Don't Break My Heart

**Don't Break My Heart** is the thirty-sixth episode of Reflection.

*CRISIS LOOMS. Despite everything going reasonably well, a feeling hangs over OPIA. A sense of looming oblivion permiates the environment. With the arrival of the Stranger of Beasts and beyond, what shape will the swamp and our heroes future take?*

## Summary

After setting up shop in the abandoned GEIST facility in Beleth, Ridill interviews Basil about her new Demonic shape. They study some of its properties, such as how it is easily influenced by the perceptions of others, with Ridill using this property to force Basil to remain a certain size. She promises to help Basil create a sort of focus for her body to prevent outside forces from influencing her without consent. Elsewhere in the same facility, Willow Wisp has a conversation with another patient Ridill is seeing about the nature of his condition and his relationship to his "family". Unbeknownst to her, this is in fact the Pristine One. Elsewhere in the swamp, Arg0s and Cast encounter Cal, who has set up a trap for the Free Will Backup Units still roaming the area. After leaving him, Arg0s suddenly feels a strange sensation as he watches his and Cast's Flames suddenly eject from their bodies as the Golden Knight exits the nearby woods. Arg0s manages to keep their Flames mostly intact using Fateweaver long enough for a protocol embedded in their OPIA uniforms to activate and teleport their Flames into simulacrum bodies back at OPIA HQ. They run into a shocked Dr. Verona and speak to Circuit, whose expertise with piloting multiple bodies helps Arg0s connect to his original body back in the swamp, albeit only partially. Verona takes everyone present into her car and drives off to Beleth.

Back in Beleth, Ace finds Sei engaged with a group of Othersent. She pacifies one with one of her Fang swords but is unable to do much else with it due to that being an ability only Laughter has. Mic eventually arrives and attempts to reconstitute the Othersent's body with Pureflame, but is unable to. Back in the GEIST facility, Basil returns to the main hall and meets back up with Saru and Unit 04. They end up having a conversation about fashion before 04 is suddenly interrupted by a communication from Number Five telling her to return to base. She and Basil find themselves supernaturally compelled to follow, which greatly distresses 04. Saru ends up following the two as well. In Trailhead, Twice, Ascalon, and Breach head up to return to the Sylt Islands. Breach initially feels a sense of something foreboding but decides to follow her orders and continue back to Sylt. In Ridill's makeshift clinic, Ridill and Willow attempt to revitalize Arg0s and Cast's inert bodies while Ace and Mic go to hunt down the Golden Knight. Ridill and Willow are eventually approached by the Pristine One, who Willow is initially frightened of due to an encounter with him in her youth. She quickly learns that this was the "patient" she was talking to earlier. Around this time, Arg0s finally manages to reconnect to his body. Out in the swamp, Ace and Mic successfully manage to follow the Golden Knight's trail and ambush him. When they inform him about what happened to Arg0s, he panicks, telling the two of them that he didn't take Arg0s and Cast's Flames, and if it wasn't him, that means Eternity is somewhere in the area.

Deep beneath the swamp, Stephano continues to engage his mysterious opponent in combat, who managed to separate him from Isaac. He eventually realizes that the scythe-wielding man is Septi, a member of Exulansis. He chases Septi deep into the Godsblood cavern. The area nearby reacts to their presence, forming brief recreations of World Four and World Seven. After some more fighting deeper beneath, Septi calls the fight to a tentative truce and reveals his real intention, which was to get Stephano to follow him in order to gain access to some kind of secret location deep beneath the swamp that he was barred access to previously. Stephano is wary, but decides to comply for now. In Ridill's clinic, Arg0s gets off the bed to allow Ridill to investigate the Pristine One, who explains that he wants to fix something about the nature of Demons that makes them supsceptible to being forcibly controlled by the perception and will of Flame and beings based off of it. Through her ESP, Willow sees several of the memories that were summoned to comprise the Pristine One, and she realizes that the reason Demons are so supsceptible to Flame is because they are only one-Element creatures. Ridill is baffled at how she missed such an obvious conclusion but is proud of Willow nonetheless. Basil's group arrives at the meeting point. Number Five initiallly begins reworking plans to retrieve Mic and Basil, but after Basil approaches him directly he calls the plans off entirely. Ace returns to where he initially encountered Sei earlier and finds Stein being devoured by Othersent. He manages to free him from the horde and learns that Eternity ambushed Stein and ripped out his Flame, causing him extreme internal organ damage. Thinking quickly, Ace used Seagazer to replace the organs that Stein's Flame was emulating with an entity from the Astral Sea, which seems to keep him alive for the moment. Ace and Stein attempt to get back to the GEIST facility to warn everybody, but Eternity makes it there first, using Flame to command the Pristine One to "survive". The Pristine One as a result activates his ability given to him by the Queen of Flames, commanding the landscape around the facility to "be free". The nature of space in the area is warped, and Ace, Basil, Arg0s, Willow, and Sei end up together in a distinctly unfamiliar swamp. They encounter Mic nearby and realize that whatever the Pristine One did completely rearranged the shape of local space. Meanwhile, the left behind Free Will Backup Units, including 04, have no recourse but to listen to the Pristine One's command, and begin to melt into Othersent.

## Characters

### Player Characters

* Ace Galatine
* Basilisk Id
* Willow Wisp
* Arg0s
* Ridill Arondite

### FLOW

* Ascalon
* Twice
* Breach
* Saru

### OPIA

* Dr. Verona
* Mic
* Cast
* Circuit
* Cal

### Demonic Courts

* Golden Knight
* Stein
* Stephano
* The Pristine One
* Sei Miscellany

### GEIST

* Number Five
* Unit 04
* Other Free Will Backup Units

### Other

* Eternity
* Radiant Barrage