In the Final Kingdom, the Kingdom that Will Be, death shall lose its power. And if your name is not forgotten, you shall walk again.

-Quotation from The First Codex

243 YT: Etyslund, three days after the execution of Marga Zelenko

The thing was formless, without body and without thought, without name. The weave of the veil caught the dispersed essence that remained, filtering it, letting it blend into the slurry beyond. The formlessness had no thought, no ideas of its own, but only a dim and slight awareness. It perceived the pull of the other side – that sameness and unity. Once, that other-side was a part of the world, it pervaded the world, it dug into every pore of every crawling thing. The Veil – separating off that sameness and unity - was the first step in a great work, but even the strongest wall has holes and may fall, in time.

How do I…

“I”…?

What is… “I”…

A voice from within spoke to the formlessness. I am not done with you yet. And in that, under the booming of the voice, the shaking and the echo, the formlessness felt a twinge of something. A spark… of identity. He pushed hard against the weave of the Veil, felt his self draining across the gaps. He did not know who he was, or why he fought so hard, but he could not give in to the sameness and unity. He could not become a part of that endless…

He wrapped astral fingers about the holes in the weave, pushed the soles of misty feet against what could have been fabric or paper or steel. He heard the voice speak once again. Do you not serve the Living God…? He remembered the sea, a great stretch of salt to the north, and across it, the land of enemies. He remembered feeling trapped in his own homeland, beset on each side. Enemies in the north, enemies in the south. “Yes,” he said, his voice a faint echo. He could not remember the sound of his own voice. It was… foreign and discomforting. “I serve the Living God.”

Good, the voice said. Because I am not done with you.

He turned. The voice no longer seemed to come from within him. Another formlessness, slowly becoming a form, drifted toward him from further along the Veil. It pushed itself away with each step, bounding like the Veil was the ground and its hand, a snail’s single foot. You are too worthy to be abandoned here. By Aivor’s will… I will not give you up. At those words, a euphoria ran through him. “The Living God…” he said… “deems me worthy? I will walk again?”

You will walk again, the voice said.

“But the Kingdom that Will Be… it has not come, has it?” His memories of the texts were foggy, but he knew that the political dominion of the Living God was not complete. There were still enemies, out there, beyond the sea to the north, in the deserts and riverbanks to the south. “We’re not yet free,” he said, with increasing certainty. “We’re not free because we haven’t crossed the sea and killed our enemies in distant lands. They still haunt us, don’t they?”

They still haunt us. But… Plato Arap, you are among the most faithful servants we have known. You have been a fine Devoted. And I will not allow you to be forgotten. The other formlessness – the other being – wrapped its misty limbs around Plato in a cold embrace. The euphoria spread from his fingertips to –

Plato flexed his fingers.

“I have….”

You surrendered your status to serve us in the frontier.

Plato remembered – joining up with the Invictan army to take the Wanderer’s Vale. It was a slow process, one of starts and concessions, not the sweeping conquest they all hoped for. Plato had questioned that, once. Why not simply conquer? Destroy? “Because the people of the Vale are tricky, and prone to resist without seeming to resist. Because the Abrists have guile and Dharists have their spirits of Spring. And the soldiers of the apocalypse are jealous and prideful.”

You showed warmth and kindness to your friends… and cold regard to your enemies.

Plato remembered – the camp after leaving Carakhte. Cigdem sat apart from the others, groaning and rubbing his shoulders and whispering to himself resentful things. Plato coaxed him closer to the fire and bade him speak his mind. Together, they looked out upon the land. “One day,” Plato said, “This will all be ours, rightfully.” Cigdem just grunted, noncommittal, neither a rejection nor agreement.

You carried me with you, from childhood until the end. You made me strong and brought me closer to Veil. You even made me believe that perhaps, one day, when the time comes, I will be the one to rip it away when it is no longer needed.

Plato’s memories were spots of warmth in the cold darkness and depth. They grew. The presence – the Devotee – it pulled back a bit, its hands on Plato’s shoulders, on his upper arms. He drifted with it, his back against the weave of the Veil.

But in the end, you were stolen from me… by an Abrist girl, no less.

Four fires of agony in his chest, Plato remembered – he tried to brace himself against the stone wall, tried to rise to his full height. The girl – a braid of light-brown hair whipping behind her like Death’s own cloak – surged toward him, and then he was choking on his own bone fragments, and fading, and…

And here he was.

“I did well,” Plato said, leaning back against the weave. The warm spots found their way into the open parts of the weave. All was pleasant and calm and kind. For a time, Plato simply allowed himself to exist, his back to it all, his mind slowly blanking. “I did well,” he said again. “I can rest. And soon the Kingdom… and I will walk again…”

The presence, the Devotee, leaned forward and its face fell through and around Plato’s. Not good enough, the voice said. I have further plans for you.

“Of course,” said Plato. “I serve… gladly.”

No, the voice said. I don’t need that. I need the Plato Arap who strikes fear into the hearts of his foes. I need… The Devotee’s hand reached into the Veil, and the weave parted before that hand, and mist flowed forth. Half-lucid, Plato turned his head and in the distance, he thought he could see human figures, peacefully drifting at the edge. One disappeared into the divider, and was as one with the mist beyond.

A part of Plato cried out in pleasure; a part in pain. He felt a sharp bite deep in his gut. A warmth there, but it was foreign, uncomfortable. Plato shifted. His… gut?

His body.

The mist flowed over Plato and the Veil closed, and he felt a sudden emptiness. A part of him forever inaccessible beyond the weave, within that sameness.

But he didn’t need it.

“Come back, Plato Arap,” the voice of the Devotee said, and it was Plato’s voice, from his own throat. “Let’s walk the earth again. But this time, we will be only what we must be.” The sorrowful eyes of the one who knows he must kill his enemies, and also that they are as human as he… the eyes were glass and cold and uncaring. As the Veil faded behind him and the world, with its stone and its iron and its wood, came into view – Plato looked upon it with contempt.

The first thing he felt was the pull of a tether. Like a cord wrapped round his neck, it bade him to the northeast. He looked along its length and, for a moment, he thought he could even see her: Kamila Zelenko, that hateful, clever and strong rat, carrying a terrible weight on her shoulders. The weight of another rat. Inwardly, Plato laughed.

He stood in a field of battle, stone whipping around him. The wet earth rippled under his feet. His eyes snapped open and his head up, awareness striking him like a sword-hilt to the back of his head. In an instant he vanished and reappeared, closer to the center of the writhing stone mass. Its dozen tendrils whipped around and around, and reached to the ground, and formed cages of rock around the Invictan soldiers approaching the center. Closer to the middle, a mess of blocks stood stable, if shaking a little. He dashed, his feet level on the cold and wet earth, passing through the rippling dirt as nothing. He felt it, but it was not pain – a strange cold pleasure at the tips of his toes instead.

His hand glowed before his eyes, and he came to the edge of the strange complex at the heart of the writhing stone monster. It parted before him, molecule by molecule, and he passed through and among it, and came out, still dashing, still reaching and writhing, leaking mist and sand all around him. A scream sounded just next to him and he reached out and clutched a Valer man by the top of his head. His fingernails – cold, pleasant tingling – ripped furrows in the man’s scalp and he threw him against the wall, screaming from the shock and the pain.

Plato dove through another wall, molecule by molecule, and the cold pleasant tingling covered his whole body for a moment. He grinned, a grin of blended malice and joy. Ah, to cut through these apostate rats like nothing, to make for the heart of this beast. Another layer, and this time one of the Valers was prepared. With an Invictus weapon, no less. Plato recognized the scratching near the barrel’s tips. That was his rifle the Valer woman held. She held it with such confidence, although her pupils were wide enough to make her irises invisible in the black. Plato stopped for half a second and the woman fired Plato’s gun. The bullet passed right through him, cold and tingling. He reached up with a yellow-glowing hand and tore the gun from the woman’s grasp, spun it in his arms.

It was exquisite – the pattern that the pieces of her skull made in the mess of her brain on the wall. It reminded him of the engravings on the cover of the copy of the First Codex he’d held as a child, the book that had brought him all the way from the Gaurl Core to the edge of the Aether. He looked down at the gun in his hands, while the other Valers around him were too shocked by the action to move or speak.

“Useless,” he said, and snapped the gun in two. He threw the pieces upon the Valer rat’s corpse, and passed into the wall to the center. This time, he tore pieces of the wall away, discharges of energy from his hands ripping chunks out in tiny explosions. He saw the one at the center of it all – the Valer, the Abrist, the Mirshalite Sower. And then there was that other woman… he’d seen her, but in life he didn’t know her. The Devotee’s mind and his were one. He knew her now. The traitor. Worse than an apostate. His jaw shook with rage and he dove through the wall, arms stretched toward the enemies.

Mist wreathed him as he closed his hands around the Sower’s throat.

The traitor half-jumped back, hands uselessly hanging open, mouth a mask of delicious surprise. Another Devotee burst forth from her – a traitorous mere Primordial, Plato shouted in his own mind. Not one of us, not anymore, not worthy! There is no glory in his heart! Plato pushed back against the Devotee, the invisible force whose presence he knew rather than saw. His hands remained, wrapped around the Sower’s throat, squeezing. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes from behind, but surely, Plato thought as his grin widened, those eyes were bulging with shock and fear.

There was a beautiful sound of crumbling stone, and the triumphant shouting of soldiers. It was a chorus in Plato’s ears, followed by departing footsteps.

Departing…?