Joahan.
So you do have something that they could use, to see if it can work at all? If you do, I'll give it to Natí. I assume you don't want to be implicated. The more you do, the more likely people will put two and two together, after all.
And I don't know the answer yet. About what will balance the things that I bring to this situation. Honestly, I've felt all along, since Badr, that I should be more like you. You're the only one who ever knows what's happening, and you are always a step ahead of everyone else. Possibly I've been trying to mimic you from the start, and maybe that's part of why the things I try don't work the way I want them to. They're half-measures: ideals that I'm not fully owning, because they are hard to make work...and I, Faihan, have never had the faith required to power through. Badr got further than I have, because he did, but he also probably hit walls, too, because he didn't have balance to make his ambitions land.
Over and over, I agree that the way you do things probably is more effective, and I slip and keep things to myself, or try to do things alone. So I didn't tell you what we were doing, and because I thought if that book was still there, it might have something in it that would help me keep you from using yourself for the seal. But it wasn't there. Aether said something important had been there, but wasn't. It had left a trace. I didn't tell you, because I thought if you knew, you'd swoop in and take it, and I wouldn't be able to stop you. That you would be right about everything, and everything that I've wanted and everything I've tried to do would be meaningless. I guess that's what I'm getting at. That I'm telling you now what we did and why, and maybe I will tell you in the future before we make any other big moves, because I think I was trying to be like you once again. Some sacrifices have to be made; some lies have to be told and secrets kept. We can't do everything the way we want to, because those things are tools that if we throw away, we put ourselves and others at risk. I do understand that, as much as I want to be wholly idealistic and have faith in faith itself. I don't know where that balance is struck, between doing things the way I believe, and doing things the way that achieves something.
But funnily enough...I think...maybe it is between where you stand and where I stand.
So maybe the answer is "you." And maybe that means your answer is me. And I wish that you could trust that a little more. But I guess our ideological differences are too great. Because you could explain to me a thousand times why one life, one soul, is nothing compared to everything else, and I can explain to you a thousand times why the universe is a place without boundaries and so there doesn't have to be only one path to take... I don't even think that we can't hear each other. I just think we can't accept the other's thoughts.
But who knows.
Maybe someday we will balance each other out somehow. And maybe that will show us the route we were supposed to be taking all along.
Anyway. Your soul keeps coming back. Maybe it isn't destiny. Maybe it's just some selfish party deciding it for you. Nero's people. Your brother. But I think you can see the pattern. I don't know if a patchwork "soul" will do any better, but...why not try? If nothing else, maybe it's a jar we can hold Nero in to keep him from raining down devastation on us every other lifetime.