The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(109)

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.

“Nassun,” you say. It’s a whisper. You’re on the bottom steps of the pylon, trying to reach her, but that won’t be happening. Your arm has completely solidified, and your torso is going. Your stone foot slides uselessly on the slick material, then locks as the rest of your leg freezes up. With your good foot, you can still push, but the stone of you is heavy; as crawling goes, you’re not doing a very good job of it.

Her brow furrows. You look up at her, and it strikes you. Your little girl. So big, here beneath the onyx and the Moon. So powerful. So beautiful. And you cannot help it: You burst into tears at the sight of her. You laugh, though one of your lungs has gone to stone and it’s only a soft wheeze instead. So rusting amazing, your little girl. You are proud to lose to her strength.

She inhales, her eyes widening as if she cannot believe what she is seeing: her mother, so fearsome, on the ground. Trying to crawl on stone limbs. Face wet with tears. Smiling. You have never, ever smiled at her before.

And then the line of transformation moves over your face, and you are gone.

Still there physically, a brown sandstone lump frozen on the lower steps, with only the barest suggestion of a smile on half-formed lips. Your tears are still there, glistening upon stone. She stares at these.

She stares at these and sucks in a long hollow breath because suddenly there is nothing, nothing inside her, she has killed her father and she has killed her mother and Schaffa is dying and there is nothing left, nothing, the world just takes and takes and takes from her and leaves nothing —



But she cannot stop staring at your drying tears.

Because the world took and took and took from you, too, after all. She knows this. And yet, for some reason that she does not think she’ll ever understand… even as you died, you were reaching for the Moon.