Penning a quick letter for context, I stopped by at my house to drop off the Black Waste intel. Bringing it direct to Chapel HQ seemed like a step too far when anyone in the Garrison could be watching my movements. If anything happened to me, someone would come looking and find the evidence left behind.

I hoped.

I felt reckless, bordering on stupid. Scratch that – I was past the point of recognising where stupid began. Not enough to completely take leave of my senses, but enough I could benefit from an independent voice of reason.

Instead, I had Near Miss.

To an outside observer, it must have looked like I’d gone mad. My mirrors were ruined and smashed to pieces. I’d disobeyed orders and aided a rival House in ways well beyond my mission, all for a voice in my head I couldn’t even hear.

And maybe I had. I was breaking all the established rules of advancement, accruing augments far faster than I had any right to, and possibly indirectly murdering one of my only friends to get them. The Chapel had deemed the situation so dire it had placed myself and everyone I’d associated with into quarantine, and I wasn’t sure it was really Jadal Cai it was scared of.

I was walking around with a multiversal bomb strapped to my back I couldn’t really control, and it had been systematically isolating me from my other ties one by one until it was the only thing left.

That’s what it looked like.

I didn’t want to start a war.

Consuming the soul of my friend to force an advancement also wasn’t an option. Perhaps what I needed to do was walk into the Chapel, explain the situation and beg for an exemption to bring Near Miss under control.

They’d probably just kill me.

In a sane world, they should have done it a long time ago.

But for all I knew, they might have tried. I knew better than anyone that Near Miss got what it wanted eventually, regardless of obstacles thrown in its path. Instead of presenting as an Arch, Near Miss had hidden as a Defect to give itself time to insert its plans into place. Any investigations, any attention, had been subtly misdirected until it was ready – which it had arranged through giving Imbersol the tools directly.

I wasn’t its partner; I was its puppet. Even if I tried to kill myself, I’d probably find myself surviving by a narrow escape. Even if I went to Jadal Cai – the only person capable of stopping it, based on loose conjecture – it would probably have a way out of that, too.

I was in full control, yet had none of the power.

This, apparently, was what it meant to wield an Arch.

Killing was what I did. Deaths with a purpose and meaning. Kills that heralded others; that brought a thousand different wars upon as many universes where people had bled and died and never received a Rein’s second chance for their troubles. That someone else would have pulled the trigger anyway didn’t change the fact that I had.

And now it was simply our turn.

"Is there any way I can avoid this?" I asked Near Miss, stabbing my blade at one of the remaining untouched parts of the mirror. Naked Eye remained deactivated. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t really need to.

Yes.

"Do you want me to?"

No, arrived the answer.

"You want a war between two Houses? Really?"

Yes.

"And who do you want to win?"

I asked the question twice, once for each House. When I had my answers, I laughed and cried at the same time.

I’d lost it. I’d legitimately gone crazy.

“And will this save the multiverse?” I finished up with.

Yes.

---

Landing back at the Garrison’s supply centre, I hustled through the town soaking up sunlight without reservation. The dirt and dust from distant universes crumbled from my finery in a trail. Not a soul was around to see it. The streets were completely empty, spotlights already migrating off the central paths without the weather wardens stationed at their towers. I gave myself a heavy dose of mood-altering light. It didn’t have the impact I’d hoped.

A distant cheer rose up from the central palace. I steeled myself against it. It helped that I had only poisonous sun in my veins. A second jubilant chorus succeeded it as I drew close, drawing my lenses back into myself and edging into the temple.

It was a grand, echoing structure mostly cut off from the light. I walked on the soles of my newly-clean boots to diminish the noise, following the sparse flashes of illumination coming from further inside.

The Garrison hadn’t had time to tidy it up. Smeared and jumbled footprints crowded the antechamber among a layer of dust. Old tapestries depicting intricate scenes I couldn’t make out dripped with more in the dark. I spared a moment with Naked Eye to shortcut to the gist: divinity, equality, supremacy. Then the cataclysm, multiversal upheaval, and its scattering of Function. The old capital the remnants of the Empire had been unable to find. The new capital restationed at the Empire’s garrison outpost at the polar city.

The overarching, millennia-long search for the original Empire and its god-emperor. The protection of his sacred echoes. The refinement of remnant Function to birth more.

I should have just snooped in here. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.

Multiple entrances lay ahead to the inner chamber. I steered away from the one taking me near Er Jid. The cheers had died to make way for a single voice. A woman’s voice.

“ – honour of accepting our work in your vision.”

Nobody paid attention to me as I slipped through the door. I stared at the backs of heads; crowd enraptured to a fault.

Beyond it, on a trapezoid dais surrounded by a border of unfolded lenses one terrace down, stood Jadal Cai and Soor Kas, the administrator who’d handled my admission. The elder bowed, crouching low to both knees and touching her head to the floor.

The Emperor still wore the body of the Rein from Reveray, though he wore new attire. His outfit was a variant on the basic Garrison style, albeit bulkier and involving more jewellery. An embellished turban graced his temples, adorned with a fan spreading from left to right. It dripped with metallic coins.

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Near Miss triggered, though nothing visibly changed. I licked my lips. My throat felt dry.

Jadal Cai hadn’t noticed me. He hadn’t seen me in this shape; not directly. I’d thought he might sense me by some other means, but he seemed enraptured by the audience and lights. I wasn't sure it was luck.

If I pushed through the crowd and up to the stage, would Near Miss protect me? Would everyone look away at just the right moment, one by one, rendering me invisible and untouchable? Would I be mistaken for a different face in the crowd; a different role to play, thereby saving me?

Maybe. But I didn’t plan on making my job more difficult.

I fired off a summons to Flinpen.

Now I’d wait.

Soor Kas rose, made another half-bow and backed away, leaving the Emperor alone on the stage. He stared out at the entirety of the Garrison; calm, severe, and probably insane. I couldn’t imagine how else four thousand years of desolate attrition would leave someone.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “I’ve been blessed with the greatest of people.”

His voice was quiet, but sounded as clearly as if spoken into my ear. It was surprisingly light, and different to how I remembered.

“You’ve carried this burden alone and unaided for thousands of years. You didn’t have to. You could have walked away, and no one would have blamed you.”

I could have heard a tear drop in the ensuing silence.

“I am not worthy of subjects such as you,” Jadal Cai said. “Your trust in me and your loyalty are qualities I can only hope to someday repay in kind. I shall start by accepting your gifts and the work you’ve prepared. I’ll reclaim my seeds and become the leader you need. Together, we shall restore our civilisation.”

A cheer rose up from the crowd. It died down quickly as Jadal Cai reopened his mouth.

“First, here,” the emperor continued. “Then elsewhere. We shall bring other worlds into the Empire, let them share in our gifts and prosperity. None shall be left behind. That is my promise of unity and enlightenment. Every intelligent creature will have an equal place.”

A gnawing foreboding ate at the pit of my stomach. None of this sounded particularly unreasonable, and while every phrase could be interpreted in a variety of different ways ranging from acceptable to utopian to deeply ominous, the man himself seemed far more stable than I would have expected from his history.

Seemed.

I told myself that, because a very significant part of me screamed I was making an enormous mistake.

“The first step is to rejoin the Empire,” Jadal Cai announced. He lifted a hand that contained two small familiar-looking vials. “I am one among many. It is my honour.”

He downed both in quick succession with none of the unfortunate side-effects I’d experienced, and a new point of interest bloomed onto the interface map. [Imperial Highness Jadal Cai.]

I wasn’t sure how it knew what to name him, considering my alias had been entered manually, but at this point I’d given up trying to predict what to expect.

Once again, the crowd erupted in celebration. Most of the faces around me displayed genuine elation, but here and there I found hints of uncertainty or trepidation. Through the dimly-lit hall, I found the figure of Chi Ohon, who applauded with the same awkward motions I’d been giving. As if sensing my attention, he turned his head and met my eyes briefly.

I looked away.

“Truly,” the emperor said, to the backdrop of jubilant clearing, “this is magnificent work. Well done. With potential for further refinements to come. The second step –”

A pair of bright clumps of versal energy phased into my awareness behind the central stage. They weren’t as concentrated as the reinstated monarch’s, but intimidating nonetheless.

Jadal Cai broke off mid-sentence. Around him, the temple’s interior walls faded into unlikely brightness and bursts of vibrant colour in a stained glass aesthetic.

I looked towards the brighter of the two pockets of energy and found a silhouette against the windows; its darkness broken by many glowing eyes.

Near Miss triggered as I opened my mouth to call for negotiations. A startled Garrison agent jostled against me, sending my teeth biting bloodlessly through my tongue.

I tried again, only for an elbow to wind me from the other side. People were backing towards the centre, away from the visions.

It doesn’t have to be war, I protested silently. I felt for the hands I’d seen in the mirror, and grasped at ghosts in the wind.

The other versal pocket resembled an unfamiliar woman in Garrison attire. Like Nysept, she wore a subtle earpiece. The marker in my head told me it was Flinpen. She stared intently at the emperor, who had yet to visibly react.

I pushed my way through the crowd, only to trip over a boot to a Near Miss trigger. When I opened my mouth, I found myself instead racked with a violent coughing fit. Garrison hands beside me helped me back up. I could barely wheeze thanks.

Complex depictions decorated the panels of stained glass, more numerous and intricate than I’d seen them before. The crowd was reflected in them; each individual represented in miniscule detail. My own depiction blended somewhere in with the others; too many to properly count.

This time there was no inattentive period. The subjects of the paintings were already moving towards their frames, faces bright with intent. Toggling Naked Eye, I saw they were manifestations of what could have been – the What-Ifs of Nysept’s core. As they drew closer, the images changed – became colder, more ruthless – until they resembled killers, warlords and outlaws with nothing to lose. The most ruthless versions of their original subjects, selected and filtered for.

Naked Eye powered impressions into my understanding faster than I ever could have on my own. I glimpsed Flinpen in a floating citadel ordering the collection of biological material. Chi Ohon with scores of weaponised lenses turning organic matter to dust. Er Jid stacking the ranks of the Garrison with allies and willing usurpers. Myself as a warlord’s enforcer, bearing my fathers’ axes. Even Imbersol was in the mix, to my surprise, looking much like her regular self but without the yellow eyes.

The Emperor’s depictions bore his features from the Black Waste. In some he wore the eyepatch, raving and insane. In others he still had both eyes, accompanied by the assurance of a tyrant. Each version glanced from side to side, ignoring the bounds of the panels. While the other figures ran for the frames, the eyepatched emperors straightened and waited to the tune of an eerie calm.

And in the background of some of the images, far, far behind the rest, loomed an enormous entity. It was a Near Miss; beautiful, claustrophobic and brimming with chaos. But it wasn’t mine.

“Stay calm,” Soor Kas’ voice pierced over the crowd, but no one was listening.

Those who weren’t looking to the Emperor for guidance jostled in a rush to stay back, darting out the exits. I found myself pushed along with them.

Jadal Cai – the real one – had a hand to his head. He seemed confused.

Halve his cognition, I recalled Imbersol saying. I realised one of my hands had risen to her pouch.

Flinpen was ticking up fingers against her opposite palm, keeping count. Three aspects reduced. Four. Both she and Nysept were doing nothing but standing quietly, but it was a deceptive front. Neither were holding back.

The first of the reflections made it charging to the frame: a Garrison agent I didn’t recognise. Her doppelganger was ragged, bloodied and wild-eyed. White knuckles gripped a single-handed scythe.

Shields went up from the Garrison’s front row as she sprinted out into a soaring leap, scythe slicing. It bruised against their defences in a shower of sunken translocation. Out of its frame, the weapon still resembled a patchwork of glass. So did its wielder.

Spurred on by the frontrunner, more of the copies began sprinting for the exit. The attacker pulled out the scythe.

Five, six, Flinpen was counting. Her lips moved in a question.

A shot from the Garrison crowd pierced the leading What-If through the centre of the skull. She dropped, motionless.

Nysept smiled. It was the kind of smile no one wanted to see on an opponent in a life-or-death situation at the best of times, but Jadal Cai reacted as though hit by a truck. One that wasn’t me.

I looked at him through Naked Eye.

My versal sense had let me intuit him like a misleading blaze. The emperor wasn’t just strong and growing stronger. It was as though someone had taken every possible iteration of a Rein – or indeed, even Nysept’s created reflections – and condensed them into a single being. It wasn’t even a case of being superhuman; if anything, he seemed more intensely human than anyone else alive. That, or something else entirely outside the realm of my comprehension.

Just as any universe could have its own magic – vast, annihilating, galaxy-shattering magic – and versal magic remained the overarching anchor, so too did Jadal Cai embody the Reins.

He was also wounded and broken.

I didn’t know what Nysept had inflicted on him in the moment of that terrible smile, but it must have been severe. It wasn't the What-Ifs. Naked Eye showed him stunted, compressed by an odd, intangible wall.

It was too late to stop it.

Then the next of the What-Ifs poured out of its frame, and everything else broke loose.