— Let's get this over with — Shun-Ri said impatiently. She dragged the tail of her purple dress through the gray earth, littered with small rocks. Her heels crushed the pebbles. On either side of her, the acolytes wore wine-colored cloaks.They were in the nyasuk ruins of a large asteroid. The remnants of what once was a temple or altar surrounded them. Above and around them was the deep night. The attendees carried torches, and the cloaks obscured their faces. Some young nyasuk wearing these cloaks stepped forward, holding metal pillars, and set them up at an angle, forming a sort of arch.Shun-Ri ignited two torches with fire that she had violently snatched from one of the attendants, almost burning him. Then she took a seat leisurely among the ruins, on a sort of stone table.— Aren't you going to thank me for the place I found?Ethan said nothing. He moved his cloak from his shoulder. He was focused, but also felt something unexplainable. He was uncomfortable with her presence at his portal ritual. It gave him a bad feeling, as if she embodied a plague, an evil that corrupted and made any budding life impossible before it had a chance to be born. He had never felt this way about Shun-Ri before. He was uneasy and worried.It was too late to back out now: the nyasuk were already holding hands after setting the torches around them in a circle. The air was already vibrating. Shun-Ri smiled, as if she were the master of ceremonies. Every word she spoke hurt his ears, as if she were shouting.— This is only experienced once in a lifetime — she said mockingly.When the attendants lowered their gaze and heads, their hoods covered their faces completely. Ethan tried to look into their eyes, anxious to find some human connection, but in those holes, he only found unfathomable darkness. He told himself that nothing mattered anymore. That he would remain the same, no matter what happened in this empty ritual, and that the only important thing was to accept his totem animal to use it in his plan to subjugate the humans. That was the main thing.With determined steps, Ethan approached the arch, through which he could see the ruins, the night, and the infinite space. At the last moment, he felt a strong shove. Shun-Ri had violently thrown him towards the portal.He stumbled and nearly lost his balance, recovering just in time. He found it hard to believe what had just happened, but when the initial horror faded, a bitter certainty settled in his mind. Not only was it dangerous to open a portal without the presence of a Sage of the Cycles—something Shun-Ri had already done—but entering it so abruptly could have disastrous consequences. He could lose consciousness, go insane, or become trapped between worlds, a prisoner between the incorporeal and the material. He realized that Shun-Ri was not only capable of such a thing, but had probably done it with the hope of causing a disaster, just for fun.As Ethan began to look around, taking his time, he saw vines growing at a dizzying speed, creeping around a stone fortress. It was Argos; it was his father Ezra's castle. Poppy flowers sprouted and died quickly, in a sickly reproduction cycle.His heart rate quickened, the beats pounding against his chest. A chill ran down his back.Suddenly, the fortress faded, and in its place appeared a white and golden mosque. Ethan wanted to protest, wondering why Sigma appeared in his vision, and then he remembered. Sigma still practiced the custom of human tribute.On the white and luxurious steps of the mosque, under a blazing sun, a bald man with dark skin met another wearing an orange turban. Ethan tried to ask who they were and what he was doing there, but he couldn't see his own body or hear his voice. However, he could hear their conversation.— Did you bring it? — asked the man with the turban.— Here it is — replied the bald man, lowering a sack from his shoulder.Ethan looked inside the sack. At first, he saw an astonishing treasure: gleaming gold and silver, pearls, rubies, jade, treasures of all kinds.— How many died? — asked the man with the turban, the sun beating down violently.— That doesn't matter — replied the bald man. — All for the young king.Before his eyes, the treasure began to bleed. The riches dripped blood, as if they were alive. The bald man put a hand to his mouth, revealing a gold tooth, as the contents of the sack transformed into mutilated body parts.The vision was so vivid that Ethan reached out a hand, trying to touch one of the men and order them to remove this abomination from his sight. He made the movement, but couldn't see his hand. His mouth also seemed numb, as if under anesthesia or gagged. After what felt like an eternity, the vision began to fade under a gray shroud, as if covered by a cloud.Before him appeared the throne room of Naësu, with the Council in session. The skylight above his head provided a soft illumination. Ethan was sitting on the throne.It took him a while to get used to this new reality. To convince himself it was real, he touched the armrest of the throne and leaned back a bit to observe his surroundings. He felt the coolness of the marble, the cracks in the material. It was the same place where Ezra had sat. The Council seemed to be deliberating. Why was he on the throne? Perhaps they were deciding how to arrest him, sanction him, or even execute him. Sitting on a throne that did not belong to him was a capital offense. He braced himself for the worst.—Where is Cassian? —Ethan asked, his voice firm but tense.One of the Council members, an older man with a beard and glasses, stopped talking with his peers and looked at him in surprise.—Pardon, Your Majesty?—I asked where Cassian is.—Who? —the man asked, with a tone of genuine confusion.—My brother —Ethan repeated, with a trembling voice and a pang of pain against his will.The man smiled with a hint of pity, as if Ethan were rambling.—Your Majesty must have worked too hard today. If you're referring to your brother, Cassian, as you call him, he died at birth. Your father warned us this might happen: that you might ask about him after many years. But there is no need to worry. Shall we continue with the agenda review?Ethan was struck by the reality, as if he were trapped between two walls slowly closing in, compressing him until he lost consciousness and orientation.—Call Shun-Ri —Ethan said firmly, determined—. I need to talk to her.The man with glasses, initially bewildered but then understanding the situation, stood up from his seat and approached Ethan, whispering the following information.—Your Majesty must be referring to Shun-Ri Zhou. I'm sorry to say she recently confessed her involvement in a plot to kill Your Majesty and is now serving a sentence of hard labor on Alpha. However, we can contact the warden. Would you like to make a call?Ethan felt the enormous throne room shrinking, as if the walls were about to collapse on him. He felt dizzy, but not to the point of vomiting. He had no one to turn to, and, moreover, no reason to live. It was a dream come true: he was sitting on the throne he had fought so hard to obtain, but his triumph wasn't due to trampling on his brother's corpse or overthrowing him. It was because Cassian had never existed, and that was the only reality in which this would have been possible. He tried to stand up, clutching the velvet robe of the man next to him, but felt he could neither walk nor move. He was immobilized, paralyzed. His mind had also entered a standstill.Without Cassian and without Shun-Ri, all of this was absurd. There was no need to plan grand schemes or elaborate intricate sequences of events. He wished for this horrible nightmare to end, overwhelmed by experiences he didn't understand in a reality he didn't want to be part of. Why so much pain and sacrifice? Why work with Shun-Ri all these years to overthrow Cassian? Did his life really revolve around others?Desperately, he wished to see the stars against the night again, to know that the torches and the nyasuk in their circle were still there, even to see the harpy Shun-Ri. But all he saw was that man with glazed eyes who seemed to think he was crazy. The man approached the other Council members, discreetly pointing at him while murmuring something he couldn't hear. This had gone on too long and had gone too far. He closed his eyes as tightly as he could while a cold sweat ran down his forehead.—Are you crying? —a woman's voice said in the darkness.Ethan could have kissed that snake because of the relief he felt upon returning to reality.He didn't react immediately, but when he did, when he finally convinced himself that around him was the night and the ritual, the acolytes with their perplexed looks, the remnants of the ruins, he was able to bring his hands to his face and touch it. Yes, he had been crying, not sure if from sadness or terror.—Listen to me —Shun-Ri said, with all the disdain and intensity she was capable of—. I don't want you to be mediocre. I want you to temper your steel in the fire of hatred, understand? The nyasuk traditions are important, but melodrama is not. And I will not tolerate it. We are not here to be soft, we are here to succeed.At that moment, Ethan loved her. He loved and hated her at the same time for giving him that clarity.Shun-Ri adjusted the sleeves of her dress, looking at Ethan trying to figure out his intentions. Ethan's face was distorted by terror and by what he had experienced as a sense of purposelessness in his life. He still had his hands on his cheeks, feeling the dampness of the tears. She didn't give him much time to reflect.—I think that's enough —Shun-Ri added disdainfully, kicking a stone that was in her way to the side—. If you want to stay, do so. You can stay inside the portal as long as you want.—Let's close the portal already —Ethan said, unwilling to discuss the matter further— and let's go.The acolytes joined hands and lowered their heads with their shadowy hoods. Ethan had never been so grateful that no one besides Shun-Ri and her subordinates had seen him. He was embarrassed to be crying, but he hadn't even been aware of doing so. He wondered if all nyasuk had such damnable visions and was glad he only had to go through this once.He didn't really question whether he had to learn something. The last vision he had before hearing Shun-Ri's voice had been a stampede of bulls on his father's grounds. Their hooves thundered on the ground, kicking up dust, crashing into each other, fleeing in terror. If that was to be his animal, why were they fleeing, and from what or whom?He didn't want to question it further. The involuntary crying had been a sign of weakness, and that meant he had much work to do. He was going to achieve his goal with Shun-Ri, no matter the methods. In his vision, he had seen a world without Cassian, but what interested him was materializing his vision of a world where Cassian did exist and was defeated by him. He was convinced that if possible universes were infinite, in some of them he could be a king triumphing over Cassian. There was no reason to think it wouldn't be this one, regardless of the visions' content.