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She’d never had Lilia as a mother, not really. Even in those first thirteen years, she’d been held at arm’s length. And now, here: proof of her love, proof it had always been there, and the final proving was that one of them had to die, and Lilia would not let it be her child.

Tears fell freely from Lilia’s eyes, twin to Lore’s own. She leaned her head forward, resting her forehead against her daughter’s, clearing Lore’s own tears away with gentle fingers.

“You,” Lilia said, “are the only good thing I have ever done. Making you run that day tore me in half. It was my one good deed.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “Let me atone, my baby, my heart. Let me finally make a world you can live in.”

Lore fell forward, into her birth mother’s arms. Her sobs were artless, racking things. Lilia held up against them, her hands soothing, sweet in a way they had never been allowed before.

Apollius was still screaming, His cries going from wheedling to begging to raging, telling her all the ways He’d make her suffer for even considering this. But Lore, here in her mother’s arms, surrounded by her mother’s love, could ignore it. Her mother had come to save her.

And Lore would let her.

The waters of the Fount imbued every part of her body; not a swallow so much as a reservoir.

And when Lore let it go—fully relinquishing every bit of herself that had ever wished for this power, rejecting every bit of awful divinity—it didn’t feel like it had in the North Sanctuary after marrying Bastian, when her sip came back to her mouth.

It fled from every pore of her, seeping out like a wrung rag.

Seeping into her mother, instead.

But there was a moment in all that rush, just a heartbeat, when they were both human-shaped, right when the magic left Lore, right before it entered Lilia. When they could just be a mother and a daughter embracing, for the first and last time.

Lilia pushed Lore away with golden-shining hands. Her hazel eyes were wide and bright; she gasped, and Lore knew she was hearing Apollius, that the god was hurling every kind of abuse He could, knowing His second death approached.

Lore’s mother looked at her. Smiled. “Love you.”

Then she threw herself backward, into the Fount.

It erupted, the power It had once held returning in a flare, almost as if It had forgotten how to hold it. Or maybe in celebration.

A storm of golden light and deepest dark twined together over the lip of the Fount, obscured in a gout of clear, sparkling water. It threw itself on the canvas of the world, marring the sky. Blackness, swirling, an infinite void framed in molten gold, as if the Fount had spilled forth eternity.

Lore had been there, on that threshold. She’d seen this yawning star-filled door. And now she knew that nothing lay beyond it. That her mother was gone, gone completely, and even though that was rest, a sob still broke in her throat.

The hum in the air intensified. The open door into eternity grew slowly as she watched, like a flower in bloom. The very atmosphere seemed strained, bending forward, everything pulled toward that threshold.

The threads of the world flashed around her, as if the seams had been cut. A new dread chewed at the bottom of her stomach. Lore made herself look up, head heavy with grief. “What’s happening?”

The Fount didn’t answer her. The humming continued, the pull, the void in the sky opening, opening.

“ This world has not done well ,” the Fount said finally, speaking aloud rather than in her head, a low boom of sound. “ It’s time to make another. ”

The words didn’t register at first. When they did, Lore slammed her hands on the ground with a frustrated scream. “No! I did what You wanted! You have Your power back!”

In the corners of Lore’s vision, threads of magic disentangled themselves from stone and leaf, water and wind; the world unraveling back down to composite pieces. “ We have Our power back ,” the Fount agreed. “ And We are using it. ”

She’d had many instances when she thought she felt despair, but none of them compared to this. Lore slumped on the broken tiles of the Fount’s courtyard, her scarred palms limp in her lap. All this, and still, the world ending. All this, and still, she’d begun the apocalypse.

“ It is too great a rip to mend ,” the Fount continued.

“ A god-imbued soul tearing their way into eternity. The only thing that can sew it back is another death, another who has held divinity. It would close the doorway. ” It paused, and when It spoke again, there was a suggestion of thoughtfulness, and admonishment. “ But you are not willing to die. ”

Of course. Of course.

“What if I did?” Lore asked.

“ Our way is cleaner ,” the Fount replied. “ Easier. ”

She huffed a laugh. She and the Fount, united in this: They both always wanted the easy way out. If you were captured, take the deal the corrupt King offered you. If the world you’d made wasn’t up to snuff, tear it down and try again.

It’d caught up to her, finally.

Lore didn’t have it in her to curse. She barely had it in her to sob. She just let herself fall forward, her head slumped to the broken tiles, taking one last moment to feel her breath, feel her heart.

Feel that hand in her hair, caressing, familiar.

Bastian.

“Well,” he murmured. “We’ve come to my part, at last.”