That his Guild was secretive, he knew to be essential. It offered simplicity. No extended questioning about movements and activity. No official reporting structure other than the Key Masters. It worked because they were selected through extensive training and experience independent of influence by other Guild Masters. That they often came from the same three Guilds was accepted as no more than a crop of apples from a tree. They were there, so picking them was nothing more than a natural pathway. Of course, that courted potential disaster for an old Assassin like himself. If, say, he was approached by someone of more deliberate intention, and swayed by a reasonable argument, then ascension through death might easily circumvent standard protocols. It could present access to the Vault and, from there, access to points of reference in the past, where the Assassin could launch an incision in cahoots. Such chaotic outcomes needed trimming with skilled deliberation to alter history. As he often said, the ultimate Assassination.

He looked again at the sigil showing a crow, something on an immense scale. Go back far enough; even the Elder Magi might never have arisen, which might resolve the temporal paradox. To go back and change things results in not existing to go back and change things; when considered from a more linear perspective, your continuum remains. To go back creates a new timeline divergence that supplants the existing one.

All quite simple really, then again chaos always is.