After a moment of debate, the Jai clan members shut the remainder of the front door without asking her a word.

Jai Chen sat down on the edge of her bed, stunned. So much had happened in such a short time that she felt like she’d been slapped in the face. Now that she thought of it, she had been slapped in the face.

But she could move again.

Ordinarily, she had to be careful when she opened her wardrobe, so she didn’t strain herself. Now, she opened and closed the door. Open and closed. Open and closed.

Her brother found her half an hour later, standing on her own two feet and opening and closing her wardrobe.

His mask had torn, exposing the lower half of his face. His skin was pale and tinged with blue, his jaw swollen and misshapen, and light leaked from between his lips as he spoke. “What did they do to you?”

He sounded ready to find someone to murder.

Jai Long was standing in the ashes of what had once been her doorway. She must have looked insane, standing in her bedclothes with her wardrobe door in one hand.

And tears were running down her cheeks. Her eyes were swollen, her nose stuffed, and she’d been sobbing. When had she started crying?

Jai Long walked over to her, gently guiding her closer to bed, but she pushed back against him. He noticed her strength and his eyes widened between the remaining strips of his mask. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded, and her spirit shivered at the touch of his scan.

Her voice was quivering, and she was still uncertain about many of the details.

But she told him.

***

Jai Daishou woke on a crumbling, icy cliff inside a pile of moon-white Remnant parts. They were already dissolving in streams of essence, so he must look like he was bathed in stars.

Which was no comfort to a man who had just died.

His limbs trembled as he hauled his way to his feet, his joints screaming like he’d packed them with broken glass. Every breath was agony, and his vision blurred.

He pushed the palm of his hand against his aching head, trying to shake loose his memory.

An image snapped into place: Eithan Arelius, standing over him with face bloody, hair blowing in the wind, scissors held against Jai Daishou’s throat.

Snip.

Pain, blood, absolute exhaustion…and something breaking in his soul.

He ran a thumb over the fresh, tender scar on his throat and shivered despite decades of self-control. Without his good fortune years ago, he would have lost his life tonight.

The Underlord plunged his awareness into his spirit, looking for a black-and-red ornate box that usually floated above his core. The Heartguard Chest was a spiritual object, a treasure he’d plundered from an ancient clan of Soulsmiths, but it had an invaluable function.

It contained enough blood and life madra to save you from death once. And only once. He’d thought it might prolong his lifespan for a few months, when time eventually claimed its due.

Sure enough, the box was open, and the Chest itself melting away to nothing. Jai Daishou had spent months filling it with a decoy Remnant, one convincing enough to fool—it seemed—even Eithan Arelius himself.

He coughed heavily into his hand, the force rattling his bones, and he was surprised when he didn’t find blood in his palm. Even with the healing of the Heartguard Chest, his body was finished. He was held together by little more than hope and wishes.

If he lived out the year, it would be because the heavens smiled on him.

He cycled what little madra remained, his channels burning, his core throbbing like a bruised muscle. He needed his remaining elders to find him alive.

Before Eithan Arelius did.

Because Jai Daishou was the only one in the Empire to know the truth about the Arelius family Underlord. Pure madra. He’d always thought of Eithan as nothing but an overgrown child, and he was more right than he could have known.

He wouldn’t die until he could plant that knowledge like a dagger in Eithan’s heart.

***

Iteration 216: Limit

Iteration 217 Harrow

TERMINATED

As Harrow and Limit dissolved and crumbled away into the void, Suriel witnessed once again the death of an Iteration.

The endless darkness of empty space had peeled away first, like black wallpaper peeling away…only to reveal an even deeper hole. The void surrounded them, infinite nothing dotted with swirling balls of color, like a rainbow of fireflies dancing in the night.

The planet itself faded away like a ghost, leaving fragments: pieces of the planet with a strong enough identity to hold together even in the chaos of the void. There, a disc of earth holding a forest spun into the distance, its trees frozen in a wind that no longer blew.

Time worked strangely in the void. Fragments tended to either live the same moments in a loop or to freeze entirely, waiting to join back into an Iteration. Fragments with inhabitants crawled along, their time drifting slowly forward, but the inhabitants tended not to fare well.

She had sent Ozriel’s population shelter straight to Pioneer 8089. With a population of over thirteen million, they had good odds of surviving until their world stabilized into a true Iteration.

Of course, if the Abidan didn’t survive Ozriel’s absence, it wouldn’t matter.

Iterations were like fruits, and the Way was the vine. So long as the worlds were healthy and connected to the Way, they enjoyed luxuries like causality and existence. As a world’s population shriveled, that strained its connection to the Way, which invited infection.

Whenever a corrupted world—like Limit and Harrow—broke into fragments, those pieces still contained some of their corruption. Corrupted fragments were like parasites, drifting up and down the vine, looking for healthy fruits to infest. When that world was corrupted, it broke into diseased fragments as well, and the corruption spread exponentially.

A few thousand standard years ago, the Abidan could only care for two hundred and fifty Iterations. That was as far as they could stretch their forces, because they had to protect each world from the chaos-tainted fragments that hunted the edges of the Way.

When Ozriel appeared, someone who could dispose of a corrupted world without breaking it into toxic pieces, the Abidan went through a period of explosive growth. They stitched healthy fragments together into new Iterations, spinning out new universes that they could protect.

Without infected world fragments flying around, they could expand without worry. And they did.

Suriel and her predecessor had known the danger of putting the weight of their entire system on a single component—Ozriel—but they were saving lives. Every Iteration under Abidan protection was another reality not left to the ravages of chaos or the Vroshir.

And everyone agreed: they would replace Ozriel as soon as they found another candidate.

The problem was, they had never found one. And they’d kept expanding.

They held ten thousand worlds now, with only enough Abidan to secure two and a half percent of that number. If any of the other Judges had gone missing, they could have found someone else to fill their function, but not Ozriel. He was irreplaceable.

And now, in all likelihood, dead.

[The probability of Ozriel’s death is unknown,] her Presence said, its voice robotic and cool. [If he is capable of hiding from the Court of Seven, he is capable of faking his own death.]