before, usually when someone else had made a bad decision and he had not yet determined whether healing it would encourage repetition.
Fendor stared at him.
Then his expression changed.
The humor disappeared.
He crossed the distance between them.
Grazim had barely begun lifting his arms when the elf seized him.
For several heartbeats neither said anything.
Kaylor looked away.
Nethnarel did not.
Neither did Hexen.
Isamu remained where he was, very still, his face revealing almost nothing except that he had stopped scanning the horizon for enemies.
Eventually Fendor stepped back.
He kept one hand on Grazim’s shoulder.
“You are dead.”
“Yes.”
The answer came easily.
Too easily.
Fendor frowned.
“So are we.”
Grazim considered that.
“Yes.”
“That is less reassuring.”
“Would you prefer I lie?”
“I would prefer several things.”
Grazim’s smile widened slightly.
“That has not changed.”
Kaylor finally moved.
He did not embrace Grazim.
Not at first.
He stood directly in front of him, enormous beside the halfling, and looked down with the same expression he had once worn before impossible doors, corrupted temples and enemies who had made the mistake of believing certainty belonged to them.
“You were gone.”
Grazim’s expression softened.
“I know.”
Kaylor swallowed.
The dragonborn had learned to survive betrayal. He had learned to survive losing his faith, rebuilding it into something that belonged to him rather than the institution that had tried to use it. He had learned to carry power no righteous priest would have comfortably blessed. He had learned to live after friends died.
That had never meant he had learned to be pleased about it.
“You were gone,” he repeated.
This time Grazim reached up.
Kaylor crouched enough for the cleric to place a hand against the side of his face.
“I know.”
Kaylor closed his eyes.
The embrace came then.
Shorter than Fendor’s.
Harder.
When Kaylor stood again, he cleared his throat and turned toward the monument as if it had suddenly become tactically important.
Nethnarel went next.
She had no speech prepared.
That irritated her.
Words were usually easy. When they were not easy, magic could often be persuaded to make the problem someone else’s. Neither talent proved useful now.
She stopped before Grazim.
“You know,” she said, “this is becoming a very confusing relationship.”
Grazim raised an eyebrow.
“You die.”
“Yes.”
“You come back.”
“Sometimes.”
“You die again.”
“Apparently.”
“You appear in places where dead people should not be able to help us.”
Grazim’s eyebrow went slightly higher.
Nethnarel folded her arms.
“I would like rules.”
“You?”
“That is an unfair response.”
“Still true.”
She laughed.
It lasted less than a second before breaking.
Then she hugged him.
Hexen waited until she moved away.
His reunion was quieter.
The druid and cleric regarded one another across a small distance that contained more history than either seemed interested in explaining aloud. Grazim had appeared once before when Hexen called for aid in the Swarm Lord’s temple. Not returned. Not resurrected. Something stranger. A presence permitted for a battle and then gone again.
Hexen understood perhaps better than the others that seeing Grazim did not mean they had been given him back.
That made the moment harder.
“Still dead?” Hexen asked.
“Still dead.”
Hexen nodded.
“Good.”
Fendor stared.
Hexen glanced toward him.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I absolutely do not.”
“If he were alive, then we would need to understand how.”
“Whereas this is straightforward?”
“No.”
“Excellent.”
Grazim laughed.
The sound hurt more than silence would have.
Isamu approached last.
He and Grazim looked at one another.
Isamu gave a single small bow.
Grazim returned it.
That might have been all.
Then Isamu stepped forward and embraced him too.
When they separated, Isamu looked beyond the halfling to the monument.
“So this is death.”
Grazim turned.
“I don’t think so.”
That brought all five of them back to attention.
The monument stood on the rise behind him, carved figures overlooking a place they remembered without remembering properly. Their first awakening had always existed in fragments. Stone beneath them. Names without histories. A monument declaring they had been heroes before any of them understood what that meant.
Now they stood before it again with centuries of missing memory still behind them and years of shared life between.
They had returned to where they began.
But they were not the people who had awakened here.
Fendor walked toward the monument.
The stone figures had once been accusations.
Heroes.
That word had been waiting for them before they had earned it in their own minds.
Now he looked upon the carvings and felt something stranger.
Recognition.
Not of the faces.
Of the burden.
He reached out and touched the cold stone.
“Do we stay here?”
No one answered immediately.
Grazim looked away from them.
Toward the center of the strange place.
Only then did the others remember the figure.
It had been there when they arrived.
A shape beyond Grazim, difficult to judge against the peculiar distance of the place. Human perhaps. Perhaps not. It stood motionless where the open ground dipped slightly before rising again beyond the monument.
Kaylor’s hand moved instinctively toward Final Word.
The sword was still with him.
So were Fendor’s weapons.
Nethnarel still carried the Staff of Power.
Isamu had everything death had taken with him.
Hexen’s possessions remained as well.
Even the three pieces of the unfinished spear had crossed whatever boundary the dragon’s breath had forced them through.
Fendor noticed Kaylor’s hand.
“Are we attacking things in heaven now?”
“We do not know this is heaven.”
“Good. That makes it more reasonable.”
Grazim watched the distant figure.
“You are not here to stay.”
That ended the humor.
Kaylor turned toward him.
“How do you know?”
Grazim hesitated.
It was the first time he had done so.
Not long.
Enough.
“Because I am.”
The words settled heavily.
Nethnarel looked at him.
“You stay.”
Grazim nodded.
“And us?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Fendor’s expression hardened.
“You just said we aren’t staying.”
“I know that much.”
“How?”
Grazim looked toward the figure again.
The air around it seemed darker now.
Or brighter.
The place refused ordinary measurements.
“I have been waiting.”
“For us?” Hexen asked.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
Grazim considered the question.
“I don’t think time works well here.”
“That is becoming a theme,” Nethnarel said.
Kaylor stepped closer to the cleric.
“What happens next?”
Grazim’s eyes moved to the unfinished spear.
Three sections.
A shaft without a head.
The weapon they had descended into the Void to recover had failed them by remaining incomplete. Somewhere beneath the crater, or somewhere beyond it, its final piece still waited.
The Mithril Dragon remained alive.
The Naked Goddess remained undefeated.
Their bodies—
If bodies were what they had—
were dead.
Fendor followed Grazim’s gaze.
“If you say we have to go back down there, I may become religious purely so I can object formally.”
Grazim almost smiled.
“I don’t think you are finished with her.”
Silence.
Not the dragon.
Her.
The Naked Goddess.
Nethnarel looked toward the three spear fragments.
“We died.”
“Yes.”
“We failed.”
Grazim shook his head.
“You died.”
“That is generally considered a failure.”
“Only if dying was the end.”
Fendor looked around at the monument, the distant figure and the impossible landscape.
“At the risk of encouraging theology, I am beginning to suspect it was not.”
Hexen had been studying Grazim instead.
“You know something.”
“Not enough.”
“You know more than we do.”
“That standard is low.”
Fendor pointed at him.
“There. That. I missed that.”
Grazim’s smile faded again.
“I know you have to return.”
Kaylor’s eyes narrowed.
“To the Void?”
“I don’t know.”
“To the Goddess?”
“I think so.”
“Think?”
Grazim looked toward the distant figure.
For the first time, it moved.
One step.
Nothing more.
The effect traveled across the strange ground without wind.
Hexen felt it before the others.
A pressure.
Not hostile.
Not gentle either.
It reminded him of standing beneath ancient trees during a storm and realizing the forest was not fragile merely because it was quiet. Something old occupied this place with them. Something that had no obligation to explain itself in mortal terms.
The three spear fragments trembled.
Kaylor drew them from where he carried them.
Metal answered metal.
Not joining.
Not completing.
Remembering.
A faint vibration passed through the pieces.
Fendor watched carefully.
“Are we sure this isn’t another trap?”
“No,” Nethnarel said.
“Good. I value consistency.”
The distant figure lifted one hand.
The world changed.
Not visibly at first.
The monument remained.
The ground remained.
Grazim remained.
Yet every one of the five felt something shift behind the ribs.
A pull.
The opposite of the compulsion the wrapped creatures had used in the Void.
That had wanted them closer.
This wanted them elsewhere.
Kaylor gripped the spear fragments.
His vision filled with flashes.
A cavern.
Mithril.
A storm of metal.
A woman’s silhouette so vast that mountains became scenery around her.
He could not tell whether any of it was memory, prophecy or the dying echo of what they had already endured.
Then it vanished.
Nethnarel staggered.
Hexen caught her arm.
“You saw it?”
She nodded.
“Something.”
Isamu was staring past the monument.
The horizon had disappeared.
Not darkened.
Gone.
The world now ended a few dozen yards beyond them in pale nothingness.
Fendor turned slowly.
“I liked it better when death had geography.”
Grazim stepped toward them.
For the first time since they had arrived, urgency entered his face.
“You have a choice.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“What choice?”
“To stay dead.”
No one spoke.
Grazim continued.
“I don’t know what waits if you remain. I don’t know whether this place is reward, passage, prison or merely somewhere between one breath and the next.”
His eyes went to each of them in turn.
“But you can stay.”
Fendor looked toward the blank horizon.
“Tempting sales pitch.”
“Or you can go back.”
“To what?” Nethnarel asked.
Grazim shook his head.
“That is the part I cannot promise.”
Kaylor looked at the unfinished spear.
“The Goddess.”
“Yes.”
“The dragon?”
“Maybe.”
“The Void?”
“Maybe.”
Kaylor almost laughed.
“Useful.”
“I’ve been dead. My information is limited.”
Fendor nodded.
“Finally, a reasonable excuse.”
Hexen moved away from the group.
A few steps.
No farther.
He looked at the monument.
There had been another life before this one.
Another beginning.
Another death.
They had once returned without knowing why. They had awakened beneath their own memorial and spent years becoming worthy of names the world already remembered.
Now someone—or something—was asking them to do it again.
Not as blank people.
Not as legends without memories.
As themselves.
Hexen looked at Grazim.
“You aren’t coming back.”
The cleric’s silence answered before his words did.
“No.”
Fendor’s face hardened.
“But you are coming with us.”
Grazim looked toward the distant figure.
Something passed between them.
No words that the others could hear.
Then Grazim looked back.
“For a little while.”
That changed everything.
Nethnarel’s eyes widened.
Kaylor stared at him.
Isamu simply nodded once, as though some private equation had finally balanced.
Fendor exhaled.
“Well.”
Grazim looked at him.
“You say that too much.”
“I’ve been told.”
Kaylor stepped forward.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how you’re coming with us?”
“No.”
“How do you know you are?”
Grazim’s smile returned.
“Faith.”
Kaylor stared at him.
For several seconds the old wound between that word and everything Craven had done to him opened.
Then closed.
Not healed.
Never that simply.
But changed.
Kaylor looked toward the monument.
“Fine.”
Fendor blinked.
“That is your response?”
Kaylor drew Final Word.
“Yes.”
“We’re dead.”
“Yes.”
“We have no idea where we’re going.”
“Yes.”
“We don’t know what is sending us.”
“No.”
“We don’t have the weapon we went into the Void to find.”
“No.”
“The dragon that killed us is still alive.”
“Yes.”
“And the Goddess is apparently still waiting.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“Yes.”
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“All right.”
Nethnarel laughed.
Hexen shook his head.
Isamu adjusted his grip on the whip.
Grazim looked at the five people who had once awakened beneath their own monument and somehow become his family.
Then the halfling reached for his holy symbol.
The distant figure raised its other hand.
The monument began to shine.
Light traveled through the carvings.
Not from above.
From within.
It traced the shapes of the six heroes carved there, filling old grooves worn by weather and years that none of them had witnessed. The figures brightened one after another.
Kaylor.
Hexen.
Fendor.
Nethnarel.
Isamu.
Grazim.
Six names.
Six shapes.
One dead already.
Five dead only recently.
Fendor stared upward.
“You know, I would like one resurrection in my life that involves a bed.”
No one answered.
The light reached them.
It was warm.
That surprised Nethnarel most.
Death had not been cold, but she had expected whatever came after it to be distant. Abstract.
This felt painfully physical.
A heartbeat.
One.
Then another.
Her own.
Nethnarel gasped.
The sensation struck all five at once.
Breath.
Weight.
Pain.
Blood moving where blood had stopped.
Kaylor dropped to one knee.
Fendor doubled over.
Hexen grabbed the monument.
Isamu shut his eyes and endured.
The five heroes felt life return not as a blessing but as an invasion.
Bodies demanded things the dead had forgotten.
Air.
Balance.
Warmth.
Pain.
So much pain.
Kaylor looked at Grazim.
The cleric remained unchanged.
No breath caught in his chest.
No pulse returned.
No sudden weight of mortality settled onto him.
He was still dead.
Kaylor understood.
“No.”
Grazim met his eyes.
“No.”
“You said you were coming.”
“I am.”
“Not like this.”
“No.”
Kaylor rose.
Anger came quickly because grief had always known the shortest road through him.
“That is not enough.”
Grazim stepped closer.
“It has to be.”
Kaylor looked as though he wanted to argue.
With Grazim.
With death.
With whatever power had arranged this.
With every god that had ever decided mortals should accept loss politely.
Grazim placed one hand against Final Word.
“You brought me farther than death should have allowed already.”
Kaylor said nothing.
“You don’t get to keep everyone.”
The dragonborn’s jaw tightened.
“That sounds like something a god would say.”
“No.”
Grazim smiled sadly.
“It sounds like something a dead cleric says to an Oathbreaker who still thinks stubbornness is a divine domain.”
Fendor looked away.
Hexen did not.
Nethnarel wiped at her face with the back of one hand and pretended it had been necessary for some other reason.
Isamu stepped beside Kaylor.
Not touching him.
Present.
The way he always was when words had reached the limit of their usefulness.
Kaylor lowered Final Word.
The monument’s light intensified.
The distant figure vanished.
Or the light swallowed it.
None of them could tell.
Grazim looked toward whatever lay beyond the brightness.
“It is time.”
Hexen took one step forward.
“Where?”
Grazim’s gaze shifted to him.
“Back.”
That was all.
No spell followed.
No sacred words.
No ritual any of them would later remember.
One instant they stood beneath the monument.
The next, the world had weight again.
Real weight.
Violent weight.
Air struck their lungs.
Stone existed beneath their boots.
The scent of burned metal filled Kaylor’s nose.
Wind moved across Nethnarel’s face.
Fendor heard something enormous in the distance.
Isamu opened his eyes.
Hexen looked down at his hands.
Alive.
All five of them.
Alive.
And beside them stood Grazim Von.
Dead.
But present.
Not returned.
Not restored.
Borrowed, perhaps, from wherever dead heroes waited.
Allowed one more battle.
Fendor looked at him.
Grazim drew his weapon.
That answered enough.
Then something moved beyond the light.
A shape impossibly vast.
A presence they had crossed death to face.
The Naked Goddess was waiting.
Kaylor raised Final Word.
The others spread out beside him.
For one impossible battle, there were six Heroes of the New Beginning again.
And this time, death had sent them back.