There is a doctrine in Orphic magic called the attraction of souls. It proposes that certain persons are fated to be together, for good or ill, and that their souls will move through the world, across as many lives as they need to find one another. The moment of conjunction will yield a shift in the nature of the world, for better or worse, and it is the duty of the wise and of the initiated to identify such moments of unison and prepare the participants, so that the scales of life are balanced towards the benign and the earth—little by little—is made a paradise. To the Orphics, the attraction is a literal force and not a metaphor: it is a power of nature that tugs and hauls upon these sundered ones the way a river flows to the sea. The reunification of disconnected parts cannot be stopped. The soul of Adeodatus is torn into five parts, the demon told me in my dream. Perhaps those parts seek reunion. Perhaps what I am doing is exactly what I am supposed to do, and this false Chamber emerges from that necessary remaking of the whole.