"I have yet to learn why. I have not the memory of it. But I do know that I am left to clean up. It all ends with me. Your struggle is futile. Your foundations are uncertain. I am sovereign from the laws of god and man. A constant. I know, with absolute certainty, that I have fought this battle more times than there are droplets in the ocean. And I have never lost."

It is not an idle boast.

Once again, the ascending King is destroyed.

The wheel of Time is ratcheted back to the start.

But - this time -

in the instant that does not exist, between the universe ceasing to be and the universe being again -

something flits in.

Two entities. Consciousnesses. They have been hurtling ceaselessly through the Void, and they land in a very particular fragment of spacetime.

The time where they land is at the beginning of the story, and the place is in the bedroom of Alice Lydia Gardiner, who is making out with her parentally-disapproved-of boyfriend, Zaid. Maybe she's about to be deflowered; maybe she's about to punch him in the face and kick him to the curb. Who knows? Reality is predetermined, but if no one cares enough to check then it might as well not be. And no one cares about what would happen if this moment were not interrupted.