It was snowflakes first, then diamonds of ice. As my legs ached from treading water and my throat burned from salt and breath, Lucet finally gave in, the sorrow in her soul spearing outwards in lances and chunks. By the time we reached the harbor, we walked in on a solid glacier, the souls of a few dead fish shattering like meteors colliding in the dark.

And yet the dockworkers of Knwharfhelm hardly paid us a second glance. There was a story more primal and resonant than any act of magic which was unfolding on the pier.

Jiaola was still absently brushing the hair from Sansen's eyes when we returned. The old man was talking with a dockhand who had awkwardly offered a sheet of cloth.

"He had other plans," Jiaola simply said, holding Sansen's body a little closer to him. "Really. I'll be fine. He made arrangements. He... always does."

The dockworker cleared her throat. "Ah, that's... not quite what—"

"You've been sitting on a prime loading zone for half an hour," a blunt foreman interrupted. He got scandalized glares from everyone except Jiaola, but he just shrugged in response. "Someone had to say it, and that's what I'm paid to do."

Lucet tensed by my side, and I knew she could see the gashes of red-hot grief being pressed into an emotion that blazed with heat and flowed like stone, the global firestorm that had consumed Jiaola's soul. "Hey, you! Asshat!" She shouted, pointing at the foreman.

The foreman looked at us, then did a double-take as he noticed the frozen-over harbor. "What—who are all you people? Where did you—"

"Have you ever lost someone you loved?" Lucet interrupted.

The foreman scowled. "Look, I understand that he's grieving, but this is a public workplace. If he can just move out of the way we can—"

"Would you like to?"

Lucet didn't shout or gesture or even so much as wave a finger. She was far too accomplished a soulmage for that. She simply remembered the endless frost around the Redlands, and filled that memory with salt-spiked sorrow.

The wooden dock screamed in agony as the ocean beneath it swelled with ice, jagged spears of pure cold twisting the planks into broken maws. The foreman stepped back, stunned, as Lucet tilted her head.

Jiaola gently got his arms beneath his husband, soul still molten and gushing and raw, and gave the dockhand a polite smile.

"Thank you for the offer. Time is precious, and I've taken up enough of yours."

I leapt up onto the wooden dock, mindful of the painfully sharp edges, and dashed after Jiaola. I didn't have to hurry. I could have spotted his soul from outer space, still rippling from the impact as it was, and Jiaola was taking his time. But I didn't want him to be any more alone than he had to be.

"...Hey. Jiaola." Hesitantly, I walked up to him. "You're, uh..." He kept going at the same steady pace. "Do you... want me here?"

"He would have," Jiaola softly replied. "All three of you."

As Jiaola spoke, Lucet slunk up to us, shying away from that molten radiance shimmering off Jiaola's soul.

"Meloai... I told her what happened. Where can she... where can she find us?"

Jiaola smiled. "Sansen made sure she'd be there when she went to search. We'll meet her soon."

The four—the three of us made our way down lantern-strewn alleyways, too bright and hot in the day, until we reached a niche between alleyways where a kindly old man had once served soup to little lost children who were, one way or another, like him. Meloai stood inside, turning towards us when she heard us come, and her expression locked in place when she saw Sansen's corpse.

Jiaola knelt, placing Sansen in the center of the square, and I felt his soul shiver as he pulled on it.

"I can't work magic," he finally said. "Can you make sure he'll... can you make him stay? Like he was?"

Lucet and Meloai and I met each others' eyes, saw the measure of our souls, and nodded, wordlessly, one by one. Lucet placed a hand on Sansen's forehead, closing her eyes, and a faint iridescent sheen flickered over his body, the light bouncing oddly off Sansen's closed eyes as time slowed down around him. I lit a flickering flame of hope, dancing on the edge of my thumb, and set it over his left eye. Meloai held out her palms, carefully excising a memory from her own soul, and sealed a slice of the Sansen-that-was: standing over the soup pot, burning with one eye to the future, resting on the cobblestones then and now and forever.

The faint smile on Jiaola's lips finally fell, and he closed his eyes.

A single teardrop fell, then two. They slowed as they fell, caught a hair's breadth above Sansen's skin.

"I'll come back when I'm ready," he whispered. "Thank you."

Then he stood, and the debris from that magmatic, calamitous impact began to fall, peppering his soul.