TO Rewrite: B4 — 12. Countdown to Calamity

1. Rachel Park (Our Lunar Hare!)

2. Our Villains!

TO Rewrite Index

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The gravelly scrape of sand grinding between teeth swarmed from every side. Rachel’s ears tracked twenty-three infected townsfolk, their muffled chants clawing at the air. The battlefield was chaotic, and everyone was looking to her, but she realized each one would require a different training approach.

This isn’t going to work. I can’t be everywhere at once…

“Then why not split up the load?”

Rachel’s smile grew as Nike’s harmonic, peppy voice resonated with her soul, time slowing with the same intensity that her Feats produced.

“Nike,” Nia chimed in, still sounding a tad frustrated about how to utilize her spiritual energy. “It’s nice to see you feeling better.”

I see someone’s awake. Nungal drain you?

“You could say that… We can get into it later. Right now, you are poised to win one battle to lose another. The question is, which one?”

Meh. Misfortune smiles on us in the long run. This is just a few steps back.

“If that is what falling down a cliff feels like to you,” the Goddess of Victory snickered.

“Stop!” Rachel’s voice cut through the mayhem as her gothic vampire sister maintained a defensive zone. “My training method? We’re splitting up—tactical pairs! Conquest, you’re taking Adoncia and Scarlet to the southwest quadrant!”

“What?!” Scarlet balked, blood fluctuating with discomfort as the corrupted people clawed at it. “Why do I need to—”

“Figure it out!” Rachel interrupted with a laugh, slamming shoulders with her to get her moving. “You know me.”

“How mysterious!” Butter chirped, smacking her fingers a single time and causing a bright resonance field to erupt around them. “If that’s the case, you’ve got sixty seconds to follow your trainer’s orders before I quit helping. Bop! Bop!”

“It’s chop-chop, High Queen,” Adoncia groaned, trying not to allow her dress to be snatched by the zombie-like citizens.

“Yes, yes! Chop-chop… What are we chopping? Hmm… I’m going to have to think about that one, Blue Eyes.”

Her barrier struck all twenty-three attackers, freezing them in place. Their veins bulged as they fought the shell keeping them in place, snarling and gnashing their teeth.

The Horsewoman’s silver eyes gleamed with approval as she grabbed the struggling oni maid’s wrist and pulled her up onto her horse to distance themselves. “Finally, someone with sense. Come, Blue Eyes. You two, vamp girl. Time to learn how to dominate!”

“Conquest, I—h-hey?!”

“Dominate? Ugh. Rachel,” she growled, giving her a pouty look that didn’t fit the scene. “I can handle myself if we’re splitting up.”

Rachel grinned at Scarlet’s glaring crimson gaze. “Don’t be shy. I know you can handle yourself, so use your brain a little,” she doubled down, playfully shoving her toward the Butter’s two servants. “I’m counting on you.”

“Uh-huh…”

“And you, Wakalapi, you’re with Grace,” Rachel continued, spinning to dodge a grasping infected child as Scarlet’s blood followed her; Alexa didn’t look too pleased about that as she pressed closer to her in fear. “Your pipe techniques align with her weapon manifestation—external spiritual tools, both of you.”

The Native mystic nodded, sacred smoke curling defensively and looking utterly unbothered by the situation. Without an ounce of hesitation, Grace spun in a circle to press backs with the man, a big smile on her face.

“Rootin’ tootin’, Chief! I’ve got a tall glass of brandy and milk with your name on it—promise it’s fresh from the source,” she winked, swinging her rope in a slow, deliberate loop before snapping it taut. “Now let’s churn us some soul butter before the cream rises to the top!”

Rachel’s left ear and eyebrow lifted as she glanced at the cowgirl. Even Wakalapi paused his puffing at what that could be mistaken for.

Grace was wild.

“I hope it is high in protein and fat,” he muttered with a small smile, his amber eyes tracking something in the sky rather than what surrounded them. “A warning… We are being observed with great interest, though the spirits cannot pinpoint the source. It shifts like smoke in the wind.”

“I figured as much,” Rachel muttered, gesturing to Maria and Alexa before jabbing a thumb at herself; her tail bristled as misfortune’s threads tightened and loosened like someone testing a web. “I’ve sensed it on and off, as well. Someone’s playing games with us. I can’t tell when they’ll strike.”

“Ooh, how delightful!” Butter commented from above, golden radiance pulsing in waves as she flew higher to look around. “I am not sensing anything currently… Mmm. If you can sense them and I cannot, then they have a cloak that hides them from divine sight. Very intriguing… Forty-five seconds remaining, students—time is running out!”

Nike’s voice whispered within her as Nia rapidly scanned her memories, learning at her grandfather’s feet. “Careful, Champion—victory’s sweetest right before you trip over your own trophy”

Yeah, she’s not going to take that advice. Rachel snickered, grabbed Maria and Alexa, pulling them toward the center. “You two are with me.”

Maria huffed, the symbol on her forehead flickering weakly, yet no horn materializing.

“This should be my thing, chica, but shit ain’t workin’. Every time I reach for my power without the Seed, it’s like, mmm—como si Dios himself is saying ‘not yet, mija.’” She flicked her fingers in the air like she could pull the missing piece out of it.

“Rachel, I can feel something building inside me, but it’s like trying to hold back a flood with my hands! It’s not blocked. It’s like…like I need to go to the bathroom but am trying to hold it back…” She shifted from foot to foot, wings twitching against Rachel’s back. “But I really need to go.”

Rachel’s brow furrowed as she glanced at the tight-lipped 13-year-old, clutching at her dress. “Really? No, okay—whatever. All you can do is test it.”

“Thirty seconds!” Butter sang out cheerfully.

Alexa clutched at her dress tighter, eyes darting toward the swirling attackers.

The infected strained harder against their shells, cracks appearing in the golden barriers—theatrics on Butter’s part because there was no way in Hell they’d actually break her restraints. Sand poured from their mouths in increasing volumes, forming geometric patterns on the inside of the semi-transparent barrier that hurt to look at directly.

“The iron horse runs on iron rails,” they chanted in perfect unison, their voices creating harmonics that shouldn’t exist, but she knew all too well from the Black Moon. “But iron rusts and rails decay. Only shadow-tracks eternal stay.”

Yeah, yeah… Keep spewing veiled future threats. You good, Nia?

“Yeah, I think I’m figuring it out! I just need to figure out…how to breathe as clothes. Hmm.”

Haha. Good luck.

Rachel’s ears swiveled constantly, tracking every sound. Twenty-three infected here, but her enhanced hearing caught more approaching—lots more. The whistle of a train whispered on the wind, not in distance but through some sort of dimensional ripple.

The Conductor was coming.

“Fifteen seconds!”

“Positions!” Rachel barked. “When these barriers drop, just follow your trainer’s instructions.”

“Easy for you to say!” Adoncia called out, blue oni features flickering in and out of existence. “I just…need to get mad… Slap me!” she shouted at the vampire next to her, making Scarlet jump.

“W-What?!”

“Slap me!”

“You sure?”

“I said do—ouch… Ack…”

Scarlet drew back and smacked the shouting maid, forcing her face to the side and causing her to choke.

“Didn’t help?”

“No… Shit.”

Conquest laughed. “Rage should work, Adoncia, but you have to fuse your very soul into it.”

“Whatever that means…”

“Ten seconds!”

Grace spun her pistol, eyeing it thoughtfully. “So if this here iron is part of my soul made real… I gotta trust it like Jim—Jim!”

With a loud snort, the spectral mustang wrenched free from her flaring aura, hooves sparking as it stepped into the physical with a new type of power.

Everyone’s heads snapped toward her.

Nia was fuming.

“The horse got it before a Soul Item! This is my thing—my thing—but no, the horse gets it first? The freaking horse?!”

Wakalapi’s pipe smoke formed shapes—almost wolves, almost birds, almost something else—before dissolving. “Good work, Ms. Alexander. Interesting… You have more trust in your horse than yourself.”

“Haha. Have ya met me?” she asked with an innocent grin.

Rachel took a deep breath, giving Maria a small smile as she gripped her rosary. “I bet you’re praying for help, but isn’t there something in your religion about works?”

She rolled the beads in her fingers with a smirk before it slowly faded, fixating on the children snarling in front of her.

“Works? Pfft. Ya got me there, chica. I’m here, ain’t I? That ain’t work enough, huh? Faith without works is dead…”

“Five!”

“Four!”

“Un mensaje…una advertencia para ayudarme a verme con más claridad… Hmm.” She looked down at her palm, slowly curling into a fist.

“Three!”

Scarlet’s blood rippled outward, already responding to threats that hadn’t materialized yet.

“Two!”

Alexa whimpered, golden light sparking chaotically from her pendant.

“One!”

Conquest raised her hand, silver authority gathering.

“Zero! Time’s up, my lovely students! Let the test begin!”

The barriers shattered like glass.

The infected surged forward—but they moved differently now. Not shambling, but coordinated, tactical, displaying knowledge they shouldn’t possess. A woman who’d been a baker performed a perfect military flanking maneuver. A child moved with the precision of a trained assassin.

Rachel’s breathing shifted.

Inhale the essence of the world, exhale the limitations of the flesh.

Time stuttered. The world slowed to a crawl.

Yet, it was the unicorn who moved first, making Rachel’s eyes widen as she stepped out…in front of her. The symbol on her brow flared with a pure white radiance. A ravenous child lurched toward her, the woman’s grip on her rosary.

“Maria?!”

“La sangre en mis manos me aterra… Amaré al mundo, como debo. Con los brazos abiertos. Por todas las cosas perfectas en las que dudo.” Maria crossed herself. “This is God’s country.”

An explosion of light bathed them in warmth and wrapped the attackers in a blanket. When it faded, what was left were wide-eyed people. Maria knelt to offer a hand to the child, horn bright, the snarling infected too far away, backing away with glares.

“God is with us… Come, step into His light.”

The little girl’s pupils were large, staring up at the pretty, glowing woman…and she accepted her hand. “Thank you…”

Clapping echoed through the still atmosphere, Maria’s breakthrough and display of power temporarily forcing the corrupted people back. Butter’s face was practically the sun.

“That was real. A power not your own, bleeding from divinity, and mixed with your spiritual devotion… Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.”

Time snapped back without Rachel doing a thing. Her heart hammered like she’d sprinted uphill. Sweat already soaked through her shirt.

Well, she could have warned me… Damn.

Maria guided the child and three purified souls back as the throng rushed in again with renewed vigor. Rachel prepared for the next wave, as more corrupted people showed up from the alleys and from inside the establishments.

“God’s country, huh? We’re sure about that?”

Maria’s smile said she wouldn’t understand as she held the child.

“Who said I was talking about this country?”

That flew right over Rachel’s head, which was a bit annoying.

“You,” the little girl squeaked, hugging her tight and looking up at her. “You mean…you.”

It clicked in an instant. Maria herself was her own country—sovereign and dedicated to a singular king.

“¡Hijo de puta, Rachel!” Maria gasped as another infected lunged, shielding the child; she spotted wet spots staining the unicorn’s armpits, showing the strain of that single burst. “Quit spacing out—”

Whose spacing out?

Rachel smiled, ignoring the sweat and exhaustion, like she always did as an oscillation rippled within her—pink, sparkling lights separated from her—and Nia materialized.

About time.

“Shut up! I’m trying to concentrate. Match breaths with me!”

Is that what we do?

Time stuttered, her speed accelerated, and Nia maintained perfect harmony as they blurred. The bun went low, tripping the first and creating a whirlwind with her motion, disrupting the symbols they’d been forming around them. Rachel went high, kicking the falling man in the chest and launching him back.

Twisting around, braid whipping with the momentum, a massive hammer forming in her grip. Clicking the activation switch, a rupture of kinetic force rippled through the air. Dust tornadoes kicked up, ground fractured, and the flooding horde went flying back as if an earthquake passed through the atmosphere.

One hiccup in their unified breathing followed.

“Nice!” Scarlet cheered. “You’ve got—Rachel?!”

Her heart stuttered, grip faltering, world tilting on its side as cold hands closed around her chest…all feeling leaving her muscles.

Nia constricted around her frame, body collapsing.

A burst of light, and she caught herself on one knee, Maria’s voice filtering through her ringing ears.

“Damn fool! It’s always the same, ack… Rach—”

“I get it,” she coughed, breathing harshly and looking down at her trembling hand before blinking and rubbing her nose. “It’s pretty obvious, I overdid it. Shit…a bloody nose and a little blood from the eyes—and that’s after healing. Not great.”

“Ugh… Ouch. We still have a ways to go, Major.”

“Watch out!”

An infected man’s fist caught her shoulder, spinning her into Alexa as she rushed in to help. Mid-spiral, the loud whistle of a train erupted all around them, the ground shaking a hundred times more than her hammer strike. Yet, even that was temporarily muted.

“Rachel!”

Golden light exploded from Alexa’s pendant—wild, uncontrolled. The beam barely missed her calf, carving through air and just missing an infected, but slicing clean through a building support. The structure groaned ominously as fire immediately ignited and Scarlet hissed.

“Ah! That’s solar, Alexa—I felt that through Butter’s shield!”

“Sorry! I-I can’t—” Alexa's wings suddenly erupted outward, doubling, tripling in size. “It’s just…building after Butter blocked my Seed. I can’t—”

Divine power flooded through her with no framework to contain it. Feathers shot out like guided missiles.

Rachel tackled Maria flat as Nia materialized to do the same with the restored people.

“Down!”

Razor-sharp plumes whistled overhead in silver flashes.

Scarlet’s blood whipped up across the battlefield, the vampiric girl cursing as she deflected three that would have hit Grace. One caught an infected man’s arm—nearly severed it.

“That one’s just physical—but it almost cut through my blood!”

“¡Dios mío!” Maria scrambled forward, her healing flowing smoothly through a desperate need to help as she purified five more. “Alexa, cálmate! You’re gonna kill someone!”

At the same time that was happening, Rachel’s ears twitched, listening to every twitch from the other groups:

“…Your oni Feats say you thrive on conflict, right?” Conquest’s voice cracked like a whip, silver chains binding three infected instantly without effort—she was a natural. “Stop asking permission for your own power from The Empress! She gave you power through your connection to her chains, and the door is always open if you believe in her. So the issue is…”

“Me.” Adoncia's features were converting to red and blue now, horns beginning to grow. “I know I’m the problem—grragh! It’s so…annoying! The High Queen is so annoying! Why is she so unlike The Empress?! She’s so…grrragh!”

“Well, tell me what’s on your heart!” Butter huffed from above. “You love me, despite my faults. I can feel it.”

“It doesn’t make you any less aggravating, High Queen. Why can’t you just be…stressed for two seconds?! I want to break something—”

Blue flames erupted—wild, beautiful, uncontrolled. Three seconds of pure oni fire before…sputtering out.

“Better! Fail faster! Each failure teaches!” Conquest commanded.

“Failure? I’m not a failure!”

Her aura returned in a blaze as she seethed, drool leaking out of her mouth now.

Scarlet calmly flowed between attackers, her blood responding naturally to keep them at a distance—then suddenly the shrill sound of a whistle, heat bleeding past her defenses—

“Rachel!”

Before that, though…Grace’s soul bullet finally held form, flying fifteen feet before dissolving. “Getting closer! Come on, iron, we’re partners… Jim!”

A corrupted teen lurched at her before her horse snatched the boy’s collar and yanked him into several others like pins in a bowling alley.  

Wakalapi’s smoke wolves lasted ten seconds now, actively attacking, wrapping them both in protective curtains. His eyes narrowed, drifting skyward.

“If you keep relying on Jim, how can your weapon feel your trust?”

“Ya got a point, big fella! But, eh, how can I feel any danger when ya got everyin’ rangled tighter than a border colley in a sheep pen?”

The Native’s frown deepened as symbols they drew in the dust began to glow, his smoke dispersing; across the street, Rachel’s explosion sent a storm flurry around them, and Adoncia began throwing their attackers in every direction.

“They were buying time… Seals against spiritual forces. The symbols are all over the town. And the watcher grows more interested, Ms. Alexander. They’re studying our development like a scientist observing specimens. ”

“Oh? Smart buggers. Let ‘em watch. Maybe I’m hesitatin’ because I gotta save ‘em. I’ve been usin’ the wrong weapon! It worked before…”

Grace’s lasso materialized out of ruby light, glowing silver as she flung it around one of the corrupted, drawing on the side of a building. Looping around his shoulders, she tugged it tight, and abruptly they fell limp.

“Holy hell, that worked! Wakalapi, I—what the blazin’ cow lights?!”

Rachel’s ears swiveled as every head snapped toward her sister-in-law. The battlefield had gone eerily quiet.

Alexa was floating higher now, Butter’s mouth curving into a frown. She wasn’t hovering by choice, divine energy literally lifting her. Her tears evaporated to steam before they could fall.

“It hurts!” she sobbed. “It’s too much!”

Her feathers rose and shot back, Alexa’s wings spread to full extension—twelve feet each. Every feather began glowing like miniature suns.

“E-Everyone get down!”

“I think that’s enough… Oh?”

The blonde pointed a finger at the 13-year-old, yet her beam of light was met by a superheated aura, seemingly blocking her power.

“Help! It hurts…”

“No worries, sweetheart. I just need to shift my tune… Wow. You’re actually pushing back, and that pulse…”

Dammit! This wasn’t supposed to—

Rachel’s technique activated on pure adrenaline. Time slowed to a crawl. She could see every feather’s trajectory with [Strategic Mind] activating, calculating the casualties—too many.

If those feathers launch…only Scarlet might survive, and even she… This is Solar Damage!

Butter’s other hand lifted high, causing an umbrella of Life Force to envelope them as a supernova of effulgent energy erupted outward.

“Darling, hold strong!”

Then, the golden beam sank through the barrier just as her feathers bristled.

It connected

The superheated wind, creeping light, and threatening feathers dissolved into sparkling dust. Rachel lurched forward, snatching her sister-in-law out of the air to soften her blow with her body.

When the brilliance subsided, not a single building was damaged—other than her first flash fire that was still blazing. But…

Every citizen in the town was blinking and looking confused—purified.

“Hey! Hey… You okay?”

Through blurred vision, Rachel saw her sister-in-law stir in her arms.

“D-Did I? I…I didn't mean…” Alexa sobbed in her arms.

Butter descended slightly, shivering a little. “Now, that was unexpected. I actually had to try there for a moment. She’s not channeling pure divinity—there’s holy Eldritch threading, and something else entirely foreign to me… It’s like she’s becoming a hybrid that shouldn’t exist in that split second before I reactivate her Seed! You are a mysterious joy, Alexa.”

“I just feel like a failure…”

“No, you did perfectly,” Butter whispered, glancing around at the purified townsfolk as the distant sound of train bells rang like thunder overhead. “You just learned what unregulated power costs. That’s the lesson…and have faith. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

The purple sun slid below the horizon, but yellow light still bathed them from the lingering twilight of Alexa’s dazzling blast. Tiny balls of solar light cast spots across their vision, floating as if cotton spores in the wind.

Around them, citizens blinked, healed, and whole.

Five timeless seconds later…the rumble and screech sounded.

The voices festered within its cry

Not the town’s.

Something…otherworldly.

“The rails are laid. The schedule is set. The Conductor comes with debts to collect.”

A chill ran down Rachel’s ears to the tip of her tail, taking her back to a mixture of her time in Yomi and Ali Baba’s world crumbling.

She looked heavenward as Alexa’s fireflies flickered and died.

Wakalapi’s voice carried urgently across the battlefield: “The spirits scream warnings! Something massive approaches—not of this dimension! It carries death!”

“Death?” Butter mused, but Rachel caught the calculation beneath her enthusiasm. “Please, this is merely the thrashing of a toddler. Priss would eat him alive.”

Despite the former goddess’ chuckles, [Seventh Sense] and [Bringer of Misfortune] went haywire, the threads weaving into an inescapable net around them.

“And so the trap is set,” Nike whispered within her soul.

There’s no escape. A noose tied tight around us…even the all-conquering goddess.

If that wasn’t bad enough. In that moment…Nia’s time ran out.

Little Bun deflated within her soul.

Rachel's stance widened, each breath scraping her throat while she tried to still her thumping heart. The rumble of a train brought back the same roar as the lava dragon who had faced Conner, reminding her of what a Tier-2 Legend Quest boss meant.

No Unique Moons.

Not even Event Moons to buffer her.

She was bare.

Nia was a disoriented child.

And, for whatever reason, Butter had yet to lift the seal on their Seeds.

Rachel looked up at the smiling blonde, wincing as the sound hit them like a physical force. It wasn’t just a train whistle but the sound of reality tearing, dimensions grinding against each other like tectonic plates upon making his entrance.

The question isn’t how can we win, but…how can we possibly lose?

“Wait, how can we lose?!” Nia cried, her outfit now trembling as if a child before the tide of death.

I can only think of one way to overpower Butter, Rachel mumbled internally.

“What?!”

Built to win in the end, set to lose in the start…

Nungal set this in motion.

Nike’s peppy voice turned grim.

“Bingo.”

Shadow rails bled into existence through the obsidian vault above, their darkness a negation of light itself—not merely black but an absence that devoured meaning.

They writhed between dimensions like the fevered sketches of a mad architect, existing in states that mortal geometry could not contain.

From one angle, they stretched infinite, railroad ties of diamond void marching toward horizons that shouldn’t exist; from another, they simply weren’t, leaving only the ghost of their presence burning behind watering eyes.

The tracks twisted through space-time with the wet-silk sound of reality trying not to scream, creating optical blasphemies that made the mind revolt against what the eyes insisted was true.

Something massive began its descent from those impossible runways—not falling but arriving, as if distance was merely a suggestion it chose to ignore.

The infected emerged from fractured carriages, weaving in and out through tears in space, as if an anaconda, slowly closing in around them. Windows open as if gaping mouths in perfect unison, and the desert itself poured forth.

Sand cascaded from them as if lips in ancient waterfalls, each grain a whispered secret of burial and bone, creating rivers of crystalized black death that pooled around the town in a torrent. They spoke with one voice that was all voices and no voice—one voice:

“All aboard the final station! Next stop: transformation or termination.”

* — * — *

Miles away, hidden in the hills overlooking the town like a vulture perched above a battlefield, a different kind of drama was unfolding under the cover of gathering darkness.

At least, that was the internal musings Adelaide Herrmann played in her mind, illusions casting a 3D model of the town, far distance. Rachel and her party had yet to arrive.

The benefits of having a Fable supervillain who relied on her for her survival. One who was in possession of a mirror more potent than even a certain confident heroine realized.

“It’s almost time… It’s too bad our sleeping princess won’t be awake to witness it.”

The Queen of Magic adjusted the silver threads woven through her midnight blue coat, focus drifting to the floating figure trapped in eternal sleep—Snow White.

Regina stood a ways off, returning from her mission after using Frank’s ‘special gas’ to inflict a memory gap effect on the military escort. The plane was just taking off to Washington, Green following an hour later. Of course, no one would know the former CEO of Fable had ‘escaped’ until the plane landed.

“Excellent work, Evil Queen.”

 “If anything, it should be my darling stepdaughter who obtains that crown,” the bitter woman whispered. “She stole everything from me… The kingdom, my beauty…her father.”

Frank stood a ways off, adjusting his tie while inspecting a book he’d borrowed from the Scarlet Hand storehouse. “How the tables have turned, ladies. I am impressed by the combination of your schemes. Truly…”

He shut his book with a crisp thump, the faintest hint of a mocking smile lifting his stoic face. “Everything is on schedule.”

“Note quite yet… Mirror, mirror, wrought of silver bright,” Regina’s melodious voice commanded, her fingers tracing patterns across the mercury-smooth surface with the practiced grace of someone who’d performed this ritual countless times. “Show me who rules this frontier night, whose power holds dominion over shadow and blight.”

Adelaide’s fingers drifted to touch the ruby at her throat, dormant blood glowing faintly within as the ritual completed.

The Evil Queen’s reflection multiplied across the mirror’s surface as images shifted and flowed like liquid mercury poured through reflective channels. The scrying magic reached through dimensional barriers, piercing the veils between worlds with the casual ease of someone opening a window. 

Her white Gibson Girl updo remained perfectly arranged despite the evening breeze that whispered through the rocky outcropping. Her green eyes glinted as the hazy outline of a figure split between dimensions materialized.

The Conductor appeared in the mirror’s depths, his shadow-touched form conducting his macabre orchestra of infected townspeople with the precision of a master musician directing a symphony of the damned.

Now, everything is on schedule.

“Fascinating,” Adelaide murmured, her voice carrying the measured tones of someone observing an exciting experiment. “A spirit of transportation and transformation, building infrastructure between dimensions. I have a story for you, my dear man…”

She leaned closer to the mirror, her voice carrying across impossible distances through the scrying connection: “I bring word of powerful beings heading your way—a golden, former goddess who brings unwanted change wherever she travels, and a lunar rabbit who specializes in breaking the fundamental rules that govern fate and causality. They come to purify your work.”

The Conductor’s head turned toward the mirror’s perspective, his hidden features somehow conveying amusement despite being completely obscured by supernatural shadows—even to the fabled mirror.

“Information noted and appreciated, Mirror-Touched Queens. Perhaps this goddess will provide me with valuable data. All passengers must eventually reach their designated destination, regardless of the route they believe they have chosen. The schedule accommodates all possibilities… I will see to it personally. But if you have fooled me…”

A fracture appeared in the mirror, and the connection was cut, leaving a deep frown on Regina’s face.

“Quite the brute for a supposed scientist of death… It will take me an hour to fix this damage. He reminds me of a certain other gentleman and his…monsters,” she mumbled, accusing gaze shifting to the well-groomed man nearby.

Frankenstein stepped closer to examine the damage. “In experimentation, breaking things is often a necessity. If one does not understand the limits of what they use, then they cannot plan for their uses in the necessary mediums.”

From the shadows behind Adelaide, his shoulder-length blond hair caught the falling sun, still a few hours before twilight. He adjusted his glasses with a cheerful smile that didn’t reach his calculating blue eyes.

Would you not agree, Ms. Herrmann?”

“Life is a performance that demands perfection,” Adelaide whispered, raising her left hand to view dozens of scenarios that could play out within a few hours. “Your creatures are primed and ready? There will be errors, despite your science, Doctor.”

His vision narrowed from behind his silver frames, smile never faltering. “You misunderstand me, Madame… Errors are a part of the process. That is why corrections are applied to improve accuracy in weighing the scales of any experiment. The more often it is performed, the more precise the results become.”

He produced a metal box and presented it to her with one hand behind his back.

“As promised, I have delivered. The Scarlet Hand’s research into spirits was most helpful, but are you sure your magic and the Conductor are adequate for the initial play? My calculations say there is a significant chance of failure.”

“Irrelevant,” Adelaide returned with a sharp smile, accepting the cube and examining its black, metallic shine. “After all, luck is on our side,” she giggled, fingers sliding to the monkey’s paw and rabbit’s foot dangling from her hip before pressing a finger to the jewel resting against her chest.

“The target isn’t Rachel…and that is the downfall of her power. Why do you think her brother was so vulnerable to Russia’s plot?”

Regina’s reflection smiled back at her from the darkened mirror surface, her expression bright as starlight reflecting off broken glass.

“Because…she is a curse on those around her. We collect our prize. Everything proceeds according to the prophecy.”

That got a twitch from the handsome professor’s lips.

“For now, perhaps. Prophecy can be interpreted in…many ways.”

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