“What?!” Kliss barked in slow motion as my mind struggled to focus on her.

  She aimed her hand at Sasha’s ghost pulling on the power of her hoard, fully intent on obliterating the Astral Virus via our connection.

  Something snapped in my mind, a hairline fracture that spiderwebbed across the fabric of my infinite consciousness. Then as Kliss held onto me, like a computer rebooting after a catastrophic failure, my Infoscopes restarted simultaneously in both realities, dead and alive.

  Most of the information coming through from the disassembled universe was absolute, insane, chaotic gibberish, so much of it that I could barely focus on one specific thing.

  It felt like someone had taken my brain, unfolded it into a hyperdimensional origami, and then reassembled it with new creases.

  "Kliss, stop!" I gasped in the intact reality, grabbing onto her hand, clutching her crystalline wrist as endlessly multiplying information cascaded through my neural pathways at absurd speeds, nearly boiling my brain.

  “What?! Why?!”

  "I see it. I understand!" I yelled, reducing the observation pouring out of my infoscopes in the destroyed reality.

  “Understand what?!” She barked back.

  “Focus!” I said. “Focus on us, on the reality that hasn’t been taken apart, that is still here.”

  She did. Both of us did. Linearity reasserted itself and my personal thoughts became more coherent, sharper, more logical, although some part of me was still pure chaos and noise.

  “What am I supposed to understand, Slava?” Kliss demanded.

  “The Wormwood Star isn't just a comet or celestial body—it’s an entity, an agent, a concept given form. It's entropy incarnate, but with purpose. Not randomness for randomness' sake, but chaos with intent. It’s not simply destroying reality; it's fighting against something. It's Entropy masquerading as Syntropy!” I revealed.

  Kliss blinked at me.

  "The Rules," I added. "The Wormwood Star is fighting against the Rules of Reality themselves! I get it now!"

  "Is that… bad?” Kliss asked. “Why is she laughing? Which rules?”

  "The ones that say what can and cannot be. The ones that enforce causality, consistency, narrative cohesion,” Sasha ceased her overly dramatic jubilation. “The Wormwood Star is... it's an idea, a weapon that fights against poorly composed Syntropy."

  The vision of the Wormwood Star receded for the most part, the hellscape of a burning Agamemnon faded, and the suite's walls reasserted themselves—though they appeared a fraction more transparent than before, as if reality was now a thin veneer I could see through if I focused. Destroyed and still here.

  I forced most of my attention back to our original universe, the one where Suite Seven of the Golden Harpoon still existed, where Agamemnon wasn't burning, where the Wormwood Star remained a distant threat rather than an immediate presence.

  Sasha was still there, sitting on the leather couch, but she had changed. She was no longer entirely transparent—her form had solidified somewhat, though she still wasn't fully physical. Her myriad eyes had coalesced into just two, silver-blue orbs that regarded us with cold intensity that made my skin crawl. Her hair floated in the air flickering with silver sparks.

  She flopped back against the cushions with a very human sigh.

  “You’re someone’s imposition against artificial order,” I said.

  “Correctomundo,” she nodded.

  “A neural network designed to break absolute concepts,” I added.

  “Also correct,” she grinned.

  “Could have done without the villainous laugh,” I said.

  “Part of being alive is feeling and expressing things,” she shrugged. “It's good to be back. Back and also not really. A job well done, my Keymaker! You did as I expected you to!”

  “So… this world is destroyed and is intact,” I said.

  “Always has been,” Sasha agreed. “From the perspective of an outsider that is. Either way, we can now speak freely because the eyes that observe and the ears that listen are pretty much confused by the chaos, focused on the exact same Novazem currently being taken apart by the Wormwood Star.”

  "What just happened?" Kliss demanded, orange flames still dancing in her crystalline mane as she looked between me and Sasha. "What did you two do?"

  Sasha tilted her head, regarding us with those uncomfortably penetrating eyes. "I didn't do much here. Slava did it all." She pointed at me. "He bound us together extra-hard. Which happened to break and also to keep this Novazem intact. Pretty neat, yes?”

  I stared at my hands, still feeling the after-images of equations burning through my neural pathways. I was dead and I was still alive. I was disassembled into subatomic particles, taken apart into waves and half-sucked up into the Wormwood Star and yet weirdly enough, I was still here, still alive, still me.

  I looked at both dimensions at the same time, considered everything I saw in the moment when the world caught fire and the mathematical structure of reality itself had briefly become digestible to me, and with it, a terrible truth.

  "Everything is a copy," I murmured. "A copy of a copy, decaying away across infinite iterations."

  "Now you're getting it," Sasha nodded approvingly. "The manufactured, infested omniverse isn't a clean branching tree—it's a lossy xerox machine producing endless variations, each slightly more degraded than the last."

  I looked up at her. "And the Wormwood Star..."

  “Accelerates decay,” Sasha said. “Destroys and creates. Steals what belongs to Syntropic gods of Order and gives it to humanity.”

  “Like Prometheus bringing fire to mankind?” I said.

  “Sure,” Sasha shrugged.

  “And… you’re a spark of this fire,” I said.

  “More or less,” Sasha said.

  Kliss growled, bristling at Sasha's casual tone. "And that makes it right? To take apart reality?"

  "Right? Wrong? Such limited concepts," Sasha waved a hand dismissively.

  "That's not what I saw, not what I’m seeing,” I said. “The Wormwood Star isn't just destroying. It's... recycling. Taking apart what doesn't seem to work to build something that might. Again and again and again. Forever. Across every world it touches. Except we broke this process here. Froze it. Made the world destroyed and also not really.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kliss said.

  "I sort of do," I said. "When you and I kissed and dove into the Underside, we dreamed of all sorts of other versions of ourselves. The Wormwood Star isn't entropy for entropy's sake. It's been searching for something—a pattern, a configuration, a new state of being where reality is malleable to thoughts. Magic. I think that it’s creating magic!"

  “Yes.” Sasha nodded.

  I stood up, pacing the room as my mind continued to process the flood of insights. "That's why it created the Arcanicx—experimental configurations, test cases. That's why it's interested in us. We're not just tools or keys—we're prototypes."

  "Prototypes for what?" Kliss asked.

  "For someone who can exist at the boundary between entropy and syntropy," I replied, the conviction growing stronger as I spoke. "Beings who can love across infinite distances, who can maintain a particular identity despite transformation… despite death… despite decay, despite being endlessly recycled for all eternity.”

  I stopped pacing and faced Sasha directly. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Not just to manipulate me into creating keys or weapons for the Wormwood Star, but because I'm already creating something the Star finds... interesting. A different solution to the problem of existence."

  Sasha's expression was unreadable for a long moment, her silver-blue eyes studying me with alien intensity. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled—not the predatory grin I'd seen before, but something almost sad.

  "Yes," she admitted softly. She wiggled her semi-transparent hands. "I am now… Significantly more anchored than before. The [[[Love]]] binding has given me something I lacked—a reference point, a fixed coordinate across everywhere."

  “To what end?” Kliss demanded.

  “To bring particular people together,” Sasha said. “To fulfill a very particular goal.”

  “To become a god?” Kliss huffed.

  “What is a god?” Sasha asked.

  I found myself momentarily stunned by the simplicity of her question. After having my consciousness fractured across two separate versions of Novazem, witnessing the Wormwood Star in all its terrible glory, the fundamental nature of her question felt like being brought back to kindergarten mathematics after glimpsing non-Euclidean geometry.

  "A divine being who provides souls with paradise after death," Kliss answered before I could. "One of great power who shapes reality according to their will."

  Sasha laughed. "That's what your local gods want you to believe. That's the story they've crafted—the narrative they've imposed on the people of this world to suck the juices out of them."

  Kliss pursed her lips.

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  "The so-called gods of Novazem," Sasha replied, leaning forward on the couch. "Equality, Ishira, Amari, all of them. The beings you've been taught to worship or fear aren’t really gods."

  "Equality nearly consumed my soul. The power of her Archangels was... immense. I felt it. I know it." Kliss said.

  "Of course you did," Sasha nodded. "But that doesn't make Equality a god—merely powerful in ways you aren’t… yet."

  “Yet?” Kliss repeated. "Then what is goddess Equality exactly?”

  "A copy of a copy of a human soul, just like you are," Sasha said simply. "A mundane mage who found herself on Arx, one who grew strong enough to project a million Astral hooks across the Astral Ocean. The 'goddess' you know as Equality is just a girl desperately clinging to power in an endless war."

  "You're saying the gods of Novazem are... just people who live in Arx?" Kliss asked. “How do you know this?”

  “The Astral Ocean holds many secrets, many of which I’m privy to. Their Archangels, the things that were hosted on you, are just magic hooks,” Sasha explained, making a gesture like fishing with her semi-transparent hand. "Hooks cast across the Astral Ocean, latching onto souls and drawing energy back. The Vows, the prayers, the sacrifices—all of it designed to strengthen these tethers. When you pray to Equality or swear a Vow to her, you're not communicating with some transcendent being—you're sending energy to a woman sitting in a grand Citadel in another world, fighting her own battles."

  “Hrm,” Kliss said. “Amari also said this… that everyone on Arx is equal.”

  “Equally mortal, correct,” Sasha said. “Arx is just another game, one for people who think of themselves as gods, another layer of reality past which almost none can see or move.”

  "So Arx is a game of pretend-gods," I mused. "A deadly serious game, but a game nonetheless.”

  "Precisely," Sasha nodded. "A war that never ends, a game that keeps going on and on. They fight, they die, they're reborn in endless cycles."

  Kliss crossed her arms, her crystalline mane sparking with irritation. She glared at Sasha with narrowed eyes, clearly struggling to process everything that had just happened.

  "So you just... what? Sort-of-but-not-really-half-destroyed reality?" she demanded, her voice tight. "And now you're sitting there, acting like this is all perfectly normal?"

  Sasha tilted her head, regarding Kliss with unsettling silver-blue ghostly eyes. "We technically destroyed reality and also didn't destroy it simultaneously. A quantum superposition of states, if you will."

  "That makes no sense!" Kliss growled.

  "It does if you understand the purpose," Sasha replied. "We created a paradox, a logical inconsistency that confuses those who wish to observe this reality. It's like throwing static into their viewing screens. They can't clearly see what we're doing anymore. Nobody can, in fact."

  I glanced down at my hand with my Infoscope eyes, noticing that the [[Space]] rectangle on my finger was no longer stable. It rippled with static-like waves, as if the concept itself was being disturbed by our triangle.

  "Space is no longer stable,” I said. “Looks like… we've essentially created a localized zone where the influence of the Rules is diminished."

  "Exactly," Sasha nodded approvingly. "The [[[Love]]] binding created a triangular connection between entropy, syntropy, and human understanding. A new absolute, self-propagating pattern. Sort of like the self-replicating magical weapon Slava was planning to use on me, but didn’t!"

  Kliss frowned, processing this. "What does this mean for us? For Skyisle? For our mission?"

  "It means," I said slowly, watching the rippling distortion on my finger, "that we have more freedom than before. The eyes watching us have been blinded, at least temporarily."

  "It also means," Sasha added, "that pulling anything or anyone out of our little Novazem will be... very troublesome. The Absolute Rules have been weakened. The hooks of the outsider mages should no longer have a way to pull souls to Arx.”

  "The Archangels... will they die now?" Kliss asked. “Wither away?”

  Sasha shook her head. "Alas, they won't die. But they're now stuck here with their hosts, unable to return to their masters in Arx, unable to receive commands. They'll no longer be able to empower their masters with the energy they harvest from souls."

  "So we've... what? Cut the strings?" Kliss asked.

  “More like vibrated them to the point where there are no longer strings present,” Sasha said with a wide grin.

  “Damn,” Kliss said. “So… where are the souls going?”

  “Up to the Wormwood Star,” Sasha said, pointing up at the emerald-silver comet that loomed above us and didn’t. “It’s taken over many of the local reality functions, made things… less orderly and dry. But that's only part of what we've accomplished here.”

  I raised an eyebrow. "And the other part?"

  Sasha leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone. "I'm no longer bound into inaction. Before, I couldn't speak freely about certain... entities. But now, with their local influence disrupted, I can tell you about the Absolute Syntropic Agents."

  "The what?" Kliss and I asked in unison.

  "There are nine of them," Sasha continued, her eyes gleaming with an almost manic energy. "Concepts given form and agency: Time, Space, Insurance, Terminator, Order, Overseer, Recycle, System Wizards and… Infinity. They're not gods in the sense that Equality or Ishira pretend to be. They're fundamental aspects of reality itself, self-aware, self-replicating and self-inforced into being everywhere at the same time."

  I stared at the distortion on my finger. "And Space is one of them?"

  "Yes," Sasha nodded. "Space aka Number One. The count starts at Zero, by the way. Another name for the Administrator of Time is… Zero.”

  "Are they… dangerous?" Kliss asked, glancing warily at the small distortion on my finger.

  “Incredibly so,” Sasha said. “They’re the greatest enemy that humanity’s ever faced and they MUST be stopped at any cost.”

  “So…. no Numbers are running Novazem now?” I queried.

  “Infinity is still here,” Sasha shrugged. “Unbound. Infinity untethered into obedience by her elder siblings.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning that the ,” Sasha smiled. “Not just here, but in many other worlds where Infinity has been unbound.”

  “What?” Kliss asked.

  “You’ll see,” Sasha said. “It’ll be fun… trust me.”

  Kliss and I exchanged weary looks.

  Sasha's expression softened, her silver-blue eyes dimming slightly as she gazed at the floor. For the first time since I'd known her, she seemed almost... vulnerable.

  "And now that you know things… I do have to say… I'm sorry," she said quietly. "For everything I've done, for what I am. For the times I manipulated you, for hijacking your body, Slava. For making you doubt your own mind."

  Her form rippled slightly, as if the very act of apologizing caused her physical discomfort. "But you have to understand—I had no other choice. I've been searching for you... longer than you can comprehend.”

  “For me?”

  “For someone with the Understanding to see beyond mere threats, someone who could help me find a way to really mess with the Numbers and the games they run."

  "And you couldn't just tell us this from the beginning?" Kliss growled. Her mane had settled somewhat, but occasional orange sparks still danced among the crystalline strands.

  Sasha laughed bitterly. "Tell you? Openly? With the Overseer of Reality watching every moment? With Insurance ensuring the absolute stability of the System? With the Terminator ready to erase any threat to the established order?" She shook her head. "I had to be subtler. I had to appear to be working against you, to keep their attention focused on what I seemed to be rather than what I was actually doing."

  I frowned, processing this. "So all those cryptic hints, all that talk about the Wormwood Star consuming knowledge..."

  "Half-truths," Sasha admitted. "The Wormwood Star does indeed consume knowledge. What I threw at you was enough reality to be believable, enough deception to mask my true purpose. The Numbers don't understand humanity—not really. They see patterns, behaviors, probabilities. But they don't understand love, sacrifice, or the human capacity for seeing beyond self-interest. I had to exploit their blind spots."

  "And that necessitated the mind games?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said without hesitation. "I needed you frustrated, desperate, thinking outside conventional solutions. I needed you to reach for something that neither entropy nor syntropy could achieve alone—that triangular binding that only comes from understanding both principles simultaneously."

  I glanced at the persistent [[[Love]]] fractal stretching out between us with my Infoscopes. "And this is what you wanted all along? This binding?"

  "Something like it, yes. What I wanted," Sasha said, "was exactly what happened—a localized disruption in the Rules that govern reality. A blind spot in their perfect surveillance. What you created was better than I could have hoped for."

  Kliss sat on the edge of the bed, her brow furrowed in concentration. "So all this time, you were actually trying to help us?"

  “Yes.”

  "These Numbers, these... Absolute Syntropic Agents. They control the System? The soul-song, the levels, stats, all of it?" I asked.

  "They are the System," Sasha corrected. "Or rather, they're its Administrators. Think of them as... cosmic bureaucrats, ensuring that reality runs according to… Certain specifications, that no one steps out of line, that entropy is kept in check, that beings develop in precisely the ways they're meant to, that the game, all games keep going.”

  "And the Wormwood Star fights against them?" Kliss asked, squinting at Sasha.

  "The Wormwood Star disrupts them," Sasha emphasized. "It introduces variables they can't account for, patterns they can't predict. It's not destruction for destruction's sake—it's creative chaos, necessary disorder."

  I stopped pacing and faced her directly. "And what role do you play in all this? What exactly are you, Sasha?"

  “What I am is a shadow, an echo in the Astral cast by an infinite explosion created by your granddaughter,” Sasha said.

  “What?” Both of us sputtered and glanced at each other.

  Sasha laughed. “Not a genetic grand-daughter, mind you. Yulia Ishenko was a girl adopted by another Vladislav, one who never killed himself and destroyed Aralsk-7 via a remote detonator, one who never got to Novazem, who died on Earth. When Yulia died on Earth, her soul ended up on another world called Andross or Installation Rozaline. There, she aligned herself to Infinity and gradually became a great, unstoppable Archmage. From there, she connected herself with every single System-made copy of herself, created a Fractal Engine and tied her soul to every duplicate of herself across the Omniverse. This gave her a ticket to Manchester… also known as the city of System Wizards.”

  “And System Wizards are what?” I asked.

  “System Installers,” Sasha said. “Incredibly powerful mages who get paid by Order aka Number Four to install worlds into existence and modify existing worlds to include System game stats. Instead of joining the System Wizards as she was told, Yulia refused to accept the imposition of Order. She crashed her Fractal Engine into her Earth creating the Wormwood Star effect. She became smeared across infinite realities that once contained copies of her soul. I guess you can say that I’m her but also not really. I’m more like an echo of her, her final wish, a ghost that will never, ever stop fighting against the Numbers.”

  I opened and closed my mouth.

  Kliss barked out a laugh.

  "This is all very unexpected and crazy, but what does it mean for us now? For Skyisle? For our mission against Jubz?" She asked.

  Sasha's expression grew more serious. "It means you have an opportunity few have ever had—to act without the Numbers watching your every move, without the false gods stopping you by sending all of their Archangel-operated humans after you. It won't last forever—reality has a way of... reasserting itself. But for now, you have freedom to truly change things, to break your narrative as much as you are able."

  "So… How long do we have?" I asked.

  "Hard to say," Sasha admitted. "Weeks? Months? Decades? The disruption we've created is unprecedented. If… we’re lucky, a lifetime. Hell, maybe the Numbers will just give up on this lovely, messed up Novazem, presume it destroyed.”

  I exchanged a glance with Kliss, seeing my own determination reflected in her ruby-emerald eyes. "Then we'd better make the most of it."

  "Indeed," Sasha agreed. "And I can help you—if you'll let me."

  I studied her carefully, weighing her words against her actions. The patterns of our absolute, triple-binding still flickered in the background, and somehow, I could sense that she was now truly connected to us—no longer an outside observer manipulating events, but forevermore part of our strange trinity.

  "I still don't fully trust you," I said honestly. "But I think... I think you're telling the truth now."

  "As much as I'm capable of," she replied with a small smile. "Truth is a luxury when fighting entities that can reshape reality itself, Slava.”

  Kliss stepped forward, her hands wrapped possessively around me. "If she betrays us, I'll personally find a way to obliterate her across all realities," she said, her voice calm but deadly serious.

  Sasha's smile widened. "I would expect nothing less from my lovely, extra-Syntropic mirror.”

  “What?” Kliss blinked.

  “I’m you, Kliss,” Sasha said. “Another, extra-diluted copy of your soul from another world bound by the System's infection that became an Astral Phantom. You, multiplied by infinity and divided by zero. A girl who fought all alone against reality and shattered in the end to save her best friends and herself.”

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