Mysteries

Every fallen who reaches the top brings one more question than it took up.

Some things in Road to Redemption are meant to stay open. Several were decided by Alex on 25 October 2026 to stay unanswered for good; the others are open because nobody has answered them yet, and are the hooks for acts and leagues not yet written. Every faction has its answer to each. None of these answers is confirmed.

Decided never to be answered

Who cut you loose, and why you?

The exact cause of your fall is never told. The climb reveals what made it possible: heaven's war, the Apostates' hammer, and the trade by which both great factions buy fellings. No fallen learns whether its fall was bought. The Apostate who finds you knows you very well, and she never says who paid, if anyone did. Each memory comes back with the height, and none of them reaches the blow that felled you.

Is anyone in the House?

Nobody is allowed to enter it, and whether anyone is inside is never answered. The Wardens say God is inside and will come out when God wills. The Heirs say God speaks through the Prophet. The Apostates say there shall be no God, whoever is inside. No key in heaven fits the House.

What did the Prophet hear?

He listens at the door, and nobody can prove he hears nothing.

What does a third cut do?

It is said to end an angel, and the Apostates, who free angels and never end them, will not try. So there is no third fall.

What would winning mean?

If either great faction won, the world would probably end, since nobody keeps a board once the game is over. If the Apostates won and heaven were destroyed, the war in the world would stop, and the world might at last be at peace; or it might vanish with heaven. Nobody knows.

How did the first hammer come up?

The hammers were made below; nobody says how the first one came up. Nothing of the world rises to heaven unless a fallen carries it, and the Apostates were making fallen with them.

Still open

Who answered Orrin?

The Hearthfolk say Orrin opened the Tidewall to drown the Ember for good. The fires had spread past stopping, and a king chose a sea over a pyre. The proposal on the overview is that he asked heaven, and someone in heaven answered with the sea. Nobody below knows which side.

Others say a king who wanted the fire gone would have let it burn out. They say he drowned his kingdom to keep the Ember for himself, or to hide it from someone. Fallen who reach his throne room say the floor at its centre is dry. Nobody can say what holds the water back. His barrow on the moors still stands open, waiting for him.

Whose lives does a memory show?

Each act boss gives back a memory. On the second climb the same heights give back older memories, from before your first fall. A memory may show you serving a side you never chose (a proposal). Some fallen remember things heaven says never happened: a court with no stairs, a door standing open. The Wardens say memories come back crooked. The Apostates say they come back true, and that heaven is what changed.

Is the fire dying, or waking up?

The Last Hearth burns lower every year, and Hearthold reads that as the fire dying. But the old miners said the depths were warmer than they were in their youth. And the Last Hearth itself grew for a generation after the drowning before it began to shrink. Nobody can say what it was growing toward.

The royal mint struck one Sovereign Spark for each reign, and Velmarch had eleven kings. Fallen bring back more than eleven in a year. The Coalwrights do not like to discuss it. If the fire is fallen grace, as the overview proposes, every coal is an angel, and the heap at the bottom of the world grows with every felling.

What is under the fire?

Old miners swore there is something under the Ember, a place where the fire itself is afraid. They called it the Unlit. Voidsteel and Ether are said to come from there, and both turn up in the Underhalls. Nobody admits to having found the place they come from. Heaven made the board, and nobody in heaven speaks of what it was made on.

Who taught the faithful?

The Apostates planted the faith, and the faithful keep fires for whoever climbs. Maudra knows the Lighting, the rite by which a fallen lights its fire from the Last Hearth (a proposal). She has never said where she learned it, or who taught the one who taught her.

Rumours

• A ship's bell rings in the Sunken Reach, on the Drowned Coast, at the hour the Tidewall opened.
• The Tide's bargain with Orrin had two halves. The Drawn Sea is the half he did not mention, and there is a third that nobody has found.
• The Stilled have a second sacrament, drunk only once. Nobody who drinks it is seen in Hearthold again.
• The Last Hearth was never a coal from Saltreach. Someone carried it up from the bottom of the world on the Night, and that is why it grew.
• Every fallen who first looks at its passive tree finds one place in the remembered heaven already lit. Nobody knows who lit it.
• The stray coals that wake rare monsters are not stray: an angel above drops one on a piece it means to play by hand.
• The House has a second door, and the Apostates know where it is.
• One of the still angels on the City's walls moved, once, the night the Prophet left.