[ChicletPrime]

well, i've been calling it 'corruption' for lack of a better term simply because its black, dusty and appears to be invasive, at least in Zayne's case, but for all I know its just an intrinsic part of every protocore.

maybe every protocore is made of this stuff as part of its nature. or maybe when protocores are inserted into humans, this is the reaction it produces, like coke and mentos. maybe its something specific to Zayne, although I believe that's flat out wrong as Isaiah at least, when killed by Xavier, exploded into black particles. Hell, Sylus' evol is red and black particles and he's got a whole aether core going on that doesn't seem to be causing him any eye problems at all.

in this specific instance, in that last cutscene, i would agree with you that it appears Zayne was just taking back whatever it was that our Resonance tried to strip off his evol - it was too much, we fainted, he just reverted our efforts. it all jives right up until the one spoken line - the "one last choice". it just seems too weighty to just be reverting to status quo... that and the fact that the blackness spread instantly when he did what he did.

i dunno. i am likely wayyyy overthinking this, simply because out of all the companions so far, Zayne is the least explained so my brain is trying to put together all the puzzle pieces into any shape that could likely fit.

REMINDER TO SELF:  explain the god is playing plinko tomorrow when you're more awake.

Prologue to Tomorrow:
Chapter 3: Onward Again

• I forgot I had more of this section to do! i was so caught up in the branching stories that it completely slipped my mind that they were technically only a pitstop.
  
• Okay, Special Ops is shifting its focus to Ever proper now, since the links to these modified protocores lead straight to them
  
• Andrew is calling shenanigans on how fast Ever is producing ever (hah!) more complex tech. i agree, not-my-boyfriend. but i don't think now is the time to let slip that i know more about that than i should, even if all that i know is that Xavier isn't what he appears and there's a spaceship involved.
  
• okay. Ever is advertising a new "portable" Flux Stabilizer that you can just personally carry around like a lapel pin. suspicious. is everybody going to now be a broadcast tower?
  
• okay, the three fragments we found on the three different branches appear to be part of the same aether core - now officially dubbed "Spatium Core", likely because it was welding space together.
  

THAT REMINDS ME.  i was thinking in the shower, as one does, and I realized - in two of the branches, the Wanderers phased what Xavier called realities together although he failed to explain anything more about it in his branch. but it doesn't overlap just physical spaces, it really overlapped time.  Zayne was Dawnbreaker in his distortion field, although he didn't seem to know why.  Xavier knew exactly where (and when) he was but was still caught up in it. One was a future and one was a past in their respective timelines and both were accompanied by a white fog at points during its progression.

So Spatium Core can weld pieces of time together, at least in a general sense, long enough and real enough to strand the person inside it. 

• and now we have three aether cores on the playing field, two whole and embedded into people (that nobody should know about which means that everybody knows about LOOKING AT YOU SIMONE) and one in pieces that could potentially be assembled. Jenna says that the fragments are in fact being held together currently by "some kind of gravitational pull" and the visual on the screen reflects it. it looks like it wants to come back together from its brokenness.
  
• Xavier did say something about having whole aether cores together would lead to disaster. i guess we really are collecting the infinity stones without meaning to.
  
• oh, there's at least one more piece of Spatium missing.
  

Chapter 4: No Ends

• "Ever Secret Investigation Report"  ESIR.  yeah, somebody needs to step it up on the devs side - if this was FFXIV, the acronym would have been a groan worthy pun. although backwards its RISE which could be something (see: evol is love).
  
• oh. OH BOY. something in that report has something to do with the explosion at home way back a billion years ago.
  
• i am perfectly fine with them re-using backgrounds if they're going to do color grading on them to make them a different time of day. lovely!
  
• forecast is for heavy rain. Rafayel probably stubbed his toe on a can of paint.
  
• oh, an actual storm. lightning and thunder, ahoy!
  
• what is it, lassie-heart-attack? is timothy in the well??
  
• oh shit what the fuck IS that?
  
• wow, did not expect that at all.  that was cool as hell.
  

CHALLENGE FIGHT! (level 18 required, takes level 55 Abysswalker along for an evening stroll)