Patterns repeat.

It was during his tenure at the Academy of Natural Philosophy that he had noticed the strands of fate, chance and destiny weaving together in what was undoubtedly a concerted and intended design. His first thesis was meant to explain how, in a world subject to the insidious influences of the Outsider and other pervasive forces, the only certain thing was prior experience. Similar factors producing similar results. Recurring events would inevitably lead to the same conclusion. It was far too messy and chaotic, he postulated, to trust to the otherworldly, fickle choices of something as quaint as a god or an all-powerful, benign force. No, apart from the Outsider, who made his presence all too obvious with the numerous shrines and relics left behind, there was only one sure moderator of chaos and randomness: patterns. He recalled the sourness he felt as he scanned the document when it had been returned to him.

Name: Anton Viktor Sokolov
Course: Cosmology and the Inner Workings of our World
Thesis: "The Valleys of Strife: A Discourse on the Patterns Implicit in Nature"
Grade: C-
Comments: Main discussion too vague and reliant upon dubious sources. Too much theorising and final postulations lacking convincing evidence. Gratuitous use of anachronistic texts on the subject.

He spent many a night inside the Eminent Library, pulling dusty tomes of the shelves till he could have made a fort out of them. Like the ice-and-stone ones he had built with his friends during his youth in Tyvia. But there the similarity ended, for there was no laughter in his heart when he scanned the spidery handwriting in these books. Superstition was something that never went out of fashion. For every tale of magic and mystery, there was a work disproving it. Then another disproving that. And so on.

Until one night, when he'd almost given up and the candle had been about to gutter out, he found a slim book-not a tome, but a journal. It was so old it had nearly withered away, but the words inside were unmistakeable. THE OUTSIDER WALKS AMONG US. Whoever this had belonged to, had felt the touch of the Outsider. And rather than fear, he felt a thrill creep up his spine. Here, at last, was something conclusive!

Excitement had turned to dread, then outright horror, when he read the secrets within. Amongst the endless mantra and pictures of…whales? He learned what the Outsider had imparted to the author. In a surprisingly cogent burst of writing, the author named himself. He had been a scholar, just like Sokolov, and had never wanted for anything. Until his beautiful and cold wife, Lady Carsephia, had been found brutally murdered. The scholar had woken to see his wife's bloodied corpse sprawled on the rug and with no idea of how he'd gotten there.

The Outsider had drawn him into the void and "explained" things to him. Here Sokolov felt a brief frustration, as the author once again spiralled into madness and did not elaborate. But it paled in comparison to what he felt when he read from there.

Everything he'd said in his thesis had been true. All of it. There was nothing out there. No sentient force guiding people. No intricately designed master plan. Just chaos, and more chaos. An all-consuming void that would one day swallow the world, swallow everything, and nothing more would come after. And the Outsider watching all of it with a malicious grin and eyes as black as jet.

He'd resigned from his placement the next day, sold everything he had. He put together an expedition to Pandyssia. No-one had ever returned from there, but he felt a conviction unlike anything he had ever felt. He needed to know more. He needed to know more. The thirst for knowledge was nothing new to him, but this…this was beyond knowledge. This was desperation.

Even when he eventually did return, even when Rosebarrow had stumbled across the greatest scientific discovery in their history and he went to him with plans to usher Dunwall into a golden age-even after Jessamine died, blast it all-the terror stayed with him. Perhaps, underneath a thick black beard and beady eyes, it did not show, but it was always there. Driving him to create new ways to keep the scum and illiterate of the city in their place, new ways to kill.

And then the plague.

He coughed again, and lifted his head from the desk he had sat down at some hours ago. He could not concentrate enough to work out how long it had been. The thumping sound of his heart had crept to his ears and everything looked hazy and indistinct. There was no doubt about it. The rat plague had finally found him. Only a matter of time, of course.

He tried to speak up, but managed only a grizzled mumble. He tried again. "Piero. Piero." The sound echoed off the walls of the workshop. No response. Not so much as a clatter.

The man must have gone. Fled, just like Corvo. Oh, perhaps he'd spoken differently-"I'm going to save Emily and put an end to this treachery once and for all"-but Sokolov was no fool, even with a disease pumping through his body. Emily was tangential at best. What Corvo wanted was to continue his rampage throughout the city. From the aristocracy to the gangs, from the Flooded District to Kingsparrow Island, everyone would feel his presence. Few would survive it.
He sighed, and let his head drop again. Well, no matter now. No matter anything. The end was near, Maybe his head had been in the stars, his mind in the universe, but his body was firmly rooted here, and it was about to succumb. For a moment, he mourned the loss of his brain. It had always been a tool of greatness. So sharp, so able to pierce the veil of ignorance that obscured knowledge in this shit world. It would be snuffed out like a candle.

He wondered where Piero had gone. He had certainly not wondered when he had been dismissed from the Academy. But the man had won out in the end, hadn't he? Piero had gone on to work for something he believed in. Something noble, before man's essential malice took over and twisted the conspiracy. Whereas he had made terrible things, walls of light and firebombs, for men who would have used them on the city wholesale if it had meant a rise to power.

And now Piero was elsewhere, while he was here dying of plague.

Patterns repeat.

When he finally did succumb, mere moments before Piero arrived back from the Hound Pits with fresh elixir, he found himself standing in a blackness. A young man stared across at him. His eyes were even darker.

"Why?" he asked.

The young man shrugged. "You weren't interesting enough."