On her way up the stairs, Ani is assailed by a strange memory:

She is young again, and is covertly investigating a commotion coming from the Mistress' study. Through the doorway, she spies The Masked One, smoke pouring from a wound, triumphant over a black-cloaked wizard Ani had never seen before. He sneers at her victory, proclaiming that others will come, that she can no longer hide--and is cut off as Chester opens his throat. Young Ani shrieks at this, catching the older witch's attention, who looks at her, unmasked, and sighs. She lifts her staff of nightmares, which seems to devour all of reality, ending the vision.

Ani is certain she'd never observed such a thing, and soon, forces within her mind soothed the dissonance in her memory, fading the revelation into dreamlike mist. She regains herself, and they ascend further, only to find Chester guarding the Mistress' chambers. Half reluctant, and half just plain bored, he nevertheless refuses to yield his post, challenging the party. Before battle can be joined, however, Kekat pounces on him--they fight, briefly, then abscond away without comment, leaving the door unguarded.

Within, they find the Mistress' effects, which may have seemed entirely ordinary, until they spot a strange device of Artifice in her satchel (something we, the audience, recognize as some sort of futuristic cell phone, accompanied by some AR glasses and a nifty makeup multitool). The devices are far beyond the Artifice of the party's present day--let alone the current year of 1372--so their origin is a mystery. Once again, Ani can't recall the Mistress ever dalliancing with high technology, but there it is, plain to see.

And as she examines the device, Ani falls prey to another memory, even more powerful than the last:

It's a pleasant summer afternoon, and the Coven is marking it with tea at a fancy streetside bistro. Cars streak near-silently by, snaking between the soaring glass towers of the city. Keket and Zahl are yammering on about something--Ani has zoned out, and is checking messages on her phone. Suddenly--and very much out of order--the color pales from the world. The End has come, far earlier than it has any right to. And the others don't seem to notice right away. Always, there are a few weak souls who succumb quickly, harbingers of what's to come. A lorry driver, no doubt taken by the consuming void, breaks from traffic an accelerates, crashing through meager fences and tables...and right past Ani. Just like that, the others are gone, and she realizes quickly that she is now all that stands between this world--nay, all of reality--and total annihilation. She moves with haste, avoiding confrontation as much as possible, but, as often, forcing her way past guards, passers-by, and just those unfortunate enough to be in her way. Her magic comes slow and clumsy, but it suffices, and she makes her way to the Municipal Power Core, the nearest source of adequate power for her ritual. Though she has cast the spell hundreds of times before, this time, she didn't have the other two to help. And yet, she must persevere, somehow. Lacking the time or materials to properly prepare, she begins her hopeless task...and is joined by Natalia, young as ever, as always there for her in her hour of need. And then, even by the Masked One, from beyond death, ready to aid in one last spell. As the world unravels, she casts the spell, and pulls reality from the jaws of death once more.

Ani is floored by the revelation, and, once again, her mind reels from it, not quite ready to process it, to admit it was real. It takes some doing, but she recovers, and leads the party up the stairs, past secret doors, to the fifth and final floor, where the serious magic and treasures are to be found--and undoubtedly the Mistress.

The door to the casting room remains slightly ajar, enough for them to spy the Mistress, unmasked (but her face pointed away from them), her staff drawing forth memories from her helpless body. She's seeing things she can't possibly see, images of the future, beyond her own death, and beyond even Ani's own present. The timeline will be horribly altered, unless they can stop her.

Ani creeps forth, evading the Mistress's notice, and grasps the staff, surviving its cruel tests of worthiness with aid from Keket. She suddenly finds herself back in her own body, no longer helpless, facing the Masked One...except she is unmasked, and something about her face strikes Ani with a life-changing revelation--one quickly soothed away by forces familiar, yet unfamiliar, as the situation rapidly evolves.

The Mistress's mask takes flight, gathering darkness about itself, and multiplying many times over. It is dizzying at first, though soon, the party (and the Mistress) resolve its true form, seeing beyond its multi-temporal nature, to the animating force at its center. It still appears as a mass of darkness, using the Mask to hide its identity, but all are immediately certain--as if from having faced such foes many times over their long lives--that they face one of the Unseen Enemies here, now, in the flesh (or at least in the dark blobbiness).

The Mask taunts Ani, challenging her to remember what she chooses to forget, claiming that she is unable to defeat him, as she cannot even master herself. And battle is joined. The masked enemy is powerful, but the Coven and the Mistress are equal to the challenge, and they best him. Keket's divine magic forces him to face his sins, and he caves before the might of Isis. Through her divine blessing, they are afforded a vision:

In a room very similar to the one in which the Coven parleyed with the Goddess, in the far future near to their world's destruction, another group confers. Four figures on either side of the table flank a fifth, and all but the fifth cannot be identified, for the Mask magically obscures their faces. But that fifth is all too familiar. Though dressed in some futuristic garb, which, despite its strangeness, does not seem to be the garb of high honor one would expect from a god, they behold Kelemvor, God of Death. He hardly looks divine, as he hems and haws about the prospect of some proposal they are considering. It becomes evident that he is being asked to suspend Death itself--for what reason the Coven must only guess--and is laying out the (rather unfortunate) consequences of such a dereliction of his duty. Nevertheless, they order him to carry it out, and the vision freezes as he confesses to Isis, to the Goddess. He speaks of walking dead, of corpses returned from the earth, of a massive revolt from the Eternal City, of terrible chaos and suffering. And, through tears, he admits, "it didn't even save Her."

Back in...what we shall call the Present...the darkness releases Kelemvor, who disappears, presumably returning to his home plane (being, after all, an outsider). The Mask remains animate, and challenges the party once more. Though that one was broken, perhaps someone more personal might have an edge. The darkness gathers around a form, then reveals Raithen--older, more scarred, darker, and dangerous. The Masks speaks, explaining that Ani and Keket ruined him, that some of the timelines in which he never met them brought him peace, and even redemption, but their presence in his lives led inevitably to his downfall. It tooks its place on his face, and bade him to attack.

After some hack-and-slash, Zahl fells Raithen with a Dark Star, after proclaiming, "Raithen, you were an adequate lover, but...well, that's all I can think of to say." Not to be outdone, the Mask gathers up more darkness, this time in the shape of Valik. He also gets beheaded by the Dark Star. The Mask conjures a copy of Zahl, who nearly turns things around by stealing good (?) Zahl's Dark Star, but Keket and the Mistress pile on to turn the tide, destroying evil (?) Zahl. Good (?) Zahl expresses regret that she didn't get to it herself, which was weird.

Finally, the form of Tchazzar appears from the darkness, which then spreads out to encompass everything but he and Ani. This time, he wears no mask, and levels no accusations, making a play at being the true Tchazzar, and beckoning her to flee from this place with him, to save their children.

Natalia's voice whispers in her ear, as does the Mistress. They know the spell that will end this charade, that will send this unseen enemy to his demise. Calling upon her full magical power, aided by her sister and her adoptive mother, drawing strength from the titanic forces of grief and anger levied at her foe by countless millions, Ani invokes the grandest possible release of karmic retribution possible: she casts Everybody's Grudge against Kelemvor, God of Death.

Every mother who lost a child, every doubter whose body was used as mortar in a pointless wall, every love cut short, every future nullified, every ounce of the agony of everyone who'd ever died wrong, and everyone who'd ever lost someone, not to mention the suffering of millions of souls who toiled in his Eternal City, forever forsaken...it all came together, in the form of unstoppable divine destruction. Kelemvor, god of Death, was annihilated--in every reality, in every timeline, all at once--and the darkness was no more.

The Mask itself fell, and shattered, and with it, the last of the barrier's in Ani's mind.

A city of towering glass spires, a monument to creation, how resplendent in its time...now hangs in deathly silence as the sky turns gray, as the color leeches from the world, as its soul fades into darkness. You've seen this before, and you know how this ends. Another universe gone...another thread missed...another cycle begins.

As panic sets in around you, you already spring into motion. Old thoughts, ancient memories your body remembers more than you do, bring forth the old magic--or some tiny, wavering flicker of it. It's all you need to notify the others, to assemble the Coven.

Fitting, perhaps, that's it's a fraction of "Covenant", because that's just what it is. You, Keket, and Zahl, still alive, and still battling the enemies of this world, even if everyone has forgotten so much about its past. Its shining glory is about to come to an end, but you three might just save it...or its nearest facsimile.

You need a meeting spot. You've seen chaos in the cities in plenty of past cycles--they won't do. You remember a dozen old haunts, now lost to time. All but one. It lies beneath a great University, its origins long since revised in the history books, but the builders never went quite so far down as the sanctum sanctorum of Keket's temple.

You'll need power, of course, and plenty of it. And your bodies are...well, you do your best to live a healthy lifestyle, but you're no spring chickens. What are you, like 250? Zahl closer to 300? You all stopped counting eons ago. But no matter...you won't need the channel the power through your ancient, dusty magical conduits.

You've got an Accumulator sitting below you.

Sure, past Keket may have used it to create cities, and whole life forms, and even move it to a more suitable location, but it's still got a few megatons to play with. It's more than enough to power your spell. Of course it is. You've done this more times than you can count, at this point. You've never failed the cast the ritual correctly, but you still take all the necessary steps--bathing, purging, candles, the whole nine. And it gives you time to catch up--after all, you barely check in more than once a decade, and it passes the time to discuss the subtle differences in your most recent runthrough.

And when all is prepared and ready, you step into the circle long ago crafted for just this purpose, long ago prepared with all you might need and more. And you cast a spell. A very, very powerful spell. Just as you've done a hundred times. If you fail, everything everywhere ends with a whimper. No pressure.

You cast a spell, and save the world.

Maybe.

Maybe this time.

When the Masked One is defeated, the mask falls to the ground, shattered. Ani once again possesses her own body. She realizes she is in the Hall of Mirrors. She hears the voice of her mistress, and the voice of Natalia, speaking in harmony: "The mirror, Ani. Gaze into the mirror. Face the truth."

And she does.

And she remembers.

A little girl, scared and alone, in a dark, cold tower, in the care of a strange, distant woman. The Masked One is the only caretaker she's ever known, and yet, in her heart, she knows she wants more. She deserves more. She deserves someone who will love her, who will care about her, who will play with her, who will never hurt her. Who will protect her.

And then she hears a strangely familiar, comforting voice say, "Hi Ani." It's a girl, the same age as Ani, her hair dark where Ani's is light, a bit more tomboyish in appearance, but warm and welcoming. "My name is Natalia. Do you want to be my friend?"

---

At first, you were the best of friends, sisters in all but blood. And that was fine. That was enough. For a while. But the Mistress grew colder, grew less tolerant of your games, less patient with your will. Though she was never cruel out of anger, or spite, or jealousy, your young mind couldn't appreciate the subtle difference. She was mean. And her lessons were not fun.

And so, more and more, Natalia protected you. She would do the worst of the scrubbing, take the worst of the lashes. And then, one day...she did it all. It was always her fault, she would claim, she was always the instigator, the perpetrator, the worse of the two. And she did it with love, to protect her dearest friend, her sister.

And then came a day, when Ani had to do something...terrible. Something that would destroy her, but not doing it would destroy her just as well. She had to be free. She had to fulfill her destiny. This happened. It always happened. It couldn't not happen. That's just how fate works. And yet, Natalia couldn't let her suffer that alone. She didn't want her to suffer at all.

So, as with all of the worst lessons, the harshest punishments, the darkest revelations, Natalia took care of it. And when she was done, she bid one last favor of her sister. "Forget, Ani. Forget all of this. Lock me away."

And Ani did. She locked her sister away, her best friend, and she forgot why. She saw her Mistress' blood, her lifeless body, and she didn't know what had killed her. She feared for her own life, she feared every possible fear, as her world crashed down around her. And so she ran. She gathered her things--and a few of the Mistress'--and she ran. She ran from the tower, from the forest, from her old life. And she ran to the town. To the Temple. She knew she would find help there, even if she didn't remember why.

But now...you do.

You remember why you locked her in the mirrors, why you developed a phobia of any mirrored surface, banishing them from the palace, even to the point of forgetting that you'd done so. You remember what became of her convalescence after the incident with your father. You remember the confusion on Keket's face when you asked for help with your sister. You remember...how the Mistress died. You remember who killed her. And why. You remember a hundred memories, hidden from you by her magic, her last wish, that you forget.

You...remember...everything.

---

Natalia is...not real. But she is. She's as real as anyone. She's done more for you than anyone. She's your best friend, your sister, your...you wouldn't have made it this far without her.

But she doesn't have a body. She lives in your mind. She lives in your soul. She's part of you. And now that you realize that...she can be with you again. You can be together again.

You see her now. In the mirror. In her face is...understanding. Forgiveness. Love.

And in unifying with her, you regain all that you lost, all that you dissociated. Every harsh lesson, every dark revelation...now, with the strength you’ve gained, with all you’ve overcome, you understand its purpose, and it can no longer hurt you. You face your darkness, and you let it inside you, and you are unafraid. And you are stronger for it.

And you remember more, still. You remember that cold, lonely night, as the snow gently fell upon the bodies of the witches who tried—and failed—to defend you. You remember laying low the man who felled them—your father. You remember picking up the crying child. You remember looking into the eyes of her mother, as she drew her last breath. And you remember saying “Thank you. I love you, mother.”

And you remember...so much.

The death node. Its defender. The spell to bind it to you. Raising the tower. Making a home for yourself, and for the baby.

You remember young Ani, her first words, her first steps. Every lesson you taught, every mis-step she took. You knew she would be alright, of course. But you knew she needed this. And more. You taught her everything you could, everything you’d learned, everything she would need to become herself. To become as strong as you were. Stronger. Better.

Because you were the Masked One. From the first day, until the last.

You lived for two hundred and forty two years. You’ve seen things that beggar belief, that are difficult still to explain, to reconcile with that young child’s view of the world. And she will see it all, too. But maybe—just maybe—with all you gave her, with all you taught her, she can do better. Maybe, in her future, the world doesn’t fade, doesn’t falter. Maybe she will do what you could not.

This Ani may yet defeat the Unseen Enemies. She may yet save the world’s future. She was ready. She was prepared...as much as you could possibly prepare her. And it was time for you to go. The revelation came to you in quiet contemplation, clear as day. The final lesson you needed to teach her. Her only hope for a future, and your only hope for salvation.

She did as you bid her, with strength surprising even you. She overcame the first of many demons, many obstacles. She grew stronger. And you saw her become what you knew she could. Powerful. Good. Warm and loving to the worthy, and deadly to the unworthy. She was more than you could have hoped for.

You died. And yet, you live on. The past that created you has changed. This Ani, your Ani, you...she has a different future. She will find the path through infinite darkness, against enemies unseen, against all odds...she will face the darkness. And she will overcome it.

She has to. Or everything, everywhere, will come to a meaningless end. You've looped through this existence a hundred times, and now you enter the last cycle.

This is it.

At this point, Ani is able to accept the Goddess' gift / curse, the ability to exist simultaneously across all points of her personal timeline, and to perceive (and combat) entities that are not bound to time. Thus, at any point, with a simple act of will, Ani could step into her younger self...or into her future. She could know what becomes of her children over the next few days, or years, or...the rest of their lives. She could know what becomes of her Empire, her legacy, all of her works. She could see the end of time--a hundred different ways. I leave it to you to decide what she chooses to see, and when.

Natalia was not real, in the sense that she was a living being born of some other mother, and raised by the Mistress in the tower. She was created by Ani, whose loneliness, combined with her immense magical talent, manifested in the Shadow Realm to create a companion for her. From that point, Natalia was, and has remained, a thinking, living entity, able to freely traverse the Shadow Realm, not to mention Ani's mind, and as such she was visible and tangible to Ani, if not to anyone else. (In the later years, her power was sufficient to create a tangible--if temporary--body of shadowstuff.)

Over the years, Natalia began to take over Ani's consciousness from time to time, to shield her from some punishment or suffering, or to perform tasks she didn't want her to have to do. She began to accumulate knowledge that she though would harm Ani's innocence, inadvertently siphoning off the revelations that would empower Ani's magic and will.

And in the very end, she responded to a challenge from the Mistress, obeying her command, perhaps to the old woman's surprise. Using your body, and her terrible knowledge, she slew the Mistress. And, in her last request to you, she bade you to forget--not just what she'd done, but to forget her, to leave her behind, for her own good. And she did. Mostly. Natalia wanted to leave the good memories, the joy, the sense of companionship. But it was a tricky thing to work around. She had to know that her sister was locked away, but she couldn't know too much about why.

Natalia, in her twisted way, only wanted what was best for her sister and dearest friend. But, in this act, she created a terrible dissociation in Ani, of which she wasn't conscious--she couldn't be. And, for her part, Natalia couldn't help but keep trying to interfere. When her world was falling apart, when she desperately needed to strike back against her enemies, Natalia opportuned upon her sister's glance in the Hall of Mirrors, and stole her body once more, to slay her father. Her intentions were...good-ish, I suppose...but it was just one more violation, as Ani's body had only just recovered from being taken by the spirit of Nythra, the Covenant Slayer, who murdered her only other living relative just days after she'd met him. Her mind began to fight back. When the chaos of that day was over, the Masked One appeared to her, and bade her to smash the mirrors. She did. And she didn't look into another mirror for nine years.

Now, with all the dust settled, Natalia remains, once more unified with Ani, cheating the shattering of the mirrors with a trick of Chronomancy. And yet, this reunion is much more consensual than the last. Natalia has forgiven Ani for locking her away (even if it was half her idea in the first place), and acknowledges her misdeeds. She wants them to be together again.

(Also, if it's of interest, Keket has the technology to create whole, living humanoid bodies for dissociated minds in need of one.)

It has become clear to Ani, through the revelation of her own memories, that in her inevitable future, she will live for centuries hence, into a world of technology no doubt spurred by the Artifice research and development already underway, where she will blend in as just another ordinary person, along with Keket and Zahl. The three call themselves "the Coven", and in the far future, they remain the world's guardians, not against everyday monsters and mayhem (which isn't particularly common anyway), but against an event they know is inevitable: the destruction of their entire world, its entire timeline, and, ultimately, the annihilation of the Universe in which it is contained.

She knows that this event is caused by the Unseen Enemies--a name nobody is quite sure when it was coined, given the temporal wackiness going on, but it was predicted by Augathra the Mad centuries ago, and sure enough, marks the final year of the world's future, 1600 DR, or, more accurately, the year following the latest year they've even seen the end come. Moreover, she knows that it is an unintended consequence of said enemies' attempts to muddle with the timeline--the Event is what happens to a Universe when they change history, nullifying that Universe's past.

She knows that their temporal meddling seems to begin in 1358 (the Year of Shadows, when the gods were cast to earth, chaos ensued, and several gods died or were reborn) and rarely extends beyond 1385 (the Year of Blue Fire, when Mystra died and the world's magic went haywire). Through simple deduction, it seems most likely they are attempting to prevent the death of Mystra--and repeatedly failing.

What she doesn't know is the exact identity of the Enemies, and perhaps more importantly, where and when they are based. And now, the Coven has proven that they can pin one down, and defeat him. Kelemvor was outed as one of the Enemies, and has been dispatched. They don't yet know what effect this will have, as it is unclear when--and in which timeline--the deed was done. But it is done, and they face one less Enemy.

Keket and Zahl are aware of all of this, too, but with one exception. They can see their own future, to a world of glass towers, flying cars, and high technology. They can see the end of the world. Keket can see a million lives before her own, thanks to an ancient breeding program and her Starborn nature. Zahl...well, who knows, she never shares. But Ani is a little different. Because Ani is a looper.

At some point during the, probably an instant before the destruction of the Universe, she loops back in time, manifesting on the day of her birth, mere hours after her mother delivered her. But she's not in her own body--she's in the body of the Masked One, one of the witches in the highly secret expedition to deliver Ani's mother to safety, and to protect the first of the Goddess' new chosen, which was tragically intercepted by enemies, after betrayal from within the Covenant. In fact, the Masked One was one of the Durthan double agents within that party, who helped to betray the guardians, to steal the Chosen for themselves, with the help of the child's father. And from the moment she steps into Wilhelmina's body, Ani is in control.

She uses the Durthan's body to rescue the infant, who would otherwise die of exposure. She travels to the death node in the Yuirwood, defeating a powerful Genius Loci, mastering it, and claiming it as her stronghold. She erects a tower--a home for herself and the child--and raises the Chosen, though not kindly. She knows she must harden her against the impossible battle she faces. She must not only become as strong as her older self, but stronger still, and to that end, she orchestrates the upbringing that Ani remembers still, more fondly through a lens of nostalgia than her younger self might attest to.

But how is any of this possible?

The Masked One has a name, and an identity beyond elderly Ani's charade. She is Wilhelmina Petrovna, and was of the Wychlaran (and the Durthan) for over 50 years before adopting Ani. She apprenticed under Radduk, and later even studied under the Simbul herself, and was known--at least to a few--to the Court of Aglarond. She was a signatory of the Covenant, and her name and mark is still embedded into the table on Olympus. None of that was a fabrication by a time-traveling witch from the future. So how is it that Ani stepped into her body?

Until this episode, Ani (as the Masked One) assumed that her desperate ploy worked. It was sort of like the Patronus Light--she knew she could do it, because she'd already done it. She remembered becoming the Masked One, rescuing her young self, raising the tower, all of that. And in the last instant of the Spell, when the Universe blinked out of existence, she threw her awareness back in time, to the earliest moments of her life, and found herself not in the body of a newborn, but in Wilhelmina's. Another chance. Another cycle. Armed with all she'd learned in the previous one. Surely, that would give her the edge. Surely this time, she could win.

And now, as of the events of this episode, she's calling that into doubt. She remembered looping just once...but now, with the Goddess's gift, and her mind unclouded by Natalia's magic, she remembers looping a hundred times, or more. It perhaps partially answered the question of why she thought she could time-travel in the first place, having never had such an ability, but only raises more questions. Even if, at some point on her own personal timeline--24,000 years in the future, as it were--she would eventually come into the power to jump around freely along its length, how did that entitled her to jump into someone else's body. Moreover, how did that power--which came with strict limitations about altering the past or even the future--allow her to act differently every time she looped?

It seems there remain mysteries to solve.

The Coven can clearly remember visions of their own future, and among them is The Spell. Feel free to rename it. It's the most important spell anyone's ever cast. Hundreds of years in the future, when the world ends, the Coven comes together to cast the Spell, as they'd planned long, long ago. It's the reason none of them could die, or go into space, or otherwise abandon their post for all those years. It was their reason for existing.

The Spell's purpose is to save the world--moreover, to save the entire Universe, for at some point in the future, they discern the consquence of the Unseen Enemies' temporal shenanigans. Every time they change the past to save their beloved Mystra (allegedly), they destroy any number of Universes that might have existed. Although the number of such Universes is infinite, it is nonetheless depletable. A butterfly may flap its wings this way or that, a dice may roll a 1 or a 6, and a photon might pass through this slit or that...but the vast, vast majority of random events are meaningless to the ultimate outcome of the world. There are only so many major revisions the timeline can endure. At some point, all futures are denied to the world, and it cannot continue into the future. And so it simply dissolves, unraveling reality with it. They can't know how many times the Enemies rewrite history. It may be infinite. It doesn't matter. What matters is that all ends converge on the year 1599, the last possible year of any timeline. And from that fulcrum, from that battlefront, Void is devouring the Universe. It may be unstoppable, it may be hopeless, but they have to at least try.

And so, they vowed to remain here, as long as it took to reach the End, or perhaps to find an alternate solution. And when the End came, they cast their spell. Its purpose is to preserve the Universe--in a way. They cannot stave off oblivion, but they can deny the Void its feast. The spell takes the unbound thread of the Universe, as its future sprays into the Void, and sort of coils it up. It collapses back into its own past, retracting into the relative protection of the beginning of the temporal envelope of the Enemies' machinations.

The hope is that their alternate-Universe selves would all do the same, and maybe, just maybe, someone would get lucky, and find a way to truly stop the Unseen Enemies. And, when they did, those other Universes wouldn't be casualties, but could once again exist, their timelines saved within the fabric of Reality, ready to be woven back into the cosmic tapestry by whatever celestial force has that responsibility.

Keket and Zahl can see that spell being cast, hundreds of years in the future, but Ani can remember casting it many, many times, in a hundred different timelines. She can draw upon that knowledge now, perhaps to refine the Spell, perhaps to do something entirely different.