Vraska had already challenged Jace over Loot. The child hid from him and resisted being placed under mental control, while Jace kept translating fear into proof that Loot was too young to understand necessity. Vraska recognised the pattern because she too had justified cruelty as service to a greater good. She asked him to release the dead, accept the family still beside him and build forward. Jace promised instead that he could make the damage disappear.
When Vraska entered the Meditation Realm, she found Jace burning beneath power no human mind could safely direct. Elspeth prepared to stop him by force; Vraska protected him without endorsing his plan. She offered a harder form of love: no return to an innocent version of themselves, no transformation of Vraska into a reward for his sacrifice, only a future they might choose together. For a moment the realm displayed everything Jace desired—friends alive, planes unbroken, Vraska unscarred.
The vision could not hold. Jace remained mortal, and the realm's obedience consumed the person trying to master it. Reality fractured into mirrored pieces and a void began to erase the prison. Jace broke apart within it. Narset fled with Loot while Elspeth carried them toward an Omenpath and Vraska emerged beside them. Ugin grappled with Bolas as both vanished into the collapse. Whether the mind-mage was dead remained uncertain; what was certain was the cost of his shortcut. The attempt to abolish pain had broken the lock on one of the Multiverse's oldest dangers.