The destructive potential of it was infinitely greater, but so was the difficulty of achieving it. In her years of searching, she hadn't come close to unlocking the mystery, although the key to it had to be somewhere in the galaxy. She would redouble her efforts to unearth it. As before, she would use her pursuit of renegades like Lagan as cover for her own research. So far as the other ship's officers were concerned, they were simply hunting down the apostates, destroying heretical texts and nothing more.
She would need to speak to Primo Carious again, too. He would have heard some rumour of what had happened, and it would seem strange if she didn't report back to him. She would go to him now, before he could summon her. Perhaps it was time to insist on the unfurling of another shroud around some other planet. He wouldn't agree immediately, of course, but eventually he might consent if she continued to press for one. He needed to think that another shroud was the extent of her ambition, while she needed him to be oblivious to the fact that they were a distraction. The Primo's problem was that he couldn't think big enough thoughts. To him, weak and cautious as he was, the destruction of a single planet was such a horror that he couldn't conceive of anything operating on a larger scale, at a different order of magnitude. The loss of a single planet appalled him so much that he lost his perspective of the wider galactic picture and the truth of the teachings of Omn.
It was a useful failing. And, indeed, the shrouds were welcome, so far as they went. They were, along with pandemics like the one she'd unleashed upon Fenwinter, her most significant success at sending souls for judgement through the wormhole. The occasional slaughter here and there might despatch hundreds, or thousands, but a shroud could kill billions. It looked good until you considered the number of people inhabiting the galaxy as a whole.
She needed an approach that would yield numbers far, far greater. That gave her only one option, if she'd understood all her readings of the ancient texts correctly.
She'd begun to understand that much of the wisdom that Concordance existed by was flawed, blasphemous even. Of course, it was only natural that the truth should be kept hidden from all but the select; it was a truth that would be too much for most people to believe or accept. It had been hammered into her that Morn was another name for evil, a representation of the great enemy of Omn, but she'd harboured her doubts for a long time. Carious and his predecessor Primos had twisted the truth into lies, refusing to reveal what was written in the texts they kept under absolute security at the God Star. Even Vulpis, she now believed, had misunderstood the truth of the situation – or else Omn had chosen not to reveal the full reality to him.
Omn and Morn weren't opposing forces; they were simply two aspects of the same divinity. They were object and mirror image, identical but opposite. They were like the same planet, but one was the light side, bathed in the glow of a sun, and the other was the night side. The Morn were not the Great Enemy, and that meant they were to be embraced rather than rejected. That single revelation guided what she would now do. That was why Omn spoke to her, intoning his urgent words into her mind. That was how she'd come to the correct understanding of his creation, because the texts she'd unearthed, the carved messages on crumbling temple walls and the corrupted, broken sentences on decaying datastores all agreed: Morn was no mere concept, no disembodied influence in people's hearts and minds. They were a real, physical thing. An overwhelmingly powerful ally, one so destructive that the fossilized hierarchies of Concordance feared them more than anything.
At the end of days, every soul, from that of the Primo down, would fly to the wormhole and face the judgement of Omn. The Morn were not the great foe, the killing evil that denied the truth of Omn. They were Omn. They were the means by which everyone could be brought to his presence in the end days. The Morn were Omn's weapon, his sword. His dark sword. And she was the one chosen to wield it.
She had only to discover where in the galaxy it was.
Part 3 - Epochal
1. Aevus
Aevus slipped out of his family's house to find a few moments of solitude. It was the day he would be leaving the surface of his world forever.
The Borial sun was already rising over the distant purple hills, lighting the sky into glowing oranges and pinks. The dawn air was chill as he breathed it in. The birds were calling as they had done every day of his life, and as they would continue to do once he was gone.
The rolling line of the hills – like a stringed musical instrument lying on its side, he always thought – was utterly familiar. Most of the time he paid the scene no attention; the hills were simply there. Now he studied them intently, trying to commit every detail to memory. The hills had framed his life, provided the setting in which he'd existed. He would still be able to see them from his position on the orbiting Cathedral ship, just as he'd be able to gaze down upon his family
