Rhett

A person who has not been born, whose leftover will is loose in the universe and heading for a fixed point in time.

She is named twice and appears never

Ch. 77 is titled "Rhett" and the body of it never says the word. The only place the name is spoken is ch. 78, by Blook, to a thing that is not her:

BLK: Looks like I managed to find you again, Rhett.

He corrects himself in the same speech. The figure in front of him is not Rhett, and he explains why at some length. So the saga names a character in a chapter title, withholds her from the chapter, and then uses the name once on somebody else.

What Blook says she is

Not alive yet. Not an echo of somebody who was.

BLK: because she hasn't been born yet. She's still a dream stuck in the bloodstream of tomorrow.

He found her in his journal, which is the journal from his own future. That is how a name can be older than the person:

BLK: Buried in ink both older and younger than memory. Rhett, an individual who sought... [CORRECT]

The sentence stops there. He cannot finish it, and the chapter treats that as a physical event rather than a hesitation.

He coughed, a raw sound. His mouth twisted, as though reality itself had bitten his tongue.

BLK: I can't even say it. Can't even push the words into the air without the universe grinding its teeth at me. Her story folds space like paper.

So what she sought is redacted at the level of the world, not the page. See ../lore/the-typography.md for the marker itself, which occurs once in the saga and nowhere else.

What is owed to her

Blook's reason for stopping the Tear is her inheritance, and he states it as an obligation rather than a preference.

BLK: The universe is hers to inherit when she comes, not yours to sterilize before she's even taken her first breath. Until that day, I'll chain this story to its own future.

He also gives the cost he is willing to pay for it, and it reads as a description of her:

BLK: Even if that means watching potential perfection sacrifice itself for actual freedom.

Where her remnant came from

The Tear is "a leftover scrap of her will leaking in from the last run of this universe". That is the saga's only statement that this universe has run before. See ../lore/the-tear.md.

Open questions

• What she sought. The text refuses the word.
• Whether she is ever born, in this iteration or another. Nothing after ch. 78 uses the name.
• Whether "the last run of this universe" is the same repetition Maeve and the timelines work in, or a larger one.
• Why the chapter titled for her is the one she is absent from.