eyes of gosh

[Firstly! WHAT WE KNOW THAT HAS BEEN COMMUNICATED (interviews etc.):]

[there will be a heist]

[a wedding]

[lots of immaculate fashion]

[Hell gets Harrowed, whatever that may be like]

[Ianthe does something fucked up]

[there's a full penetration scene apparently]

[something involving a venus flytrap?]

[and being woken up in the morning?]

[reversed power dynamic; a weak Harrow to a strong Kiriona]

[possible: a repetition of the paragraph where Alecto stabs John through the heart (the way HtN is structured leads me to read the last paragraph of NtN as one that might be repeated somewhere in AtN)]

[there's a line that Muir wonders may have her excommunicated from the Catholic church]

[we'll come to understand just how horrifying love can be]

[the big major thing of AtN happens early in the book and the rest of the book is spent dealing with the implications]

[these range from "plausible" to "reaching pretty far" and i'm unashamed.]

[some of these involve characters who have died but not brought back canonically ever since, physical or confirmed spiritual alike. Let this show the testament to the breadth of fanfiction possibly and perhaps inspire those with better long-form fiction-writing ability than myself.]

[Also heads up, i've seen posts around by other fans talking about a few of these ideas, my seeing them being some time after my typing them here - i've thought about each of these by my volition, as they (y'all!) have, and it is delightful to see others drawing up speculations 🖤 Whether similar or different from what i would wager to happen. I haven't kept track of which ones of mine match what i've seen around, as i'm not one to do so. But if you're like me and spend a lot of time with TLT fandom then some of this speculation may be familiar since the lot of us share many of the same braincells, which i adore~ ]

[ANYWAY]

[SPECULATION ON MY PART / QUESTIONS]

Harrow hairstyle change: she drops all the hair follicles off of her scalp altogether and feels liberated for it, perhaps doing something gothly creative with the textured puddle of thousands of black strands.

Aiglemene shouts "she's MY daughter bitch" and knocks the daylight out of God [i almost said Wake but remembered she was banished both physically and spiritually in HtN, rendering her soul non-existent, which was canonically posited to be worse than physical death]

Someone's PoV experiences non-existence, differently from Nona's brain reconstruction.

an all-star acquainted cast are running from Second through Ninth Houses declaiming God. Varied reactions ensue

the other Houses are like "hey! Sixth! what the fuck!!"

inter-house war? inter-house allegience? house catastrophe(s)? The Ninth is already under attack by spirits and living people are doing living-people things to the Ninth, much to Harrow's potential anguish.

do we get to know all those new posers on the Ninth? Harrow and Kiriona would both probably unite on a front of "all these new people are cringe, they're not being devout nuns of the Ninth correctly" while also not wanting them to live this way, figuring they no longer need to as the tomb is open thus upending the one thing 10,000 years of their tradition centered around. But also from just, living through it and coming back to the Ninth with new perspectives on life than when the two went to Canaan House. Someone finds Harrow's parents. Some people get hurt grisly by bone wards Harrow could have placed around the House, stopping them from rifling through everything, but to some extent Ninth sanctity scathed altogether.

We learn about the teacher who was incidentally killed alongside the 200 children.

more devils? are they in other Houses? Eighth would be thematically fitting

have the murdered spirits of various cast been able to communicate with anyone in the Nine Houses, faster than living or otherwise-animated bodies of our cast have been able to return home to the Dominicus system? the Fifth for instance (Abigail's brother) - because Silas was able to talk to Glaurica, and Silas is just Silas.

One of the remaining Lyctors (or Jod) learns how to kick people's souls OUT of their bodies and put a soul/person they WANT in that body. shit has the potential to get wildly OP with TLT universe rules

Kiriona reveals that she accepted the new name because of her old name being an aural jab to Harrow's brain, wanted something phonetically different

i do wonder if Nona's brain being shot twice, fried with jellyfish neurotoxin, the shock of being utilized to deactivate an entropy field, and suddenly deteriorating rapidly upon the Secret being told & out - maybe other brain destruction that we're not aware of - did any/all of this reset the lobotomy? did this undo "the work"? Also does Nona get this immense level of regeneration of Harrow's body because of her being Earth, with Harrow missing and without utilizing Kiriona's soul since parts of her soul have since been pinned to Kiriona's dead body? [[Harrow "rounding out three syllables that she did not even understand" undid the work at the beginning of HtN.]]

Harrow and Kiriona, in a moment where they are finally alone together for the first time since Canaan House, cry in each other's arms for the trauma they have been through away from one another

Or Kiriona punts her, almost as likely scenario.

Kiriona reveals that Jod literally wanted to make her into a "son" by giving her external genitalia as part of making her body invincible and as part of her being the heir. [i'm a trans woman with dysphoria so maybe i've read "wide, brash leg movements, saddest girl Nona had ever seen" with my own colored perception on my first reading years ago]

Kiriona Gaia, ruler of the universe upon Jod's death (if he dies) (and if the necromancy holding her together stays intact upon his death)

Can we talk about that? John could just. Undo Kiriona. What then

the clones/decoys created depicting Kiriona? Hello? help?????????? What if she comes across one and has a Haley Joel Osmond moment?

Kiriona and Pash fight bloody on first contact then 5 minutes later are the best cousins as if they've always known each other [[EDIT: someone posted this already, I saw it, I need to to find/credit who.]]

i mean shit so might Kiriona and Harrow, fighting each other is all they knew as kids and they may need to get reacquainted physically

[so many fights as always, lmao <3 ]

We meet the universe's most esteemed fashion designer

Alecto is Nonafied, but still Alecto through and through. Carries Nona traits, Nona instincts. I'm of the mind that the things Nona learned in half-a-year, the way she learned them, could put a myriad-old Lyctor to shame; and this experience, knowledge, and lovingness is subsumed into Alecto. That said, Alecto is still fucken scary to be around dawg.

Alecto conversationally screams at Resurrection Beasts [remember, Varun infiltrated Judith's body to scream wordlessly, yet it was a language Nona happened to understand. So later in NtN - i'm speculating here as it's not stated explicitly - when Nona and Judith were on top of the trucks, we the readers were possibly given translated dialogue of them belting out blood-curtling screams. In a screen adaptation, the screams would be subtitled with the dialogue we read in the novel. Plus the trucks are loud, screaming could be the only way they would have heard each other ]

Alecto eats (an object from your childhood that you figured would have been delicious, judging by the way it looks, only it's not edible).

Alecto, regarding herself as something to be dealt with as Harrow sees fit, does she get... dealt with? is anything about Alecto what Harrow hallucinated at all? what horrors await the reality of such a challenging love, made complicated by the binds of duty? do they make it work? Kiriona errand side chick forever if true. in any case Harrow is faced with some difficult choices regarding Alecto, but that depends on what transpires

I still think Kiriona should get on a space motorcycle and hit up every lesbian bar in the universe, build up a diverse collection of dirty magazines from different cultures, spend time doing what she wants to do since she's still young y'know. Dead, but still young. Bars full of living ladies would LOVE her freak or be terrified of her, or both, depending on how much trauma a given planet and its aformentioned women have been through.

Phyrra gets the answer to the question she asked Harrow in the incinerator [or, who did she ask that question?? to Wake? to Cytheria, whose body Jod couldn't detect on the space ship? do we ever get to know what the question was or am i missing something?]

([pure speculation but Cytheria was probably undetectable because she's good at keeping her body in the River for long, looong, excutiatingly patient swaths of time. [Jod & Mercy (used to the River), and Harrow & Ianthe (new to this and horrified) don't particularly enjoy the experience of being in the River. You, you as a human don't want to be there. i hypothesize that Cytheria LIVES there to hide from Jod and everyone.] Her body & spirit may have been waiting in the River most of HtN and spirit-only in NtN. She is horrifyingly powerful. Surely she has spirits in the River she communicates with, has perhaps been communicating with many for thousands of years]).

([no wait, in HtN that was only ever Wake's soul utilizing Cytheria's body, whenever she wasn't vibrating furiously inside of the two-hander (upon being thrust through Cytheria's heart once they were 40 billion light years away); permanently freed Gideon to front in Harrow's body once Wake was killed in Harrow's river bubble])

So if i'm understanding correctly: A murder weapon can move a soul from one body, to the weapon, to a Lyctor's body, or a necromancer's body so long as they have outside help to repair their damage, thus replacing any previous inhabiting souls unless those soul traces are firmly grounded in that body. I wonder if this comes up more, later on.

Harrow answers for being genocidal to planets

[perhaps early on] Kiriona dares anyone to call her genocidal for her actions on Antioch, and defends Ianthe on the same point, or has immense regret. To what extent were their actions on Antioch to fight devils? She said chop em up and burn the bits?? Was the Second House there supporting the Tower Princes? How many people have died, how many hurt? How much of this contributes to Kiriona's sadness? There are millions of people between the 3 planets (New Rho, Antioch, and Ur), many of whom have already resettled multiple times.

[Kiriona: "Planet's haunted." (Someone): "What?" Kiriona: [grabs her two-hander and reboards a shuttle without making eye contact] "Planet's haunted."]

Upon returning to New Rho, we find the grisly scene of someone's attempt to use the shuttle with the pyrophoric fuel.

WHAT IF THERE HAVE BEEN MURDERED MESSENGERS AND THERE IS ONE OF MANY MILLIONS OF POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS OF MEANINGS THAT A SENTENCE COULD CHANGE THROUGHOUT HISTORY BY REMOVING ONE OR MORE WORDS

do Antioch and Ur have messengers too? multiple messengers?

[Still wondering why Corona lied to Judith during her spasmodic episode, saying they are in the Ur facility]

WHERE IS THE PROOF IN THAT SITUATION? WHAT DO THEY GAUGE THE MESSENGERS AGAINST ONCE THE MESSAGE FINALLY COMES TOGETHER? the implants?

Issac and Jeannemary, somehow, some way, come back and, in the desert outskirts of the ciry on New Rho, become amazing friends to Hot Sauce and Honesty and Beautiful Ruby and Born in the Morning and even Kevin

Jod answers for being genocidal

anyone else wanna answer for being genocidal? (points microphone around the room at most of the cast)

Phyrra & Paul lovers to enemies to lovers arc

Paul says to John, "look at me, i'm God now"

alternatively, Paul gets un-fused by John, leaving Camilla's soul in her body and Palamedes' soul cast into the River, highly damaging Camilla and spiritually rending Palamedes apart like Cassiopeia. god i can't even believe i thought of such a horrible thing-

we recieve confirmation of Silas' soul torn to complete shit

Jody and Corona pls ;_; [EDIT] actually you know what if Judith × Marta can still happen somehow, my heart would sing

CANAAN HOUSE RE-EXPLORATION oh gosh that'd be so fun, recontextualized with what our surviving cast know now. Harrow is back and remembers what Abigail told her in the River about John's quarters running sidelong. the gang go in there and find exactly what you'd expect of the freak, along with plenty of memories recounted upon walking through what remains of Canaan House. Paul getting their chance to do psychometry with far keener senses & abilities may answer some questions from GtN and shed new light. Phyrra giving a play-by-play from the things she finds, a photo of her even pleassse~! Anyone with necromantic aptitude catching strays every time they come across pieces of a necromancer's or cavalier's body.

the Second for sure has something in memoriam of Marta and Judith, the latter seeing again her father, the people of her House, and now Marta's gravesite. will Judith remain steadfast to God even after all she's been through?

Corona returns to the Third to speak to millions who thought she was dead. Stands at her own memorial, sees remembrance pieces of her everywhere. She has turned on God and is involved in an anti-House cell. How will the Third recieve this? How will they recieve Ianthe, and how will Ianthe receive the third as a Lyctor?

Kiriona has a Zidane Tribal/Bran Bal moment on the Third House upon meeting other redheads, noting that she's not like those people despite being her closest House relatives. Proceeds to have a heartfelt You're Not Alone!-type montage where she realizes her friends(?) are sticking out for her~

the Fourth run through people of their child army so much, would Jeannemary and Issac have anything made for them?

the Fifth - [thinking on this one, again, love the possibilities involving spirit stuff] [does Abigail's brother find her notes?]

imagine Paul goes to the Seventh and cures everyone. Do we learn more about Dulcinea and Protesilaus?

(for that matter, does Paul "keep to office hours"? do they make similar mistakes as Jod? whole thing to unpack there)

the Eighth seems like anyone's guess, though as i said, thematically a devil infestation would be on the nose

the Sixth reunite with Cassiopeia who - if i'm understanding correctly, faked her death? [in HtN two Lyctors recounted eyewitness testimony of seeing Cassy's arms and legs ripped apart by ghosts, but in NtN it reads as if she managed to escape?]

even if not, and she is dead indeed; if something about her is around and able to help the Sixth aside from the escape plans, that's HUGE by itself. What do they strive for from there? So many of the Sixth have been killed for being necromancers, how does THIS affect Cassy's long game? What are her goals once the remaining Sixth escape the grip of John and his empire, of BoE?

Just to tally: we got glimpses of what happened to the Sixth House more or less as it happened (after the installation fucked off and they got "established" and subsequently brutalized on New Rho) and we see the Ninth House toward the end of NtN. The other 7 houses wait to be seen; state of ferns unknown.

So how about the First then? Will we see more of how Earth is nowadays, not just an installation out at sea? Green continents coast-to-coast with dense forest, bugs, animals, which makes Harrow lament with regret? ... are there people anywhere on those continents... did... did John at any point, while the Lyctor trails were being developed, did he go out and make... "practice people"? Oh god what if they've survived and evolved in isolation, like new uncontacted tribes with their own traditions, their own adaptations to their environment. Cities and towns and shit are still around albiet abandoned and destroyed; 10,000 years is more than enough time to get close to where we are today, perhaps beyond us in some ways, but also for new geopolitics to develop & play out over and over and over again. prolly lots of genocides can certainly happen on a self-contained human planet, over the course of a myriad.

Where IS he keeping all the pre-Resurrection people? Is it a Zeus/Athena situation?

Alecto leaves her construct body, becomes injected into Earth who starts growing life rapidly in estatic response. Even in the case that there may be very little life and is, in fact, a wrecked planet. The tone of Jod and Harrow's dream conversation doesn't make this hopeful, but, perhaps human destruction would be reversing if there were no people on it?

Varun's soul back into their natal planet as well. Because of the context surrounding Varun/Varuna, still unclear whether it's Uranus or Neptune. Being the seventh RB =/= seventh planet =/= Seventh House etc etc, but anyway what if Varun's soul was put back into the wrong planet? Like it's supposed to be Neptune but gets put into Uranus and is like, "My rings do not feel the same - My weather does not feel the same - I do not know these Moons. - I feel disoriented, as if lopsided - This is not my body - This is the body of my sibling - Green thing, I cannot account for our sibling"

We've long extrapolated that it's our Solar System - Jod reveals the names of each planet, since our cast don't know the og names!

Someone, could be anyone, has their turn with the sunglasses to hide their irises. Tragedy befalls as the sunglasses get broken completely

Okay this might be out there but watch me: Collapsed River singularity where too many people/souls are becoming Lyctors too fast and people start combining at an out-of-control rate. at first you get like 3, 4, 5 people to one body and then more and more clump together into individual clusters. then they're like "ohhh are Resurrection Beasts the same except on a much larger scale? the combined ghosts of probably quadrillions, icosaillions of innocent lifeforms, going after John because he's responsible for all their murders." And then you get people/souls who want to combine more and more because they get a rush from it, even if the original soul is not present in the Lyctor's body, if the person/soul desperately doesn't care because they want out of the River, [there should be a word, not necessarily catchy but definitely a word worthy of being a standard, whose meaning implies a soul/spirit as having personhood. or does the word soul imply that in the first place? or does a soul have more personhood than a human to begin with? flesh is only temporary after all] or occupying a regular human for that matter (re: Colum)

Speaking of, Colum getting his soul retrieved and having a fair chance at life for once. Though, what has become of him? The functionality of what Silas did to Colum's soul - did Colum's difficult life strengthen his spirit's resolve, by way of Silas granting his soul such power (albiet in an inordinately backhanded way)? Is his soul immensely powerful enough to withstand the River, or does it rip him apart too?

Oh and referring back to a collapsed River - since it's an adjacent universe with it's own rules - that universe collapses altogether and starts operating under completely new rules? does this tend to happen to such a space? can it happen to our "physical" "realm"?

So we have the physical dimension, to River dimension with stoma that lead to yet another dimension that Gideon described as being a lightless black absence of reality - this dimension beyond the stoma accesses •another• dimension somewhere within, which has yet another [etc etc etc]... it's a slippery and potentially circular slope where it eventually loops back to the physical universe, and basically physical reality is a stop-gap so long any soul has a body or object to occupy (Anastasia's Tripod Principle). Is there a way to collapse our universe into the River? Just like the Mithraeum but with the entire universe, with immense & unimaginably destructive force where universes are flowing into each other... i could muse more on this but i'm already reaching kinda far. Again, wildly fantastical, just playing with the universe's rules in my brain :V

We peer through the stoma and Augustine is chillin' on a trash pile with Ulysses

For all we know Cyrus could be alive and trapped in that ultramassive black hole, unable to escape the event horizon and regenerating like Promethius the titan as long as he somehow has a water source.

Anastasia... we saw that she's there, she's just bones but she's there. Is this her Tripod Principle, only with body & soul but no thalergy? Can Harrow, after coming back to her body, communicate with Anastasia? Can Harrow help her any, with only the bones? [Again, if she can, since Kiriona's soul is no longer [completely] in Harrow's body to be a furnace]

We know only part of Kiriona's soul is back in her dead body, by way of Jod's personal equivalent of necromantic duct tape. Does Harrow/Nona retain some of the soul?

We know the soul is both malleable and permeable, and all of us want so bad to see Gideon be a whole thing, or near enough to being whole. She's been through a lot, complete wholeness might not be possible for her.

Phyrra -- gosh whatever comes up gender-wise, honestly. Phyrra my beloved

The harrowing of Hell parallel: the River has been emptied of those countless billions of people. Where have they gone? Does Harrow shepard them? Did someone consume them or perhaps frightened elsewhere?

Kiriona gets her two-hander back and is ashamed of how out-of-practice she is after a year or so, though is quickly reacquainted

Heck wait what if Harrow wants spirits to remain safe in physical bodies but Kiriona wants to stop the spread of demons..

..in such a way Kiriona and Harrow could wildly disagree on who to save and how..

sorry, can i pause for a second... Gideon's thalergy to Harrow's thanergy... such an immense balancing act between life energy and death energy. intense diametric opposition yet so!! aagh! ♡

Kiriona and Harrow go full Lyctor just like Paul. They decide on the name Griddlehark

crossover moment! with The Deepwater Bride, where one of the Lyctors goes to the bottom of the ocean [for some reason idk lol, i'm riffing this one out] and finds Rainbow Kipley as chipper as ever. She, too, is used to living for eternity, while Hester Blake sits there with a thousand-yard stare after 10,000+ years

Alecto/Nona sees herself in a mirror, in the body of Alecto that John made for her, and has a tantrum

Phyrra gets her farm on a half-flipped planet and spends the rest of her eternal life tending it, a perpetual state of Zen

Alecto might defer to Phyrra a lot for emotional support - will Phyrra have the patience for it? Harkening back to "You knew this whole time" and ignoring Nona in that moment

Alecto goes back for that mustache shirt, in the process reuniting with Hot Sauce and Honesty and Beautiful Ruby and Born in the Morning and/or/even Kevin

Unjust Hope is one i'm not too sure about but i'm curious nonetheless

Juno Zeta as well

Meeting more BoE and more Sixth House would be fun~ Meeting more people of any House really~ Colum's horrible brothers, Protesilaus' family tending his garden, Abigail's brother & her ferns, Jeannemary & Issac's families, the branch family of Naberius Tern's, Judith's father

Harrow's fright & disgust at everything Nona did with her body. Probably best that she doesn't know? As far as we're aware it all came out in the wash by the time Nona is brought to Alecto's body and Harrow comes back, though it would still be disturbing to her.

[Timeline clarification because i don't know: does Harrow occasionally sleep in Hell and dream the John chapters during such sleep?]

What happens when Harrow is free from Hell? Even if she is still a Lyctor or even retaining necromancy at all, does she come back even more wrong? Who would care for Harrow in that state? Would Kiriona feel obligation the same way that Cytheria seduced her into?

Kiriona's soul being back in her own body nullifies Harrow's Lyctorhood, perhaps even of her necromancy thus rendering her a normal human and the only reason this doesn't kill Harrow is because she has the power of two-hundred souls, instead of one like most everyone else.

Furthermore about Jod's theorems that make Kiriona invincible, that pin her soul in place - do they disappear when John dies? When Jod dies does Kiriona die again, forever this time?

Are Herald weapons still in play?

I do try to be careful about character death prediction, but... Corona, not sure how, and becomes subsumed into Ianthe like Corona wanted. Whether it's herself or Ianthe or a secret third person, Corona then becomes stuck with eternal grief that Babs is there and that Ianthe has become more like him. And even with this, Ianthe is glossed over by everyone, and she becomes the worst terror she can be

Ianthe PoV?

Harrow asks Kiriona how to do a press-up, becomes a flirty sequence, towards the end of the sequence Harrow feels a hurt pride via self-pity while Kiriona feels her heart reving to life

Kiriona becomes human? ??? ?? her name. wha-

Harrow reverted to a mortal human would be more frail than before, i would imagine [edit: vindicated!!]

Alecto loves Harrow dutifully, and still loves Our Lady of the Passion romantically. [Pash would only reciprocate if a) we confirm she is or isn't ace and b) isn't still put off by necromancy] [if not ace, you know she'd be about loving bloodily] [if ace; Pash being shown the most sincere romantic gestures from someone who might be good for her and Pash asserts that this does nothing for her] [EDIT: someone has art of this! I'm in love aaaah!]

Alecto knows everyone sleeping that John showed Harrow toward the beginning of HtN, and in AtN goes through the Ninth House saying hello to everyone new

Jeannemary, GtN: "If we hadn't been trailing everybody it would have been that creep Ianthe Tridentarius. And she's stalking everyone. Believe me." HtN: [Ianthe gets better at stalking AND gets unfettered access to Harrow], NtN: [Ianthe still stalking [searching for] Harrow but Ianthe is at least [sort-of] confined to a small spaceship in orbit; utilized her manipulation off-camera on Kiriona and God, presumably.], AtN: [????]

Ortus Nigenad and Abigail Pent team up for new recalled warrior spirits while Magnus assures Ortus how nice he feels to sit in the cuck chair