Varyx had never really understood why it was called Space. Were there other arcana named specifically after their reflection in the Lie?

Distance wasn't real. Connections were real.

Her connections were always so thin, but ordered. Clean. Threads she could snap when they became knotted. Threads she could tug on, to manipulate and guide, but never strong enough to pull her off-balance. She'd seen what those thick ropes could do. Hold you up, give you support, but they could hang you, too. Pull you down and drown you. Or fray and leave you feeling a missing weight forever.

Stretched out on her bed, she was thinking of her connections. How many there were. How strong they had become. Perhaps the thought of community had allowed her to forget why she kept such connections thin. It wasn't possible, here, to keep herself at a distance. She had a cabal. You can't live with someone - or a group of someones - without getting tangled up with them.

Though it seemed she didn't need strong connections pulling her in two different directions to start tearing herself into two pieces. She was already doing that well enough herself. Two great yawning fears, screaming inside her head and demanding that she run. Run to her cabal and wrap them up in these connections, tie them together into a great suffocating knot that couldn't be undone. Or run away, weaken the links until they could be severed at a moment's notice when the pressure became too much, and disappear to start again somewhere else, just as she had here.

She took a deep breath. Magic rolled over her and muted the panic that tingled her nerves and drove her heart into an erratic beat. She had yet to make a decision out of fear that she hadn't eventually come to regret. In its place, however, a disconcerting question.

If the heart of the cabal broke, what would remain?