Postscript

Raum ascends the stairs to find himself, for the second time, in the Cardinal House. Though subconsciously he already recognises what has happened — that is, he has hijacked Reyl’s body upon dying — and though he also subconsciously recognises, by how its body language conforms to his over hers, how much of her presence remains in this vessel — that is, none — he must pause to consider himself in a windowpane to even begin processing these realities.

Having felt the surge of Camellia vibes in the tunnels, Phoenix rushes down from his living chambers to find Raum there, arms crossed upon the windowsill with his forehead planted upon them. Phoenix’s urgency immediately settles into sympathy upon seeing this. He intuits that, just like himself, Raum has been cornered and suckered into an eternity of personal hell.

That is to say, he has been made into an Archon. And Phoenix is right. Ten points for Phoenix. Feeling a responsibility to ease Raum through the transition period of acknowledging oneself as an undying abomination, and warily eager to know how his condition has manifested, he invites Raum to stay again at the Cardinal House, which Raum, still shaken, accepts.

As Raum learns over the following months, his particular ‘condition’ of godhood is powerful. For all intents omniscient and omnipresent, with powers to alter human memories, transpose souls into new bodies, and even resurrect the dead, the fact he can still convincingly feign humanity and blend in with society at all is, in itself, profane and very liable to make him quietly go a little bit nuts.

Fortunately, working the political spin of how Asphodel’s new heir died and was deified on his first day on the job, and mediating the court of noble and public opinion with Aquila, occupies him and sculpts for him a place in the public consciousness, despite him not having his own body anymore. In this way, he successfully reestablishes his identity with two major personae as his anchor: one as Phoenix’s caretaker, servant, and fellow-Archon roomie, and one as Aquila’s best friend and co-conspirator in finagling civic politics, who is the nation’s tragic heir. Fancying the first as his ‘home life’ and the second as his ‘job’, and being able now to attend to both simultaneously, his originally conceived timetable quickly flips and Sebilles becomes his permanent residence. With some recreational floozing and escapist bodysnatching thrown in too, for his own sanity.

Phoenix finally has some company. Aquila’s position as King is unshakeable. Raum has the power and freedom to do anything and be anyone, no longer hemmed by any cage but the one that he chooses.

All at the cost of his family, the thing Raum had ultimately leaned upon God to fix and save. The level of stability and peace Raum had that night before the heir announcement party never truly comes back again.

Each seething with reaffirmations of their respective resentments for God, none of the three can enjoy the positives of these circumstances without knowing they come at the whims of an immaculate demon, who has allowed and enabled more suffering than any of them can let pass undenounced or even personally bear.

As the years turn, and Raum’s attempts to reconnect with a resurrected Reyl again fail, that resentment for God deepens further. Behind his easygoing demeanour and humble pacifism, it’s with a cold and incisive zen that he commits himself to undoing the pact upon Phoenix, decoding the mechanics of divinity that they may be broken, and dragging God to account—

—something that may be shockingly possible, with the tumultuous advent of Azimech Camille.