Disquiet Gods

On Sabratha, Hadrian¹ insists on examining Mann's remains in the camp morgue. Tor Carter, the HAPSIS scholiast, demonstrates the bodies' eerie connection: moving the arm of one corpse causes the others to rise in unison. She explains that Mann has been refracted across higher dimensions, like a reflection distorted by curved mirrors.

Hadrian¹ looks at the bodies with his second sight and sees them linked by a blur of light across potentials. He reaches out, composes the limbs, and presses the twinned heads together. Four eyes become two. The other bodies vanish, leaving only the original.

Cassandra² gasps; Oberlin watches through the glass with vindication. Hadrian¹ has just demonstrated exactly why he was recruited: he can perceive and manipulate the dimensional intersections that the Watchers exploit. He is not merely a foxhound but something closer to the quarry itself.

Tiber Valeriev, the Durantine xenologist, leads Hadrian¹ and Cassandra² into the ruins of Phanamhara. In the grand hypostyle, they find a massive frieze: the Enar legions march beneath a Watcher, a disc of concentric rings covered in the Quiet's anaglyphs and surrounded by roiling tendrils.

Three eyes stare from the disc, arranged in a triangle. Hadrian¹ studies the image for a long moment before the realization strikes him like a physical blow. The eyes are not the inhuman orbs of some alien entity. They are human eyes, complete with pupils, irises, and lids.

Hadrian¹ reels backward, his mind racing through implications. If the Watchers share human features, then the line between mankind's divine protectors and its would-be destroyers is thinner than he ever imagined. He whispers Valka's name, wishing she were there to help him decipher the meaning.

After months of digging, Valeriev's engineers breach a massive round chamber directly beneath the mountain's core. The pantheon is a coliseum of descending galleries, its walls covered in friezes chronicling the Enar's conquests under their god-king.

At the center, on a dais of white marble surrounded by the Quiet's anaglyphs, lie the collapsed bones of a hand. The fingers are many times the height of a man, the substance black as obsidian and bitter cold to Hadrian's¹ touch alone. It is highmatter — stable tetraquark material — identical to the substance found in Calagah and Annica.

The moment Hadrian¹ presses his bare palm to the bone, a scream echoes from above: an engineer named Alexander of Alba has hurled himself from the top gallery, splattering on the stone below. The Watcher has noticed them, and it is defending itself.

The camp's lights die, and a knife-missile kills Friedrich Oberlin in his quarters aboard the grounded Rhea. Hadrian¹ destroys another missile that attacks him and Cassandra,² then discovers that Priscian Lascaris, Oberlin's gaunt secretary, is actually Kybalion, a MINOS changeling who has been sabotaging the expedition from within.

Kybalion opens the Rhea's hatches, admitting Cielcin who slaughter the crew. Outside, Cielcin siege towers descend from the sky, and a worldship appears overhead, destroying the Troglita in orbit. Hadrian¹ and Cassandra² fight through the chaos, sending Edouard⁶ to secure the Ascalon.

They are ultimately captured and marched toward the ruins, where Prince Muzugara — an old enemy from Thagura — has come to claim the Watcher for the Prophet.¹⁴ The Cielcin sacrifice a lieutenant on the altar stone, its blood flowing upward into darkness as the ritual begins.

Muzugara, seeking to claim the Watcher's⁷ power for himself rather than deliver it to Dorayaica,¹⁴ kneels before the bones and offers his lieutenant's life. The corpse rises, shrinks, and vanishes into the darkness. The massive hand curls into a fist, then shrinks and disappears entirely.

A towering figure in a black shroud materializes on the altar. Ushara⁷ does not reward Muzugara. Her countless hands tear him into refracted copies that are smashed against the walls.

She turns her attention to Hadrian,¹ forcing visions into his mind: the Enar's glory and fall, Sabratha's oceans dying, her own millennia of starvation, and an offer of eternal empire at her side with her as his queen. Hadrian¹ sees through her seductive female form to the monster beneath: a core of writhing arms, countless eyes, and withered wings. He refuses her, and the battle begins.

After escaping the pantheon, Hadrian¹ finds Cassandra² and a group of survivors. They are pinned down by Cielcin, but the Watcher's⁷ appearance has changed the battlefield: the Cielcin captain Ramanthanu,⁸ who witnessed Hadrian¹ fight the god,⁷ defects with five of his warriors.

He presses his ear to the sand and declares Hadrian¹ his 'ba-aeta,' his prince. Meanwhile, Edouard⁶ reaches the Ascalon and flies above the ionosphere to contact Governor-General Hulle's defense fleet. Orbital pulse weapons rain down, disrupting Ushara's⁷ energy pattern and causing her to condense into shards of black stone that crash to the desert.

Hadrian,¹ kneeling beneath the bones of a native leviathan, watches the fragments fall like a shattered cathedral. He limps away, believing the mission accomplished — until he finds the corpse of the sorcerer Gaizka in the desert, his transmission equipment fused to his skull. Ushara⁷ has escaped within the signal.

Hadrian¹ returns to the Eternal City, imprisoned in the Arx Caelestis under the watch of the Martian Guard while awaiting an audience with the Emperor that never comes. At the war council, he clashes with Tavrosi and Jaddian delegates.

Outside the Sun King's Hall, a Chantry Cantor named Samek¹¹ confronts him, her ring concealing a dispholide needle. She grabs his wrist. Hours later, as Princess Selene⁵ confesses her love in his chambers, Hadrian¹ begins to sweat blood. His skin sloughs off, his left arm — the false bones Kharn Sagara³ gave him — falls away.

He tries to shout instructions: find Albé,⁶ trust Lorian,⁴ save Cassandra.² Then he is nothing but a puddle on the bathroom floor. Selene⁵ screams. Neema bursts in. The Halfmortal,¹ who survived decapitation and psychic assault, is undone by a poison that liquefies every cell in his body.

Hadrian¹ becomes aware of himself in cold water at the bottom of a well. A dwarf-like homunculus named Saltus and a boy called Rag⁹ pull him from the pool, though his hand passes through Saltus as through a ghost. He learns he is in Llesu, miles below the surface, in the Well of Nahaman where the dead are recalled.

Rag⁹ explains that the 'condensers' need time to stabilize his form. He has been dead for a trillion years. The last sun is dying; the stars are gone. As they ascend through the empty city, dodging the patrols of Watcher-serving machines, Hadrian¹ glimpses the black Wall on the horizon.

At an old church, he meets the Judicator,⁹ who reveals himself as Rag⁹ transformed. Ragama⁹ is not a Watcher but what they were meant to be: a servant of the Quiet who has kept his oath across the eons.

Ragama⁹ challenges Hadrian:¹ smash the egg and kill the Quiet, freeing himself from his burden. Hadrian¹ raises a stone to do it, but feels the creature stir within, remembers his daughter, and cannot.

The Judicator⁹ then reveals the full scope of the cosmic war: the Quiet created the universe and made the Watchers to shepherd the stars, but they rebelled. Now they seek to unmake creation. Ragama⁹ draws a twisted iron sword from his own body and drives it into Hadrian's¹ heart, not to kill but to transform. Hadrian's¹ grief, his scars, his age — all are burned away.

He is restored as the man he 'should have been,' his body perfected, his memories clarified. Ushara's⁷ shadow, which has lurked in his mind since Sabratha, is purged. The Quiet's silent voice asks: Whom shall I send? Hadrian¹ answers: I will go.

Hadrian¹ materializes in the airlock of the ISV Gadelica, his body remade. He finds the ship docked inside Lorian's⁴ Extrasolarian spinship, the Mistwalker. His companions — Cassandra,² Edouard,⁶ Neema, and Princess Selene⁵ — have escaped Forum after his murder, commandeering the Gadelica with Lorian's⁴ help.

Cassandra² refuses to believe he is real, certain he is an Extrasolarian trick. She challenges him with her sword in the cenacle. Hadrian¹ does not fight back, simply dodges every blow. When she thrusts the blade at his heart, he catches the hilt and switches it off.

There is no wound. She collapses, calling him 'Abba' — father. The ice breaks. Later, Lorian⁴ himself shoots Hadrian¹ seventeen times with a needler to be sure, and when every bolt passes through without harm, Lorian⁴ embraces him. The Halfmortal¹ has returned, twice-born.

Aboard the Mistwalker, en route to Latarra, Hadrian¹ learns that Lorian⁴ now serves the Monarch Calen Harendotes,³ a rising power in the Extrasolarian realm. When they reach Latarra's White City, Hadrian¹ meets the Monarch in a simulacrum chamber.

Harendotes³ conjures illusions: first the city complete, then the throne room of Vorgossos. He reveals that he is Kharn Sagara³ — not the original, but a clone driven from Vorgossos by his 'sister,' the current ruler. He wants Imperial atomics to bombard Vorgossos, trapping his sister's consciousness and allowing him to reclaim his throne.

He threatens Cassandra's² life to ensure Hadrian's¹ silence. In return for Hadrian's¹ help, he will provide the Demiurge. Hadrian¹ agrees, recognizing that the Monarch's obsession with immortality and his vendetta against his clone-sister makes him both indispensable and dangerous.

Princess Selene,⁵ who escaped Forum with the group, sends a holograph message to her brother Aurelian, framing Lorian's⁴ intervention as rescue rather than treason. She negotiates the treaty: the Empire cedes the Norman territories to Latarra in exchange for the telegraph-tracking technology and military alliance against the Cielcin.

When her brother Prince Matthias arrives to ratify the treaty and escort her home, Selene⁵ publicly kisses Hadrian¹ farewell. In that embrace, he slips her a black-papered note written in black ink, invisible to casual surveillance.

The note contains five words: 'The Monarch³ is Kharn Sagara.³' It is a knife thrown into the future, a contingency against the Monarch's³ inevitable betrayal. Selene⁵ departs, and Hadrian¹ prepares to assault Vorgossos alongside the man he has secretly marked for destruction.

The combined Sollan, Latarran, and Extrasolarian fleet, carrying Chantry nuclear weapons, attacks Vorgossos. Hadrian¹ rides an Armored Mobile Platform alongside the Interfaced, Lorian's⁴ elite neural-linked soldiers commanded by 2Maeve.¹² They fly through the planet's icy trenches, fighting past automated defenses and a chimera guardian at the gate tower.

Calen Harendotes³ himself joins the assault, piloting his own AMP and wielding a giant highmatter sword. At the gate, Harendotes³ saves Hadrian¹ from an Exalted spider-creature, revealing his personal combat prowess.

They secure the beachhead, and the invasion force begins the long journey through underground tunnels toward the profane city. Hadrian¹ notices Harendotes³ knows the defenses too well, his familiarity with Vorgossos's layout confirming his true identity as the exiled Kharn Sagara.³ The battle in orbit rages as the Demiurge, the planet's ultimate dreadnought, has yet to appear.

Inside the palace, the Interfaced capture a man in golden robes: a clone of Hadrian,¹ created by the other Kharn Sagara as part of the Angelus Series — an attempt to replicate his resurrection power. The clone has Hadrian's¹ memories up to their first stay on Vorgossos but believes he is the original.

When confronted, the clone's golden hand detaches and burrows into an Interfaced soldier, giving the other Kharn remote control. All the Interfaced turn on Harendotes³ and Hadrian.¹ In the ensuing slaughter, the clone is killed by Cassandra,² 2Maeve¹² is possessed, and the survivors are forced to retreat down a lift shaft.

Harendotes³ uses his eye-lasers to destroy the cloned hand and kill 2Maeve.¹² They flee deeper into the palace, cut off and outnumbered, and Hadrian¹ realizes Harendotes³ brought him to Vorgossos not just for his combat abilities but as bait for his clone-sister's experiments.

Hadrian¹ confronts the other Kharn, the woman Suzuha, on her throne. She offers him a clone of Valka,¹³ made from their memories, in exchange for the secret of his resurrection. The clone is nearly perfect, down to the green eyes that Cassandra² inherited, but she is compelled by Kharn's commands — forced to kneel and be silent.

Hadrian¹ refuses to bargain. He destroys Kharn's drones and cuts down the undead woman, though not before her final shot kills the Valka replica¹³ where she stands. In the laboratory above, Harendotes³ sacrifices his remaining scions to create an army of himself, but the other Kharn's drones slaughter most of them.

Harendotes³ himself is killed by the drones after declaring his true victory: by scattering his clones across the galaxy, Kharn Sagara³ has conquered death, becoming a distributed intelligence that can never be fully destroyed. Hadrian¹ signals Edouard⁶ to flood the reservoir from the tunnels below, an act that will kill the daimon Brethren and drown the lower city.

Hadrian¹ descends to the drained reservoir, walking across mountains of bones. The daimon Brethren, now exposed and dying, floods his mind with visions of its origin: a sick boy named Daniel fused with an artificial intelligence called Cheyenne during the Mericanii era. Brethren utters its final words — 'This must be' — and dies.

Then its body convulses, and a monstrous giant tears its way out of the central mass. Orphan¹⁰ has two heads (one dark-haired, one white-haired), three mismatched arms, and a vestigial third leg. It attacks Hadrian¹ with raw fury, blaming him for killing its mother. Hadrian¹ fights back, kneeing the creature and beating it with a thighbone.

But when Orphan¹⁰ collapses in pain — having never experienced physical suffering before — Hadrian¹ sees it not as a monster but as a newborn, minutes old, filled with Brethren's knowledge but with no framework for feeling. He spares the creature, extracts its oath, and leads it from the ossuary to pilot the Demiurge.

The shuttle docks with the Demiurge, the vast black dreadnought whose hull is carved with writhing human forms and Gothic cathedral spires. Hadrian¹ accompanies Orphan¹⁰ aboard, watching as the chained giant is freed and leads them toward the bridge. But during the flight from Vorgossos, Hadrian¹ experiences a vision that is more than vision.

He is pulled across light-years to Dharan-Tun, the Cielcin capital, where he stands before Syriani Dorayaica¹⁴ in a white dome. The Prophet¹⁴ is cracking apart, stony flesh revealing the Watcher Miudanar growing within. Ushara⁷ stands behind her Prophet,¹⁴ her arms wrapped around the dying creature.

Dorayaica¹⁴ speaks with Miudanar's voice, a god awakening. The Prophet¹⁴ seizes Hadrian's¹ arm, and when the vision ends, Hadrian¹ finds his sleeve torn and bleeding — and Dorayaica's¹⁴ severed stone finger lying on the shuttle floor. The Demiurge's bridge awaits, and with it, the next, final phase of the war.