Simon was only given a few minutes to put all of this together before he was brought face-to-face with the woman he thought he'd lost a lifetime ago. Still, in that time, he put it together. I was on the same level then as I am now, he realized. Somehow, it's not just my actions that are sticking around now. Somehow, it's me. There are at least two of me in this world right now. Maybe more, depending on what's happening on which level. There might even be four or five of me if things overlap right.

The realization hurt his brain, and as he hugged the beautiful woman he'd abandoned decades ago, all he could think about was where he might be in previous runs in that moment. She'd gotten only a little older in that time, but he'd gotten a bit younger.

Neither of those facts mattered as much as the details of his current predicament. He was on level zero, as he had been the last time he'd come here. He'd presumed that it would reset like all of the other levels, but it didn't seem to be the case, and the implications were unsettling. What I'm doing now can't be undone.

He kissed her then, as much to distract himself as because it would have been too cruel not to. As he did so, he tried to will his sight to tell him more than just the faint aura that told him she was a good person. He didn't need any gifts to see that on his smiling face. Between his recent violence and his current uncertainty, his soul churned, and the world offered him no insight.

After that, as he was given robes to change into that were lighter than the ones he'd worn when he left, they went and shared dinner together in the commons. There, he was greeted by any number of old friends who had become near strangers in his long absence. He'd cared deeply for some of these people, but while he smiled at them, they'd been reduced to names and faces in the interim.

Simon had thought that returning to Hepollyon would feel like coming home in its way, but it felt more like the Twilight Zone. In some small way, he felt like he was the evil Simon now, impinging on the life of his old self, and no matter how many pleasantries he exchanged with other acolytes, that thought never left his mind. He'd revisited versions of his previous lives, but never like this.

What about Elthena? His mind argued. That was exactly like this. You finished a life and came back to it.

That was true, but the difference here was that he hadn't been expecting it. That time, he'd worked and planned around a number of events. The level had been locked in, but… Well, he was locking in a lot of things right now, for better or worse, and as soon as he had some time, he was going to have to review some of his past lives and make some notes about where he could and could not go on level zero.

Still, things only got more awkward as the day wore on, and Zoa tried to do more than just kiss him that evening, he resisted, which wouldn't have gone any worse if he'd slapped his former lover across her face.

"Aren't you attracted to me anymore?" she asked.

"It's not that," Simon explained. "It's just that I've been gone for so long. I want to reconnect and remember who you are to me first."

That placated her somewhat, but it created resentment, too. He could see it in the tiny but growing distance building between them.

It wasn't even a lie, but there was no way to explain the whole truth to her. She wasn't the shrewd woman that Elthana was, and the gray robes she peeled off before snuggling against him told him just how far she was from accepting such revelations; she had yet to approach any sort of enlightenment that could let her view the wider world that he lived in.

Still, he told her some things because it would have seemed strange to tell her nothing at all. He told her of his trip north and the city of Zurari. He left out that he'd toppled the pyramids when he told her about those. Instead, he told her about the bazaars and the food. He dazzled her with strange details, which did as much to calm her as it did to distract his racing mind from the fact that he was somehow in the same life he'd left behind.

That shouldn't be possible, his mind argued. It had calmed somewhat over the course of the conversation. Sharing the mundane details of his adventures had allowed his vision to sharpen and see the pinks of love and kindness that tinged her aura.

He was just getting to the horse clans and the giant's footprint he found when the priest came for him near midnight. Zoe didn't try to stop him. Instead, she only whispered, "Come back to me," as he dressed and left.

He met the Oracle by the lake again, just as he had last time, though when she saw him, she said, "You're looking quite a bit brighter than when I last saw you, Simon."

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For a moment, he couldn't answer her because he was too distracted by the lights and patterns he saw around her. She was as dazzling as the sun, and even when he looked away, he was half-blinded by her, but the lines were the most interesting part of the light show.

He'd long since grown used to those at the peripheries of his vision. He could see the way that friends, family, and even co-conspirators were linked to each other. Around the Oracle, the lines were thick and braided, indicating their strength and importance. They were multicolored, which told him just how varied those connections were, but stranger than all of those things was the fact that almost none of them actually touched the woman. Instead, they interwove with each other, leaving her in the center, untouched, like she commanded a vast tapestry but was not actually part of it.

"It's been a while," he answered finally, after the pause stretched just a little too long, making it awkward. "Longer than you know."

"Oh, I know you are not the same Simon who left us years ago," she answered. He could hear her smile, but hidden by her veil, he couldn't see it.

"How, though, is it my aura or—" he started to ask. If he could see so much in her outlines now, then he was sure she could read him like a book.

"Because until very recently that Simon still lived and breathed," she answered. "Unfortunately, he perished in the collapse of a rather large temple a couple of years ago, and yet here you are. What am I supposed to make of that?"

"I think you know," Simon agreed, chagrined that he hadn't thought of that answer first. "I'm sure that two Simons muddies your waters that much more than one."

"Oh, there's rarely even two or three," she answered with a shake of her head, sounding faintly annoyed. "You churn up the world more than you realize, I think."

The answer surprised him, but he doubted he'd get any more on the subject from her, so he pressed on. "I didn't come here to debate the ethics of what it is I'm doing. I feel pretty good about stopping a wave of zombies and death and taking care of the Magi. Well, I think I set them back long enough to ensure peace and—"

"The things you did to stop the zombies made the world a better place. I'll admit that, but not for the reasons you think," she said, smoothing her robes before turning to look out into the world at something only she could see. He was pretty sure that she gazed toward Schwarzenbruck, though he couldn't be a hundred percent sure at night. "As to the Murani, you've only exacerbated that situation, I'm afraid."

"What?" Simon asked, surprised. "How? I shattered their school. That has to set them back a good long way from whatever war preparations were brewing."

"It does," the Oracle agreed, not bothering to turn back to him as he faced north. "They will not attack the south until years later than they otherwise would have, but when they do, it will be even more vicious than before."

"Then I'll stop them again if I have to," Simon said, trying hard to keep his thoughts on the conversation and not the light show that surrounded her.

"You probably will," she answered wearily, turning to look him over from head to toe. "But did you ever think that maybe the future had already been laid out for things to happen in a certain way? Perhaps it might be better for the world and the people in it if they were fought now and not then."

"Wait, are you saying that you already set things up so—" Simon started to ask.

"Not me," she quickly corrected him.

"Well, it can be Hel… the Goddess. She wants me to change things," Simon reasoned. "So who? The Murani's God King?"

"The God King?" she laughed. "I think not." Simon was about to ask about that reaction, but she continued. "Someday, you'll find that very funny, though I don't think you'll find out just now."

"So who?" he asked.

"That's not your question," she countered, "Or even the reason you're here."

He was torn on whether or not to push for that point, but instead, he decided to return to the topic at hand. "I'm here because my vision has gotten so much stronger… Because I've gained so much more clarity in this last life. I need help understanding what it is I'm seeing."

"You do," she agreed, "But that's not why you're here."

"It isn't?" Simon asked, giving it some thought before he continued. "Well, I suppose that desire started because I wanted to talk about the whorls… the sort of vortex I saw, but that stopped a while back."

"How far back?" she asked, in a tone that told him he was missing something.

"A few years ago?" Simon answered as he tried to think about how long it had been. "Summer? Maybe fall, three years back?"

"Interesting," she said after a moment, obviously bursting to tell him something. "Well, what you're describing, I would call a snarl in the tapestry of the world, and as to what and why that is, maybe if you can figure out why it might have stopped, then I'll tell you."

"Figure out?" Simon protested. "I've had years to think about it, but I have nothing. That's why I came to see you."

"You did," she agreed, "And I have foreseen all of that, which is why I gave you the critical piece of information you were missing at the beginning of this conversation."

Simon paused and considered all the topics they'd discussed, discarding them one by one. It hadn't been a very long conversation, so he didn't have very many options. Still, it took longer than it should have because his mind refused to accept it.

"It's because that's when the other me died?" he asked, finally.

The oracle said nothing. She merely nodded excitedly as Simon felt a wave of vertigo wash over him. This is going to be a long night.

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