A year's salary had gone down the drain, spent mostly on bribes. The bastard who not only caused the 'accident' but survived it—as the only survivor—had remained in seclusion within one of his family's compounds.

Roland was somewhere out there, getting everything sorted in order to bury the man. She didn't doubt it would work—not in the slightest.

But what Myrna had in mind was far less elaborate a punishment.

Some would have called this ridiculous. This wasn't even personal. Her interactions with Rosario Hebenstreit had been as dull as they had been brief, with them only being technically related through Yoyo, for all the old woman would have insisted it still counted.

Growing up, Myrna Zamacuco hadn't had many friends—not for lack of trying. She'd been a happy accident—one no one actually complained about—but that did leave her with a family full of people who hadn't been expecting a baby to be born to a woman in her fifties and were sort of underprepared to adapt. Surrounded by her adult relatives as she'd been, she'd struggled to connect with children her age. They always felt too… naïve. They were blind to the harsh realities of the world.

Meeting Yoyo had changed things. He had his troubles, which certainly sucked for him, but from that came a higher level of understanding, as far as Myrna was concerned. She could relate to him—for the first time, she'd felt as though she had someone she could call a friend. Someone who understood what it felt like to still be unhappy despite technically having all their needs met.

Thurmond Thompson would pay, she'd decided. Her grandfather and Yoyo's choice to let him have due process might have been well-intentioned, but monsters didn't deserve that luxury. He should have died in space when he had the chance.

The worst part was that she knew killing him would defeat the purpose of this all. That certainly took a whole lot of fun out of this—she'd always wanted to play the role of a vengeful underdog, and her family had more than enough resources for her to fantasize about getting away with it. But no—she wouldn't get to do any of that now. She had to play by the word of the rules for all she meant to entirely ignore their spirit.

Still, Myrna kept tip-toeing her way around the bushes. The window she'd bribed a maid to leave unlocked should have been around here, but she'd neglected to consider the likelihood of them all looking alike.

Dressed with the most elaborate ninja costume money could buy, Myrna moved with the confidence only someone who'd spent days at the shooting range but never truly used a weapon could, eager to put the thing to use as if empowered simply by having it in her possession.

Unfortunately for her, she had to holster it for a moment, as she sort of needed to use both her hands to climb up. The window opened without fanfare, and she would forever pretend she hadn't had to check several before she found it. That would eat away at the coolness of the stunt.

The carpeted hall was suitably empty—and man, was the carpet ugly. It somehow combined cherries and what were probably meant to be fleurs-de-lis into an abomination of modern décor. Myrna scrunched up her nose in disgust and tried her best not to look at it. As it turned out, that didn't help—it seemed the carpet came with matching wallpaper.

Rich people really do have shit taste, huh, thought the marginally less rich woman. She continued down the hall, pulling her gun back out as she tip-toed with her cushioned shoes. They probably muffled all sound. Right?

Not that it mattered much, as the door she sought was right there. Unlocked, just as she knew it would be. Myrna couldn't help but smile within her mask.

It was time to terrorize a corrupt old man!

The Instance that was Eilo Gonçales de Billanueba—who was also quite adamant about this being the proper way to spell her name—was deeply confused by the task for which it existed. She was but a copy of a small yet quintessential part of the greater self, which had as many drawbacks as it had perks.

She found it difficult to understand the former corpse's thoughts, or what remained of them. The Sliver had long taken its due—the soul proper was long gone—and all she had were memories that weren't hers.

A simple task was taking months. She could not wear the body as her own, merely interfacing with it as if the brain's contents were something to be browsed, and that would not do. Eilo needed the knowledge within—to understand how those not preserved in system worlds experienced death.

Not unconsciousness followed by dissolution while awaiting an outcome, but true death, a final end to Existence, of the sort that made the Sliver of Existence that made up conscious life escape and leave behind flesh that would never be the same.

Perhaps their knowledge remained flawed still—the Deity of Fragile Eternities could only learn in truth from firsthand experience, and never before had they try to take over a husk. Their technique was superior without a doubt, but it was leaving much to be desired now that it was put to the test. It was almost funny, when the one they regarded as their better could puppeteer bodies such as this one as easily as a mortal could breathe, yet while their hearts would never again beat, they would undoubtedly be easier to read than this thing was being for Eilo at the moment.

This Instance was not having a good time. Not in the slightest.

But her sulking would have to wait. Something prickled at the edge of her awareness, of the senses that came from her nature as opposed to the magicless body she was inhabiting. Eilo reached out, eager to learn just what might be trying to get her attention, only to stop herself—she wasn't in space right now. Who knew what kind of consequences could come from using even a fraction of her power down here?

They weren't even supposed to be in a world such as this one, but it was far too late for the Deity of Fragile Eternities—or any piece of them—to give up by now.

So Eilo simply waited, wearing the visage of the mortal who once Existed yet no longer did. The body lived, surely enough. The impossibility of resurrection came from how that spark provided by the Sliver life started with could never be replicated once gone, and without the system to interfere in that process, even a body reanimated to perfection was incomplete.

That was to say, it took her a moment to even understand what the body was feeling. The distance between her false Existence and the vessel she inhabited was simply too large a gap, even if for all intents and purpose, she currently was the old man. She was hearing things. Footsteps. By the void, footsteps!

When had it been the last time any piece of the Deity of Fragile Eternities experienced life like this? For all she'd already resigned herself to this being a failure, perhaps it had not been without benefit. Once she unraveled and once again became part of the whole, maybe the Instance would bring something worthwhile to the table—experiences they lacked due to the natural erosion of the echoes they'd been formed by.

The door to the room creaked. That was another thing Eilo had thoughts about, and she had to fight her own curiosity to stay focused on the body's senses. Just why did people always try so hard to be stealthy, when their environment inevitably betrayed their presence sooner or later? It was clearly something beyond their control, when it came to their own inconspicuousness, so why did they take no steps to better manage their environment? Was it their own powerlessness that limited them?

Certainly, it would probably be quite difficult to alter nearby reality as a powerless mortal… Maybe that was it?

"You," a voice hissed out as a feminine figure stepped into the room. She—assuming this was a 'she', from the voice—was walking strangely, on the points of her feet. It was a confusing way to walk. Eilo rummaged through the body's brain for ideas as to why she might be doing this, finding only memories relating to movies and shows, where people tip-toed to be stealthy.

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I can hear your footsteps, Eilo had to suppress the urge to groan. Why were people like this? Or are they called toesteps in this scenario?

The brain's contents failed her this time, and bedridden as this body was, she could not exactly go grab one of those trusty phones mortals in this world loved, in order to look it up. She was oddly disappointed.

"Me?" was her question as she failed to come up with any other response for the interloper. The masked woman was holding something with both hands, her arms stretched to their maximum as a piece of metal was brandished like a weapon. Another second later, the body's brain once again briefly stopped being useless as she identified the object as a gun.

Someone was dangerously close to aiming a gun at the body. Eilo would have been worried if she hadn't been but an Instance of something hilariously beyond this. Actually. What happens if I die here? She wasn't a Sliver of Existence. She was a piece of divinity given the shape of a soul, for the express purpose of inhabiting a body.

Now she was positively giddy with curiosity.

"Yes, you," the intruder replied a moment later, but she was blinking repeatedly. Clearly, this had not been what she'd been expecting, but Eilo's attempts at discovering what people usually expected when showing up armed to a bedridden person's room failed her, so perhaps this wasn't the time to get judgmental towards the intruder. "The cause of so much pain. Hundreds—no, thousands!—are still in mourning over what you did, and here you are, getting the best treatment in the world."

As if it were paying off. Eilo knew all too well there was no fixing this body. Had the man himself survived, this world's technology could have probably helped him recover to an extent, but the combination of his age at death and—well—the death itself would forever be a roadblock in practice.

Still, at last Eilo now had an idea of what this might have been about—she could spare herself the effort of sifting through memories to come up with possible reasons. So this is someone he pissed off? Hurt somehow?

For that part, she had no ideas. This wasn't someone she could recognize, even after she looked over the faces the old man's conscious mind had long forgotten. "Who are you?"

The voice was raspy, weathered. To be fair, Eilo hadn't bothered using it much, and she suspected she might be doing damage to it as she did, now. The disconnect between her and the body wasn't only something she complained about because it made her task harder to complete—it was a legitimate problem.

"I am one who speaks for all of them," the woman stated boldly, still gripping the gun. "All the people you hurt, thinking there would never be consequences." She cocked the gun, or at least that was what is sounded like—the original owner of this body paid people to know how those things worked in his stead. "Tell me, Thurmond Thompson. Are you afraid?"

Right, that was his name. My name. That last part left such a bitter taste in her mouth that Eilo had to pause to take mental notes on how that kind of thought could elicit psychosomatic reactions. Bodies were so interesting! It felt like a drop of understanding in an ocean of ignorance, but perhaps this was part of why Existence wished to be—to experience what it meant to be alive.

In the meantime, though, she reasoned the old man would likely have been afraid. She combed through decades of experience cowing behind others whenever things went poorly and tried her best to replicate them—the half-paralyzed body could only do so much, so all she managed was to screw her face up as she vaguely shivered.

"I am." Oh, that didn't sound right. Too calm. She added a quiver to her voice and repeated, "I am!"

"Good, good," the woman's eyes lit up—yet another detail that should have been cause for concern had this been Eilo's problem. "Has your time here made you think about what you did? The lives you ended?"

Eilo couldn't exactly fault the stranger for any anger she might have held towards the body's original owner. Even if the person that had been no longer Existed. It had only ended up in this state—come within range of her real self's domain—because the man had somehow managed to cause countless deaths in the unclaimed void of space. It had given the Deity of Fragile Eternities an unparalleled opportunity, the chance to play around with what remained after death in ways that would have normally taken centuries. The dead from systemless words only made it to them infrequently, and that many, in one place, had been a ridiculous boon.

It had furthered their understanding to the point they now, too, could intercept lives that had been, before their corresponding Sliver could recall them. If nothing else, Eilo was a bit grateful that this man had been stupid enough to indirectly cause that.

But that wouldn't have been the morally correct stance to hold as a mortal, would it? I guess that's one drawback to Instancing? I'll have to take note. Scientists shouldn't feel bad for improving their craft! And it had to be a problem on Eilo's end, because Thurmond sure as fuck would not have cared for what happened—only for the inevitable consequences of being held responsible for it.

"I would do it again," Eilo said, suddenly eager to further ruin whatever must have remained of this man's reputation—but most importantly, still infinitely curious as to what taking fatal damage would mean. This body had already died once, and fixing it enough to be inhabited hadn't exactly erased the past. What happened when someone died twice in a context where death was final? What sort of impact would it have on her as an Instance? Her not returning to the whole would be bad news, but not insurmountable. At worst, she'd have to drift beyond the world through the centuries, until all she stood for and was slowly returned to space, within the Deity's reach. But she doubted she could be destroyed like this—she was naught but a pilot here, and death should be a learning experience.

Maybe that'd be what it took for her to turn this failure into a success—she'd learn what true death felt for one who experienced it, one way or another. All she had to do was provoke this already angry stranger.

"You—" the woman growled, incensed, and Eilo almost smiled as she took another step forward.

Right up until the gun went off, and the woman howled for an entirely different reason. Eilo couldn't lift this body's head further to get a better look, but she could make some confident guesses based off how the woman had all but forgotten her gun, now clutching at her bleeding foot.

By the void, did you seriously just—

The mansion came alive, the sound of a gunshot too much for people to ignore, and now, Eilo groaned in earnest.

As the intruder picked up her gun and fled, Eilo focused on the blood left behind. She understood enough from the old man's memories that that and more could be used to track the woman down, and she didn't want that—how else was she going to get this body killed a second time for the sake of learning?!

So she broke the rule she had imposed on herself not so long ago and let her power cling to the woman for the time being, destroying anything she would have otherwise left behind as a record of her presence—even the blood already spilled. She'd have to let go eventually to avoid destabilizing anything, but by then, the intruder would probably have put more than enough distance between them.

As a nurse entered the room and eyed the suspiciously clean hole in the ground before rushing to see how the old man was doing, Eilo sighed, her thoughts locking in on one she suspected the Deity of Fragile Eternities themselves would have concurred with.

The things I do just to learn how to defy the natural order…

"An accident at the range," Roland repeated as he changed his granddaughter's bandages. "Why did no one call me about this?"

"I told them not to," Myrna insisted, wincing at the latest movement. "I didn't want you to worry, you see."

"I see," he said through narrowed eyes. This was par for the course for him, honestly, but now was not the best time for anyone connected to him to be going around leaving messes for him to clean up—or if they did, he expected some warning in advance. "Do I need to get you a lawyer?"

"No?" Myrna shook her head. "Why would you? Everything is fine. I don't feel like suing the range or anything. Shit happens, and I am very clumsy."

"Maybe you shouldn't carry for the time being, then—pending some more safety lessons."

"What?! No, no! It was just an accident. I'm fine."

"But dear, what kind of grandfather would I be if I let you get hurt like this?" Roland shook his head, giving her a warm smile that radiated all his certainly genuine concern about her wellbeing. "No, I cannot stand for that. I'll have the best instructors brought over, so that this kind of thing never happens again."

She was lying and he knew it—maybe she'd even noticed he knew. But Roland didn't have to fake that part. He did care, and not just because it would ultimately fall to him to clean up the mess. He'd perhaps been too indulgent to the child, but that would change today.

If she wanted to start shit, he'd make sure she learned how to do so properly. Whatever it had been she was up to.

As They awaited Sáinz's next message, Eylo hovered formlessly everywhere and nowhere. They could only stay close for so long without explaining Themselves to a certain entity, and considering the being in question had no mind that could be easily reasoned with, that was to be avoided at all costs. It wasn't as if They could be hurt by It, but no one—no matter whichever heights they reached—liked being annoyed.

A pulse in the distance called to Them, the tiniest speck of what had not so long ago been part of them reaching out involuntarily. An impression of amusement, frustration, and the outlines of a plan.

If They'd been capable of it in this form, Eylo might have laughed.

Having fun, aren't We?

The acknowledgement didn't even last a second, before They resumed Their vigil. Either that would pan out or it wouldn't, and there was little reason to waste energy pondering something they didn't yet have an answer to.

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