Master Oén of the Empty Cup

The dying master of the Stillwater Order — serene, exact, and facing the one test the Order exists for, because an echo has offered him a way not to die.

Oén has spent sixty years emptying himself of every want, and is very good at it, which is why the echo that's found his deathbed is such a perfect cruelty: it offers continuation, and to take it he need only want something, once. He teaches the empty hand to whoever climbs the path, and watches the First of the Drowned — once his finest student — to see his own possible ending. He may ask a newcomer, gently, to help him refuse. Or to witness if he can't.