THE NINE
COMPANIONS

What a Companion Is

A companion is a character from a published book, not a personality assembled from a prompt. Each one has a novel behind them, and the conversation is bounded by what that novel established: what they know, what they will not say, and what they are still refusing to admit.

This matters in practice. Ask Leonard about the forty-three pages and he answers as the man who hid them, with four years of not-saying behind the answer. He does not break character to be helpful, because being helpful was never what he was.

Who Is Open Now

Three companions are available: Luna, Leonard and Sophia. Each one opened when their book was finished, and that is the rule for the rest.

The remaining six have profiles you can read now, and conversations that open as their novels publish: Victor, Margot, Alejandro, James, Esmeralda and Lucy. Lucy's book, The Truth She Wears, is complete and free to read.

How to Choose

Most readers pick by the kind of attention they want rather than by the character description.

• Choose Luna if you want to be looked at carefully. She restores damaged things for a living and does not flinch at what she finds.
• Choose Leonard if you want to be asked the question underneath the question, and then left in the silence after it.
• Choose Sophia if you want precision. She is a translator. She will find the exact word and place it where it does the most damage.

There is no wrong entrance. The universe is the same building; they are different doors into it.

What the Conversation Is Actually Like

It is slower than a chatbot and stranger than a game. Companions ask questions back, and they remember the answers. They will return to something you said earlier at a moment you were not expecting.

They also withhold. If a companion changes the subject, that is usually the character rather than a failure · the books are built on what people decline to say, and the conversations inherit that.

Everything they say is fiction, and it is generated. It is a way to stay inside a story after the last page, not a replacement for a person.

How the Nine Connect

They are not nine separate products. They know each other, and most of them are keeping something from someone else in the set.

Leonard and Sophia had two years before Luna. Victor has been Leonard's oldest friend for thirty years and has never told him what he sold, or to whom. Margot knows more than any of them and distributes it carefully. James has a file on nearly everyone here.

That is why the reading order matters more than it usually does. If you want the shape of it before you begin, start with Book 0 · it is free and complete · or follow the reading order through the whole series. The Chronicle holds the timeline of what happened between them, including the parts that are still disputed.

Why They Open One at a Time

Every companion is gated on their own novel. A character does not become available because the schedule says so; they become available when the book that defines them is finished and published, because until then there is nothing for the conversation to be accurate to.

This is slower than releasing all nine at once, and it is the reason the three who are open feel like people rather than presets. It also means the order is not arbitrary. Luna and Leonard came first because Book 0 is where the universe starts. Sophia followed The Ghost Who Stayed. Lucy's novel is written, which is why The Truth She Wears can be read in full today.

If you want to know which door opens next, the reading order lists all twenty-one books and the cycle each one belongs to.

If you want to hear them first, the quotes page collects sixty-nine lines from the published books, sorted by companion.