"No!" I beheld Or'do's struggle, and his surrender, through a vision bestowed by the Keeper.

You cannot save him, Ashen One. She said this not unkindly, yet I bristled all the same.

"Why?!" I fell to my knees, fists of iron slamming against the flagstones as tears burned like liquid glass from my eyes. "Why did you show me that?!"

Because you needed to see it.

I roared in fury, and throwing the bone to the earth, I bellowed a wordless challenge. Not Or'do, not him. The Fates had stolen everything from me, yet he was one thing they would never take. Again, I screamed, yet this time in pain, as I thrust a hand inside my own body, and tore my own rib free.

Ashen One! The Keeper's invisible hand grasped my wrist, yet I jerked my arm free, throwing the bloody splinter atop the rib of my fallen foe.

"By the bone of my body," I felt the rib regenerate, yet simple tore it out once more, piling it upon the others. "By the blood in my veins," Again, again, again! I ground my bones to tinder, and set other glistening ribs upon them. "By the cold of my sorrow," I fell on hands and knees, one hand on either side of the small, damp pile. "By the fire of my soul," I reached to my breast, nearly toppling as I did so, and dug my steel fingers into the flesh beneath which the Cinder lay. "I swear," My fingers brushed against searing heat, and pinching off part of the pulsing mass, I plunged my hand into the makeshift kindling, igniting with a blinding flare the bones of Dark and Light. "I SHALL NOT LET YOU WIN!"