One week ago…

He remembers his sister's throne differently: an amalgam of Eliksni flotsam built from the spoils of war, its great weight suspended from the rafters. A throne Uldren set ablaze in the wake of losing her. His first step down a forsaken path. Crow lays a hand on the throne before him. It is empty and ponderous, silhouetted by distant nebulae and cosmic dust. It feels smooth. Too smooth.

"It was here that I first heard the news of your death," calls a familiar voice behind him.

He turns to see his sister striding down the hall. Mara takes her place beside him and gazes out into the far reaches of space.

"Did you mourn for me?" Crow asks.

"I did," his sister replies. She is silent for a moment. "And I regret what I did to you. The manipulation, the subtle coercion. None of it went the way I intended."

Crow follows her gaze out into the endless void. "I know what that's like."

"Remorse and recriminations," Mara says absently. She turns her eyes toward him. "If you could go back, alter the course of your history, what would you change?"

He can't help but laugh. "Where to begin?" Crow muses with a smirk. It fades soon enough. "Cayde," he whispers.

Mara raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Before then, I could have taken a different road. But once I pulled that trigger…" He shakes his head. "Everything else, I can set right. But not that. I just wish I could tell him I shouldn't have done it."

"I see," Mara murmurs. Her eyes shine in the starlight.

Crow sighs and rolls his shoulders back. "I should get going. Vanguard's waiting on my report."

"We all have our obligations, I suppose."

"Don't I know it." Crow nods as he heads down the hall. He pauses at the portal to the Dreaming City and glances back at Mara. Ringed by the distant nebulae, she shimmers like a mirage on desert sands. Crow realizes then that it was not his sister he spoke to. He departs with a shudder.

"See you soon." Mara's voice echoes across the empty chamber as the illusion fades. "O brother mine."

Jayesh stood on the sidelines with Silvan as final preparations were made for Crow to take the portal into the Traveler. They stood in a room in Mara Sov's tower, the walls and floor paved with gleaming blue crystal, which reflected the light until they seemed to stand in an underwater grotto. The portal stood ready against the far wall, a ring of metal filled with glimmering starlight. A group of the queen's tech witches gathered around a black stone that acted as a computer for the Awoken. A hologram of the Traveler floated above it. The white globe with the cracked underbelly now had a huge triangle portal cut into it that blazed magenta.

Jayesh vividly recalled the day it had happened... the day the pyramid ships reached Earth. The Vanguard had sent their top pilots to attack them, even though the pyramids were impervious to all Earth-made weapons. The Witness had revealed itself that day, a humanoid figure in black with a head that constantly emitted a smoking cloud of faces. Each of its movements left a trail behind, as if they saw only the top layer of a being that was millions of layers deep. It contemptuously swatted aside their best pilots, causing their ships to turn to stone and slide apart in millions of tiny rectangles. Amanda Holliday died along with many others, humans and Guardians alike, their Ghosts cut to pieces alongside them.

The Traveler had taken to orbit and fought back, blasting the pyramid ships with light that caused plants and trees to grow rampant across the ships, tearing them apart and breaking them down. Victory seemed assured until the Witness seized one of these blasts of Light, walked down it, and peeled open a portal in the Traveler's side as if it was nothing. It entered the portal and no one could stop it.

Jayesh had felt the whole battle and felt the Witness's entry like a worm sliding into his heart. Ever since then, his Light had been weaker, his Darkness powers stronger. He had stayed abreast of the news, of the Vanguard's fruitless efforts to penetrate the portal. Every day had seemed like a countdown to the apocalypse. And now, just as Crow had told him of a way in, the Witness had played its hand. The universe would be turned to stone, frozen into a twisted idea of perfection. Jayesh was rested, healed, and ready for what might be his final battle.

Silvan stood beside him, arms folded. She was a pretty Awoken girl with red hair in braids and glowing freckles like stars. She and Crow shared telepathic resonance the same way Mara and Crow did. But while Mara Sov was Queen of the Awoken and more powerful than any Guardian, Silvan was merely a warlock who loved studying the outer planets. Motherhood had deepened her curves and softened her face, turning her love for her husband hotter and more concrete. She watched him as he spoke with his sister and the Techeuns, receiving last-minute instructions.

"He'll be all right," Jayesh said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Her silver eyes lifted to his brown ones. Silvan was cool, composed, as if waiting for a new mission to start. "It's not the portal I'm worried about," she said. "I was here when Riven granted the wish. She demanded they restore the rest of her hidden eggs, and our fireteams have worked overtime doing it. Crow will make it through. I just worry about what the Witness might have waiting for him on the other side."

"He'll be armed," said Jayesh, motioning to the Hawkmoon hand cannon at Crow's hip. "And what's more, inside the Traveler, his Light will be constantly supercharged. He'll be unstoppable, no matter what the Darkness conjures up."

Silvan smiled and fixed her gaze on Crow. He glanced up, as if sensing her attention, flashed her a smile, then returned his attention to his briefing. Jayesh sensed that beneath her calm she was tense as a drawn bow, ready to fire…although what, and at whom, he wasn't sure.

"I'll be on the HELM," she said suddenly. "Once you all follow Crow inside, Mara Sov will open the way for the command ship and the rest of the fleet to enter the portal. We're all coming. No matter what happens in there, don't forget that we're right on your heels."

Jayesh nodded. "The Witness will never know what hit it." That was the source of her tension, that mental preparation for the final battle.

"What about Rega?" he asked quietly.

"She's staying with a lovely Awoken couple in the City," Silvan said. "Relatives of your cop friend Max Ross. If something happens to us, we've given them the legal status to raise her. The husband is a Sunbreaker and the wife has the powers of a Techeun, so I think it'd be a good fit."

"We'll all make it back," Jayesh said. "We're going to see this through."

"Backup plans are just that, backup," said Silvan. "I have no plans to die out there, but things happen." Still, she slipped an arm through Jayesh's and held onto him as Crow moved toward the waiting portal.

Goodbyes had already been said, so Crow only nodded to them from a distance as a final salute. The Techeuns and Mara Sov parted, wisps of tech magic playing over their fingers. Crow stood alone for a moment in his white mail and black cloak, like a white bird poised for flight. Then he sprinted at the portal and leaped through. He vanished without a sound.

All eyes turned to Mara Sov. She stood frozen, her glowing eyes staring into the portal, tracking her brother by the feel of his heartbeat. Suddenly she began conjuring magic in both hands, casting it on the nearest stone computer.

"I have him," she announced. "His signal is faint, but I can trace him. He is inside." The stone computer lit with the mysterious circles and lines of the Awoken computer language. The Techeuns gathered around and studied it.

Mara Sov turned to Jayesh and Silvan. "Both of you, return to Earth and prepare for your run. The portal is open and it is time."

Jayesh and Silvan bolted for their jumpships.

For Crow, the devastating powers of the portal that had destroyed another Guardian didn't exist. He leaped through the portal, emerged in a sunlit space, and found himself falling. The ground spread out half a mile below, green and lush as the countryside around the Farm, just as he'd imagined it.

The ground rushed toward him, but this was not the first long drop Crow had made in his life as a Guardian. He gathered his light and leaped off nothing, the way Hunters trained to do, slowing his fall. He landed hard and skidded down a sandy slope, but otherwise arrived unharmed. He rose to his feet, gazing around. "Glint, we're here."

"Scans register … Light," Glint replied in his head. "So much Light. Everything you see is made of it."

Crow threw back his head and drew a deep breath of the Traveler's atmosphere. It didn't look like he was inside the great mysterious sphere. It looked like he was someplace on Earth, a lush green hillside with rock outcroppings here and there, with a pleasing line of trees in the distance. The sunlight (was it sunlight?) fell warm upon his face, and the breeze in his face was delightfully cool.

But before Crow could enjoy it, or even reach for his link with his sister to let her know that he'd arrived, a familiar noise crashed upon his senses: a gunshot. A bullet struck a nearby rock with a ping.

Moving by instinct, Crow threw himself behind the nearest rock and drew Hawkmoon. "Glint, what is it?"

"Looks like a hostile Guardian," Glint reported. "Hard to tell exactly what we're dealing with. Maybe a construct?"

"Maybe some sentinel of the Witness's," Crow muttered. He swung out from behind the rock and fired off a few shots. His enemy was a flicker of movement behind a distant rock outcropping. Crow dashed toward a different rock, trying to get a better angle. His opponent fired at him again, but missed as Crow reached cover safely.

Crow took a second to reload. As he jammed in a fresh magazine, a small object struck the rock opposite him and stuck. A hunter's tripwire grenade. The laser trigger focused on Crow's forehead.

He leaped out of hiding and ran. Two seconds later the grenade detonated in a ball of fire, the blast flinging him forward. He landed in a roll and almost regained his feet, except that he landed at the feet of his opponent.

His enemy lifted a hand cannon and pointed it at him. Crow aimed Hawkmoon at him. Neither fired. This close, only a few feet away, Crow realized that his opponent was a fellow Hunter in a cloak and hood. An Exo with a blue painted face and glowing eyes. An Exo whose gun had an Ace of Spades painted on it, and was veined with cracks of light.

Crow's heart spasmed with superstitious fear. Cayde-6! He'd last seen this man from a different vantagepoint, Uldren gloating over him before shooting him in the heart. How was he here? A spirit? A construct of the Light?

"You died," Crow said, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.

Beside him, Glint appeared, as if so curious about this new development he simply had to see for himself. Or perhaps he was taking a calculated risk.

Cayde's glowing eyes flicked to the Ghost, then back to Crow. He appeared to be thinking quickly. "So did you," he replied.

Cayde lowered his gun, and Crow lowered his. Then Cayde held out a hand. Crow took it, and his former victim helped him to his feet. Without releasing his hand, Cayde tugged him a little closer and said, "I don't have to call you prince anymore, do I?"

Crow grinned and started to respond, but was interrupted by a distant thundering sound. Both men turned.

Their fight had carried them to the top of a little hill, where they could see the whole landscape spread out below them. Trees, forests, and hills seemed to roll all the way to the horizon–except for a single high mountain, thrust impossibly high into the sky. This mountain was black and swathed in roiling clouds. As they watched, a pulse of Light burst from it and spread across the landscape, eventually blasting over them, too, stirring their cloaks.

"That looks bad," said Cayde.

"It's the Witness," said Crow. "It's corrupting the Traveler's heart."

Cayde turned his head and studied Crow, looking him up and down all over again. "You know, I've been out of commission a while. Mind updating me on what's been going on? Like yourself. I take it my partners rolled in and dealt with you after you gunned me down in cold blood."

Crow's grin was pained. "Let's get off this hill and under cover."

As they left the hill and made their way into a shady glen where the rocks looked like Ghosts, Crow reached for that connection he shared with Mara Sov. Her heartbeat was there, distant but steady. He tried to tell her that he was all right, but the connection didn't allow for much communication. Next he reached for Silvan, but felt nothing. The distance was too great. He missed her resonance, her cheerfulness, the way she took his own emotions and gave them back with a sunshine edge. No, he was on his own now, even if he did have a strange companion at his side.

And now that moment in the throne room returned to him, when he thought he had been talking to Mara, and instead it had been an illusion. Riven the ahamkara, probably. Her spirit had been summoned from the Ascendant plane so as to grant a wish, and had not yet been dismissed at that point. He had wished to make things right with Cayde, hadn't he? It looked as if Riven had granted it. Here stood the man beside him, stitched together with Light and wishes.

As he figured this out, Cayde said, "Hey Ghost! What's your name?"

"I'm Glint, and pleased to meet you," said the Ghost, bobbing in midair.

"You picked up with this loser, huh?" Cayde said, balancing on a tree trunk over a small stream. "So like, you looked at his corpse and thought, 'What a haughty, stuck-up snot nose, I have to have him for a Guardian'?"

Glint laughed. "No, I merely scanned him as I scanned so many other things, and he was right. His spark was the one I was made for."

Crow's face grew warm at this assessment of himself. "I know I made a bad first impression. Let's start over. I'm Crow now."

"First, second, third, and fourth impression," said Cayde, "but who's counting?" He grabbed Crow's hand and shook it. "Pleased to meet you, Crow. Nice to know you're not the stuck-up prince of the Reef anymore." Cayde scrutinized him. "Or are you? Did Mara just take you straight back to being her lapdog?"

Crow shook his head. "No, actually Spider did."

"Spider!" Cayde exclaimed. "The mob boss on the Tangled Shore? Oh, I'll bet he clipped your wings!" He settled himself comfortably at the base of a tree. "Tell me the story, I gotta hear this."

Crow sat on a nearby rock and awkwardly began the story, but Cayde kept interrupting. "No, no, tell me about the jailbreak and the Scorn Barons. What were you lot even trying to do when you gunned me down? And my Ghost, poor Sundance, she didn't deserve that."

"It … it was the Rifleman who shot your Ghost," Crow said, his throat trying to close up at this admission. "I didn't … order him to do that."

"No, you just took advantage afterward," Cayde pointed out. "Also I find it pretty suspicious that you remember so much about it."

"Savathun gave me back Uldren's memories," Crow said.

Cayde drew the Ace of Spades and set it on his knee. "So, you went to a Hive God for this. Tell me why I shouldn't blow a hole in you the size of a truck."

Glint flew forward, spinning his shell aggressively. "If you'll just listen instead of interrupting every two seconds, he'll explain everything!"

"Short version, please," said Cayde. "Tempted to shoot you every few minutes anyway, wait just long enough for your Ghost to get you up."

"Please don't," Glint said. "The other Guardians already hunted and killed him over and over for two years. It was miserable."

Cayde grinned. "Sounds like my work is already done."

"I'm … I'm sorry, all right?" Crow said. "And Uldren's sorry, too."

"Sorry you did it or sorry I'm here to call you out?" said Cayde. "Anyway, tell me the story, I'll listen this time." And he did, fiddling with his gun.

Crow explained how Uldren had been looking for Mara Sov after the Battle of Saturn and had fallen prey to Riven's whispers. He explained about accidentally wishing the Scorn into being, and Fikrul, about the thing he thought was Mara goading him into every awful thing he had done, including killing Cayde. When he described Uldren's final moments and the fireteam that brought him down, Cayde slapped his thigh.

"Jayesh did? Jayesh Khatri? Timid little warlock guy?"

"Y-yes," Crow stammered. "You knew him?"

"Tried to get him to switch to Hunter," Cayde said. "Mentored him a bit. And his team is who tracked you down? If that don't beat all. Did he kill you?"

"No," Crow said. "He argued that I stand trial. Madrid shot me. Tall Awoken fellow with a sniper rifle."

Cayde laughed again. "Of course Madrid! He was with me when I died. Well well, will wonders never cease. The bastard actually avenged me. I owe him a drink."

Crow sat there in silence, an awful burning feeling behind his breastbone.

Cayde waved a hand. "Go on, go on. You got resurrected, right? How long were you dead?"

"Less than eighteen months," Crow said, the words coming slowly. He didn't want to relieve that part of his life and have Cayde laugh at him anymore. He did deserve it, he supposed, but he was simply so sick of having to apologize for Uldren's actions when he had tried to build a new life as Crow.

To his credit, Cayde-6 didn't laugh anymore. When Crow mentioned how Spider had strapped Glint with a bomb, Cayde quietly lifted his hand cannon, examined it, then laid it aside on the grass as if he wouldn't be needing it. Crow told about Osiris and Wrathborn, of Silvan and the royal Cabal, of Caiatl and Torobatl, of proving grounds, and snipers gunning for Zavala in the heart of the City. When he reached the part about Savathun inhabiting Osiris, Cayde-6 jumped to his feet and cursed the Hive gods and all their ancestors. Thus he understood about Crow having Uldren's memories returned to him.

"So you're as much a victim as I am," Cayde said, once Crow's narrative had wound all the way down to present day, with the Darkness pyramid ships and the entity only known as the Witness. Cayde sat with his chin on one fist, processing all this. After a moment, he added, "So all we have to do is sit here until the Vanguard shows up. Right?"

"Right," said Crow. He jerked a thumb toward the distant mountain with its storm of darkness. "Although I wouldn't say no to a little intelligence gathering."

"Now you're talking like a Hunter," said Cayde.