The moment Hazahnahkah found himself standing in a completely different section of the space station, he knew something was off. For one, he was breathing. For two, he had hands. Zalahak was smiling right at him. He placed a heavy hand on Hazahnahkah’s shoulder.

  “It’s a pleasure seeing you again in the spirit, old friend.”

  Hazahnahkah slapped the man’s hand off. “Don’t touch me. I’m not your friend.”

  This seemed to hurt Zalahak. His blue eyes fell low to the darkened, glassy floor. The station’s automated lights dimmed respectfully to his steps. He gestured towards a magnificent structure at the heart of the endless white room.

  The sacred stone altar stood like a wound in time—a monument of earth and spirit where no such thing should exist inside the sterile heart of the space station. Like a bell tower, it rose to the ceiling, humming faintly with whistling wind and chime song that echoed through bone. Embedded throughout its body were bells of every size—bronze, gold, obsidian, and crystal—each one half-swallowed by the stone, as if the altar had grown around them over eons. The architecture was a more complex semblance of shapes, patterns, and buildings than anything in Black Garden. It also felt alive. The channels carved into it were emblazoned with pulsing light, as if all of this temple had at one point been perfect pieces that had now been put together… perfectly.

  This was a place for ghosts, built by ghosts, kept by ghosts. Little mechanical objects bearing resemblance to Zalahak’s sphere went about dusting, washing, mumbling to themselves little echoes of demands once spoken. Recordings. Hazahnahkah could recognize the voices of others long past, stored within the devices. These metal shells were empty. They weren’t anything like him. He needed to find his blade. He needed to beat Zalahak. He twisted around, scanned the area, and found no hints of how they’d gotten here. Wherever they were fighting, it was far away.

  Hazahnahkah used his Third Terror to warp to higher ground. Zalahak waved his arm. It was just like with the sphere, but this time the force keeping him from utilizing his Ramble was coming from Zalahak himself. Hazahnahkah clenched his teeth and tried harder, but he quickly gave up. This battle wasn’t worth it. He wouldn’t even know where to teleport when he won, for he knew not where in the space station this was.

  “The world is too large a place to worry about the past,” Zalahak said.

  “You attacked me ten seconds ago.”

  Zalahak laughed. He revealed beneath his swordcoat Hazahnahkah’s blade. He unsheathed it, tossed it Hazahnahkah’s way, and trudged up the steep blinking of the jade steps without so much as a glance. “And after I took so many liberties to keep you warm.”

  The blade was exactly his own. Hazahnahkah did not understand as he ran his hand over its brand-new edge. If his consciousness was somehow transferred to a new body, then how was his old blade here? He stared at it. There were no holes anymore. They were really gone. Nothing about this was an illusion. His body was in perfect condition, but there was no paint from Galfarys either. Either Zalahak had truly restored his appearance…

  … or he had made a copy of Hazahnahkah’s blade body.

  Whatever Zalahak had done, it looked like those earliest evenings in which Hazahnahkah had first been forged. The only way Zalahak could have done this was if he could make Hazahnahkah anew himself. The sword was almost too scared to ask.

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  “Did you make me?”

  Zalahak gave a sullen nod.

  Hazahnahkah couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to, but if Zalahak could make those spheres, then he had no other choice but to believe. Still, to think that the culmination of all these years of wielders finally ended here, with him, in a battle for Serpent’s Ramble—Hazahnahkah wanted to change the man’s mind—he had to.

  “Then you should know that you never gave me a purpose,” Hazahnahkah said. “I found it in Serpent’s Ramble. I found my purpose was doing as much good as I can.”

  “You came all this way to tell the one who forged you this?” Zalahak frowned. He stared at the end of their ascent, where a body of water swirled around the top of a bell tower. “I did give you a purpose. You had one before you entered “The Ramble”. Your purpose was to keep other people within it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because it’s just as you’re thinking. Serpent’s Ramble is a prison. That’s why you’re here with Yurreth. Is it not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you were willing to kill me before knowing anything at all. Were you not?”

  “If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead.”

  “If my holomatrix didn’t protect me, you would have used your Terrors. Come on, man. You were a scoundrel, but you were never a liar.”

  “You do not know me. Don’t speak as if you do.”

  This response seemed to surprise Zalahak. His face didn’t change, but his heartbeat lagged for just a fraction of a moment. “I do know you. Did I not?”

  “Clearly, I don’t remember who I was, so am I not someone else?”

  “Don’t get so philosophical. You know that’s not true. It’s your reason that I’m here; why I brought you to this place. Your selfless sacrifice those ten thousand years ago to enter The Serpent’s Ramble I still honor to this day. To this dream. To your dream. Was it not this very spot that I stood here and oversaw the moment your wife cried out her eyes and watched you turn before your son?”

  Nothing about what Zalahak said reached Hazahnahkah. He was now captured by the bell tower, which he had now come to realize was a grave. The base of the pinnacle was sculpted from pale, porous stone that seemed older than the stars themselves. Flowing reliefs depicted human forms walking through this monument from one side and appearing as symbols on the other, dissolving into symbols, then into nothing at all. A serpent ran through the space, so endless it had no head or tail. The only reason Hazahnahkah could tell it was a serpent was because of the scales, and the scales seemed to ripple with light.

  The chamber that housed the grave was not still. Its siren strobes and vibrating viaducts gyrated all around the structure in a vortex of mechanical murmurs. It was an eerie, unending dance. The immense structure of the grave stood unmoving in its center, locked to the station’s inertial core by ancient anchors of blackened alloy and veined stone. The world around it, ever-revolving in ways that never repeated twice.

  “This is where Incarnates are born,” Hazahnahkah whispered.

  “So you are in there, somewhere,” Zalahak replied. “Go on, press your head to it.”

  Hazahnahkah looked at the pulsating porous stone. He didn’t feel like he had the right to do this, since this body wasn’t his. It was anyone’s guess what this monument might do to him—to the person he was in. He wanted to ask them for permission, but no permission ever came. It was also entirely possible that Zalahak was stalling for time. Hazahnahkah didn’t get that impression, but he had mismeasured humans before. There was nothing particularly dangerous about the temple, so he gave in to the feeling he had first had when he had woken to this place, surrendering to it.

  The flat sides of the structure were crying. They were wet with a thin layer of ice. It kissed Hazahnahkah’s forehead like the cold tears of a thousand faces frozen in time. The frigid burning pushed itself in Hazahnahkah’s head gently, persuasively, deeply. It spread throughout his body and overtook him. It possessed him. It was a cold so passionate it made everything else feel empty, and made him feel full. Memories came with the feeling it delivered, memories of long ago. They pushed themselves deeper into Hazahnahkah, deeper like a knife.