Redemption: Ruin and Rising alternate ending

Part 1

I knew when Mal was gone. Tears ran down my face as I held my breath—I screamed as power flooded through me, burning and consuming me. I was a living star; I was a new sun.

I am ruination.

A roaring shook the sands around me and light filled my eyes; and then the power was gone. Thick darkness surrounded me. I tried to call the light, tried to find any sliver of my power. Nothing answered except for the shrieks of the volcra. Mal lay beneath me, his shirt soaked through with blood.

Then I saw it—a light in the darkness, blazing and burning through the Fold. As my eyes adjusted to the sunlight enveloping me, I saw him; the Darkling, his face a picture of shock and confusion, light streaming from him in every direction. It consumed him, consumed all of us, as the light filled the Fold and burned it away. Soldiers, Grisha, and oprichniki alike stood in awe in the new sunlight.

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"Look at what you did to me," I pushed the Darkling onto his knees next to the stump of the old oak. I tore the sack off his head, but his blank eyes stared into nothing. I grabbed a fistful of hair on the back of his neck to make him look at the ruins of Keramzin.

"Look," I said again. He said nothing in return; only his eyes showed his grief, but I knew it wasn't for me. Smoke drifted up from the skeleton of the old building.

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Nikolai bought me passage to Novyi Zem and set up a cabin for me on the coast. He let me take the Darkling with me, even though so many people were calling for his execution. Genya, Zoya, and especially Nikolai would pay to see him dead. I might, too. I'm not sure what compelled me to save him. Saints know he wouldn't have done the same for me. I guess part of me wanted to see what parts of him could be saved. 

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