43. The Living and the Dead

As the sathium drains from the balloon, Kinch crash-lands the cloud-ship into a snowy mountainside, surviving with Bully Boy and salvaging gear, the blackglass sword, and the farglass. Following Norrigal’s guiding stone, Kinch reaches Ylda’s old cave—the place of Galva’s earlier recovery—now a tomb.

Inside, Kinch finds lamps recently used and the corpse of his other self, posed with Palthra and a blood-stained letter in rough Galtish. The letter describes how to penetrate the Book of the Full Shadow’s pages through timed observation, growing text, and murder as entry-price, hinting at forbidden revelations. Grief overtakes Kinch before Bully’s hunger pulls him back to practicalities.

Galva appears alive but gaunt, bearing a pack that carries the book clamped in a bear trap and wrapped in chain and hide. She explains that assassins—an Assassin-Adept, an Ispanthian mercenary, and a dog-man—found them. She and other-Kinch killed the attackers, but the dog-man’s blow mortally wounded other-Kinch. Other-Kinch had learned archery arts from the book using a raptor’s talon, enabling decisive shots from below that felled two foes, yet he died days later after writing the letter.

They speak of the book’s enslaved spirit—the niece of Oustrim’s first Full Shadow—and the guilt of learning from it. Kinch recounts the fall of Erydon and Galva’s heroic death in the other life, shows her the blackglass sword, and gifts it to her. Together they honor Dalgatha and agree the crashed cloud-ship cannot be left to discovery.

Kinch and Galva ignite the wreck with yak oil, then lace into snowshoes, load a sled with the fettered book, and depart into the Thralls. They stage the cave with corpses—assassins, dead Kinch, and dead Galva—to convince pursuers that all perished, looting their own gear to live on. Marching east, they pledge to act later against the Takers Guild and Spanth powers, reaffirming their bond as Galva begins recounting her past, setting the course for their return and future strike.