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You rise and speak to the villagers, assuring them that you faced the False Icon's champion and emerged undefeated. They forget the obvious setback with the Specular as you sweep them into the narrative and describe everything you saw, leaving out the parts toward the end where either you or the universe went insane.

"Now that you've played to the local audience," Dr. Sabbatine says, sounding a bit annoyed, "we must address the central paradox of our situation." She clears her throat. "If you try to return home, Stralchus, the False Icon, or both remain behind, and they do something to bring about the gray world. So if you return home, you don't return home, if that makes sense."

You run the idea over in your mind a few times. It sounds like you need to solve things here in the past if you're ever to return to your future, not some other future.

"And I end up trapped in a tiny bubble!" the doctor continues. "You must remain at least long enough to stop the gray mountain from crashing into the world of the past. And I don't know how you're going to stop it."

Alexius and Control discuss the paradox with Dr. Sabbatine, trying to determine a way out. Unfortunately, the only way out seems to be through.

"Through Stralchus and the Ziggurat," Alexius says. "Blast. I had hoped to take the coward's way out."

"There may be no way out," Therko says, pushing his way through the crowd. He's dirty and looks tired and carries a pack with traveling equipment. "I have been speaking to the downriver tribes. The Crowned Serpent has finished raising his army." (He uses the recently adopted Koiné word.) "It's coming for the village."

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