Die. Respawn. Repeat.

The core of an Inspiration is that they alter the skills that pass through them in some fundamental way. The Knight is the strongest one I have, and the skills that pass through it usually emerge as some physical alteration to my form rather than the usual energy projections.

The Mirror Twice Shattered, on the other hand, is perhaps the most unpredictable. It's one of the reasons I haven't used it as much—the Mirror tends to lend an emotional tint of some sort to the skills it alters, and most of the options I have aren't pleasant.

It's a representation of some of the worst moments in my life, after all. The Mirror is a reflection of me as I was, and who I was back then...

Determination. Anger. Sadness. Fear.

I remember looking back at the Mirror in the moments after I first received it. It hadn't felt particularly good at the time, having my life laid out in such broad strokes. It hadn't felt like a real representation of who I was.

I remember my thoughts back then. The Mirror took the most significant moments of my life and turned them into a source of power, but what it hadn't been able to do was take the small moments. Recovery hadn't been instantaneous. It was a slow process, built up over months and years, learning to smile again, learning to laugh, learning to live...

Only for me to be brought into the Trials right as I felt like I might be ready to face the world again. Go figure.

Now that I think about it, even back then, I think I had a connection with both my Truth and my Talent. I might not have really known what I was doing, but I looked at the Mirror and thought it felt wrong. Like it failed to truly capture who I was. I'd forgotten this up until now, the memories suspiciously foggy.

Now, though? Clear as day. I remember reaching back to the Mirror, trying to fix it. Trying to make it represent who I really was.

The smallest hint of an early Anchoring. The slightest invocation of a Change.

I'd created a fifth fragment that joined with the Mirror. Unnamed, unspoken, and untouched, hovering around the edges of memory and reality.

That's the aspect of the Mirror that I draw upon now. It's the fragment created not from any deep trauma, but from the life I lived after. The steps I took to bring myself back from the brink.

He-Who-Guards is many things, but if I had to put a single emotion to him, it wouldn't be within any of those four quadrants of power I initially invoked with the Mirror. Anger doesn't suit him. He may have experienced sadness, but he's never let it define him. I'm not sure I've even seen him scared unless it's for someone else's safety. And as much as he might be determined, that isn't what he's all about.

The fifth fragment, though... it suits him. I name it here and now, the one thing that carried me through both my recovery and every loop of this Trial.

Hope.

He-Who-Guards, at his core, is someone that always carries hope with him. It's why he protects. It's why he still stands, even after everything Whisper has done to him.

Temporal Link changes. The thread of Firmament that emerges from it now shines a pure white tinged with just the faintest hint of iridescence, a perfect match to the prismatic nature of Guard's power. It slides through the glass without resistance, makes contact with his core—

—and the world around us freezes.

It takes a moment for Guard to recognize that something's changed. When he does, he blinks, looking around in confusion. "Ethan? What is this?" he asks. His words emerge with the cadence of a mental link.

"This is as new to me as it is to you," I admit. "I think it's a mental buffer the link is creating for us to try to connect our cores. It's a lot like the first few times I received an Inspiration, actually."

The only real difference is that with Gheraa, my words didn't have the same echoing quality to them. That's no surprise, though—Gheraa is an order of magnitude more powerful than I am still, and he had the support of the Interface in maintaining this space to boot.

I wonder if that's important. If Temporal Link is capable of creating a space like the one we use for Inspirations, what does that imply about the skill as a whole? For that matter, what does it imply about what Kauku is?

I suppose it doesn't matter at this exact moment.

I can feel Temporal Link working. It's making a connection with the part of Guard that isn't entirely in-sync with the timestream—that aspect of him that stays coherent even when the rest of the world rolls back. It's the densest and deepest part of his core, deep within a storm of Firmament that boils and churns with a power I don't think I would have felt without this link.

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"I think..." I say out loud, and I notice with some surprise that my voice comes out clear now. The connection is stabilizing, maybe? Or the space is. "I think we need to do more to fully establish the link."

"What more do we have to do?" Guard asks.

I shrug. This is as new to me as it is to him. I close my eyes, feeling things out with my Firmament sense instead of my eyes—it's not like vision really matters in a space like this.

And I feel it.

The new link is there. It's trying to form even now, a tendril of Firmament reaching out through my core and into his. The reason it's able to at all is because the nature of the link is attuned to the both of us, but...

Guard's soul is even bigger than I anticipated. The link is struggling to establish itself, wavering with uncertainty between our two cores. For this to work, the two of us have to be of one mind for at least a single instant—we need to have the same thought, the same intent, the same hope.

Easier said than done, I think wryly.

"Sit with me?" I ask. Guard shoots me a curious look, but he complies—we find a pile of rubble nearby and make ourselves comfortable. "The bond's halfway to forming, but it needs more. You're, uh—" I snort a little at the phrasing. "—Your soul's a little too big for this to be easy."

Guard quirks his optic slightly. "Whisper had no such complaints," he says, clearly amused. I roll my eyes.

"I don't need to know about that, thank you," I say. "When did you come with jokes?"

"Exposure to a certain pair of Trialgoers had rather irreversible side effects, I'm afraid," he deadpans, and I have to muffle a laugh as I shake my head.

I think it's the first time I've seen him like this. He's relaxed, almost, despite the situation we're in. It takes me a moment to realize why.

This space we're in, despite all the similarities it shares with reality—it's ultimately just a mental construct we're sharing. What I'm seeing now is how Guard sees himself. He's so used to his mechanical body that he's more metal than silverwisp, but if I look closely enough...

The shape of his "eye" shifts a little every time he's trying to express himself with a little more malleability than it should be capable of having. There are times his form wavers just slightly. Small quirks present in the metal that aren't there in the real, physical world.

"You're more comfortable here, aren't you?" I ask quietly. Guard glances at me, but he doesn't seem surprised by the question. Instead, he hesitates for a moment, then nods.

"This is a strange place," he says. He looks down to his hands and clenches his fists a few times, watching the movement. "The body Whisper gave me is incomplete. It lacks sensation, flexibility, and movement. Here, it seems, things are different. I am more... myself."

I nod. "Not that it's particularly comparable, but I feel the same way."

I hadn't noticed it at first, but my Interface-modified bones don't weigh me down here. The Knight transformation is gone. Right now, I'm just Ethan Hill.

The link between us solidifies just a little further, but not nearly enough.

It's odd, having a quiet moment like this in the middle of what should be a tense battle. All around me, I see evidence of how important this is going to be—the amount of destruction to the dungeon, now that I have the time to properly observe it... there are large swathes of the Intermediary that are just gone.

Courtesy of the Hand's void beam, no doubt, but with the true extent of the damage hidden by that illusory skill.

Guard seems to notice the shift in my mood. He speaks again, drawing me out from my thoughts. "Is there more we must do to speed up this process?"

He's relying on me, isn't he? They all are. Not just Ahkelios and Guard and Gheraa, but considering the state of things on Hestia, the situation with the Integrators as a whole, and that cryptic warning I sent myself...

"We need to synchronise," I say. "Just for a moment. Intent and thought and emotion. We need to be one being just enough for our Firmament to align and the bond to take hold. I don't think it has to be perfect, but it has to be close."

Guard tilts his head slightly, considering this. "Not a trivial task," he says.

"Not at all," I agree. I'm about to make a suggestion, but Guard stops me, holding up a hand.

"I believe I have an idea," he says. "Such a moment would be difficult to artificially create, if not wholly impossible. But perhaps, given a matter we care equally about..."

His voice softens. "If I understand who you are—and I do, in this regard—then this will work."

Guard's optic flickers shut. For a moment, nothing happens—and then for just a fraction of a second, his Firmament and soul unravels into a fractal of pure prismatic power. He reaches within himself—

—and from within, a second presence emerges.

It wouldn't have been possible for anyone else. A single bond created by Temporal Link isn't strong enough to host a third mind, let alone a third soul.

But He-Who-Guards is different, isn't he? The same way I am. The same way Ahkelios is, even if he hasn't completely found that aspect of himself yet.

He's his own kind of impossible. The type of soul around which a world can change, so long as it lives for long enough.

I know who this is even before the bright flash of Firmament resolves, and I know what Guard is thinking.

He's right. This will work.

I kneel down before the slightly-confused, pillbug-shaped presence that stands before us.

"You must be Aris," I say quietly. The one who would have been Miktik's daughter. The one Miktik tried to save—had saved, even if she didn't know it herself. "Your mother has a message for you. Would you like to hear it?"

Aris looks up at me. She doesn't understand what's going on, doesn't know what any of this is—she isn't really part of the bond as much as she is a guest—but she doesn't need to.

All she needed to hear were those seven words. Your mother has a message for you.

She nods. Trembling and hesitant at first, like she doesn't really believe me. Then more vigorously, a choked sob emerging from her throat.

"Please," she whispers.

I nod. I reach out so she can hold on to me, smaller insectoid limbs clinging to my fingers.

He-Who-Guards must have realized this at some point, but because the space we're in is less a literal frozen snapshot of reality and more a creation of our shared minds, I don't have to just tell her the words.

I can show her.

So I do.