wasn’t unprecedented. Nomad hadn’t been to Nalthis—the place sounded nice, and nice places tended to be easy for the Night Brigade to find—but they bought, sold, and traded chunks of people’s souls like they were gemstones. BEUs as a measurement were based on this system—though at least there, the transaction left you alive. “That’s why there aren’t any ghosts here,” he said softly in Alethi. “Threnodites, they have this phantom echo to their souls. A sort of smoky shadow that lives on after they die. Here, there’s not a chance for that. Their souls are condensed, fused, turned into…” A power
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