Narset quieted the travellers' competing expectations long enough for the realm to reveal its centre. Ugin remained there, diminished but alive, entwined with his brother Nicol Bolas. The Meditation Realm was their prison. Ugin believed death might only provide Bolas another route back, so he had committed what remained of himself to containing the amnesiac elder dragon for millennia. Every conversation weakened that arrangement, and speaking Bolas's name began returning pieces of the tyrant's memory.
Ugin could not leave to calm the dragonstorms without risking a greater disaster. Narset asked for knowledge instead, but the answer remained the same: his attention was the lock. Jace had come for something else. An illusion concealed his movement until he reached the gem suspended above Ugin's head. He seized its power, not to free Bolas, but to take control of the realm beneath reality. Loot's mental map had shown him a substrate touching countless worlds. Jace believed sufficient will could turn it into an instrument of repair.
His argument made catastrophe sound compassionate. Phyrexia's invasion had shattered lives and worlds; with this power, he could restore the dead, remove scars and make every loss avoidable. The vision narrowed around Vraska. Jace wanted the woman he loved safe and untouched by what had happened to her, even after she told him to stop. His goal was tenderness stripped of consent, a perfect future imposed so completely that nobody would remember choosing another.