Evan Michaels’s Ascension Rite turns the Cognomina’s test of identity into a public act of belonging. After a panel accepts his claim by a four-to-one vote, the community welcomes him as a brother, Poppy presents the Embe-marked gauntlet, and members offer gifts that make their kinship tangible. The ceremony joins proof, bodily marking, and reciprocal care: Evan is no longer asking whether he may belong, but being received into a family designed to endure beyond any one life.

The Test and Its Purpose

The Ascension is the identity-verification trial that every returning member must undergo before reentering the Cognomina. In each incarnation, a candidate must persuade people who knew the earlier self that the person in the new body is the same individual. The society’s name reflects this shared recognition, and the trial gives that recognition a formal process rather than leaving it to assertion alone. For a newcomer, the first Ascension is especially difficult: names, dates, places, and other verifiable details must establish a continuity that the new body cannot show by itself.

The rite’s present-day panel replaces a much more violent older practice. In earlier times, members would face the candidate and one would run him through with a spear. Acceptance came only if the candidate returned in a later life and identified the person who had killed him. Evan’s ceremony does not repeat that ordeal; its four-to-one judgment belongs to a system in which remembered evidence, rather than death and another rebirth, can establish identity. The contrast gives the vote its weight: the community’s test is still a threshold, but it no longer demands that a candidate die to cross it.

The Grotto and the Vote

The ceremony takes place below ground, reached by a torchlit staircase descending roughly seventy-five to one hundred stone steps. Evan follows Poppy into the darkness, feeling along the old masonry for handholds while the brass tip of his cane echoes down the stairwell. The descent ends in an ancient grotto whose formal arrangement makes the encounter resemble a hearing: a wooden table and two chairs face a long console like a judge’s bench, while tiered seats rise before a heavy black curtain. The setting places the candidate beneath the ordinary world and before a gathered community that will decide whether his remembered life is credible.

After the testimony and deliberation, an old man announces that the judges have determined, by a vote of four to one, that Evan is what he claims to be and will be welcomed into the Cognomina as their brother. Evan releases a long-held breath; Samas embraces him, and groans and cheers rise from the gallery as wagers are settled. Mr. Diltz is the first to congratulate him. The decision changes the gathering’s mood at once: the scrutiny of a hearing gives way to noisy celebration, and Evan’s acceptance becomes something witnessed and shared rather than merely recorded by the panel.

Marking and Welcome

The vote does not complete the welcome. Poppy reminds Evan that the tattoo remains, then offers him a fingerless leather gauntlet that opens and laces beneath the hand. Its upper surface bears the black-ink traces of an Embe-shaped template. Evan slips his hand inside while Poppy holds the sheath and fastens it. The physical object makes the transition visible: membership is not only a finding about who Evan was, but an identity carried into his new life through a mark and a communal practice.

Evan tells the assembled members that their knowledge of what he feels makes explanation unnecessary, and says he is home. He jokes that he is glad they did not have to kill him; the room answers with hoots and howls, and the musicians rejoin the celebration. The joke recalls the lethal form of Ascension without confusing it with the present ceremony. Its effect is affectionate rather than threatening: the old ordeal has become a story the new brother can invoke among people who have just accepted him.

Gifts and Continuing Kinship

Poppy interrupts the start of a proposed card game to insist that the gifts for the new brother come first. She explains that welcoming a brother with offerings has been a tradition for centuries. Chance drops a pair of small white dice into Evan’s hand, saying they were carved from the bones of his last body and had brought him luck. The gift joins an object from a previous incarnation to a wish for Evan’s future, making the ceremony’s claim of continuity concrete. The other offerings vary as widely as their givers, from clay cuneiform tablets to carte blanche use of a harem of fifty women and ten boys.

Auda’s gift turns that same concern toward Evan’s next return. He directs Mr. Diltz to place five thousand American dollars in escrow for Evan, with the condition that the money remain unavailable until Evan comes back in a new body. The provision is meant to ensure that Evan will have something to return to. It reflects the Cognomina’s wider system of designated custodians: because members cannot simply bequeath their accumulated wealth to themselves across incarnations, living custodians hold assets and restore them to members when they reemerge. Material security is therefore part of the society’s long-term care, not just a celebratory present.

The offerings also connect Evan to histories beyond the immediate gathering. Poppy says that the cane beside him was offered to her by Charles Le Brun on behalf of King Louis of France, and she now presents it as an offering already made for Evan. The varied objects and commitments do not erase the members’ differences; they show how those differences can be gathered into a shared welcome. The ceremony makes the Cognomina’s extended-family ideal practical through custody, remembered lives, and gifts pledged across time.

Consequences Beyond the Ceremony

The rite’s consequences extend into later dealings among the members. During the dispute over The Rendezvous, Poppy uses the threatened destruction of the painting to demand a higher sum, arguing that it should be large enough to make her reconsider reimbursing Evan. Samas ultimately orders ten million American dollars transferred to each of them. This later transaction is not part of the Ascension hearing, but it shows the material reach of the relationships affirmed at Evan’s welcome: his place in the community is accompanied by allies prepared to negotiate on his behalf and by obligations that can carry real financial weight.

The rite thus gives Evan more than a verdict. The panel validates his identity, the Embe-marked gauntlet makes membership legible, and the gifts bind that recognition to the practical promise of future care. Its decisive reversal is from uncertain candidate to acknowledged brother—and from a life experienced as fragile and separate to a place in a community that expects to find him again.