We return to The House in Fata Morgana. Before going into the rest of the chapter, I want to share something I’ve been thinking of.

When characters outside of the ones under Morgana’s curse show up in the narrative, they’re not represented by sprites. However, in looking back on the story, I remembered there was one sole exception: Javi from the 2nd door. I thought about it and, hey, he’s gotta be another reincarnation of Mell, right? It’s weird that Mell is the only one to be reincarnated twice, but it makes sense. They have the same flaxen hair, he’s got sad surroundings and the same smartass attitude about things.

My theory? Morgana wanted him to experience what Yukimasa could have done to him. Past Yukimasa threatened to kill his sister, and future Yukimasa did all that and more by killing Javi!Mell’s whole family and making him alienated. Unlike past Mell, Javi!Mell decides to act, and much like how past Mell worried, he winds up getting killed by Yukimasa for it. Morgana reeeeally wanted Mell to suffer. Well, I’d say that there’s someone that deserved to suffer more than Mell in the grand cosmic scheme of things, but well, we’ll get there.

Speaking of Yukimasa!

After the progress made earlier, Michel wakes up in the estate’s cellar. Yukimasa decided to put on the Joker mask and kidnapped Michel to figure out what his deal was. Michel tries to reach out to Giselle to be his hype woman like she was in the first half of the chapter, but for whatever reason, Michel can’t reach her.

Yukimasa reveals that he intended last night’s bad vibes dinner to be like the Last Supper, and that Michel would be killed. Yukimasa does offer a deal: since Michel clearly knows about Morgana, Michel can take Mell’s place in the conspiracy and get Mell killed. Michel refuses and decides to just tell Yukimasa that he’s from the future.

Unfortunately, Michel forgot that he’s talking to the Joker. Yukimasa does not believe him, even as Michel starts talking about specific things he learned from the future version of him. Except, funnily enough, Michel still doesn’t know his name. In fact, Yukimasa’s just dubbed “Swordsman” for the rest of the chapter. White trans man is still white I guess. Yukimasa tortures the shit out of Michel, breaking all his fingers and threatens to cut off Michel’s arm within a few uncomfortable minutes.

Before Yukimasa cuts his arm off though, he gets interrupted by Pauline. Mell was looking for Michel and had united with Pauline to look for him, and when they heard the ruckus in the cellar, Mell lockpicked the cellar door. Facing Yukimasa, Mell’s no longer scared of him. In fact, he answers Yukimasa’s Normal question from yesterday that reminded me of that ponytail guy getting hassled by a debate tiktoker: he’d simply save both Giselle and Michel. Honestly, good job growing a spine kid, you earned the right to be a smartass.

Pauline had heard enough. Seeing Yukimasa’s torture of Michel, she takes it as confirmation of the conspiracy and Yukimasa’s involvement. Pauline expresses regret in her role in things since Yukimasa did his crimes to facilitate her position. She states that she has no interest in the church itself, but she merely fell into church service to give herself a direction in life, reflecting how her future self was somewhat aimless. However, her future self did have something this Pauline wanted: a nice quiet life on the beach. Michel tells her that Morgana cursed her and Yukimasa to have that life but have it get violently ripped away from them. This revelation calms things down somewhat, and Pauline urges Yukimasa to have a proper talk with Michel to redeem both of them for their role in things.

Yukimasa takes off the Joker mask and goes to Michel’s room to talk with him. Starting things off, Yukimasa affirms that he sees Michel as an angel, and that he perhaps really is the Archangel Michael himself. Michel denies it, refusing the holy vision his parents had for him when he was born, saying he’s just a normal guy. A guy from the future, but a normal guy. Yukimasa also shares that he doesn’t have romantic interest in Pauline like Michel suspects, but it’s purely platonic, affirming the story’s focus on platonic love being as important as romantic love.

How did this platonic love blossom? Well, Yukimasa starts telling Michel his story.

Much like his future self, this Yukimasa was a foreign merchant that became an amnesiac. He got taken as a slave and faced a lot of racism, even from other slaves. Then came the day he got put in the same caravan as Morgana. He was interested in Morgana as she was as unusual of a presence as he was, mirroring his view of Michel. With Morgana maintaining a calm attitude in spite of everything, Morgana became a sort of tether for Yukimasa on the ride.

Then came Yukimasa’s one-man rebellion. After killing the slavers, Yukimasa turned toward the other slaves. Unfortunately, killing the slavers ignited that bloodlust in him. Perhaps emboldened by past racism from other slaves and the racist beast image people made of him, Yukimasa went on to slaughter the slaves except for Morgana. Instead of fearing for her own life, Morgana expressed regrets for failing to thank the brothel that took her in. Even though Yukimasa took the Joker-pill, he couldn’t bring himself to harm the first unambiguously good person he came across in so long and just left.

Yukimasa became a roving bandit for a while since he couldn’t get hired for a proper job. He fell ill and was prepared to just let himself die as recompense for everything he’s done, but a traveling nun came across him: Pauline. Pauline nursed him back to health and Yukimasa came to be good friends with her. Pauline in turn wanted to get a better understanding of him, even wanting to be half Japanese to understand Yukimasa’s culture and lineage, and well, Morgana sure made future Pauline get a taste of that.

Pauline started falling in love with Yukimasa, but Yukimasa wanted her to reject him. Besides feeling undeserving of love, Yukimasa himself did not feel romantic love. He cared about her, but couldn’t muster the same kind of love she did for him. Honestly, respect for being aromantic and asexual. Despite everything, they maintain a good relationship.

But as it happens, Yukimasa wasn’t the only person Pauline helped. In wanting to maintain the kind and generous Saintess title Pauline fell into, she brought her convent toward poverty with her excessive charity. Yukimasa wanted to help her, but again, traditional jobs were out of his grasp. Enter the nontraditional job offer…

Lord Barnier, who is totally not Jacopo, approached him, fingering him as an escaped slave desperate to help the church that helped him. Barnier figured he’d do his dirty work and not be willing to spill the beans, so he tasked Yukimasa to capture the witch. Yukimasa was sincerely regretful about his capture of Morgana, but he was willing to do it for Pauline’s sake. Barnier considered having Mell killed as a witness, but hearing that he was formerly from a noble family, he demanded that Mell be brought into the conspiracy. Considering later revelations, it makes sense that the lord wouldn’t want to risk angering nobles. Kinda.

Finishing with his story, Yukimasa is weighed down by the guilt of all he’s done and what his future self will do and wishes to die. However, Michel refuses for him to die. Even though he’s frustrated by Yukimasa, he wants Yukimasa to stop taking the easy route of death and being the Joker and to take the hard and rewarding path of a peaceful life with Pauline. Michel sees Yukimasa as a flawed person (which is a pretty mild way to put it), but says that working around your flaws is just a normal way of living; after all, Michel’s relationship with Giselle started out flawed, but they worked their way to happiness.

Yukimasa is grateful for the talk and is fully on board with helping Michel now, promising to get his lord to come to the estate for dinner so they could get the last key. Michel is happy that his quest is going well, but worries about meeting the lord since he’s the most powerful of the men involved in Morgana’s suffering.

Michel gets a psychic jumpscare in that he gets a vision of being in Morgana’s shoes in her days suffering under the lord. He goes to talk to Maria as he promised earlier, but the mental damage combined with the physical damage Yukimasa inflicted on him are starting to take its toll. Maria insists that Michel get some rest, but Michel refuses. He already got the Joker on his side, and dammit, he will get the lord in on it, too. He shares Yukimasa’s story of meeting Morgana, and in exchange, Maria shares her regret at not being closer to Morgana. The person closest to Morgana was actually the escaped slave that freed her, but he reportedly died.

Maria gives Michel a necklace the slave was going to give to Morgana as a gift on her ruined birthday. However, that’s not important to him at the moment. Pauline had also come in, and she remarked that the current lord is actually different from the one what was in charge around Morgana’s suffering. With this fact in mind, combined with the slave being the only recurring unaccounted for figure in all the flashbacks, Michel gets a brain blast.

Michel trudges to the estate’s dining room, and another horrible vibes dinner is being held – but this time, Lord Barnier is there. The vibes aren’t bad forever, however. Michel unleashes his brain blast, accusing Barnier of actually being named Jacopo, and that he was the escaped slave in Morgana’s backstory; the escaped slave isn’t actually dead, but figuratively dead to Maria for what’s about to be revealed. Jacopo demands that his boys gang up on Michel, but they’re fully on Michel’s side.

Jacopo gives his key out of frustration, but that’s not enough for Michel. He wants Jacopo’s story of how he became a lord and what led to Morgana’s capture. Jacopo is totally normal and attempts to stab Michel, but the struggle causes Michel to drop the necklace Maria gifted him. A dark mist starts exuding out of the gift and it engulfs Michel and Jacopo to give them an experience Michel’s been long familiar with…

A flashback begins, a first-person narrative from Jacopo’s point-of-view after the slave rebellion in Morgana’s flashback. Jacopo wasn’t actually a slave, but a revolutionary that disguised himself as a slave. Good work was done, but it didn’t do lasting damage. Slaves were freed, but that lord’s still in power. Much more needed to be done to bring real change….

But until then, Jacopo watched over Morgana along with a brothel he was connected to through Maria. Much like their later selves, they were good friends (emphasis on were). Jacopo makes it a point to take care of Morgana, hoping to one day get her injured face cleaned up and to give her a dream life. Was he being like a found family dad?

Well, no. As if to make Nellie’s incestual assault on her brother look tamer, Jacopo had romantic feelings for Morgana. Now, The House in Fata Morgana doesn’t exactly endorse this. Jacopo openly considered himself a creep for thinking this. Maria doesn’t see this as bad, but this was only because she had to do sex work when she was young – but even then, she and other women at the brothel considered Jacopo kind of a fucked up loser. This is moreso a product of the setting of this part of the chapter than an endorsement. Still, it immediately made a bad first impression of past Jacopo.

Morgana’s birthday arrived and Jacopo bought that gift necklace for Morgana. Maria encouraged Jacopo to tell Morgana his feelings for her, not necessarily to make a romance happen, but to show Morgana that there’s somebody that truly cares for her. And uh, sure Maria. We just got a flashback of a guy showing that he cares about someone without romantic interest, but whatever. Jacopo did have good meaning behind his intentions toward Morgana, but come on man.

Anyway, the brothel got attacked and Morgana got spirited away.

Before the attack though, Jacopo had been approached by a woman. She claimed to be a servant that once worked under one of the Barnier lords and he got her pregnant, and she claimed that Jacopo was her son and part of the Barnier line. In the aftermath of the attack, Jacopo decided to hit her up, wanting an ounce of power that could have prevented the attack and Morgana’s disappearance.

However, Jacopo believed that the woman was a liar. Though she carried a ring of royalty, he doubted he was actually her son. Jacopo believed that she really did have a son, but he died, and she just sought someone that could fill the role for her true goal of disrupting royalty – and a man that helped stoke a rebellion being declared lost royalty would really cause drama. To me, this unnamed woman feels like a parallel to future Maria, being adjacent to power but not being allowed it due to being a woman. It feels like Morgana combined this woman and the earlier version of Maria to produce the future Maria.

The woman was like, “okay, so what if that’s true?” and Jacopo still decided to take her offer. With the ring he was given, Jacopo stoked the discontent to properly unseat the lord he previously stoked a rebellion against and became lord himself, even taking the Barnier name. Unfortunately, he became a victim of a full circle revolution in that he ended up having to suck up to other lords and consolidate power around him to the detriment of the impoverished people he left behind. Jacopo became jaded and hostile, looking for ways to keep his power and keep money flowing. Don’t worry, he’ll totally use the money to support the lower classes, he promised.

Then he heard the rumor about the witch with healing blood and much like his future self embracing the mass transit economy, he was going to start the saint’s blood economy. So what if he was going to subject a woman to horrible torture?

Then he regretted it when Yukimasa arrived and revealed that the witch was Morgana. Morgana did not recognize Jacopo, and to truly cement that Jacopo just did a full circle revolution, Morgana thought that Jacopo was the old lord. Jacopo tried to reassure her that he totally isn’t, but… he doesn’t want to risk anyone finding out that he was truly just a commoner since it’d unravel the power he claimed for himself. Welp, up in the tower she goes.

The vision ends. Michel roasts the shit out of Jacopo for choosing to subject Morgana to hell despite personally knowing her circumstances, despite supposedly loving her and, and…

Look. I’m gonna be honest: I’m not sympathetic to Jacopo at all. Like okay, let’s ignore his pedophilic feelings toward Morgana for a second. Even if he was a truly good ruler, he was still perfectly willing to subject the story of the city of Omelas to somebody. He was only regretful because the victim was somebody he personally knew. If the victim wasn’t Morgana, he probably would have more eagerly done the same shit. Under the most generous interpretations, Jacopo’s still a fucking terrible guy.

Mell and Yukimasa’s roles in Morgana’s torture were sympathetic. Mell was threatened and was just acting like a scared child. Yukimasa may be the Joker, but he was explicitly getting taken advantage of. The motivating factor for Jacopo was keeping power as a shithead leader and being “I don’t want people to find out I wasn’t born a noble 😦 “ Fuck you, I don’t care. Like, maybe I’d feel for him if he was the righteous leader that people expected him to be. But if Maria’s telling the truth of the conditions of the world – and the short glimpses of Jacopo being a ruler doesn’t exactly contradict her narrative – then he’s just terrible. People already hate his ass! In fact, seeing as Maria wanted to kill him like her future self did, there’s no sign that Jacopo was actually helping poor people. Mell and Yukimasa acted for the sake of other people, but Jacopo just acted for himself.

This is honestly my only big sore point in The House of Fata Morgana so far. I don’t care about Jacopo. Morgana should stop tormenting Mell and Yukimasa, but Jacopo? Honestly, let him fucking suffer. He’s the worst guy in Morgana’s backstory and he acted for the worst reasons. Make him dead. If The House in Fata Morgana wanted to break the pattern by making a guy actually look worse in his flashbacks instead of better, it sure succeeded.

Anyway, continuing his little bitch behavior, Jacopo claims that he was going to let Morgana out on the day of the festival. Remembering how future Jacopo was isolating his White-Haired Girl until he finished the railroad, Michel chews him out for putting things off until a big milestone instead of doing things immediately. Jacopo calls Michel a liar for saying that she’ll die on the day of the festival, and god, Michel really is a saint, I would have just let Yukimasa do his thing.

Michel cows the coward to his demands anyway. The three men open up the door of the observation tower and everyone heads up. Outside of Morgana’s room, they hear her talking to someone…

As it happens, trapped in isolation for so long, Morgana seems to have developed dissociative personality disorder. Her normal god-loving personality is still present, but that personality talks with a harsher personality closer in line the Morgana Michel came to know. For Michel, he gets another brain blast: perhaps the White-Haired Girl was the milder personality of Morgana.

Michel holds onto Morgana, assuring her that she’s free now. However, she’s very weak and has no desire to go outside.

Much like many, Morgana views Michel as an angel.

Instead of denying it, Michel takes up the mantle of an angel for her as one last wish.

And that wish is for an angel to finally bring her to God.

And so, despite everything, Morgana dies in Michel’s arms. I took a long break here to cry.

Michel asks the men present to talk to Morgana, feeling that her spirit would still be around to bear witness. The men all apologize to Morgana for their role in her suffering and want her to get a proper peaceful burial. Despite his injured arm, Michel takes the job of carrying Morgana’s body down the stairs to truly embody her last wish of being carried away by an angel.

They all stop at the front door of the estate. They’re ready to go out to bury Morgana and the men are ready to face the consequences of their actions… and for their future selves to be better people than they were. Mell promises to confront the problems he comes across instead of running away from them. Yukimasa vows to try to live a normal life with restraint. Michel has to tell Jacopo to be a more open person because this fucker doesn’t take a future vow like the other men. In turn, Michel thanks the men for wanting to be better people and for giving him a chance to reflect on himself.

They open the door, and…

…They’re in creepypasta land again.

Morgana’s body disappears and everyone but Michel suddenly drops dead as the world shifts to a horror-scape and Michel comes to a horrifying realization: he was a victim of Morgana’s Joker’s trick yet again.

Michel’s been in the estate and its afterlife hell the whole time. He was never isekai’d to the past, but was wandering through a new world constructed by the memories of the dead men. The mask slipped when Michel bore witness to Jacopo’s past earlier, but now he understands how that happened to begin with – he never left the manor.

At first, Michel despairs, but then he looks on the bright side. He truly hasn’t changed the past, but he exhibited the full truth of the past to Morgana, who was clearly watching Michel in the last installment of this series. Hell, maybe the reason why Giselle was gone was because Morgana spirited Giselle away while Michel dug around for the truth.

Now, how does Morgana take that truth? Michel gets spirited away in light as the chapter finally ends, so we may know in the final chapter.

If I had any predictions for the story, I think the final chapter will focus on Morgana’s time with the first lord. Morgana kept giving Michel flashes to the earlier moments of her life, and with the lives of the men fully explored, I think we’re going to explore her. Perhaps it’ll even confirm that the White-Haired Girl was Morgana’s base personality.

Anyway! I hope that Jacopo suffers more. Free Mell and Yukimasa from the pit, but dear god, I want the fucking worst for that man. Eternal suffering on his soul.