The Fifth Season: Prologue Summary & Analysis

 “Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we?” the narrator says. But first, he describes a more “personal ending” as an unnamed woman sits beside the corpse of her young son. Her own world has ended with his death, but the narrator says that this is not the first time that the woman’s world has ended in this way. The woman realizes that her son was never free until now.

The narrator then describes the world ending on a continental scale. The continent he describes is enormous and frequently unsettled, like an old man stirring in his sleep. Ironically, its inhabitants have named this land “the Stillness.”

The city of Yumenes is the oldest, largest, and wealthiest city in the Stillness. Most Stillness towns never get a chance to grow into cities because of the earth’s frequent movements, but Yumenes has survived and grown for thousands of years. It is the only place in the Stillness where people build with “bravery,” assuming that they will never experience an earthquake and therefore constructing precarious structures like balconies. At the center of Yumenes is an enormous pyramid called the Black Star, where the emperor lives. The narrator then notes that “none of these places or people matter, by the way.”

The narrator introduces an unnamed man who “will matter a great deal.” The man is standing on a hill outside the city, looking down on Yumenes. With his “sessapinae,” he can feel all the delicate movements of the city’s millions of inhabitants. He speaks aloud about how “stonelore” was originally written in stone so that it couldn’t be changed. The man’s companion is shaped like a human woman, but she looks like she is made of stone and moves incredibly slowly—she is a “stone eater.” The man asks her what she will do “when it’s done,” and if she and her kind will take over the world. The stone eater says no, because humans will still be around.

The man on the hill suddenly longs for silence and an ending to everything, and he reaches out with his orogeny—using all the skill “that his masters have bred into him”—to feel all the people of Yumenes and even his “fellow slaves” far outside the city. He knows that he cannot save them, but he can at least make their pain have meaning. The man then uses his orogeny to take hold of all the life within the city and the magma beneath it, and to grasp the entire tectonic plate on which Yumenes sits. Finally, he reaches upwards, “for power.” He holds all this in his “imaginary hands,” and then he breaks it.

As a result, the entire continent of the Stillness cracks in two. The crack runs in a straight line from east to west across its equator, beginning at Yumenes, and magma wells up into the earth’s “wound.” In geologic terms, this injury will heal quickly—but in the meantime, ash will blot out the sun, causing a winter that lasts for thousands of years and during which millions of plants and animals will die. The inhabitants of the Stillness are always prepared for disaster, but never for anything like this.

The narrator then notes another aspect of this world: there are enormous obelisks floating above in the atmosphere, moving very slowly and appearing to be made of crystal. No one knows what they are or what they’re for; they are assumed to be a relic of another long-dead civilization, as there are many other “grave-markers” like this in the Stillness. People are taught not to admire such things, because the people who built them were too weak to survive.

Now the narrator returns to the woman whose son is dead. She is far to the south of Yumenes, in a small “comm” (community or town) called Tirimo. Tirimo is simply constructed, designed to survive earthquakes, and would be mocked by the people of Yumenes. Many of the houses are essentially roofed holes in the ground, and one of these belongs to the woman, who is introduced as Essun. She is 42 years old, and her dead son Uche was almost 3. Essun knows that Uche’s father is the one who has beaten him to death.

The narrative shifts back to the day after the continent breaks in two. The land is devastated and filled with death except for a perfect circle several miles wide, with Tirimo at its center. The townspeople know that this means a “rogga” is in Tirimo, as their stonelore tells them to “Look for the center of the circle.” Hearing some of the rumors coming from the North, Tirimo’s “headman” sends out scouts to collect all the dead animals that they can find to preserve their meat. Some of the scouts pass by a strange object at the bottom of a newly broken cliff, but they do not notice it. The object is an egg-shaped boulder, the size of a human and colored differently from the other rocks around it. It smells like rust and blood and is warm to the touch.

Suddenly the object splits in two, and from the crack, a liquid-like substance spills out onto the ground. Days pass, and something in the rock pushes it apart and emerges. The being crawls a few feet, collapses, and stays still for another day. The object has now cooled, and its inside is lined with white and red crystals and a mysterious fluid. The figure that emerged from the geode—who resembles a human boy—slowly gets up. He walks to the geode, breaks off a few of the crystals, and starts to eat them. Then, he breaks off more crystals and gathers them in his arms. Slowly his movements grow more natural and humanlike. When he seems satisfied, he sets off toward Tirimo.

Now speaking in the second-person, the narrator reminds the reader that the world has ended before. But the planet has always survived, and new civilizations have replaced the old. However, the narrator says, this time is different—“this is the way the world ends. For the last time.”