Noah materialized in the snow just outside the gate, the giants nearest the entrance turning at the sound of him arriving, their pale eyes following him as he walked past without raising their maces, an acknowledgment of some kind that hadn't existed the first time he'd stood here.
He found Yrsala in the same hall as before, near her mother's frozen throne, and she turned when his footsteps reached her.
"You're alive," she said.
"Barely," Noah said. "It got close a few times."
"Tell me what happened."
He did, as much of it as made sense to put into words. The chase up the mountain. The mist and the slits the size of doorframes. The General arriving and grounding it with a single strike. The halo, the mist that aged anything it touched, the pulses that split the mountain's own bedrock apart. He told her about the coin, about holding it up, about the Sleeper lowering its head until its eyes hung level with his own.
