Epilogue
The final beat of my heart propelled me upward, layers of glass and stone streaking by in dizzying patterns, till finally I emerged into open air under a sky of impossible colors.
I was dead. Again.
The realization didn’t frighten me. I had spent what felt like a lifetime within the confines of my dreaming.
Lynette was there when she could be, but otherwise, I was left to my own devices, surrounded by the machinations of my own mind.
But now, I could be free of those walls within my mind.
Here, in the Ether, I could breathe. Metaphorically, of course.
Did the others await below the mountain? I hoped they had been close by, at the very end. It was a selfish desire to want them to witness my end, but the idea brought me comfort. To reach the end of one’s life surrounded by those who love you—there was no better end.
When I was still alive, I’d never dwelled on what came after.
Even as Bastien brought me back from the edge of oblivion, there was no part of me that wanted to explore what that end would have been without his magic intervening.
He’d told me that our magic returns to the Source, so was that where I was headed next?
To rejoin the source of all magics and await the day that I would get to inhabit a form once more?
Would I even realize that I’d lived a life before then?
Or would my consciousness, much like my body, decay over time, leaving behind nothing but the unrecognizable bones of what came before?
“Do you truly wish to know?”
The voice was quiet, yet in this place of stillness, it was a cacophony. A chorus of harmonic tones distilled into one, all at once frightening and entrancing.
A figure appeared in my periphery, drifting into focus as they came alongside me, head tilted back to view the same sky of chromatic majesty.
I knew in an instant I was in the presence of something otherworldly.
Could this be Death itself coming to greet me?
All of those times I had imagined evading the figure, to see them manifested filled me with an unexplainable excitement.
“Have you come for me?” I asked, not taking my gaze away from the stars overhead.
“I come for all, eventually. You are no different.”
“That’s comforting,” I admitted.
“Most find it so.”
“Are they afraid?”
“Most are not, by the time they reach this place.”
“Was my mother afraid?”
Death didn’t answer.
“I thought I would be. I thought I would be fighting. Clinging to life with all of my might.”
“Your battles are over. There is nothing left to fight.”
“What about you? Others don’t try to stop you from taking them?”
A grinding laugh echoed around me.
“Those who try quickly find their actions most inconsequential. All things end.”
“Even you?”
“Even I, eventually.”
“What about those like me? Those who come back.”
“All things come to an end,” the entity repeated. “No matter how many times one wishes to attempt outrunning it. They find their way back to me. You are proof of this.”
“I guess I am,” I agreed. “If I go with you, will my magic still return to the Source?”
“The lifeforce given by my siblings has already returned, yet it would seem they saw fit to relinquish this portion to me.”
“Sibling? Do you mean that you and the Source came from the same place?”
“Yes. It is the same for all of our siblings.”
“How many are there?”
“Seven in all. Seven wonders, Enduring. They are among your kind, now. All but one, for I must remain here to greet my brethren as they return to the Ether.”
“What do they want with us?”
“To experience what it means to be human.”
My thoughts raced.
“Why?”
I turned, suddenly feeling the weight of someone’s gaze upon me, but Death no longer stood at my side. Instead, a man with crimson hair streaked with white drifted up from the mountain, searching the sky with a desperation that robbed the voice from my throat.
Cirian drifted higher, dark eyes scanning the horizon.
He hadn’t spotted me yet, which gave me a moment to watch him from afar.
Though it no longer beat in my chest, my heart swelled at his presence.
Even if I were soon to be carried away by Death, at least I would be able to tell him a proper goodbye. To say that I loved him, even in death.
To tell him that I wanted nothing more than my final moments to be beside him.
After all, what were the odds I’d be able to escape death a second time?
It would take a miracle.
Drifting up to the red-haired man, a smile spread across my face.
“You found me.”