"We're worth more than our successes or failures," he says quietly, the words heavy with a significance beyond the immediacy of their joint situation. He smiles, faint and melancholic. "Our inherent bias against ourselves notwithstanding."

Ascension's complexities had taught him that, if anything. The universe, regardless of iteration or genesis or variation, was constructed to be indifferent to the subtle oscillations of comparatively insignificant things like them, despite the Rift's magnified interest.