“This,” the god said, “allows you to explore different possibilities without actually disturbing the tapestry itself. I use it to interpret patterns, see all the different ways a thread might work itself into fate’s design. See what might happen if someone were to change something here, erase something there.”
“If the past can’t be changed, then what’s the point?”
“The point,” the god growled, setting the instrument between them with an indignant thud, “is that even gods get curious.”
Baz stared at the scale. “So how does it work?”
“Think of a significant moment from your past. A catalyst that would fundamentally change the course of your life had it not happened.”
“The printing press,” Baz said with confidence. “The day I Collapsed.”
The god nodded and, with an enthusiastic flourish, produced two intricately carved wooden beads from one of his many pockets, one white, one black.
“This is your life as it is,” he said, putting the white stone on one side of the scale, “and this is your life as it might have unfolded if you had not Collapsed.” He set the black stone on the other side of the scale. “Hold that day in your mind. Now, watch the pendulum here in the middle of the scale… and let it show you what might have been.”
The god gave the pendulum a little nudge, and Baz was hypnotized by the steady rocking motion. The god disappeared, the workshop, too, and he found himself in the printing press he so vividly remembered, almost as if he were in one of his nightmares. But Kai wasn’t here, and this wasn’t a nightmare. The scale was still in front of him, the pendulum swinging rhythmically, but the scene around him played out in rapid motion, a blur of color.
He saw himself as a boy with his father and Jae Ahn in their printing press. He saw Keiran’s parents and Lizaveta and Artem’s father enter. He saw the altercation between them and Jae just as he remembered it. But Baz did not Collapse. Keiran’s parents and the Orlov siblings’ father did not die.
A sliver of hope bloomed in Baz’s chest. If he hadn’t Collapsed, hadn’t killed anyone that day… then surely Keiran would not have become obsessed with bringing back the Tides, would never have gone after Emory. Baz’s own father wouldn’t have ended up at the Institute. None of this would have ever happened.
But then the rest of the scene unfolded. No Collapsing on his part meant there was no stopping Keiran’s parents from going after Jae, who was the reason they’d come to the printing press to begin with. A fight ensued, and in the chaos, Baz’s father told him to run. He hid in a shop across the street. And when all wassaid and done, it was Jae who was brought to the Institute, hands bound in damper cuffs. Their secret—that they had been Collapsed for years—had come to light, and they would now receive the Unhallowed Seal.
The scale skewed off-balance. Fate thrown off course.
The scene shifted before Baz’s eyes, the years speeding up as he followed the thread of everyone’s life who had been at the printing press that day.
He saw Jae at the Institute, where they became a shade of themself, wholly unrecognizable. He saw his own father, a free man, but a haunted one; in the wake of Jae’s arrest, Theodore closed up shop, the printing press long forgotten, and lost himself in obscure work trying to understand the Nullifying magic used in damper cuffs and the Unhallowed Seal to find a way to reverse the damage. His work ruffled some feathers, and he, too, ended up at the Institute for misusing his magic.
Baz followed the other threads, seeing Keiran at his parents’ funeral years later, after another tragedy led to their deaths. Keiran still wound up on his quest to bring back the Tides, still went after Emory, still died in Dovermere.
Baz saw himself Collapsing years later to even more catastrophic results. It happened in Dovermere, on that fateful day he saw Emory slip through the Hourglass. Here he called on his time magic to try to stop Keiran from going after her, but since Baz hadn’t Collapsed, since his magic was not yet limitless… This is where it finally happened. A great blast of silver light flooding the Belly of the Beast, killing everyone who was there as the cave crumbled onto itself—Virgil, Nisha, and the rest of the Selenic Order.
Leaving only Baz and Kai alive, their only way out through the Hourglass—where they were pulled, once more, back in time.
The pendulum suddenly stopped, and Baz found himself in thegod’s workshop again, everything around him coming back into sharp, dizzying focus.
“You see?” the god said with a defeated, sad smile. The scale was completely off-balance, even though all of their fates had remained the same—or worse. “Changing the past is pointless. You might be able to sway individual threads, make things like death and destruction happen sooner or later than they should, but the larger picture remains an immovable outcome. Fate will always autocorrect, leading you down different paths that will still inevitably get you to the same destination. You can’t unwrite what is already written.”
There was a wistful note to his voice, as if he’d tried to do just that but could not.
Baz righted his glasses. “I can’t accept that. I have to try.”
The god sighed, muttering something to the darkness above them. He looked at Baz, studying him intently before saying, “If I do send you back to the past. If I give you the chance to try changing history. Will you let this go and return home?”
Baz gulped. “Yes.”
Another sigh. “So be it. I will entertain this naive determination of yours.” He rifled through his pockets. “If you reach the end of the sequence of events and fail to alter the outcome, you’ll be brought back here, and the timeline will reset to what it originally was. You can then attempt to go back if you wish, however many times you deem necessary. But be warned—every time we reset, whatever change you did make may leave ripple effects. Small snags in the tapestry, not of fate in the larger sense, but in the threads of individuals you interact with. The more directly you try to change things, the more knotted their threads might become, which could lead to all kinds of, ah, unpleasantries in their future.”
Baz blanched. “Unpleasantries?”
“Drastic changes in behavior, hallucinations, delusions, loss of touch with reality, distorted memories. That sort of thing.”
The god handed Baz a pocket watch that fit in his palm, and for a moment Baz thought it was like the Veiled Atlas compass watch that Emory’s mother had left her. It was similar, but made of bronze, not silver, its clockface full of symbols and lines and words Baz didn’t recognize.
“You will need this to navigate to the past,” the god explained.
He showed Baz how to manipulate the pocket watch. At the flick of a finger, a little magnifying glass popped out on the side, which would allow him to view past events, see how threads were connected in time. There was a dial he could turn to make time speed up, so that he wouldn’t need to relive every second of the past and would be able to jump between key moments and locations as needed. Another dial made the symbols on the clockface come alive, which would render Baz invisible to unwanted eyes—his former self, especially.
