Division is the universe's force for creation. Reality is ripe with possibility when things spiral and fly and crash into each other. When the outcome becomes unpredictable, something happens: Possibility emerges. I can grab on to possibility. Widen the gyre that deafens the falcon and spins the center apart, as they say.

All coalitions not grown from the inside out, but made instead by bringing outsiders together, have cracks through them. Foundational kintsugi can be exploited. A union made from gold is just nice to look at. Nothing is stronger than the monocoque, the single piece.
This is Lume's "Imperium." For all the great gifts of flat time that VI has given us, the Imperium has not resolved the tension that animates its core. Lume has enjoyed decades in a moment, using VI's grace to propagate and train vast legions of Barant soldiers and weapons, to capture and recondition generations of Psions. But for all that effort, the Imperium still lacks the summative soul of a nation. Torobatl is still beyond his efforts. All he has built is a self-contradictory revanchist movement stitched together by grievances, garbed to look like an army.

Shared hostility makes tight bonds, but the main partners—Barant, Psion—are still enemies. The would-be master and the defiant servant cinched together for millennia, bonds broken for centuries. They haven't shaken the pain. The soul remembers the imprint of the bindings. These tidy categories both hate Caiatl, but they hate her for different reasons; those reasons aren't germane here.

What I can use is this: Barant and Psion have come to despise each other. The Barant see themselves as superior to the Psions. The Psions have never been free enough to consider themselves supreme. Lume will lose control of his coalition despite the powers afforded to him by our patron, VI. Lume's nascent state is fraying not from the edges, but from the center: the point of the stitch, where the binding is meant to be strongest.

The Imperium will fail. I can see this in my dreams. I can read what trembles the fibers of reality. But until the Imperium collapses, I will use it to further my ultimate goals: Defeat the Vanguard; break their tyranny. I'll reach into the seams of his Imperium. Tug the right threads. Spiral them apart in a way that I can predict. Stoke the fires to burn in a controlled manner, prescribe the burn, and then search the violence for promising candidates necessary to complete my work.

The Psions will be my first attempt. The fruit plucked from division's harvest.

Cabal—Barant, especially—live long lives. Lume's project will fail, but he will endure. That is the Cabal nature, anyway, to endure. Even if he must use the last of his pliable muscles to drag his ossified corpse to Torobatl's shore, he will see it done, and I will be there with him. He has the last of my admiration; let this effort of mine be a test of his mettle, a lesson in pain that will prompt him to grow stronger. This is the lesson that VI confirmed for me: growth and knowledge can only come from pain. Ancient cultures practiced scarification. I do the same.

VI, are you listening to me? Witness this vessel. I await your response.