I was Justice before I was Anders.

There was a time when time meant little, when the sky was shimmering white and easily mutable, when mortals were a flitting presence, easily distracted, easily diverted. There was a time when my purpose was so pure and all consuming that I thought of nothing else, and I was content to embody it rather than enact it.

There was a time when I lived in the fade and not in the mortal world, when I had none of the limitations of a physical body and there was no true meaning to the word death, or time — not to me, or to anyone. Thoughts and ideas were more real to me than people. Spirits and demons were my companions and they were changeable and fluid and none of them were important.

I could not say I was Kristoff before I was Anders. A small window was opened to me, a tiny glimpse of what the world could be and wasn't, but I wasn't him, all I felt were echoes. I was still Justice, but for the first time in my life I felt the true meaning of the word. Suddenly everything I had been before was not important, and that I had named myself Justice seemed like an act of arrogance — of ignorance.

I remember longing. I remember wonder at new sensations — the first touch of friendship, the first glimpse of things I never knew I wanted. I remember ages of insubstantiality replaced by something solid and real and beautiful in a way that nothing could be in the fade, because it was fleeting. A world so full of beauty that beauty was overlooked.

I was Anders before I was Justice.

There was a time when all that mattered to me was my own freedom. The next escape, how far I could get, what pleasures I could indulge in. All the niggling little injustices we were forced to endure every day as mages were personal affronts, not something to be changed, just something to be avoided.

I lived very firmly in the mortal world. For all I spoke with spirits and used them for my magic, they were nothing to me but a means to an end. I used their curiosity to fuel my spells, let them help me escape detection and cursed them when they sometimes gave me away. Pleasure and freedom were all I sought, and I took any means available to get them.

I remember loneliness. All consuming and terrible and empty. I remember darkness, and lies, told to me and by me. I remember how easy it was for a mortal to fool oneselfinto believing things that are convenient, instead of things that are true.

I was Justice before I was Anders.

I was Anders before I was Justice.

There was a time when I was two people — now there is just one.