Rankwood, Columbia's nomadic city, is the neighborhood that sells dreams to all of Terra. Its entertainment industry is so developed that it'll detach and relocate an entire downtown just to shoot one movie.
In that Rankwood, there's a production team two months into filming 'The Death of Miss Dupont' β a love triangle you've seen a hundred times before, with three brothers courting a fallen noblewoman.
But on the first night of rehearsal, the prop knife had turned into a real one. The one holding it was a rookie actor, cast by pure chance at the Screenplay Auction.
1. First Night of Rehearsal, the Prop Knife Was Real
Director Steven keeps the rehearsal going, coaxing along a production team worn down by two straight months of grueling work. Lines don't land and everyone's on edge, but the movie still has to get made.
That's when a mysterious black creature bursts onto the set. This two-tailed thing gets props intern Tippi all excited β she says it looks even weirder than the monster from the horror movie she watched last night.
Producer Greta knows exactly what this creature is. She says it's the 'companion' of a guest she invited, and that for this rehearsal, she'll put that guest in instead. His name β Lucian.
Lucian is cast as the 'Messenger' β a role bringing grim truths to a noble household. His scene partner, the veteran actor Dalton, holds the knife the props team barely managed to secure.
Ready, action β lines go back and forth, and the knife passes from hand to hand. Everyone marvels at the performance. No one knows the knife is real.
Even after the cut sign, Dalton doesn't get up. When coordinator Shelly goes over and touches the bloodstain, it isn't from a prop blood packet β it's real human blood.
2. First Night of the Promotion, Horror Movies Instead of Overtime
Greta wraps things up without missing a beat. Dalton's death is ruled an accident, the props lead is fired on the spot, and the vacancy goes to Moira, the props staffer who's always worked so quietly you'd hardly notice her.
Moira is a Zarak from a frontier settlement. She came up to Rankwood without knowing a single soul, making props purely to make a living. She herself is the most shocked by her sudden promotion.
Shelly starts acting strange after that day. She flinches at the mere sound of a chair scraping, and more self-harm marks appear on her arms. She keeps bringing up a fatal fall that happened on this same production five years ago.
Then, on set, a cargo crate falls right over Shelly's head. She's saved by the rookie actor Lucian, and by props lead Moira, who desperately holds the rope from the other end.
At night, Shelly, Tippi, and Moira gather in the props room to watch horror movies. Screaming, they say, helps clear their heads. Tippi calls Moira 'Molly,' and Molly calls Tippi her best friend.
Even if there's a killer out there, I'll protect you β as your friend!
β Tippi
3. The Freezer Mystery β But the Real Bombshell Was Something Else
That night, Shelly gets a message from an unknown sender and steps out of the props room. The sender's name is the same as the rookie actor said to have died on this production five years ago.
The next morning, Shelly is found inside the warehouse freezer. She froze to death, but her palms are covered in scrape marks from struggling. Lucian says it isn't a curse β just the marks of someone fighting to stay alive.
The production assistant is thrilled β a serial killer means a scoop worth serious money if sold. But while piecing together a scrap of paper picked up in the office, he ends up setting off a bombshell he can't handle.
That Greta had secretly set the sector's course straight toward a Catastrophe, just to film it β going so far as to obtain a Catastrophe forecast report from Trimounts University.
Cameraman Abner is furious β five years ago, too, Greta had turned an actor's death into a movie's climax. But Greta doesn't so much as blink, and calls everyone together.
What we're lacking isn't skill. It's nerve.
β Greta
Right then and there, she reveals the truth about five years ago herself β her own downfall and the fraud she suffered as a rookie, even the story of how she changed her name and came back to Rankwood. Not an apology. Just a notice.
4. After a Lovers' Quarrel, Two Nooses Side by Side
That night, actor Michael β notorious as a womanizer since his rookie days β has a huge fight in the dressing room with stylist Marion, who's supported him for five years.
Michael, saying he's terrified of the killer, begs her to run away together, but Marion flatly refuses. The real reason she's furious lies elsewhere.
Five years ago, when a rookie actor slowly died while dangling from a wire, Michael was the only one who stayed there until the very end. Marion only found out about it much later.
That day, Michael noticed the old wire was about to snap. But thinking it was his chance to score points with a woman he had his eye on, he deliberately looked the other way.
Once you've decided to bear the price yourself, that has nothing to do with me anymore.
β Michael
The next morning, on-set staffer Hotin hears water dripping in the dark studio. When he switches on his flashlight, Michael and Marion are hanging there, back to back.
One fact comes to light later β the axe was originally meant for Marion, but Michael took the fatal blow shielding her. Only in their final moments did the two finally confirm each other's true feelings.
5. A Director Waiting for a God, and the Next Lead
Greta pays out every remaining wage owed and officially disbands the production. Anyone who wants to leave can leave, anyone who wants to stay can stay. She says she'll take over the cameraman's role herself.
Director Steven, two months in and still unable to settle on an ending, sits buried in manuscript paper. But that night, an unidentified voice speaks to him β so vividly he can't even tell if it's real or an illusion.
The voice whispers to Steven β just as that actor's death five years ago saved the movie, all these deaths now could nourish the story too. Only, shift the focus onto the 'Messenger.'
Steven has his eureka moment. From that day on, rookie actor Lucian becomes the lead of the ending. Steven himself never gets around to asking just who gave him that idea.
Meanwhile, Greta has arrived at the same conclusion. She goes to Lucian and, without asking why he alone stayed so calm through these strange incidents, simply asks him to take on the next lead role.
Instead of answering, Lucian just nods. He already knows β none of these coincidences were ever really coincidences.
6. There Was Never Any 'Sister'
That night, Moira sneaks into the sleeping Greta's bedroom to kill her. But when she pulls back the blanket, Greta isn't there β just a black shadow: Miss.Christine, lying on the bed. It's none other than Miss.Christine. It was a trap.
Greta is there too, shocked to learn that Moira is the one who came to kill her. Lucian calmly explains that it was Miss.Christine who first noticed something was off.
Miss.Christine is a creature that 'tastes' emotions. She's especially drawn to complex ones β suppressed rage, a flash of murderous intent. Moira was the only person she ever approached first.
Moira doesn't deny it. She admits it was all her doing β swapping the prop knife, luring Shelly into a trap while pretending to hold the crate's rope. There's one reason: revenge.
I'm going to be the last person on this earth who remembers Laura.
β Moira
The rookie actor who died five years ago was named Laura. Moira says she's Laura's younger sister. But in the family records Greta looked into, there's no name 'Moira' on Laura's family list.
Moira takes out an old videotape and plays it. Laura's smiling face appears. But no matter how hard she tries to recall it, the memory of them growing up together cuts off abruptly at a certain point.
Moira recalls a night, driven out of Rankwood with nowhere to go, when she met a kind Feline. In the spot where he'd been standing, she found a single videotape left behind.
Lucian knows exactly who that Feline was β the master who raised him, and the root of this entire tragedy. Moira, smiling, begins to dance with the mannequins under her control.
7. Those Who Walked Into the Catastrophe
Moira has already blown up the sector's control room. Unable to change direction or speed, the Mobile Sector begins racing straight toward the Catastrophe.
Tippi remembers a horror movie she once watched β filmed on a sector with the exact same layout, it showed a backup course-correction device deep inside the power deck.
Panicked staff block her way, ganging up on Tippi as the killer's friend. But right then, Miss.Christine appears and quietly 'eats up' everyone's overwrought emotions.
Tippi turns the old control lever all the way. The whole sector screams as it changes course. Not knowing whether it'll work, or how long it'll take, she can only pray.
Meanwhile, Melanie walks straight into the middle of the collapsing set. Casting off, before the storm, all those years of inferiority for never once surpassing her lifelong rival Marian.
Who said Miss Dupont dies? She never dies. This storm is going to carry her straight toward freedom!
β Melanie
Abner chooses to stay by Melanie's side, camera in hand. This time, he chooses for himself the work he's hated for five years.
8. The Slaying of a Master, and the Curtain That Goes On
Among the ruins of the collapsed mansion, Lucian sees the shape of someone who shouldn't be there. To the thing speaking to him in the dead Dalton's voice, Lucian quietly bows his head.
Lucian pulls out, one by one, the evidence he's gathered these past months traveling all over Terra β a traitor of Gaul, a Cardinal of Laterano, a missing sailor from Iberia... all cases marked by the same sign.
The owner of that mark was no legendary god of abundance and festivity, but a Longliver who calls death and ruin an art form. His name was Tragodia β the very troupe master of the Crimson Troupe who took Lucian in and raised him.
It was Tragodia who took in young Lucian, left alone after losing his home to a Catastrophe, and it was Tragodia who taught him to perform real death on stage.
Lucian had already killed him once. And yet Tragodia survived, and this time chose this very film set as his new stage.
Tragodia laughs. Dalton, Michael and Marion, Moira β all of them, he says, simply had emotions already inside them burst out in the face of death. So death, he says, is where all things ultimately belong.
Lucian asks back β isn't that gorgeous theory really just self-justification, not belief? Isn't the one thing a Longliver like him can never reach death itself?
The storm rages between the two of them. Lucian releases the Originium crystal suppressor at his throat. A song rings out, piercing straight through the Catastrophe.
The tip of the staff pierces Tragodia's heart. Hundreds of masks shatter and fall, and where he once stood, only bloodstains and masks remain.
But Tragodia's voice doesn't disappear. Saying that what just died was merely one of his countless selves, he leaves Lucian a silver crown and staff as an inheritance.
The end of the assassination has become a succession. Without a word, Lucian leaves the bloodstains behind and climbs the stairs. He doesn't look back.
Epilogue. Two Months Later, at an Indie Film Festival
The film is finished. The words '- Death of' have been dropped from the title. Both Steven and Melanie had, by then, found their own answers inside the Catastrophe.
Tippi is picked for Rankwood's sector restoration team and stays busy. She says this whole incident made it clear that background painting is what she truly loves.
The retired legendary actress Marian, now living under the name Yara, also comes to the screening. She and her longtime rival Melanie finally share an embrace, as if reconciling.
Moira, now in a Federal mobile prison, receives a visit from Tippi. She hasn't been forgiven, but at least, she says, she's decided to stop hiding inside an illusion.
Outside the theater, Lucian runs into his old friend Shalem, and the troupe's writer. The Crimson Troupe is gone, they say, and everyone's free now. And yet Lucian himself doesn't seem to have fully escaped this path.
This earth has never once been short of actors.
β Lucian
One prop knife, real on the first night of rehearsal, ended up dividing this many people's lives. And at the end of it all, one actor set off traveling again, declaring himself a new god.