A trio of beings stand on the surface of a pale white moon, staring at the planet above them.

"So what's the verdict?" A young-looking man asks.

"Good end." An old man with eyes that look to the future responds.

"How? She lost? She died!" A passionate woman shouts with a booming voice easily achieved through body cultivation.

"And if she had won?" The young man asks.

"Bad end. Would have made this whole thing a waste of time." The Oracle replies, obviously relieved.

"Wasn't she the one you guys wanted to groom for this role? How can she do that if she's dead?" The woman asks, confused as she looks up at world she crafted with her own hands. "What happens now?"

"She would have eventually become our equal had she lived, yes, but she would have never have expanded off this planet. With no stars left there is little to strive for in the night sky. And she never truly believed there was more out there, or at least not anything she could have reached." The oracle answers with confidence.

"So that's why you guys had me bless those angels? To kill her? It sounds to me like we are back at square one. Is it the cyborg chick next? she seemed like she had potential. Craftsmen make great empires."

"Craftsmen make fragile empires, they never outlive the craftsmen. No, the plan still holds as it is. She is both Fate blessed and a soul mage, her successful reincarnation is inevitable." The young man says, speaking from eons of experience. "Besides, hive minds are much more stable. If their centerpiece dies it will usually just reincarnate within their own ranks. Usually, anyways, not this time, not yet."

"I'm not even sure we should be going for a hivemind in the first place, much less an expansionist one. The old empire killed them all on sight for a reason." The worldsmith replies with some apprehension.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Yes, I know. I was there when that decision was made, it's because hiveminds are nearly impossible to properly put down, and expansionists can be absolutely terrifying. This one, thankfully, is almost purely informational, free will is almost perfectly preserved." The not-so-young man states with a small amount of glee.

"And if it wasn't?" The woman asks incredulously.

"It is still better than the alternative. We need a unifying force to throw off the next invasion, there is no free will in oblivion. There is no coming back from the void." The man states, melancholic.

The woman sighs, defeated. "You're right, I got worked up, I'm sorry." After taking a moment to compose herself the woman asks a question. "So why did you have me bless her enemies? Assuming it wasn't just to kill her."

"to provide her with a challenge, to force her to grow and acknowledge the parts of herself that we wanted her to acknowledge. She never would have started caring about her people if you hadn't had them slaughtered over and over again, not really. Not fast enough to matter anyway." The oracle responds in a slow even voice.

They sit in silence for a while, watching the world above them.

"So what's next?" The Fate Blessed man asks.

"Nothing, now we wait. Any more interference now will be detrimental. We have a couple millennia before we need to be ready again. She is an expansionist by nature, she will set up hiveminds on every single planet she lives on if only to advance her own skills. Eventually, she will be able to reach out far enough to connect to the ones she leaves behind, and then there will be little capable of preventing her from claiming the heavens, for a time at least." The oracle answers. "She's already on her way to the perfect planet to get started from."

The trio follows after the unconscious soul hurtling through space at impossible speeds towards its next life, apparently dodging anything that might harm it by the narrowest of margins.

"A world without magic? No Ki, no Mana, no Aether, no psionics, just normal mundane people? Why? I don't imagine that it would be easy to set up a hivemind here." The woman asks, more than a little confused by this turn of events.

"Of course it is, that's the point. She loves a challenge, and this will force her to learn how to use her soul for any magic she wants to perform, or Fate, I guess. She will get very, very good at using the soul." The Fate blessed man says, excitedly. "We should introduce ourselves to the local worldsmith, there is no way a garden planet like this one is untended, and we should try to avoid any unnecessary interference."

And so the trio waited and watched as the one they hope to be their savior grows and develops. But that is a story for another time.