Keiser wasn't even sure if the changes he had made in those first two weeks of living as Muzio had done any good at all, especially in Hinnom Village.
The deaths there had struck him harder than he expected. Too hard.
Each face, each body, had pressed against his mind until he couldn't escape the thought, if he died, if anyone close to him died again now, he wouldn't be able to change it.
He wouldn't make a difference, not to Muzio's fate, not to his own as Keiser.
The truth he kept shoving down his throat rose back up each night: death was permanent.
It always had been.
And yet… how was he supposed to reconcile that with his own reality?
With the fact that he had already died once, betrayed, and then woken in another man's body?
That paradox gnawed at him. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to believe that the same helplessness waited just around the corner.
What he wanted, no, what he needed, was change.
