The final invader was another standard human, with pale skin and long, black hair tied into a tail that fluttered in the wind. She wore furs and leathers that looked as though they had been taken from a dark-furred lion, and they gave her a barbaric air. The black smoke drifted around her palm.

Her dark eyes surveyed Pariana with absolute disregard.

The Abidan’s Presence whispered, [All four match descriptions of tenth-generation Vroshir.]

Pariana didn’t ask for their names. It wouldn’t help.

The first generation of Vroshir had worked for the Abidan, long ago. They lived to shatter the Eledari Pact and see the Court of Seven cast down. It was not a grudge that she could resolve.

In the face of her death, Pariana reached out to the Way. The touch of its absolute order soothed her.

But she couldn’t fight the despair. Everything she had worked for, everyone she loved in this world, was coming crumbling down.

“Relinquish your Presence into our keeping,” the black-haired woman ordered, drifting down to hover over Pariana’s cracked barrier. “You shall be taken as a prisoner of war, and all others will be liberated.”

Did Sector Control respond? Pariana asked her Presence.

[No. I cannot confirm whether they received our report or not.]

Pariana closed her eyes. In truth, it wouldn’t matter even if Sector Control had heard them. No one else was close enough to respond, and even if they had been, it would be too late.

Destroy yourself before they capture you, she ordered.

[Of course. I am sorry I could not serve you better,] the Presence added, its voice tinged with sadness.

Smoke boiled out of the fur-clad Vroshir’s palm again. “Too late,” she said.

The mouth shattered Pariana’s barrier.

At the same time, the formations she’d created turned on her home. Impossibly hot pillars of light carved furrows through the crops, spearing into the bunkers beneath.

Pariana could feel the Way weakening as people died. She threw everything she had into a barrier to protect them, and a blue dome flickered into existence over the smoking hole in the colony, cutting off the weapon’s beam.

The gilled woman swept one of her sickles through the air, and a violet slash tore open a canyon in the earth. It split Pariana’s protection in half.

Earth blasted upwards as though a volcano had erupted underground, spewing fire and debris all the way into the atmosphere. The four Vroshir were surrounded by invisible barriers, protecting them and Pariana.

The Abidan Titan collapsed to her knees, soaked in tears. The smoky maw had left her alive. For now.

The armored figure had its rifle trained on her. Pariana surged forward—the Way was too distant for her to manipulate now, and her specialty had never been violence, but she had nothing left to lose.

He shot her.

The sound of the gunshot somehow pierced the deafening sounds of exploding earth. It drilled a hole through her white-plated armor, through her personal barrier, through her chest, and out the back.

Slowly, Pariana toppled to the ground.

She could feel her Presence trying to eradicate itself when it was seized by red power and dragged out, a mass of colorless light like a ghost. The Way had never felt more distant.

As she died, she desperately cast out her mind, trying to feel someone alive. Without her Presence to guide her powers, she was left with only her mundane senses. It was like going suddenly blind.

Armor and powers broken, Pariana drifted into death alone.

…but as the darkness had almost claimed her entirely, it stopped.

“Fear not,” said a woman’s warm voice. “I have come for you.”

The world reversed itself.

Pariana was pulled to her feet as though on a puppet’s strings, her vision returning, her flesh stitched up and her armor restored.

The cascade of debris fountaining into the sky froze, then drifted back down, sliding back into place.

Pariana’s Presence, a squirming mass of silver, ripped itself from the hands of the Vroshir in furs and settled back into her mind. She sobbed again, in relief at having this piece of her restored. One by one, she could feel the lives of the colonists coming back, like candles being lit once more.

The only things in the world that had not been reversed were the Vroshir themselves. They resisted, pitting their wills against the power that had rewound the entire Iteration. They all rose into the air again, facing the source of that power, and of the blue light that shone down on the scene.

Suriel, the Phoenix, Sixth Judge of the Abidan Court, floated with the power of the Way streaming off of her to either side like massive wings. Her mantle blazed behind her, like a river of light, her armor seamless and white—identical to Pariana’s. Ghostly correlation lines, like strings of gray smoke, ran from her fingertips to the back of her skull. Her hair drifted behind her, bright shining green, and her eyes blazed with purple formations that could see Fate. At her hip hung Suriel’s Razor, dormant now, like a meter-long ruler of blue steel.

Pariana sagged forward, lowering her head in both respect and relief. A Judge had come for her.

Now everything would be all right.

The woman in furs began to laugh.

Ignoring Pariana, she threw her hands to the sky. Black smoke gushed from her hands, covering the world. The man in the red visor swirled his fingers in a significant pattern, and the smoke was threaded through with red lights. Pariana’s golden formation-circles drifted beneath them, still under his control. The robotic figure pulled a mechanical device from behind him, like a computerized bear trap, activating it with a touch.

And Pariana realized she could no longer touch the Way. The lives of the people behind her had been restored, and her connection should have returned with them, but now it was as though the Way had vanished completely. The world had been cut off.

Suriel’s mantle dimmed, weakening immediately, but the scars in the earth finished knitting themselves together. Finally, the entire Iteration had been restored to pristine condition. Only then did her mantle gutter and die. Even the blue ‘wings’ streaming from behind her vanished, leaving Suriel surrounded by enemies.

Without the Way, the world’s laws would eventually crumble, which the Vroshir wouldn’t want any more than the Abidan would. They wanted to use this world, to add it to their network, not to see it dissolve into fragments with no causality or consistent physics. But that would take time. For now, they had simply rendered any Abidan in the world powerless.

This had been a trap from the beginning.

Suriel still floated in the air, but now she was relying on her own power, not her authority as a Judge. Pariana ran beneath her. “Do we have reinforcements coming, Judge?”

“Stand down, Titan,” Suriel said, and her words were calm and certain. “I am enough.”

A rifle, two sickles, three golden formation-circles, and a maw of smoke all turned toward Suriel. Each weapon carried enough power to rend continents and shatter space.

The Phoenix faced them all with nothing but her own personal power.

“Surrender, and I will grant you mercy,” Suriel said.

The black-haired woman bared her teeth in what Pariana hesitated to call a smile. “Keep your blighted tongue still, tyrant.”

With no discernible signal, all four Vroshir attacked at once.

The aquatic woman slashed her sickles together, sending a cross of violet power rushing through the air. The attack cracked space behind her, the world splintering for hundreds of kilometers in her wake. The earth quaked and shook, and Pariana could feel the world’s tenuous hold on reality begin to shake.