Sooner or later, something will happen to everyone that will make them hate that people have to die.

For me, it was later than most. It happened at the end of my teens.

My grandfather (well, sort of) and I were taking a walk together, along with an old friend of his from the civil service. This was in the closing days of the revolution, so you'd still see spouts of unrest every so often. By chance, a gunshot went off at a protest a few streets over as we were crossing the road, and a few horses got frightened. People were pushed around.

Funnily, what I remember most vividly about the moment is how utterly undramatic it was. He stumbled, not in the quick, decisive way you'd expect, but instead rather slowly and meanderingly. It looked as though he was going to catch himself. I recall the thought that went through my mind: 'Oh, this isn't serious. I don't need to do anything.'

Then someone bumped into him at an unlucky angle, and his head cracked against the pavement.

And then there was shouting, many long conversations in which I said very little, and, eventually, a funeral. The day they held it was perfect and sunny, and by the end, the black dress I wore stunk of sweat from hem to neck. And many, many people spoke to me about how it wasn't my fault, despite me never suggesting otherwise.

My grandfather had already been on his last legs. Dementia had been rotting his mind for years, and he lived as a ghost of his former self, embarrassing at best and terribly destructive at worst. But though the events that followed his death had far graver consequences for me, something in how small the event was lingered. It made me wonder, for the first time, if there was any narrative to reality at all.

It made me feel afraid. Not of dying, but of all my actions and experiences being empty and profane. Neither kind or unkind, nor even productive or destructive. Only events, objects bumping into one another.

And, like so many other people before me, I started to wonder.

Was this really the only way that things could be?

Or might it be possible to alter the nature of the world, and attain something truly eternal? To instill a meaning that could never be lost?

From then on, despite everything I conceptualized myself as wanting, I think what I was really doing was seeking an answer to that question.

𒊹

Predictably, it didn't end well.

Time was frozen on the busy highstreet. There was a golden hue to everything, as if the world as preserved in amber, and the air was utterly still and silent. Horses were stopped in mid stride, and flower petals were held rigid in mid-descent.

We stood on either side of the carriage, which was presently 'in motion' on the left side of the street, heading towards the upper reaches of the city. If I craned my neck, I could see in through the window, though I didn't need to look in order to know what was inside. There were two people. One was short, with muddy brown hair, and was currently peering down intently at a book.

The other, staring upwards with a vacant expression, was me.

To be more specific, she was me with some minor differences. She was dressed a little differently, in a dark aquamarine wool stola, in contrast to my black dress robe, and her hair was in a much better state, her braids neat and tidy. And while she also looked tired - I couldn't remember the last time I hadn't - it was to a much lesser degree than myself.

I wanted to say I pitied her, and I did, in a manner of speaking. But that wasn't the predominant emotion I was feeling.

I turned to face the figure on the other side of the carriage. Raindrops hung in the air, their stillness making them look hard, like fragments of glass. My head simply passed through them as it moved. I wasn't really here, after all, so much as 'here' even existed.

They were also a woman, though you wouldn't have been able to tell. Everything beneath the head-area was buried under black fabric, without so much as an inch of flesh visible, and their face was covered with a expressionless, androgynous porcelain mask. Otherwise, the outfit evoked something like a funeral gown, with only subtle frills around the cuffs and hem of the skirt.

"It is done," she said, her voice emotionless. "Everything is ready."

I nodded, saying nothing.

"I must recite the contract."

"Still?" I glanced downward. "Even now?"

"Yes," she said. "It is obligatory."

I sighed, just slightly. "Fine."

She reached for her waist, and grasped a scroll of parchment attached to it with a leather buckle, removing and unfurling it before her face. Then, after a moment, she spoke.

"We once more approach the re-enactment of the hour of reckoning," she said, "all factors are set in motion, and the scenario shall commence imminently. The predestined tragedy approaches, but by the grace of the Dying Gods, you have been granted a chance to amend this cruel fate, for yourself and all others."

I was silent, looking at the ground.

"Understand this: Your role in the scenario has been elevated from that of bystander to that of the heroine, and your victory condition is thus," she continued. "You must ascertain the identity of your opponent, the cause of the bloodshed to follow, and prevent it before it comes to pass. In order to accomplish this goal, you must pay close heed to all which transpires, and use deduction, alongside your skills and past experience of the events to follow. Do you understand your role?"

"Yes," I said, muted.

In stories, at absurd moments like these, you were supposed to want to laugh.

But I didn't really feel like it.

"Should you deviate from your role, the scenario will be compromised, and a grave outcome is forewritten. But should you succeed, then you shall open the path to a brighter future." She paused for a moment. "That is all. Should we begin?"

My eyes wandered back to the side, and I stared at my other self. At her face, and past the spectacles, the subtle anxiety in her eyes.

"I have a request," I said.