Kirin is caught.

He should have known better. This was simply not a get-together and display of political forgiveness; nothing is ever forgiven so easily in the empire. No, this was a calculated ploy to see which of the many rumors in Karnaca are true. A muted frustration builds up in Kirin. This was one of those easy political machinations he'd have been able to grasp beforehand. He feels as vulnerable as one of those translucent frogs from Pandyssia, with its thin organs visible and pulsating. He's nauseous and dizzy.

A gradual realization crawls across Corvo's face, though he's trying to hide it, of just what he's learned. He's not angry, though, nor is there that grimly determined look on his face, when he must do something cruel for the good of the empire. There's only a weariness on his face, as if something has caught up with him at long last—an old stag at the last hunt. He should have anticipated this turn.

Kirin doesn't understand this.

"You've met the Outsider too?" Corvo writes.

It takes a moment for Kirin to read and comprehend the letters, as carefully printed as they are. Even if he were capable of lying, there's no point now. But still, there is an reluctance in him that he should be made to keep nothing secret from this man now. "In the mines," Kirin says slowly, as he tries to recall it. "He said... He said... I would finally understand the world if I did."

An imperfect remembrance, conflating his wishes with what had been said.

Not even Kirin's anger can stay with him. That landmark vanishes from him as well. He can't articulate how terrified that makes him under the haze he simply lives in. What makes him himself? Is it his memories? His feelings? The secret thoughts of his mind? And if one aspect is muddled with, does that change him, unwillingly, as a whole? If personalities are malleable, what did that say about him?

(But he's seen the change of a blunted mind. He's seen it and cruelly enacted it on others. How could he be surprised that it's affected him the same way? Did the baker ever feel an inchoate rage, all alone in his mind?)

Corvo doesn't take his gaze off him. "Did you?"

Kirin only stares at the page and then at him, having completely lost the fledgling conversation amid his worries. The words fail to register with him. "What?" he asks.

"Did you understand the world?" Corvo writes patiently.

Kirin considers everything for a moment. "No. This world... I don't understand it. The Outsider, he used to come and tell me things about the world, but he's gone now." Kirin glances out the window, as if he could see the Outsider walking unsteadily through the streets of Karnaca, out of time and place, unsure of his place among the living but not so eager to give it up all the same. (This is his own private reckoning with the world that gave him up so easily all those millennia ago.)

Corvo tears off the page and throws it into the fire. The paper curls and shudders until it's only ash—too dangerous to be read by anyone else. Kirin holds his mangled creation close to him, as if that, too, will be subject to judgement next.

The firelight draws faint orange creases in Corvo's face, and those careless lines brings Kirin back to the time they spent together as lovers, not on this shore but on another. Ever since he'd seen those spiraling timelines, they'd haunted him. How close they all seemed at the time, as if it were only a gossamer thread separating him from his choice of lives lived.

(This time, Corvo had spotted Kirin's disinterest during sex, and had called their little game of power off. "We don't have to do this," he says, his signs smaller—a signal that Corvo means his words to be softer. "After all, I've already made the brightest mind in the Isles speechless." There's a recognition that Kirin doesn't understand.

Kirin shrugs with a smirk, but Corvo settles to the side of him regardless.

And if Kirin were pressed for an answer, he'd have to confess that he likes this much better. Still, he signs back, "Not for long."

It had taken Kirin only two weeks to become fluent in the Karnacan dialect of sign language, another sign of his indomitable genius, and the surprise on Corvo's face had been another feather in his cap. He could be full of surprises as well.

Corvo gives him a knowing smile. "As expected.")

It had been a rare moment of peace, tucked away in the walls of Dunwall, ensconced in Corvo's arms. Kirin doesn't understand this at the time, but looking back on that other branch of fate and luck, that distant timeline, Kirin finally does. What had Daud said? They'd understood each other back there, in the small cabin in Tyvia. It wasn't about dominance or power, only the slow reconciliation of learning to live with each other.

If only Kirin could remember what he'd learned back then! How much easier it would be if he could communicate more easily with Corvo. Could he draw on that memory as well? It had been his, or at least of him at one point.

But as hard as he tries to recall the specifics, it eludes him here, with the man he did and did not love. And there is no mark in Corvo's face that he remembers what he chose to do in another timeline, what he chose to do differently. (It would disturb any ordinary person, but Kirin is only fascinated by these variations.)

This is Kirin's secret to bear.

"I haven't been called to the Void in a while," Corvo writes as he continues.

"It's beautiful," Kirin replies. "There's nothing like it. You can see everything there." There's something else alluring about it—the complete freedom it promised. "It's not a bad thing if it fills up this world."

Corvo considers something. "Who knows what the world will become then?"

"It'll be better." Kirin pauses, as he struggles to articulate his thoughts. "But without the Outsider, will his gifts remain?"

He cannot keep from glancing at Corvo in turn.

Corvo only takes a deep, steadying breath, but Kirin cannot help but fill up the newfound silence.

"Do you think the Void will hand out its own gifts now?" Without a mediator, what could it do? Would it slowly warp reality, merging parts of what had been with what hadn't come to pass? The words come too quickly in his mind for him to voice them, and so he lapses into a thoughtful silence. Would it simply merge all the timelines to account for all choices made?

Oh, this questioning makes him almost feel like himself again. It thrills him.

Corvo pauses on the fresh page, gathering his thoughts. "Whatever happens, Emily is not a part of this," he writes.

Kirin's head hurts badly now as he tries to keep up with the conversation. He's no longer sure what they were discussing. He misses being steps ahead of everyone in every conversation, already dissecting it for branching possibilities. "When what happens?"

A bitterness resurfaces in him, burning at his throat. This confusion is of Corvo's making—and by his design. He vaguely understands that the only way to harm Corvo is through his daughter—who else had he done all of this for, what he continues to do? Corvo would bear anything, if it meant that Emily would be safe at the end of it all.

Is this the turn Corvo fears? What else is the Mark, but the means to revenge?

Outside, the cold rain strips the petals from the peonies, leaving behind only the bright yellow, pollen-feathered stamen.


Kirin's alone again, watching the repeats in the wallpaper.

He should be used to it by now. Staring at the wall wouldn't be so bad if he'd actually wanted to do so, but he's not so sure he does. It's what's readily available to him, but that's a different thing entirely. He struggles from this inertia. He doesn't want to go back to the all-consuming frenzy of before, but he does want to do something. And that want is a start, he supposes.

Setting aside the warmed clock, he retrieves his notebook from his jacket. He resents it for having been rifled through, for being unable to conceal the last accessible parts of his mind, and as a consequence, he's not been using it as often as he'd like. Despite the tension in his throat that rises as he slowly looks through it again, he slowly becomes reacquainted with it again—poor little thing that it is, tasked with the impossible.

He considers the lists of activities, the paste crinkling the pages. Play music. How long had it been since he'd done that? (There's a lock in Karnaca secured by music. A really foolish, second-rate invention, he'd thought over his haphazard designs of the bank vault, cobbled together in the early morning just before sleep, when his mind was the most delicate and high-strung—nearly stretched to breaking. He preferred working this way, on the thin verge of exhaustion and genius.)

Tucked away in the corner is a harp, probably meant for some lady-in-waiting. His fingers are stiff and out of use, but there's a resonance in the tuned strings that thrills him. It seems to echo forever, a sound severed from the source as the strings vibrate. He idly picks out an improvised melody, traveling across the strings. He prefers the piano—and this resurfaced preference tugs at him unexpectedly. He's not dead to himself, only still waiting to be rediscovered.

"I see we're alone again," comes a familiar voice, dryly amused.

Kirin startles but cannot identify the source. He carefully leaves his place at the harp to scan the room—nothing in the doorway, on the sofa, or in mirror. No one stands anywhere in the room.

"I suppose you should start with how I've come to be here," the voice prompts, and it's at this moment that Kirin realizes it's coming from his creation. "This is the second time I've been an unwilling guest of yours now, Jindosh."

Kirin scoops up the mangled clock. The Void pulses through it, like an electrical heartbeat. He's done it. And unlike the Heart replica, this one has lasted far longer than thirteen minutes.

"It worked," Kirin says to himself in wonder.

"And I wish it hadn't," Sokolov replies. "I wanted my final rest. How could you deny an old man that?"

"It's you," Kirin continues, making small verbal notes to himself, mostly out of habit and forgetting that there was no audiograph running to pick up his every observation. "But why?"

"Probably to torment me some more," Sokolov says dryly. The stark blue light of the Void flickers through the wires. The gears snap and whirl. "You were always like that. At least I'm not at that dreadful house of yours anymore."

"This place isn't as nice as the mansion," Kirin replies.

"Maybe if you'd have given me a proper welcome and not thrown me into a hole in your basement, I'd have a better opinion."

"It wasn't a hole. It was a shifting lab-lab-labry—" Kirin shuts his eyes as he tries to find an easier synonym. "Maze." The memory is difficult to hold onto now, but he can at least recall the labyrinth. "You had your paints."

"They kept me better company than you did." A pause, a clicking, a twitch of the wires. "How much functioning did you regain?" Sokolov's tone is far more gentle now, taking a break from the familiar fighting.

"Not enough." Kirin doesn't understand why he feels so childishly sullen at this strange reunion.

"It is what it is," Sokolov offers at last. "That's just one of the many things we can't change now."

"You should have cooperated," Kirin replies, crossing his arms. The words are still difficult to find, but they come slightly easier now.

It doesn't go unnoticed.

"And done what?" Sokolov asks. "Given you the world you wanted? No, no. The Academy, there, I should have done things differently. I can see it now. It's so strange that I can only see things so clearly now that they're far past the point of repair. What you did to that other student was unforgivable, but I should never have let it get to that point."

Kirin watches him.

"How old were you when you came to the Academy?" A pause. "It was sixteen. Sixteen is so young. You wanted my attention back then, did you not? It's a natural thing to want, especially if you don't have it at home. Didn't your brother see you off at the Academy? Usually parents do that."

"Half brother," Kirin corrects, petulantly. It's taken this insufferable man to remind Kirin that he's still more than capable of being sullen. And that memory is one of the few clear ones he has left: the cooling air, the excitement. The ivy crawling across the worn bricks.

There is an unspoken question in Sokolov's fumbling reminisces—the why of it all—but Kirin chooses to not answer it. Not everything needs to be spoken. And what a painfully ordinary answer it would be, too. An absent father, a mother who loved him too little. A half brother forced too young into the role no one wanted, not out of brotherly love but sheer necessity. It's the ordinariness of it all that pains him so.

Sokolov makes a small note of thoughtfulness. "Half brother it is, then. You were so quiet back then." There's a small measure of tenderness underlying his voice now. The tenderness of nostalgia. "It's the responsibility of the old to look after the young and guide them properly. What could you have done if I'd been able to see that?" A small pause. "Nothing is ever really over, is it? If you want to pick this vessel apart into little pieces and have the last word, like you've wanted before, I can't stop you. But maybe this time, we'll have a better go of it. Neither of us are so young anymore."

They sit in quiet for a little while.

"Can anyone else hear you?" Kirin asks.

"Let's not test that hypothesis," Sokolov replies. "At least now you'll have something other than your own voice to listen to. It'll be good for you."

And their exchange makes Kirin feel normal again, not something to be coddled and guided around and tolerated—just normal. He can almost pretend nothing has happened and he's still himself again.

In a burst of inspiration, Kirin pulls out one of the exposed wires from his creation. It snaps, ragged in his fingers, and it's not until he hears Sokolov's voice that he realizes the effect of what he's done again, more out of self-centered curiosity than malice.

"You're still the same," Sokolov says quietly. He sounds as though his heart is broken, and Kirin resents him in that moment for his frail sadness, for his vulnerability.

Kirin can't articulate why his words register as a sharp rebuke, and even worse, why it's affecting him so, from the man he'd have gladly tortured to death or worse. But this conflict shows on his face.

The wires hum and shift.

"There's still time to learn," Sokolov offers gently. "Nothing is over yet. Come, let us fix our mistakes together."

"I can't think very well," Kirin confesses. "There's a gap in my head, and it doesn't go away. I can't make it go away." And he's afraid of the pity and the judgement he's found in other people's faces. "It's very hard to live like this. It didn't get easier."

"I shouldn't have left you alone," Sokolov says at last.

Kirin doesn't answer. He's tired again from all this thinking and talking—wound down, though not at rest. As his mind wanders, he thinks of his memory as being on a train ride at night: the immediate surroundings are visible, but anything beyond falls into darkness.

Still, for a moment, they're together.


Later on, another footman brings up a tray for tea. Kirin has recovered some by now, and he keeps his creation close to him, afraid that once he looks away, the Void will fade from it. (He forgets to tell the maid about the hole in the wall that formed as another bit of the Void badly seeped into this world. How at Sokolov's request, he'd tossed in a book—not the one he'd taken off the shelf, but he never realized that—and watched it fall horizontally and backwards through the hole, drawn towards the Void. They'd both marveled at it, unconcerned with the implications, true men of science to the very end. When Kirin glanced back it from another engrossing daydream, it'd closed back up, like a crooked seam or a skipped stitch—a chill still wanders in the area.)

As Kirin twists the mangled wire between his fingers idly, he thinks about how different tea was at the Academy. There, it was a gathering place to boast and gloat and most of all, to listen. His maid thanks the footman and begins to set out the various pieces, when she spots the afternoon mail tucked in the side.

As she pores over the letter, something analogous to a painful nostalgia tugs at Kirin—a bothersome little ghost. He was so happy at the Academy: things were right there.

"I have wonderful news," she says, reaching for his hands. "We'll be getting another helper when we get back to Karnaca. I've just heard back from Dr. Hypatia, and she says that she's happy to handle the hiring process since Dr. Sokolov isn't in the area to do so himself—" Her face falls. "What's the matter? It's good news."

But Kirin can't hide the intense fear at the thought of a new person in his house, a new person close to him, someone who would always be believed over him. And most of all, again the pain that needing little and wanting less hadn't been enough to keep him safe. Enduring hadn't been enough either. Maybe nothing could keep him safe, and to think otherwise was only foolish.

"It'll be alright," she assures him. "I'll be there. Nothing will happen to you."

He doesn't believe a single word of that. He doesn't know why he knows this, but he holds onto that feeling. And he can see in her face that she understands this as well: there's a momentary sadness in her eyes. Maybe she'd hoped he'd forgotten already—an endless blank slate.

"I'm sorry," she says. "It'll be better this time. You just have to trust me." She gives his hands a gentle squeeze. "It will be better."

That was what it all boiled down to—trust. There was nothing to do but trust her. But did he? What could that look like?

He should have seen this coming. It would never have been just her taking care of him—that was too much for one person, and how easily that work can give way to bitterness. But still, still he wishes it weren't so.

His fear slowly recedes in his mind, leaving only its sharp outline behind, again. He stares at her, not out of rudeness or contempt as his stare is often interpreted as, but from genuine confusion. He's not sure what he's doing here, or was doing here. How much could he still get done if it weren't for this constant need to take stock? Instead, there's a wall in his head that he can't overcome; there's a wall in his head and he wants to break it open—wall meets wall—but he can't, he can't do that; it's bad and scary.

"What's going on?" she asks gently, sensing his unease.

He shakes his head. He's not sure how to tell her how distressing all of this is. The block in his mind feels almost tangible, like he could rip it out himself. He picks at his sleeve instead. He doesn't know why the Abbey is so fanatical about keeping people from the Void, when there's no hell like this. The problem is that this spot in his mind never gets a chance to scab over. It's always fresh every time he revisits it.

The maid seems to understand his growing distress.

"Shhh, shhh, there we go," she murmurs as she maneuvers him so that he's lying on the sofa. "It might sound frightening, but I'll be there and you'll be ok."

She pulls a blanket from a stack and covers him with it. It's pleasantly heavy. Idly, his fingers trail along the seams, and they are met at one end by hers. She folds his left hand into her own and hums a tune he doesn't recognize.

"It'll be different," she reassures him.

He doesn't believe her at all.


When she finally leaves him to rest for the afternoon, tucked away into his bed again with a squeeze of his hand and the whispering rain outside, the room is quiet and still. Carefully, he turns over the remnants of what he remembers. The replacement servant. His brother. Already, the details are slipping away. When he thinks of his brother, the only thing that comes to mind is a perfect blank. Instead, what appears in his mind are his brother's trembling hands, half withdrawal, half nerves. Kirin doesn't want to live the way he did when it was just the two of them. He's not afraid of his brother the way he's terrified of what might happen with the new servant. No, with his brother, he's afraid of something else, something he can't fully articulate.

"Are you there?" Kirin asks his creation, holding it in his hands.

The wires bend and waver; the unearthly blue light climbs across his fingers.

"Where else would I be?" comes Sokolov's response, but it's not unkind.

"A replica of the Heart—the last time I tried to make one, it only lasted for thirteen minutes before it turned to ash." His words somewhere between a strained remembrance and a recitation.

"I'll have to tell Pierro," Sokolov responds wryly, "if you ever let me go."

Kirin considers this a minute, and by the time he's come up with a suitable response, he's forgotten what provoked it. He discards this too. "The world is changing," he says, settling on a new topic. "I can feel it. The Void is coming into this world."

"Hmmm," Sokolov replies. "And what's there to be done about it?"

"I don't know," Kirin says. "Someone else will have to die, or the stars will all fall out of the sky. That's how it goes."

Sokolov muses a moment. "But what held up the Void before man started killing man to give it structure?"

Kirin shakes his head in confusion. "They will kill another orphan boy from the streets. And then it all be better."

"Will it?" Pain laces the edges of Sokolov's words. "Is that what you think? Another dead orphan to watch over this wasteland?"

"The Void can't be fixed," Kirin manages. "Only con-cont-contained." A small relief that he's managed this word this time. A minute victory over his mind.

All the same, he tucks away his creation into his jacket, finished with the uncomfortable conversation. He knows he's right.

As his gaze sweeps across the room, he spots a recording tucked away at the side of the audiograph. He doesn't remember it being there before, but then again, he doesn't exactly remember if he's been here before. He ponders the recording and then the audiograph. No matter how he positions the punch card near the audiograph, he can't figure out how it all goes together.

"The machine," he asks his creation again, "how does it work?"

And so, Sokolov patiently guides him through the process of playing the recording, and when the needle begins to read the grooves, Kirin startles and glances around the room. It's unmistakably Daud's voice. But how?

Daud's final words seep through the place he'd helped throw into chaos. They aren't triumphant, nor are they words of retribution. They're simply weary.

(And Kirin never sees how Billie agonized over relinquishing this final bit of her father, knowing that Corvo will want to hear Daud's last words as well, but still reluctant all the same. She mailed it to Dunwall Tower with no return address as the rats, with their soft voices, asked her why she was so sad. And the boy who used to be a god but was now neither told her that she could keep this one last memento for herself, to herself. Still, she was showing him how to live in this world now, and that included losing dear things. It always did.)

For a moment, it is as though Daud is still alive. And then, the punch card comes to an end, and is ejected from the top of the audiograph. Kirin plays it again. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive. The amber punchcard sticks out from the audiograph, as the gears whirl down.

Dead.

What does it mean to be dead? Kirin isn't really sure he understands anymore. How did it feel to die there, alone save for a bottle of whisky and his bottled-up secrets? Daud chose this death, but what did that mean? He didn't sound afraid in the recording, just weary. Perhaps that's all you can feel so close to death.

An unkind person would tell him that he's wearing out the card by constantly replaying it, but no one does. And so, he only lies there on the bed, endlessly repeating the countdown to Daud's death.

And he cannot make peace with it, nor can he come to grips with it. It simply eludes him.

The "terrible power" that Daud spoke of hadn't been eliminated from the world with the Outsider's removal: it had simply begun to seep in again, undaunted. Perhaps it could never be removed from this world.

Kirin resolves to consult his notebook about the matter. He passes over the sketches Daud made for him so long ago now. Quietly, he sounds out the annotation to the sketch in the upper right corner of the page, and his fingers trace the imperfect lines. Useless regret wells in him: he wishes Daud were still alive to show him that secret patch in the woods again. Had Daud's mother been a witch? Why else would she need these herbs?

For the first time in his life, Kirin wishes he could have done something differently. He shouldn't have left Karnaca, that terrible city that turns its violence onto its own people.

As he continues re-reading his notebook, his fingers fumble and the notebook pitches forwards onto the floor, its pages bent and sprawling. He retrieves it, as it opened to near the back, and he does so, a vaguely familiar handwriting catches his eye.

Kirin frowns. He's never seen these before, but he recognizes the hand—Daud's. The note, hidden all the way in the back of the notebook, speaks of something that has haunted Daud's dreams even since he touched the knife that killed the Outsider. Even though the note's written in a deliberately careful hand, the writing is still difficult to parse out.

Sloped on the pages is Shindaerey Mines.

That's it.

That's the way to access the Void from this world. To see where the Outsider was made… what a rare thing that would be. To see where the Void was seeping in would be even greater. But there's something dangerous there too. He can't remember what it was now.

He paces the hallway, drawn by the prospects of glimpsing eternity for himself, but also afraid of what it would mean to go alone. He could bring Sokolov, true, but what if his creation stopped working so close to its source? He'd be trapped down there forever.

And if they are simply drawn to each other again, he finds Corvo in the hallway.

"The mines," Kirin says. "It's coming from the mines." And it's only an approximation of what he means to say, but it has to suffice.

Corvo watches him with a mixture of confusion and intrigue.

"The an-anom—" The word twists in Kirin's mouth. He tries to find another one instead. "The strange things. The way to get to the Void is through the mines."

Corvo frowns in thought.

Kirin is loath to show him his notebook: it's the remaining part of his mind made external—almost too intimate to look at directly. But he endures this too and shows Corvo the sketch of the entrance to Shindaerey Mines.

Corvo considers this, begins to sign and then reconsiders. "It'll take a month by boat," he writes in his own notebook.

Kirin shakes his head. "It won't." He pauses. "Everything is connected."

It's like coiled wires along a wall; you just have to know where they're going to follow them. And if Corvo could feel the pulsing hum of the Void in the way that he could, then he'd understand too. He hesitates—a small, poisonous anger twisting inside him at the thought of bringing Corvo along—but he doesn't want to stay here much longer, not while there are new things to look at.

He offers Corvo his hand.