Kirin is only fascinated by this horrible entry into the world: it lingers as a half-shadow in his thoughts long after it's ended. This anomaly demands to be seen—pull one part of reality this way or that way, and how would it turn? Would they all be living in the Void soon enough, or some dreadful amalgamation of the two? Would the tears in reality stabilize, or would the Void simply overcome the world?

He doesn't mind that conclusion.

There's something peaceful about the sharp, non-Euclidean space of the Void. The sunless ocean surrounding it all. The last mystery.

(Somewhere on the distant shores of Tyvia, with the iridescent ice-seas knocking against the land, encasing the ships, another journey ends. Is it regret that marks Sokolov's last days? It's not satisfaction. He's seen too much to know what his legacy will be. It's out of his hands now, despite his attempts to correct the course. Legacies are always beholden to the whims of the future. And the futures that he has brought to this world are not the ones he'd have given it now.

And the world moves on without him. He knows this now.

And it is a relief and a terror to know this.)

Unconsciously, Kirin picks at the little broken thing he has made, plucking at its disconnected wires absentmindedly. He thinks on how living things are described as having the spark of life and how mechanical things must be given a literal one as well. He thinks and thinks on it, but whatever he decides is lost to him. The smoothness of the wires is pleasant to touch—veins considerably less so. Less streamlined, less efficient, perhaps.

Are there mechanical things in the Void too? Yes, there must be—or perhaps the spirits of the Void are called to mechanical things. The Heart... that horrible monstrosity of Pierro's that had supposedly worked once and spoken with the voice of the previous Empress... that hadn't been easy to replicate: an exchange must be made for such things to function in this mortal world. Something about death or being close to death beckons the Void forth, yet it's not a death force, diametrically opposed to life.

This is part of a lengthy and scattered monologue in his head as he quietly watches the shadows collect in the corner of the ceiling. It's an unsettling sight for most people, and so he goes unbothered by most of the castle's inhabitants.

The maid doesn't mind, though. She sits beside him, periodically looking up from her lacework to check on him, usually with a gentle touch of his hand.

One of the servants comes into the room. He gives Kirin a passing glance before announcing that there's someone who want to see him; there's only the politest note of disbelief that goes unnoticed by Kirin, or maybe he's used to it by now. How quickly he's become used to things that would have bothered him before.

And standing in the doorway before him, incredibly, is his brother. The maid watches him, but Kirin doesn't know what to make of this. His brother is as he was earlier in the apartment: only this time there is a faint flush of determination as he steels himself against what he might find. Unsteady, uneasy, but still here.

His brother takes a seat across from him, surveying him, finding a story in his posture, in his gaze. A desperate longing breaks free in his brother: the kind of pain that comes from seeing someone he cannot help but care about, despite everything. He searches Kirin's face as he exhales a shaky breath. "I'm here," he says at last. "I'm here."

He looks as though he means to say something more, but he stifles it instead. Then, he reaches out to Kirin and brushes away some hair from his forehead, slowly, carefully. Kirin doesn't understand this display, but he doesn't have to.

And with that, he pulls Kirin close in a trembling embrace. "I'm here," his brother repeats, like a prayer, like a plea.

They stay that way for a while.

And when he is done, and he lets go, his brother spills into a recounting of what he's been doing for the last twenty years since they last saw each other—half guarded, half desperate for an absolution that he won't find. They were both painfully young then: Kirin had hardly noticed his brother's departure. One day, he'd been there, and the next, not. It hadn't been a bother for Kirin at the time. What did he care if the person closest to him, yet who could never understand him, left? Isn't the dearest thing to be truly understood by another?

His brother's been a clerk, just a clerk, no love of his own, no great ambition. Just him and his little apartment. Kirin already knows this; he's seen it for himself, but there's something in the vagueness of his gaze that encourages his brother on. Perhaps it's the absence of the cold, haughty judgement that'd marked his life before.

There's twenty years' worth of anecdotes, but Kirin can't follow it for very long. He's accepted this new turn of events (there's nothing to do, but to accept all these strange turns as they arrive), but the words are tangled now. He's exhausted from trying to keep up. He simply can't hold all of this in his mind.

He touches the maid's hand lightly to get her attention. The words are slippery and resist forming. He signs them instead, and she smiles back at him.

"Tired?" she repeats back to him.

He confirms it with a nod, and she excuses the two of them for a moment. She brings him back to his room and helps him change into his nightshirt. It's still strange to be helped so, and he's not sure how he feels about it, only that there is simply no other option that he can see. Still, it's not a bad thing to be tucked into bed to rest for a little while.

The maid fusses over him a little. "Should I set a timer?" she asks.

Kirin opens his eyes to consider the question. He's struggling to understand the implications of her question: she can tell from the pained look on his face, the almost-understanding of what's going on, but he's never really able to grasp it. She can almost see his thoughts now, as he struggles to consider what she would want a timer for, what it means, and when she should come back.

He shakes his head and closes his eyes again in defeat.

She tries again from a different angle. If there's anything she's learned in the past few months, it's flexibility and patience. "I'll come back in half an hour. Is that ok?"

Some tension goes out of him. He nods, and in response, she adjusts the blanket around his form.

"I'm glad," she says softly. "You did so well today," she adds and means it too. Everyday where he doesn't break down is a good day in her book.

He looks as though he wants to tell her something, and she waits patiently for it, offering him her hand for reassurance. She watches the thought pass and the blank gaze returns. She'd like to say it's gotten easier watching this process happening a frequent basis, but it unsettles her each time. Nevertheless, she gives his hand a quick squeeze, just to let him know she's still there.

It's what she would want in his position.

She moves to leave, but he clings to her hand, and recognizing this, she stays. She sits on the edge of the bed, holding his hand as he falls asleep. How terrible it must be, she thinks, to be stuck in a world you can't understand anymore and where you are constantly dependent on other people. She could leave him if she wanted to, anytime she wanted to, and he'd be the one to suffer for it. He could try to leave anytime he wanted to, but he wouldn't get far or last long without help. On some level, she suspects, he must be aware of this.

She wonders how much of the world he still understands now, if it's only an alien mirage to navigate now, or if there's still something beautiful in it. She hopes so anyway. She waits for his breathing to settle and steady, before she lets go and tucks his hand back under the covers. She wants to give him a goodnight kiss on his cheek, but settles for tucking the covers around him.

Some would call her foolish and misguided, and she'd be inclined to agree, but she simply cannot help feeling a certain fondness for him.

She returns to the room with Kirin's brother, and sets a time for half an hour. That feels long enough for a restful nap. "I didn't know he had a brother," she says to Kirin's brother gently.

"Half brother," he replies, slightly defensively. Shame perhaps.

She considers this. "I didn't know he had a half brother," she amends diplomatically. "None of us did. Dr. Hypatia will want to know. She's been worried."

"She knows," he says, crossing his arms. "I wrote to her."

"I'm sorry," she replies. "It must have been unpleasant to find about what happened to him."

He shakes his head. "I didn't really know what had happened. I had a dream, I suppose. A strange waking-dream. It's quite ridiculous to recount now." But when he'd woken in the pale morning, there was blood on the floor. There was dried blood on the floor, and he hadn't a cut on his hands. And he'd wanted it to be anything else. He'd have given his soul up to the Outsider at that moment to make it so. He didn't know how any of this could be possible, only that it had happened. He'd written to Hypatia later, having needed until the evening to work up his nerve. There, he'd asked if she could facilitate a visit with his brother at Addermire—just to see him again, nothing more, he could make do with just that—only to find that while he was under her care, he wasn't at Addermire.

She'd let him know that his brother had been called away to Dunwall Tower. And he'd stared at those lines, uncomprehending. If he went, he'd know at last what had really happened to his brother, all those painful details.

But now, he couldn't look away. His old purpose, his first purpose, had slipped back into his life, unbidden, and it'd been a hard thing to refute and refuse.

He'd taken leave from his work, and set out to Dunwall, fearful but determined to see this through.

She'll never know this. "Dreams can be quite strange," she says.

He nods, grateful that she doesn't push the matter. "He'd been mine, you know," he says in a different tone. It's gentle now. "I was responsible for him. I'd always been responsible for him."

"Your parents," she begins, "were they gone?"

Kirin's brother pauses. "We shared a mother. She had a hard birth with Kirin. It destroyed her body: she was in constant pain afterwards and she wasn't able to have another child after him. She'd always wanted a daughter, and she resented him for the rest of her life for taking that dream away from her. My brother was a concession to her husband, and her husband—my stepfather—left soon afterwards. He kept us in financial support, but that was it. I haven't seen him since. It broke her. Her whole world was reduced to her bedroom and a small study where she kept her papercrafts. She didn't care what happened to Kirin after that." He pauses. "He was my responsibility from then on." Tenderness fills his voice. "He was mine."

Despite it all, there is still tenderness. Perhaps this is something that comes later, past the years of taking care of a child during his own childhood, having been made to give up his childhood without knowing what wound would entail. If he could choose, he'd have made it differently, made it so he could have had a childhood too. But that was not to be, and at the very end of it all, how could he not still love his only brother? He grew up beside him, even as he watched his younger brother surpass him so quickly and then, from that lofty height, look down on him for being painfully average.

There were memories that were only theirs.

He gathers himself. "Thank you for taking care of him," he says. "It couldn't have been easy."

"I was a little worried at first," she confesses. "But he's easy to care for."

A note of surprise on his face. "How did you come to the position..." There's a slight pause for her name.

"Anna," she replies, filling in the absence. "I was the one who found him," she confesses. "After the accident in the lab. I was the newest hire, and the other servants pushed me to go into the lab to see what had happened. Better me than them. We hadn't seen him for two days at that point.

"When I went into the lab, I was so scared. I thought I'd be fired on the spot or worse. I had to take the elevator in. I was terrified of the clockworks. They were supposedly tuned to not attack us, but—" she gives him a wry smile. "We were disposable. That's the first thing the head of staff told me when I was hired. He considered us disposable so I should remember that and act accordingly. They could have another kitchen maid by tomorrow if I got myself killed.

"I just remember seeing two great heaps of those wretched things—loose bolts and torn-up metal and splashes of whale oil on the floor. Like someone had destroyed them. I'm sorry to say that I wasn't sad about it. And then I saw him.

"He was just wandering the lab, and I'd thought I'd gotten close enough to make sure he was still alive, but the whole thing was wrong. He'd go from object to object, and fiddle with them aimlessly. Like he couldn't focus on anything. And then he saw me.

"I was certain I'd lost my job then. We were supposed to never enter the lab. I was trying to come up with an excuse, but he wasn't angry with me. I don't think he knew who I was. He kept saying things, but I couldn't understand him. I didn't know it at the time, but I think he'd talked himself hoarse during the time he was alone. He was in a terrible state—I don't like to think about it too much," she says, deciding to spare him the details.

"I thought it'd be better if he had a quick wash-up first, and the washroom wasn't that far away. I just had to deactivate the wall of light first. Supposedly, it wouldn't fry us, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd just forgotten to adjust it.

"I didn't know how to deactivate the wall of light, so I just pulled out the whale oil tank. It was so heavy; I was terrified of dropping it and lighting the place on fire. I'd been told to never touch the tanks. But I had to this time. He didn't seem to mind, though, but I almost dropped it when I realized he was right next to me. He wasn't upset, but he was commenting on something that I couldn't hear. It was so bizarre. I thought he was having a go at me. But he followed me to the washroom, and did everything I asked."

"Thank you," he says. "You didn't have to."

She gives him a small nod of gratitude. She could have easily paraded him through the mansion instead, humiliated him in front of the people he'd looked down on before. "He'd never have done the same for any of us, sorry, but that doesn't mean I have to do the same." This is her small victory against the condescension she'd faced at her time at the mansion.

"He was like a little lamb," she continues. "It was horrible. I kept looking at him and wondering what'd made him like this. I thought he'd come to his sense any moment now, but he didn't. So I put the ruined clothes in a pile, and I wanted to get him some fresh ones, but I couldn't leave him alone. I was afraid he'd wander off in my absence and get trapped in the walls or get hurt by the rotational machine." She pauses. "The study, washroom, and bedroom all rotate, and it's easy to get caught between rooms if you're not careful." She steadies herself. "I got him to put on a towel and made sure we weren't on any of floors that don't rotate before I pulled the lever. He kept looking around like he'd never seen it before: he was so delighted and I was so afraid because that meant he'd come back to look at it and it was dangerous for him to do so.

"When I'd got him dressed, I thought he should go to bed after some supper. Some of the serving girls had started to peek in, and I asked one to bring up some of the stew from earlier. He'd start to eat it, and then he'd get distracted and tell me something. This went on for so long that I thought I'd be there forever, so I tried to spoonfeed him instead. I'd worked in houses with small children before. I'd scoop a little bit and try to encourage him to eat it. That worked much better, thankfully."

Kirins brother considers something. "How long had it been—since he'd had something to eat?"

She draws in a small breath. "Two, two and a half, three days maybe? He usually wouldn't take anything for a day or two. He'd be too wrapped up in his work. It was the third day when he hadn't rung for any of us that we thought he'd died." She pulls at the corner of her apron. "He might have had some fruit in the meantime," she adds, trying to soften the scene. "I don't know if the lab had any, but the adjacent rooms did."

"What did you do after that?"

"I put him to bed. He fell asleep so easily that I didn't believe it at first. I thought he might fuss about it, but he was so obedient that he just went under the covers and closed his eyes when I asked him to."

"Then?"

"I cried," she replies. "I'm not proud of it. I went out to the balcony and made a fool out of myself, because either he was going to come to his senses tomorrow and have me fired or arrested on some trumped-up charge that no one would question—everyone knew he had the Duke's ear—or he was going to be like this for the rest of his life. I just couldn't stop thinking about all the ways he could be harmed. The world is not kind to any of us, but it's especially unkind to people like that."

"What did the other staff think?"

She pauses. "They were upset. Some said they weren't hired to play nursemaid to someone like him. They thought it was unfair that they had to take care of him now after everything he did, like it had never happened. Some of us wanted him sent to Addermire, but it'd been closed at that point and we didn't know when it would reopen. The day after that, the press came."

Kirin's brother watches her. "I've heard."

She lays the apron corner flat across her lap. "I don't know who told. It was cruel. What was there to gain by interviewing us? Gossip? It brought out the worst in us. You mustn't think badly of the staff. We were all stressed."

"And after that?"

She frowns, trying to remember. "The Royal Curator stopped by. Sometimes they worked together in his lab. She's beautiful, but so cold. We thought they might be lovers. She couldn't make heads or tails of what he was saying. None of us could. His thoughts kept blending into each other. It was really upsetting to listen to. She left quite frustrated and never came back."

"What did you do with him afterwards?" he asks.

This is the question that has been haunting him for the past few months; the question that has been destroying him with his regrets and fears. He knows the answer will be ugly, but he must know it. He has come this far and already heard what he suspected.

"What we could," she replies meekly. She cannot bear to look at him now and settles her gaze on her wringing hands. "He wandered everywhere in the mansion. There wasn't any place to keep him safe. He'd get caught between the walls, and—" she cuts off, unable to focus on anything but her hands. "I didn't know people could make those kinds of sounds. He was so upset all the time. He didn't understand any of what was going on. He wanted to work in the lab, but he couldn't do anything there. He'd turn bolts the wrong way, and get upset when they didn't work the way he wanted them to."

She pauses, gathering herself. "There was a room, really a cleaning closet. Please don't judge us too harshly. It was the only room with a lock and walls that didn't move. I know it was a horrible thing to do, but he kept wandering. He was going to end up dead if we couldn't keep him somewhere."

She doesn't look at him now. "We'd emptied the room beforehand, so there wasn't anything he could hurt himself with. One of the footmen called it good practice for Addermire. We thought he might yell or cry at first, but he didn't. He just went completely quiet in there. I checked on him every hour to make sure he was alright, but he didn't say anything to me. Maybe he couldn't. I remember trying to feed him lunch, and he just watched me with a blank expression. Maybe he wanted to be dead; I don't know. One of the serving girls said we should put a pillow in there, so he could hold onto it if he got afraid. I took one of the pillows off the bed, since it would probably be familiar to him, but when I tried to give it to him, he didn't react to it. And when I checked on him again, he hadn't moved from the position I'd left him in."

She still avoids the gaze of Kirin's brother. She's terrified of it, of knowing what she fears to be true—that's she's been cruel and a coward—but he doesn't answer her fears.

"I told them we had to do something with him or he was going to go mad, and then we'd really have a problem on our hands. Like poor Baron Stilton. Everyone loved him, but when he went mad, there wasn't anyone around to take care of hi—" she blinks. "No, I'm—I'm sorry, that can't be right. I… he's fine. I don't know why I thought that." She tries to refocus her thoughts. "I took him on a walk. One of the other girls told me she'd understand if he didn't come back. I was afraid he'd get lost, so I took his hand and we went to the park. It wasn't too warm yet, so we stayed out a while. And out there, he started being interested in things again. Mostly beetles. Have you seen the beetles in Karnaca? They're a lovely green. I let him keep a few, but he pulled off their legs. They all died after that."

"How long was he there?" His voice is carefully neutral.

"A week, maybe."

He considers this, but says nothing more on it. "After that?"

"We took turns watching him. We pulled straws. He didn't wander off so much after that. He didn't really do much. He started speaking again a little while after that, and this time he was able to hold thoughts for a little longer. Maybe a few sentences. He talked about the walk and the beetles mostly. He never remembered what he'd said before, so it was the same few thoughts in a circle. But mostly there was just silence." She twists the apron corner. "Then the Duke came. He'd been to the mansion before and we—" she pauses, biting her lip as she looks around the room before continuing in a softer tone—"we weren't so fond of him. He was loud and he liked to drink too much. He liked to get a little too forward with the staff, if you understand me. But the Duke got nicer overnight, it seems. There was a rumor in town that he'd been replaced, but by who? He sounded the same as ever.

"He asked us about Kirin, and what we thought should happen to him," she continues. "If Kirin had told us anything at any point about what he wanted to happen to him. The Duke told us that Kirin would be made a ward of the state, since he didn't have any living family, and from there, he'd probably be sent to Addermire. the Duke had wanted to let us know that so we could be ready for it." She pauses. "On the court day, I remember telling Kirin this, that he'd be fine at Addermire and they'd be able to take care of him much better than I ever could, and they'd be so much cleverer than I'd ever be. I don't know if he understood any of it.

"You can imagine my surprise when Kirin came back with Sokolov. I thought we'd never see Sokolov again, not after what happened. But he'd decided at the last moment to become his legal guardian. We were all quite shocked. He'd taken control of the estate and sat us all down, and explained that he'd come to an arrangement with the Duke about the mansion. In the end, he kept me and another maid on staff, and sent the others with a letter of recommendation and parting pay. He sat us down and broken down the household expenses, which we were to be in charge of. He wouldn't stay in Karnaca, but we were to send monthly reports to his address in Dunwall. There were three categories: daily household expenses, health services, and entertainment. He'd said that the last bit was for things Kirin might be interested in or want to go see. We were to figure out what he could still engage with, and then make sure he had something that he liked doing."

She steadies herself again. "We'd all thought it quite strange that someone so old had become his legal guardian, but Dr. Hypatia thought that Kirin had gotten extensive neurological damage from the shock and would probably die of that soon. Maybe within a few months or so. But he seems ok now. He used to have moments where he'd black out for no reason at all, but those seem to be gone now."

"You said there were two of you brought on," Kirin's brother says. "Is the other one back in Karnaca?"

"Maria just left one day," she says. "She'd been at the mansion for years and years, and I think that wore her down in a way. He wasn't a good employer, sorry sir. One day, she got some superstitious nonsense in her head, and... she just left."

Kirin's brother looks puzzled at this, but she doesn't elaborate.

"It's not easy work," she continues, "but I don't mind it. He's much nicer now. I like showing him things and watching him get excited about them. He can tell me now when he's not well, and what he likes, and how he feels, and it's so wonderful to not have to guess anymore. But sometimes, sometimes I'm still afraid, not of him but for him. What if I get sick or hurt? Who will care for him then?"

"Will that wear you down too?" Kirin's brother asks after a moment.

"No," she says. "Never. I don't mind it. It's just something I'd never thought to consider before. There's a whole world I'd never considered."

They both startle a little at the timer.

She gives him an apologetic smile before returning to Kirin again. Kirin's brother only watches her, as she leaves the room, as if he'd like to join her.


Corvo calls on Kirin not much later.

Kirin's still uneasy around him. There's a death between them, and that can't be so easily undone. Kirin's not so grateful to be left alive like this, left in fear and dependency, ripped free of the clock-time. If Corvo thinks they are simply going to live together after all of this, he's terribly wrong. It's easy for Corvo to be gracious, excessively so, when he's not the one who lost everything.

The thoughts leave, but what remains is resentment.

(It's a little thorn under the perpetual confusion, not a guidepost or a compass, but a persistent pain. A useless pain, insisting on itself.)

Corvo bridges their communication gap by writing out his questions onto a notebook. Kirin watches him for a little as he writes the first of his questions, but then his attention wanes and his gaze falls to a porcelain vase on the fireplace mantel. Daffodils slump out of it, their soft petals slowly turning to paper. How many of these small details had he lost or dismissed in his fervor to create? He vaguely knows this is unsettling for some and rude for others, but he can't help it. He's simply drawn to these quiet, overlooked details now.

Time stretches onwards, indolent.

His gaze returns to Corvo. They say he'd been tortured for six months during the first coup. They were going to make a show of his execution. Was that heavy on his mind during the second coup? Time repeating, circling towards the same outcome each time.

How funny that Corvo has been fleeing for his life and picking his revenge through the sewers of Dunwall fifteen years ago, while he'd been in Karnaca, twenty-five and starting a company on his own, securing patents out of spite. Strange little trajectories.

Corvo touches his arm to get his attention, and all Kirin can think about is how he's felt those hands on him before. He remembers what it was like to lie beside Corvo at night, limbs tangled together, knowing that he could cut Corvo free of his earthly bonds so easily, and yet, doing so would deprive him of the mystery of Corvo. He remembers the calculated plays he'd make at Corvo, trying to crack the man's mind, trying to figure out the one had solved the puzzle of his labyrinth home and bested him at his own game. Corvo had trapped him like a wild animal and brought him down to that rickety old boat, more hole than boat.

The sweetness of Corvo's moans and the firmness of his body as Kirin had worked him over, fascinated more by the sheer mechanics of it all, experimenting to see what elicited which reaction. Kirin had never really been interested in sex. It had always seemed tedious at best, ruinous at worse—all for some endorphins. He's not sure it was any different in Corvo's arms, as they both drew closer to their shuddering little deaths. (Kirin didn't care for the terrible moment of orgasm, the loss of control and awareness.) And how the court would gossip about them: the lascivious foreigners plotting against the crown, trying to undermine Gristol from the inside out. Kirin would be inclined to abandon Corvo at the chance for advancement, but without his answer of how Corvo had come to be, the inner workings of this surprising lesser mind, he could never leave him. And there had always been that maddening smile of Corvo's—he knew. He knew all of this.

They were perfectly deadlocked.

And every invention he'd bring to Dunwall was only an attempt to understand the man, his obsession. Yet another open secret in Dunwall.

This had come to pass on another shore, another turn of fate, but he still remembers it all the same.

Did he want that again?

It's a sudden thought, and Kirin carefully turns it over. He's not sure what he wants now. He's afraid of those hands that have stolen everything from him, but he cannot help himself from returning to them. They could have easily choked the life out of him instead. Would that have been kinder? Could this be called a life?

Does he call it one?

If he reaches out for Corvo, what will he find there?

(And in a little apartment in Karnaca, in the Dust District, Hypatia buries her head in her hands, unable to look at her lover. She's waited for this judgement, even wanted it perhaps. She cannot run from it; she's tired of running. But that is not what she finds.

Instead, Lucia kneels beside her, beside the sofa, a hand on Hypatia's knee.

"Alex," she pleads. "Alex, I need more time. I need more time to think this over. But don't go. Not yet."

And the universe, known and unknown, is fraying and twisting and unraveling around them, but the moment still remains.)

Kirin doesn't know yet. What bothers him the most is how his skull feels ransacked, like the space of his mind was no longer private and walled off. It's a difficult feeling to put into words and even harder to live with. He's not convinced it can ever be made peace with.

His gaze settles on the row of books he can no longer read without tremendous effort. Maybe if he asks the maid later, she'll read one to him; if he remembers to ask. And he'll just have to trust her that what she reads is actually written on the page, and that she's not just making up stories to humor him.

The world sighs again, a flying fish dipping from the edge of the water. This time he reaches for that fraying tear, only to feel reality unspooling away, cold and relentless. It's delightful to twist his fingers along the incredible, unbridled expanse of the Void, like dipping his fingers into a stream. It rushes along him, unconcerned. Could he simply redirect it?

And he pulls the rushing Void into a vessel: the mangled clockwork crab on the nightstand. Oh, he's forgotten how good this all feels, to watch the mechanical limbs articulate, the clicking of the joints in perfect order. He's given it life. He crouches beside the ticking creature, surveying it at eye-level as it turns about, its black, clattering eyes blinking in its surroundings.

The Void recedes through the opening it's made in the world, draining away back to its place, but the little mechanical crab doesn't fade away with it.

It watches him brightly, a spark in its eyes.

It's beautiful.

He knows now that he'd kill himself before giving up this gift. This is what the Outsider wishes he were able to do. And then the realization strikes him that he's surpassed the Outsider in a way. What good was a god who only watched and picked a squabble to bet on, like an old onlooker at a park chess match?

But even as he surveys his creation with pride, something is wrong.

He forgot he wasn't alone.

But when he turns back to face Corvo, what he finds is not shock or bewilderment.

It's confirmation.


AN: Hi readers! I just wanted to leave you a small note that this site has been very difficult to get into and update recently (a month ago, I couldn't log in for a week to update this story). I'm cross posting on AO3, so in case this site goes down again on my end or I'm unable to update here, you can also find updates there.