The SPI follows the trail of a suspected doppelganger, the spitting image of one of their former colleagues, to a hidden village of changelings.
The SPI pursued a doppelganger impersonating their former colleague Sima into the Selva forest, only to discover an invisible veil concealing the secret changeling settlement of Alye’adu—a community of shapeshifter imprints who depend on living anchors for their survival. Inside, they found their missing leader Mallory comatose, learned that the changelings had been placing agents across the world for fifty years to prevent another “Vanishing” event, and that Amisa Swiftaxe (doppelganger of Sima) had agreed to bond with Mallory as his anchor. However, the centaur warlord Talos and the orc shaman Andalla—who had once killed Freki’s raven companion and now wore its face—invaded the village seeking to steal the changelings’ shapeshifting power and the godlings’ divine essence. The agents drove the intruders away under the terms of Selva custom and restored the veil with Flux magic, though Talos succeeded in draining divine power from both Bec and Cal before retreating, leaving unresolved questions about the agents’ true nature and Talos’s connection to deeper conspiracies.