Epilogue
“THEY SAID A DUSTER COULD NEVER BECOME A SAINT. BUT ONE DID. WE ALL SAW THEM. AND IF THAT’S THE CASE, THEN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE REST OF US DUSTERS STOP LETTING THEM TELL US WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE CAN BE?”
—EXCERPT FROM TRACTS FROM A REBEL PREACHER
The Gate of Heaven is falling.
The illusion around it has dropped like a curtain at the end of a show, revealing the impossible garden, the perfect expanse of water, the glittering orb shedding chunks of glass that sparkle in the early-dawn light as they smash against the ground.
Miles away, a little cluster of people stand on the edge of a dusty, abandoned town in the middle of a copper wasteland, watching the Gate go all to pieces in the distance.
Orion, leaning against his brother. Atlas, who holds the unconscious body of a saint named Gabriel protectively in his arms. Liren, with their arms threaded through Atlas’s, and Dani next to them, her eyes pinned to her boots like she can’t bring herself to look.
Halle and Kelda stand out in front, slightly apart from the others, their arms wrapped around each other, a curious fuzzy creature with pointed ears sitting at their feet.
A breeze whips around them, unnaturally cool and damp, and Kelda puts her hand up to catch it, to let it curl through her open fingers.
She doesn’t even really know why she does it.
It’s just that every bit of her aches with loss, and she can’t help reaching out. Even if she knows it’s too far now.
High up in the sky, framed by the pink light of dawn, the Gate tips slowly downward—and then all at once it’s plummeting to the ground, like a marble rolling off the edge of a table.
A deep boom, like a distant explosion, rumbles the alloy beneath their feet, even though they’re over ten miles away.
It’s Liren who first spots the wall of debris and dust barreling toward them, and they curse as they jump forward and grab the Bruinn sisters, pulling them backward.
Almost as one, the group turns their backs to the destruction, dropping low to the ground.
The shock wave slams into them seconds later, pinning them to the alloy in a violent tangle of limbs and new cuts and bruises. And when it finally passes and they get to their feet again …
The Gate of Heaven sits in ruins, barely visible from where they stand. Ragged parts of its frame are still intact, jagged shards of colored glass stabbing up into the sky, but mostly there is just rubble and wreckage.
A ball of blue-white light streaks up like a comet from the wreckage of the Gate, out of the heart of Trinity, and Halle’s breath catches in a gasp as she stares into it.
It almost looks like there’s a silhouette inside, enormous wings outspread, bright and blazing as a lightning strike.
Cutting into the sky with a power so intense she can almost hear it crackling.
She grips Kelda’s shoulders, trying to point out to her what she’s seeing, but the comet is already too high, too far. It cuts a path up into the clouds and light blasts outward from it, spreading to every horizon, dispelling everything in its path.
There’s a moment where it’s clear sky in all directions, rich blue-green and a golden rising sun. And then new clouds spill across the atmosphere, spooling in rippling waves, different from those of a magnastorm. Darker and thicker, with silver-bright lightning dancing between them.
Something taps against the alloy at their feet. A small sound made much louder by the deep silence blanketing the air. Then there’s another and another and another until it becomes a chorus of pattering drops, beading on the ground, dampening their faces, their clothes, their hair.
Kelda holds her hands out in front of her, drops collecting in her open palms. Ember twines around her ankles, ears pinned back, looking disgruntled. “What is this? What’s happening with the sky?”
Halle steps close beside her, something like awe on her face as she looks at the clouds and the bright comet still flying far above, water ribboning down her face. “I think it’s called rain.”