Ghostwater (Cradle, #5)

by Will Wight

Ever since losing his arm, he would sometimes wake up and forget. He’d try to reach for something and see the skeletal stretch of white madra and the sight would strike him as wrong. That wasn’t his arm. It would take his brain a moment to piece together the truth. Separating from Yerin felt the same. Looking down the hallway without seeing her was like glancing down and seeing his arm missing.

“What do you call that feeling she was having?” Dross asked. “Grief,” Lindon responded absently. “I don’t like it,” the constructed decided. “It’s too heavy. Go back to the one with the man who had just cured his daughter’s disease.”

“The prize is an illusion,” he continued. “The mountain has no peak. You keep climbing and climbing until you fall off and break yourself at the bottom. Highgold is one step, Truegold is another step, but there’s no end to it. You could walk forever, but every Path ends in a fall.”

Longhook turned his good eye to Arelius. “My fate...does not...end here...” Eithan’s smile softened. “Everything ends.”

“What do you call this feeling?” “Sadness,” Lindon said, sitting against the Life Well. “It feels a lot like grief,” Dross observed. “I don’t like it.” “It’s not my favorite either.”