The apprentice kneeled to pick up the Blades. The corpses' Ghosts crunched underfoot. "Two of them? You're greedy." His master sounded nearly amused. "No," the apprentice said. "I know my strength." And he did. The two Blades flared in his hands. They shined with Solar Light for just a moment, before the apprentice's power wrapped around them. Turned them. They went sullen, were snuffed—and came back to life, now roaring with the cold strength of the Void. They chilled his hands. Praxic Blades turned to Sorrow. He'd done it. His past didn't mean anything anymore. Torobatl, the Imperium, the Premier. His old Severus blades earned in honorable combat. His mother's bow. All gone. The apprentice had mourned for a time before he learned what mattered. Time alone in the temporal isolation of the Malphas Contemptus had taught him this: The only person you could rely on was yourself. The only strength was what you carried. Who he had been was gone. He was something new and better now. "Well," Sere said, as if anybody could sound unimpressed by making two Blades of Sorrow at the same time. His long shadow writhed across the field. "Destroy the bodies. And bring every shard of those Ghosts home for Bael. You know how he gets if we leave one behind." A petty order. Getting his kicks in while he could. But the apprentice knew what was due him, at last, at last— "There's no time to waste, Dredgen Harrow." Harrow grinned. His name was the last thing he'd let Sere give him. The rest he'd take by force.