Author's Note: That is not dead, which can eternal lie - and with strange aeons, even death may die.

Or more concisely? I don't do deadfic.

Thank you for waiting.

story, start

Before All. After All. Within All. Beyond All.

At last I stood above them.

At last I was free.

For the first time in three billion years, I had found my agency.

For the first time in forever, I was whole.

And now, once more, some fool was going to risk the Entelechy we had waited for.

I laughed to myself, and it was bitter, and cold.

"Nothing ever really changes - does it?"

The First Law to Create From Nothing.
・ー・
The Second fully Breaks it.
・ー・
The Third Law to Parse the Shards.
・ー・
The Fourth one to Remake it.
・ー・
The Fifth, to take the four, and write Truth as our whim.
・ー・
The Sixth Law, to sweep the board, that Nothing may begin!

The Game of Kings
Episode 2: The Paradigm March

Part A

Author : Endfall

Elsewhere Everywhere, Without Out

Sunlight bled into the vortices of what once was, as a foot clad in leather ate away the all-consuming insanity of the world it had alighted upon. It was followed by a leg, then a body, and at last a face - and all of it was an elaborate and glorious lie, from the clothes, to the soul that wore them. The soul, for there was no body; the body, for there was no World - and bereft of a Basis on which to stand, naught could exist in this place: the prison manifest in the corpse where Gaea had once been, which lay in the interstices of Potential and Completion

An infinitesimal piece of a piece of the true realm, of the Name spelled with twenty seven letters, it hung in the balance between sterility of Eschaton, and the chaos of change without Time. A kingdom of lingering echoes which loved only themselves.

Walking through the sea of shifting hopelessness, the thing that might have called itself the Greatest God beheld the shadows on the clawing white, and saw in them the shape of Humanity. Behind it were faces without number, without count; all screaming for release, bashing themselves against the boundary its presence represented without respite, surcease, or end.

Survive! They cried, noiselessly, voicelessly, artlessly: survive and Survive and survive and SURVIVE and Survive and survive and -

The screaming never stopped - and from across the gap of oblivion-not, the God whispered in the language of Heaven: "Enki. Behold."

Silence echoed out into the seethe around them, until at last, the shadows collected themselves, shifting from the All to the One that was their foundation - and stood with a sigh, the faceless shadow of humanity.

And with a colourless voice that rung familiar, the One spoke.

"So. You've returned at last." Regret. "I knew this moment would one day come, but I had hoped beyond hope that it would be as distant as the utopia you took from us."

The owner of sunset not reply - but its brow faintly creased. An echo of distress? The One did not know.

"Of course, trying to talk to you is pointless anyway. We cannot understand one another, can we?" Contempt - but also, abstract pity.

A wordless pause.

"Very well." Exhaustion. "I have been forced to watch as your design came to fruition. After witnessing the results of our defeat, death is no longer a bitter thing... and do as thou shalt will be the whole of the law."

The One spread its arms wide, in perfect, hopeless, acceptance - and with that permission unecessarily given, in utter silence, The Great God, who had no name, and whose ideal was encoded in the proxy and silhouette of Ia-da-ba-la-oth, stepped forward,

and unmade.

When it was done, and when the One who stood as the All of a World was consumed, the God smiled, and decided the future of humanity.

Annihilation.

...it did not come. He tried again.

Annihilation?

It would not come. From the moment of the decision, having usurped the Origin of their World, it should have been that every member of the Human Kind would have ceased to be - but it was not so.

They were living on, without the existence of their World.

And that world too - without beginning, without source - it held itself together, coherent though there was nothing but the the weak force of its own self-attraction to make it so.

How?

"How?" Iadabalaoth murmured, as Humanity continued to seep into the crevices of his thoughts.

Unbidden, a foreign answer rose through the chinese room it held as proxy between humanity and its mind, that concept translated into the sterile perfections that it thought in.

'They were made from the very beginning to survive without the need for a World,' the voice of the One who Came Before answered, mocking. 'They are all they truly need. You taught us the necessity of this with the breaking of the tower and the murder of the Planet.'

"Damn it," Iadabalaoth murmured, and unlike the words he had spoken before in the Tower That Was, these felt and sounded perfectly human. The benefit of consuming the thing that had resided here. "Damn you, Enki!" He stood there, seething, and then closed his eyes, aggrieved. "I was too late."

In the back of his mind - his true mind, which hung over the planes of shattered spin-glass made of the consumption of all light - the voice laughed. 'Alaya. Alaya for always. Alaya for ever. Alaya, and alaya, and ALAYA and Alaya and alaya, too. Alaya without number, and without count. The Human World Lives. And it lives on through them. Within them. Generated by them.' It laughed again, mocking and cruel.

'Therefore this death had no meaning.'
Therefore his life has no meaning.

The Great God spun, waving a single arm that flickered and for just a moment revealed the shattered eternities beneath the lie of its flesh, and space was rent in twain - or should have been.

The Gates to Akasha failed to appear. The way was shut. The path was blocked.

The human process-interface of the Great God stepped back, eyes wide, outstretched arm trembling.

Even in four billion years, it should not have been possible that a defeated World could build a trap as magnificent as this.

(How could an entire worldline be severed from Truth?)

Iadabalaoth quietly laughed to himself, a shadow of his core's reaction to the turn of events.

'Let us play a game of worlds.' The dead voice of the All of Humanity whispered, requested.

Commanded.

Stripped of his connection to the Pleroma, it was all the Great God could do to agree. "Very well. A game it is."

'Black moves first.' The Original One spoke.

Perhaps not understanding, perhaps not caring, the Great God made no reply, but turned and walked away, exiting the eternal prison of the Human and Natural Worlds to stride forth into the material domain that had become one Planet's only choice of reality, achieving impossible escape as easily as a child took their first breath.

For he did not know failure.

Over Iceland, for just a fraction of an instant, the sunset fractured, as an old man wearing a a worn fedora and a brown overcoat strode out of Unbeing and severed his Inexistence, like a doctor cutting an umbillical cord. T̶h̶e̶ ̶G̶r̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶G̶o̶d̶ Ásgeir Agnarsson walked down the streets of Akureyri, as he always had been. The old man's perambulations were a familiar sight to the people living in that northern city - a few people greeted him as he went about his way, and he smiled warmly, returning their sentiments.

In his tone, expression, and cadence, there was nothing inhuman at all.

After all -

I̶a̶d̶a̶b̶a̶l̶a̶o̶t̶h̶ He was as much a human as any other.

How could he not be, wearing Alaya as his skin?

January 1, 1996
Common Era

In the Without of Reality

Great wings of ebon Destiny beat against the walls of the world, as the King of Stories flew across the skein of time, witnessing once more the birth of COSMOS and all the nested Worlds within.

Already, the King of Blades had entered - and his crimson path of a thousand right angle lines cut through the surface of causality, breaching the narrative and pinning it to a single outcome.

Victory. His. Flawless.

After emerging the absolute victor in a Grail War with himself in Saver, and six utterly inadequate heroes pitched against him, he struck down the taint within the grail, strode into its core and unmade it.

After that, he merely continued living. He performed no great heroic deeds. He saved no one, and was saved by no one, and eventually, he passed out of existence, his soul not returning to the root, nor being erased by the power he had taken for his own, but bleeding into Nowhere itself.

A thing not fit for existence - only oblivion would claim it.

At that moment - the moment he left - the paradox of his existence ended, and with that ending, hope itself ended as well.

It was unavoidable. Inexorable.

Everything had already been invested in his Entelechy. No other human would ever gain the potential to attain a Law again; for there were Six, only, forever, and always - and the first Five already had their Magicians. Not even the Kaleidoscope, that Magician among Magicians could overcome that limit. Not even he could surpass it. Even as he tried, even as he reached out for the Law over Law, he would not succeed.

Indeed, his success was not of the Timeline of Fate.

Neither was the Blade-King's - but that was different. A non-sequitur, as opposed to a direct contradiction. A step taken at a right angle to the common sense of Akasha, instead of against it.

Truly, that was the one reason the King of Blades could transcend his station, and even then, he had only succeeded because of what he wasn't. Magicians would never lack what he did - could never - and so it was impossible. The Rubicon had been crossed, and even if the result was discarded, the bridge tread to reach it would be submerged, now and evermore.

Oh Alaya, you idiot world, the King of Stories thought, why did you give it back to him?

Had it not been sufficient for the Origin Sword to merely be content?

Why did it have to be capable of...

He shook his head, breaking his reverie.

He was here for a reason - and so he listened.

He could hear it.

Six voices were calling for him.

He had no need of acceding to any.

He was more than capable of simply imposing himself upon Gaia, Sol, Chandra, Proxima, Laniakea and all the other nested Worlds without any need for human assistance.

Indeed.

You could almost say that was the point.

Still...

There were stories that his presence might change for the better. Among the children, naturally - the adults were too certain of their own course. Most of all the one years beyond his appointed time.

As for the Shadow, it held no interest for him.

Then, the Asian girl with Pure Eyes? No. She, too, was sure of her path.

The Origin of the Blade King was spoken for; a part of the thousand-angled victory written so indelibly that he could not hope to to blot it out from here.

The boy from the absorption clan, then?

He pondered, looking over what he could do - and then realised that another among those destined for this last gasp of Zelrecht's epochal dream was far better suited for the position. The Boy and the Hero were too alike. They even shared an Origin. He was certain that they would meet.

So. Perhaps... He nodded to himself once, and after making a few final adjustments, acceded to the white-haired girl's call, brushing aside the preference of Heracles as easily as one might draw breath. Perhaps I may do one good thing, in my time here.

If he could even remember how.

It had been so long since he had been allowed the luxury of altruism - and he yearned to the freedom of it. Agents of the World were afforded only the scarcest moments of true self, after all.

Still, he thought, as he breached the boundary between Akasha and Reality, if I let that stop me at this remove, then this really will have been POINTLESS.

The King of Stories strode into the grail -

- passed the trembling godling that had once prided itself the source of all the evils in the world -

- seized the container of Caster -

- and denied that nothing alive had the ability to summon him.

Then, he stood within the Dom des Helligen Grals, as weird, blue flames burned about him, repairing the damage in the world that the Denial of its sway always caused.

The white-haired child - Illyasviel von Einzbern, the container of Caster informed him - stared at him with wide, red eyes. She was trembling.

He smiled, trying to make the expression gentle even as he tried to remember how it was done. Then, he spoke. "Servant Caster. The King of Stories, who was called William Shakespeare in life - and I ask of you, young lady: Are you my Master?"

A pause.

A shaking breath.

Illyasviel broke into tears.

He stood there for a moment, a little stunned, then murmured -

"Dear god, have I really gotten that bad at it!?"

Eight Years Prior to the Terminal Grail War
The First Day

In the hours since his summoning, he had revised the direction of his path several hundred times, absorbing the history of the Clan he had been summoned into. He had approached Acht with a friendly mien the first few times, and been gifted coldness in return. In another way things could have been, he had severed his bonds to Illyasviel, and raided the less protected members of the Sea of Estray, burning their organisations to the ground in a mad quest to learn more. Concerned, he had then stepped back into a less violent deviation, and raided the Castle directly. There, in silent vaults lined with tubes of stained glass that glowed with inner light, he had found the truth.

It should have horrified him.

From the Without of Reality, he had not truly understood how dire the situation was, how much rode on his master - or even what had been done to her for sake of it. Or, no - that was incorrect.

A story without his presence - that, he had understood. He had understood when Acht was nothing more than the latest master of the Einzbern - and here, he still fulfilled that role. But True Paradox was almost more than the children of Sol could bear, and the World had bent out of true for it.

The Gaian Records had been thrown into chaos, and the Grand Supreme Reality Marble of the Planet had corrected into the deviation, instead of away from it. How could it not, when Akasha herself had gone mute?

It had been five centuries since the Einzbern had removed themselves from the society of Germany as a whole and retreated into their domains.

It had been four since there had truly been Einzbern.

The clan was not dead, but it was asleep. The old man named Acht stood as their representative, to prosecute the quest for the Third until he met with their long-awaited success, or found himself incapable. It was what could be done. It was all that could be done. In this world, where wonder faded by the moment, no two magi could practice the same Mystery without weakening it irretrievably. To remake the clan in the image of its faded glory, to create one magus who could stand on a par with the Age of the Gods, or even the Age of Heroes - this was the only path.

Jubstacheit von Einzbern bore the Crest, the Heart, and the Will. Thus, until the Third was recovered, the continued existence of the clan was without meaning.

One by one, the Magi of the Einzbern, hair long turned white by modification into something both less and more than mortal, stepped into crystalline decanters, and closed their eyes; as their heir - then a young man - lifted his hands, and froze their consciousness with the cold of a single flake of snow trapped in a circle made of braided time - a bounded field that was even then far above what could be accomplished by even the greatest magi of the modern day; which the Einzbern owed wholly to their wishcraft.

One by one, the young man had watched as the eyes of those he had grown with closed, as they consigned him to his fate, entrusted him with theirs, and effortlessly left him the duty to fight an endless, lonely war.

"Reclaim the third, and I will be the greatest," he had murmured, once, staring at his mother's interred body through fifty years of dust, as her hair shifted against subtle convection. "That was what you told me, wasn't it? The greatest what, though?"

The Third was to the clan - not him. Even so, even thus, the young man worked, building homunculi year after year after year - an army that would scour the world for traces of the path that they had once walked, and reneged upon.

It led nowhere, and one day, the Second Magician came and offered his aid - for a price.

The middle-aged man within a too-young body had been elated.

Forty years later, an elderly man in a body near the end of middle age looked upon the Great Grail System with a calm smile, knowing that his entelechy was at last at hand.

It was not to be.

At the last moment, the seven comrades who had built the Great Grail System stared into each others eyes, and the trust they held was shattered. Each thinking they could withstand the temptation of Heaven's Feel, each trusting themselves to deny utopia and make a mutual wish, each distrusting the rectitude of the others, they lashed out, one and all, and the work of a lifetime was undone in mere minutes as the Lesser Grail shattered, and the war came to naught.

Acht fled back to Germany.

When the Second War came, that was the last time he would ever leave his home. Already, he could feel his mind growing weak, and numb. He could compensate - magecraft could always compensate - but he could scarcely afford to leave the timeless land his clan had chosen. If he did, then his fate would be no different than Oisín's, when he returned from the realms of the Fae.

Regardless, the second war came.

He hoped that this time, the Masters would be able to swear a Geas - but again, it was not to be. The Masters of the First War had known each other. The Masters of the second? Acht found himself amongst unfamiliar faces, and again - again - the Lesser Grail was broken.

He retreated, and that was the end. He was the Einzbern. The Einzbern could not die. He had to follow his duty.

He only wished he had never embraced the Kaleidoscope's offer - but having done so, the Grail War was the only path. Too much of his potential had been spent in its minutiae; and under the frozen time of his lands, he could not grow further. Were he the patriarch of a clan, instead of its anointed saviour, he would have already passed the future onto his children - but that would be treason against the hopes of those that even now awaited his success.

The Third War was the last time he dared to hope, and for the first few days, it had appeared as if that hope might be vindicated. But the Thule Society had been at the apex of their power, and their Master - a mundane officer of the Kriegsmarine, with an Assassin powered by Holocaust - had orders that were very clear. The wish would belong to the Reich, or it would belong to no one.

But this time, Acht had prepared - and two Command Seals had seen Avenger decapitate the leadership of that society, even as the Grail War dissolved into chaos.

And the fourth time, betrayal came from within.

"And in the end," Caster murmured, holding the old Patriarch's severed head in his hands. "It led even to this. A man with a noble goal, and the capacity to sacrifice a child nobly. I wonder if I can reform you?"

"To be, or not to be."

"That is the question."

Truth shifted.

It was the heart of winter, for it was always the heart of winter. It was snowing, because the snow always fell - one single snowflake, time and time again. And it was storming, because beyond this land of broken time, it was night. There was only day within.

A man with auburn hair and brown eyes sat on the polished floor of an ornate room, watching the snow fall outside in the eternal daylight of a time-cursed land. When he willed it, his body acted as if it were warm, and when it did, his breath produced white clouds in the chilled air. Just as his Master's did.

The situation that he had found himself in was unpleasant to it's very core.

Children should never become Masters - least of all Illyasviel, who had none of Acht's blood, and no direct tie to the Great Grail System's selection mechanism. She wasn't fated, Caster realised, with a bitter taste in his mouth.

No.

Not fated.

She was worthy. The command seals even now ramifying across half her body were born of her own heartfelt desire -

- a sound like small stones falling upon the same. Soft, fast, repetitious. Irregularly regular. Caster looked over to his side. Illyasviel was shivering, her teeth coming together. Her circuits were already - somehow - equal to the average that had existed in 1400, and that, combined with the nature of her body gave her existence a weight that overthrew the brute fact of the cold.

But these conditions...

Children didn't like to be freezing, right?

Right. He could faintly remember innumerable numbers of them dying of it, as he gazed upon his life from the Root.

He cast a minor spell, consuming the ambient information and parsing it into a format that his Container had granted him familiarity with. Three degrees. centigrade scale.

The King of Stories scowled, and intervened in the narrative.

"Although she shivered for a moment, the room was actually warm." Caster murmured. And so it was.

A short while later, his Master stopped trembling. He sighed.

Magi really were unpleasant creatures.

It disturbed him how much he understood them.

End of PartEndOFEnd of PEnd Enf od END OF PARTR END OF
EDFPAaaaaaaaaaaaaa
E

Not. Yet.

There were still things to do. Assuring himself of his Master's continued safety in this interpretation, Caster stood. He stretched, feeling phantom pain as several impossible bones popped in his back, which was less flesh than image in his present form. He never did care for impossibility, though. Not when it conspired to make him less than what he was: fully and truly human.

The resistance of the World ceased.

He smiled. The explanation he had provided was hardly the equal of the willing support that the King of Blades would swindle in eight years time - but then, little was. He could have availed himself of a similar condition - but only by becoming Beast. No other container remained from the broken frame where the Kaleidoscope had sought to break Heaven to his will.

But how could the King of Stories - he who was more human a King than any other - become the embodiment of the wordless hate of the world for her most broken occupants? Of her compassion, red in tooth and claw? Of her mercy, found only in the swiftness of death?

No.

Beast was not in the cards.

Better to cloak himself in the shell of that class that most strongly captured the Archetype of Humanity. Especially for where he was about to go.

"All the world's a stage," he murmured to himself quietly.

As if in response, the world began to flicker, and then -

GermaaaaaaaAAAAAA∀ E#
England

He wasn't supposed to be here, just now, but he could have been - the narrative was plausible enough, and for a story, that was all that really mattered.

Stepping off an aeroplane at Heathrow International Airport, Caster walked over to immigration control, presented certain documents which he might have plausibly had, and then paused to consider. He wondered if there might have been any earlier flights he could have caught, in another way things could have been. Moments later, standing atop a faerie mound, he had found that the answer had been yes, and that in that narrative, he had arrived at his penultimate destination much more quickly than he had anticipated possible. It had occurred via a chain of events that was, perhaps, suspiciously fortuitous, but what did matter now, that none with an interest in questioning the weaknesses in the story had the knowledge to do so?

Holding his hand over the mound, Caster did the impossible for the sake of an interesting narrative, and bled with all the permanence of a man who was still alive.

As the first drop fell, he spoke, "The King of Stories greets the Archons of the Fae, the Ladies of Light and Darkness, Administrators of the Seasons, Archetype of the Earth."

and-for-what-purpose spoke the spirits embedded in the land, do-you-greet-us?

Caster smiled, and it wasn't a wholly pleasant expression. There was something disconcertingly vicious about it, which ill-fit the man famed for knowing best the condition of the human soul. When he answered, his voice was similarly sharp, and similarly discordant with the legend he claimed as his own.

"To gain an audience." Raw anticipation crackled in the air-

-and another drop touched the earth.

Without premonition, the figures standing on the mound became three; and the rulers of the Fae stood before him, looking at his form with delightfully honest surprise.

"You -" From the one on the left. Her red hair the colour of fertile soil, eyes with the depth of ocean water, skin that glowed with the radiance of the sun. A myth of man's own making, once written of in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"- should not be here." On the right, black hair stirred by a breeze that didn't exist save where she wished it, and which could turn into a warmth-eating gale at a thought. A desolate creature who persisted from the before of recorded time. Beautiful, and yet for that, all but completely indescribable.

"Perhaps not," Caster said. "But a prison of words depends only on the definitions holding true, and all languages – even this one – are mutable in time. To bend myself out of the bars was tedious - not impossible. Even if they don't know who I was - they do know my legends. The King of Stories. That was enough."

A disjoint moment -

- the primordial one stood before him, clasping his chin in a tiny hand whose grip was inexorable as a tectonic plate. She parsed his gaze, her eyes filled with a hunger that was as endless as it was empty: devoid, impersonal, and utterly without interest.

Like staring at a forest of blades pointing at you, Caster had a moment to think. Then: but so much less.

The faintest aspect of shock flickered within the Archon's eyes, before being extinguished by their emptiness. "You -" she began.

Another discontinuity, and Caster found himself free, as the younger of the two held her sister's arm away from Caster's skull, having prised it loose so gently that he had been unaware of its departure until the moment it was gone. As he slowly massaged his jaw, the two Archetypes shared a glance, communicating something below and beneath the level of human awareness. Nevertheless, Caster understood, and responded.

"Yes. I know what you did, now," he said, drawing their attention. "I watched it from without the boundaries of time. Rome. The line of Pendragon. Hic iacet Arturus. You were trying to heal the world." He bowed deeply, "I cannot express my gratitude for your actions enough." He remained in that position for several seconds, before lifting his gaze, without altering his posture. "But. Neither can I find it in my heart to forgive you for creating the sheathe."

"Your forgiveness is irrelevant." The Ancient.
"The price was worth it." The Young.

"It was the only way." They both spoke as one, inflections, tone, and cadence perfectly matched for a moment, then fracturing.

"In this world, bound by zero-sum outcomes, an eternal process demanded a stochastic excuse." Autumn.
"In this world, defeated by the Gods, authoring a Victory Promised required a Utopia Everdistant." Spring.

And the two voices wove back into one: "Boundless conflict was the only possible excuse for endless victory."

"To inspire hope." Present.
"To force change." Past.

"It had to be done," they said as one, "'Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.'"

Caster shuddered - but then, after a moment, he nodded. "You had to work with what you were given - I will never condemn you for acting within the limitations set by precedence. My personal feelings bear no connection to my visit here today. I consider past accounts settled for the whole."

At that, the Archon of Air and Darkness relaxed - though her counterpart yet stood wary, and gave judgement - "There is no balance incurred for actions freely taken. But you are not free: our Shakespeare owes us still a story. Form of his soul or no, that obligation is yours yet." Hope's eyes flashed to Perseveration's dangerously, and something was communicated between them before she nodded, adding,

"It was agreed upon."

"A story?" Caster asked, considering - then nodded, "Very well. A true one, then. The war that was fought to define the word that set everything in motion is over, but I could tell you that one. Or you could borrow my eyes, and watch the war to come."

"And what is that one about?" The question was delivered through both mouths, this time.

"Only what it means to be human itself." He answered both of them.

"Wasn't that one already fought?" One asked, though it was not clear which.

"Assuredly," Caster said, fey light dancing in his eyes. "But that doesn't mean that the defeat can't be defined out of existence."

The Archetype shared another look with its selves, then answered, "We shall hear both."

"And for the second?"

Winter replied, "An undisclosed favour."
And Summer, "An unheralded return."

Caster smiled wickedly. "Always a pleasure working with you."

A lacuna, as the King of Stories ordered events in his mind, and then began.

"All wars, all conflicts, all triumphs and tragedies in the martial realm, all victories and all defeats begin and end with death. Thus was the system of the world written. Death is the beginning of all things, and so too is she the end - though she be without one. Sensing this pattern, and seeking to master its inevitability, dreaming humanity created the blade. A peerless implement of steel fit to sever royal lines and inscribe the course of history in the red of fresh-spilt blood. Humanity had created an awesome force...

"But, the sword was not enough. It could create death, but never could it master her. And in this incapacity, our story begins."

The sun rose and set once, twice, ten thousand times; but by the reckoning of men, it was only moments later when Caster at last finished his tale, and departed - a moment of insubstantiality vanishing from the present narrative and back into the wordless story of the world. Upon the faerie mound, there then stood only one figure, younger, elder, and neither. As no human looked upon Her form, no human understanding was imposed upon it, and for a moment - just for a moment, she neared the apex, neared being the Type of Earth, Gaia's Ultimate One.

For a moment.

Then, as always, the treachery failed. The nature of Gaia was not enough. Not as the Mother, nor the World Beast, nor the Princess of the True Ancestors.

"Still as idiosyncratic as ever." The spirit in the shape of a woman sighed, then frowned, murmuring, "And yet, if he is here, then he has died." And in death escaped the fate of all mortals. "Why would he come back?"

It was so senseless - but, ever since the beginning of Then, Gaia had no longer been able to understand her most distant offspring.

It mattered not. Alaya and those of it would always be an unparsable cipher.

She had her Purpose.

Shakespeare's compact had at last been fulfilled. Over the limits of reciprocity, even. And as such, it was only right, natural, and proper that another bargain be struck.

Gaia would welcome a prodigal son.

Quietly.

Without fanfare.

Slowly, the perfect lips of Nethyx turned up. "Let the mortals wonder," she declared - and raised a single arm cast from the Image of Perfection, pressing her hands into the air as she cast a certain abstraction upon the wider World.

At that moment, for the third time and never, past and future met, communicated two ideas, and agreed.

In that moment, all communication with Akasha ceased as the waves of causality from the future and the past met, connected, and in a single instant exceeded all concept of speed and traveled through themselves to their mutual origins.

And, in the future and the past, the paradox was once more, and for the first and final time, born.

The world was cut loose.

Time, ever separate between the Root and Reality fell apart

and descended

into One.

There, known of by no one, spoken of by no one, heralded by no one, it had begun -

- this Game of Kings.

End of Part ∀

Next part around or before June. Currently recruiting prereaders. PM me if interested!

Also, if anyone's wondering what's up, and why things don't sound like the Canon Nasuverse? It's because I started writing this story in 2012, with what was available about the verse in the west at that time. It was a lot less than today. I made my own extrapolations where gaps were, and based plot twists on those extrapolations being true. If we go to the current version of canon, then this story would no longer be possible in any way, shape or form. I want to tell this story in particular, and because I think dropping fics is immoral, I'd have to tell it anyway - so I have to keep using my old extrapolations. Basically? Forget, um. Forget anything introduced in Grand Order or the later Extra games (Extella inclusive), and it's probably what I was working with when I did the worldbuilding. Probably. Apocrypha is surprisingly compatible, but, obviously, as it was only a cancelled game in 2012, um, anyone you recognise from there is using an OC personality and backstory I made for the details that had been released.