Chapter Summaries

Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh learned how the Invis Empire oppressed natives and how its identity-card system controlled citizens in Green Forest City. Aaron decided to stay and asked Connie how they could survive and find information.

• Daniel advised Aaron to treat Shahrukh harshly, then showed him a newspaper report about Captain Fafni winning a contest by collecting 307 native scalps.
• Shahrukh condemned the Empire's treatment of natives and wanted to return home, but Aaron refused to take him back yet.
• Aaron asked Connie how they could survive in Green Forest City and learn about secret gatherings, and she explained that newcomers faced intense scrutiny.
• Connie said they needed identity cards to travel, rent lodging, and avoid arrest, while forged cards could be exposed by police machines and central records.
• Aaron realized the Empire's punched-card records resembled early computer systems, and Connie said Muse von Eir designed the machinery using ideas from the Count of Green Forest's manuscripts.

Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh sought forged identities in Green Forest City, where Connie explained the Empire’s intelligence agencies and the Sun Church’s power. A broadcast announced a heretic’s execution, and as they went to watch, Connie spotted Suppression Bureau agents—Augmented Ones whose abilities alarmed Aaron.

• Aaron proposed forging identity cards and using money and connections to obtain convincing records, while Connie warned that the Suppression Bureau could detect extraordinary abilities.
• Connie explained the roles of the Empire’s Extermination Bureau and Suppression Bureau, and the Sun Church’s Inquisition and Sun Priests.
• Aaron wondered about Dawnbreak, Fallen Corona, and the possibility that [Black Sun] had been resurrected, then decided to seek information from a powerful local extraordinary individual.
• A broadcast announced that Mirabeau Casey would be burned for blasphemy, and Aaron led Connie and Shahrukh to Green Forest City Civic Square to watch.
• Connie recognized Suppression Bureau agents patrolling the square and warned Aaron that their Augmented Ones were as formidable as Non-Human Existences.

Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh witnessed a Sun Church execution and learned that the Empire’s symbiote-armored soldiers could give ordinary people power comparable to Non-Humans. As they left the square, Baldwin noticed their unusual behavior and ordered them followed.

• At a public execution, Connie explained to Aaron and Shahrukh that the Empire’s symbiote wearers were ordinary people equipped to fight at Non-Human strength, leaving Shahrukh despairing over the Empire’s power.
• Mirabeau Casey confessed to his crimes, but the Sun Church’s judgment burned him alive in white flames, and a cleric collected his Extraordinary Remnant.
• Aaron left the square with Connie and Shahrukh after the execution.
• Baldwin noticed that Shahrukh did not look like a broken slave and that Aaron had not bowed his head to The Cleric, so he ordered someone to follow them and check their identity cards.

Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh evaded the Suppression Bureau after Aaron killed two investigators and used a cognitive trick to get rooms at an inn. Aaron then entered the Spirit Realm and discovered that the Sun Church was monitoring it and had identified him as an illegal intruder.

• Two Suppression Bureau investigators stopped Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh, and Aaron killed them with the Blood Lord's power.
• Baldwin and another investigator examined the scene and ordered a search for reports of recent crimes.
• Connie warned Aaron not to use the stolen identity cards, so Aaron used the Philosopher's ability to make an innkeeper register café business cards as valid IDs.
• Aaron entered a meditative state and sent a phantom into the Spirit Realm to explore it.
• Aaron found the Spirit Realm dominated by a radiant White Tower and could not escape its surveillance range.
• Sun Clerics confronted Aaron, recognized him as a practitioner of the Underworld, and declared that he would face their judgment.

Aaron transformed into a Feathered Serpent to defeat Sun Clerics in the Spirit Realm, then fled before Marcus could confront him. In Green Forest City, Baldwin investigated a suspected extraordinary tram theft before receiving a wanted notice describing a dangerous Dreamwalker who matched Aaron’s disguises.

• Aaron revealed his Feathered Serpent form, devoured the Sun Clerics, and escaped the Spirit Realm before Marcus arrived.
• Aaron assessed the Sun God Tower and the empire’s hundreds of Alchemists as a source of strength and advancement.
• Baldwin searched police records for recent reports of extraordinary incidents and found a suspicious tram theft involving a retired officer.
• A Suppression Bureau agent delivered a wanted notice for an illegal Dreamwalker who could take the forms of an evil spirit and a Feathered Serpent.
• Baldwin recognized the wanted suspect as a possible Your Majesty and wondered how long it had been since one had appeared.

Baldwin identified Connie as a wanted criminal and mobilized a force to capture her, while Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh discovered a rebel broadcast and prepared to leave the Wisteria Inn. The chapter ended with Baldwin’s heavily armed squad heading out to confront them.

• After recognizing Connie from an old Sun Church notice, Baldwin ordered his subordinates to distribute her wanted notice and search the city’s lodgings.
• At the Wisteria Inn, Connie savored a meal while Shahrukh experimented with the radio and found a broadcast from the Star of Hope Radio Station.
• Connie and the others heard a plea for help after the Silver Ring Witch Dairis was captured and taken to Green Forest City’s White Tower.
• A Suppression Bureau agent identified Connie at the inn, and Aaron sensed danger and told Connie and Shahrukh to pack up and leave.
• Baldwin assembled twelve Augmented Ones with mystical items and ordered them to move out toward the Wisteria Inn.

Baldwin’s bio-armor squad ambushed Aaron, Connie, and Shahrukh at the Wisteria Inn, but Aaron turned the attack into a dream and revealed his overwhelming power. He trapped the squad, prevented Baldwin from calling for help, and began dissecting a bio-armor core while exposing its hidden cost.

• Baldwin sent twelve bio-armor users into the Wisteria Inn under cover of the Night Curtain and used a Sleep Bottle to put Connie and Shahrukh to sleep.
• The bio-armor users attacked Aaron, restrained him, and pierced his body while Baldwin questioned him about the ambush.
• Aaron revealed that Baldwin and the squad had been trapped in a dream, where he had cut into a bio-armor user and extracted the core.
• Baldwin recognized Aaron as a possible Your Majesty of the Shadow pathway and found that Aaron had blocked his prayers to the Radiant Knight.
• Aaron dissected the bio-armor core and concluded that the armor caused mental contamination as well as bodily erosion.

Aaron uncovered how Law protected augmenters from the pollution of their armor, then cut off that protection and drove Baldwin and his squad toward rampage. After subduing eleven transformed monsters, Aaron turned his attention to the White Tower, and alarms began sounding across the city.

• Aaron dissected an augmentation core and used Inspiration to learn that Law shielded augmenters from their armor’s pollution.
• Aaron explained the limits of augmentation cores to Baldwin, then warned that he would accelerate the squad’s loss of control.
• Baldwin discovered a black face growing from his chest as his subordinates transformed into monsters after Aaron’s Fallacy severed Law’s protection.
• Connie woke to find eleven humanoid monsters subdued, and Aaron credited his improved control of contamination to the Philosopher.
• Aaron looked toward the White Tower, and alarms sounded across the city as people fled toward shelters.

Aaron attacked Green Forest City, killing the Radiant Knight Hogel and the Sun clerics and investigators gathered at the Wisteria Inn. He planned to help Connie and Shahrukh capture the White Tower while he continued striking the Empire’s conspicuous sixth-origin defenders.

• Aaron watched the rampaging monsters attack the investigators and clerics near the Wisteria Inn as the city’s forces converged.
• The Radiant Knight Hogel fought the monsters, but Aaron used Fool’s Crown to trap him and the surrounding Beyonders in a dream, then killed Hogel with a golden spear and Furnace Fire.
• Aaron burned the Sun clerics and investigators to ash, confirming that Furnace Fire was recognized as the sun’s flame.
• Aaron told Connie and Shahrukh to capture the White Tower and contact the local resistance through Dairis, while he set out to kill more of the Empire’s defenders.

Aaron rescued Dairis from the White Tower and left her with Connie in South Innis, where Dairis hinted that Connie’s family tragedy involved a vast conspiracy. He then attacked the Invis Empire’s cities until the Child of Dawnbreak descended, forcing him to escape to South Innis.

• Aaron rescued Dairis and two others from the White Tower, then teleported them to South Innis before holy light destroyed the tower.
• Dairis apologized to Connie and revealed that her family’s tragedy had been tied to a massive conspiracy.
• Aaron returned to the Invis Empire and launched surprise attacks, killing more than four Your Majesties and plunging Mitra Palace into chaos.
• In Bogeli City, a second priestess summoned a powerful being with a golden whistle after Aaron evaded her attack.
• The Child of Dawnbreak descended and destroyed Aaron’s shadow avatar, so Aaron teleported away to South Innis.
• Aaron identified the child as an immortal of the present world and inferred that Plymouth’s trusted implant-bearers could travel worldwide under its protection.

Connie learned that the Church killed her parents for exposing how the Empire and Church used believers as fuel for the Augmented Ones. Aaron arranged an alliance with Dairis and asked her about the Spirit Realm’s history, learning that Dawnbreak had defeated and absorbed the power of other Age Controllers.

• Dairis told Connie that the Empire made oil by boiling people who had mastered a method of extracting spirituality, and that Connie’s parents were burned as evil god worshippers after trying to expose the crimes.
• Aaron appeared and worried that the Child of Dawnbreak was pursuing him through divination, though his Spirit of Void status helped shield his location.
• Dairis panicked after learning her students had asked for help over the radio, and Aaron offered to send her back to the Imperial mainland if she helped him contact the resistance and enter the secret world’s higher circles.
• Aaron decided Shahrukh would contact South Innis’s native resistance while Connie returned to the Empire with Dairis, and he gave them an honorific name for future contact.
• Dairis explained that Dawnbreak had defeated several Age Controllers, seized some of their power, imprisoned others, and exiled hidden existences, making him the Spirit Realm’s most powerful being.

Aaron considered why Dawnbreak had acted differently across histories and suspected that the presence of a Fate-Ruling God explained the divergence. He brought Dairis and Connie to Green Forest City's outskirts, where Dairis reunited with her three students.

• Aaron reasoned that Dawnbreak was powerful enough to defeat multiple Age Controllers but feared provoking a Fate-Ruling God, and wondered whether the Spirit of Void marked the main history.
• Dairis told Aaron that Dawnbreak had imprisoned Fallen Corona, while she did not know Unmelting Ice's whereabouts.
• Aaron took Dairis and Connie to the outskirts of martial-law-bound Green Forest City and asked Dairis to contact her students.
• Dairis used a blood-smeared silver mirror to reach her students and warned them to stop broadcasting calls for help.
• Dairis's students Monde, Ya'an, and Lamore met her on a riverbank, where Aaron inspected their modified mobile radio station and learned Lamore had built it.

Aaron and Dairis arrived at a secret gathering in an abandoned manor in the former Tisago Empire, where masked mystics questioned Aaron’s loyalties. Lady Cat accepted him after he demonstrated his Philosopher ability, and the gathering turned to news of a recent blow against the Invis Empire.

• Aaron and Dairis discussed Tisago’s fall and reached an abandoned manor that Aaron recognized as part of a ritual.
• Dairis vouched for Aaron when the masked guests suspected he might belong to the Empire.
• Aaron used Fallacy to cross the hall instantly, revealing his Fifth Origin Quality as a Philosopher.
• Lady Cat held a vote on accepting Aaron, and the motion passed because fewer than half opposed him.
• A man in a black iron mask announced that at least five Alchemists had recently fallen, calling it a victory over the Invis Empire.

At a secret gathering, Aaron offered generous payment for intelligence about the Spirit Realm and the Age Controllers. He learned that the Rancher had fallen, the Unmelting Ice was imprisoned, and other Age Controllers still resisted Dawnbreak, then heard that Mother of Night had once secretly fought Dawnbreak.

• The attendees celebrated the attacks on the Empire and identified the suspected culprit as the wanted figure codenamed Feathered Serpent, while Dairis tried not to laugh beside Aaron.
• Lady Cat invited Aaron to begin the free exchange, and he offered up to the equivalent of an Angel Grade Strange Object for valuable intelligence about the Spirit Realm and the Age Controllers.
• A cloaked woman said the Rancher had completely fallen, the Unmelting Ice was imprisoned in the Radiance, and some Age Controllers remained active in resistance to Dawnbreak.
• Aaron paid the woman ten thousand pounds for her information, prompting other attendees to watch him with interest and greed.
• Lady Cat told Aaron that Mother of Night had once fought a secret battle against Dawnbreak, but had failed to break his myth of invincibility.

Aaron accepted Bone Crow’s offer of a Spirit Realm coordinate, then exposed the trap surrounding the gathering and revealed his Feathered Serpent form. The ambush collapsed, Lady Cat was cornered by Imperial forces, and Bone Crow was consumed by Aaron’s domain.

• Lady Cat told Aaron that the event she recalled happened after the Sun King’s death, and Aaron paid her 5,000 pounds for the information.
• Bone Crow offered Aaron the location of a Spirit Realm secret realm, and Aaron agreed to meet him privately after the gathering.
• Aaron accused Bone Crow of working with the Invis Empire and revealed that Imperial agents were monitoring the gathering; Bone Crow summoned a skeletal dragon from the Spirit Realm.
• A Sun cleric ignited himself and a talisman near Lady Cat, scorching her as she fled and realized someone had betrayed them.
• An Alchemist and Augmented Ones surrounded Lady Cat, while Bone Crow recognized Aaron’s enormous Feathered Serpent form.
• Bone Crow succumbed to contamination and was drawn into Aaron’s domain before the Feathered Serpent vanished.

Aaron traced a historical memory in the Spirit Realm and witnessed Dawnbreak battle Mother of Night, uncovering the terrifying truth behind several Age Controllers. The memory ended with Dawnbreak’s crimson radiance striking Motula’s secret realm, leaving Aaron to confront the consequences of what he had seen.

• Aaron found the ruined Gumon Giant forest and discovered its chieftain had died of old age, suspecting the Keeper of Secrets had destroyed Motula’s nest.
• Aaron used his Gatekeeper ability to trace the secret realm’s history and saw Dawnbreak pursuing something through the Spirit Realm.
• Aaron witnessed Mother of Night devour Lord of Corpse Collection and merge with Underworld Moon, revealing that they were masks of the same existence.
• Aaron saw Dawnbreak’s sun contain the phantoms of Remnant Chrysalis, Raven, and the Faceless One before turning into a half Crimson Sun.
• Dawnbreak’s crimson radiance tore through Mother of Night’s defenses and reached Motula’s lake, making Motula scream.

After surviving the historical footage that killed Motula, Aaron inferred that Dawnbreak had won by half-resurrecting the Crimson Creator and suspected that Connie had led him into a planned trap. He brought Connie to the Gumon Secret Realm, where a hidden presence emerged through her and greeted him as the Spirit of Void’s Blessed One.

• Aaron recovered from the contamination caused by watching Motula’s recorded battle and concluded that Dawnbreak had defeated the Mother of Night by drawing on the Crimson Creator’s power.
• Aaron suspected that someone had arranged for him to encounter Connie and learn the battle’s hidden history, then decided to confront the plot directly.
• Aaron found Connie in the Invis Empire, reassured Lamore that her teacher was safe, and took Connie to the Gumon Secret Realm.
• Aaron revealed that Connie’s physical body was sealed away and waited for the contingency he suspected was hidden within her.
• Gray-white mist gathered around Connie, entered her face, and transformed her into an ancient-seeming presence that recognized Aaron as the Spirit of Void’s Blessed One.

Aaron learned from the Keeper of Secrets that Fate Controllers shaped the histories through compromise and that Dawnbreak’s failed attempt to become a Fate Controller had allowed the Creator to begin reviving within him. The Keeper warned that the Creator’s return could erase connected Age Controllers and severely harm Twisted Bubble, while Aaron questioned how Fate Controllers resolved conflicting histories.

• Aaron realized that Fate Controllers had conflicting attitudes toward the Spirit of Void and had joined together to prevent Dawnbreak from becoming a full Creator.
• The Keeper of Secrets explained that Fate Controllers, unlike Age Controllers, could travel through histories and that histories arose from their compromises and the interference of fallen Fate Controllers.
• Aaron inferred that the Secrecy Fate Controller may have helped create the histories for its own benefit, and that the Keeper had brought him in as outside aid.
• The Keeper revealed that Dawnbreak had failed to seize other Age Controllers’ authorities, gone half-mad, and begun hosting the Creator’s revival.
• The Keeper warned that the Creator’s return could erase Dawnbreak and Unmelting Ice and could injure or destroy Twisted Bubble.
• Aaron asked how history worked when Fate Controllers made opposing determinations, and the Keeper answered that contradictory outcomes could both exist.

Aaron learned that the Keeper of Secrets wanted him to kill Dawnbreak’s mortal-world foundation so she could oppose the Crimson Creator’s revival, and that she had found him a hidden ally. After the Keeper erased Connie’s memories, Aaron returned her to her body and pulled her from the blood pool.

• Aaron agreed to consider helping the Keeper of Secrets stop Dawnbreak by killing its powerful foundation in the mortal world, while asking what aid and allies she could provide.
• Aaron realized that the Keeper of Secrets could become his ally in this layer of history because she had killed Motula, leaving them with a shared enemy.
• Aaron reflected on the differences between Fate Controllers and Age Controllers and on Dawnbreak’s attempt to seize a path to becoming a Fate Controller.
• The Keeper of Secrets’ influence faded, and Connie asked Aaron what had happened, having forgotten their encounter.
• Connie remembered being thrown into a pool of blood and began to fear drowning, but Aaron pulled her out and watched her recover.

Aaron arrived in Plymouth under the stolen identity of merchant Para Lov Toman and witnessed the capital’s harsh controls and starving workers. After police crushed a bread-and-milk march, he asked clerk Louis why the unrest had been allowed to begin.

• Aaron entered Plymouth with a temporary identity card taken from Para, a merchant who secretly practiced curse arts.
• Aaron observed that the capital was heavily policed and its hurried residents looked hungry and gaunt.
• Louis warned Aaron that a workers’ march was approaching after unrest at the bakeries.
• Patrol officers opened fire on the marchers, killing some and arresting people as the crowd scattered.
• Aaron and Louis escaped into an alley, where Louis explained that rising bakery prices had left workers unable to afford bread.
• Aaron clarified that he wanted to know why the march had been allowed to proceed.