The dark took Lily the same quiet way it always did, and when it let her see again, she stood once more in the small grey room, four tiles glowing where five had once hung.
[Choose one deck to rebuild. This process cannot be reversed.]
Dreadlings. Dreadgate. Nightweave. Dread Sovereign.
She read them over slowly, without the urgency her first rebuild had carried. No fresh loss was pushing her toward an answer this time. This time the choice was about what she'd never actually finished understanding, even after a year of carrying it.
Her eyes settled on Nightweave, and she thought of every copy of herself she'd ever thrown at an enemy, close enough to her own shape to fool an eye but never quite close enough to mean anything.
"Copies were never the point," she said slowly, working the thought out loud. "I was always trying to ask a bigger question and settling for a smaller trick."
"Nightweave," she said, and touched the tile.
[Nightweave: erased.]
