The next in-universe Magic set is Reality Fracture, which releases on October 2nd. Wizards of the Coast has been fairly tight-lipped about the set so far. However, the Magic story has given us some hints as far as what to expect from this mysterious set. In this article, I’m going to break down what we know so far about this reality-warping set’s lore, and I’m also going to speculate on what we might see mechanically in Reality Fracture.

CLUES ABOUT REALITY FRACTURE IN THE MAGIC STORY

SECRETS OF STRIXHAVEN GAVE US OUR FIRST GLIMPSE OF AN ALTERNATE REALITY

So far, we’ve only gotten a few breadcrumbs about what’s coming this fall. The best place to start is with the biggest of these breadcrumbs, which came in the climax and epilogue of the Secrets of Strixhaven story.

That story revolved around Arcavios’s Archaics, gigantic, ancient, and powerful beings on the plane. Normally docile, they all began acting aggressive. At the same time, the plane’s snarls – gateways through which opposing colors of mana flow onto the plane – started to destabilize. 

Over the course of the story, it was revealed that the Arcavios’s oracles are all thrown back in time and turned into Archaics when they die. It was ultimately revealed that Jace was behind all of this, and his ultimate plan was to use their powerful magic to turn one of the snarls into a portal.

One of the main characters of this story is a gorgon named Tam, who at the climax jumps through one of the portals after shoving Arcavios’s current oracle – Jadzi – through it. It is then revealed that a white-clad Jace with whom she has a father-daughter like relationship was waiting for Tam on the other side of the portal, as was an alternate version of Strixhaven University. 

It is apparent Jadzi’s deep hidden power is needed for whatever Jace is planning – which I think it’s safe to say is a fracturing of reality. It was something the Archaics were capable of, and Jadzi is going to be one someday.

WHO IS THIS JACE? 

This card depicts Narset, Elspeth, Jace, and Loot in the Meditation Realm.

We’ve also gotten some clues about what might be going on from earlier stories.  Despite living in an alternate reality and dressing differently than Jace, it’s possible that this version of Jace is the one we already know.  

In the Tarkir: Dragonstorm story, he entered the Meditation Realm and stole Ugin’s spirit-gem with the intention of using it in the Realm, and when asked what he wants to do with it, he said:

“This place is a substrate to all of reality, touching countless worlds and moldable by sheer force of will. If I take control of it, I can fix everything. I can make it so that the Phyrexians never did what they did to Vraska.” 

When Jace channeled his magic into the gem, those present in the Realm briefly saw a kaleidoscope of time and realities, but the spirit-gem seemingly was too much for him, and he got overpowered by it and he turned into glass before shattering. Or perhaps, fracturing?

Jace may have survived. But he was transported to one of the alternate realities. It’s also possible that he didn’t survive, but an Alternate Jace succeeded where main-multiverse Jace failed. Jace may also have fractured reality just enough to get things started. The fact that Tam is a gorgon probably isn’t a coincidence either, as she clearly has some connection to both Jace and Vraska.

Whatever the case, I’m very confident that this moment in the Meditation Realm was the beginning of this fracture in reality.

ALTERNATE REALITY PLANESWALKERS ARE ALREADY AMONG US

At the conclusion of the Lorwyn Eclipsed story, Liliana had an unusual visitor come to her office hours at Strixhaven. This event is described as follows:

She was tall, with broad shoulders and a figure accentuated by the tight fabric of her tailored white gown and corset. Her black hair fell around her shoulders in loose waves too perfect to be anything but calculated, and she was smiling a warm, almost sisterly smile.

Worse yet, she was doing it with Liliana’s own lips.

Liliana could only stare as the white-clad version of herself stepped past her into the office, pausing to lay a hand briefly across Liliana’s own and say, in a soft voice, “Maybe close the door, dear. We need to have a conversation.”

The door swung shut with a sound like a tomb closing, and everything was silence.

This strange Liliana was certainly from another reality. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to go on beyond this short appearance. However, we do know that by the time of Secrets of Strixhaven, Liliana has vanished. This could be because her alternate self dispatched her, but it’s also possible the two of them are working to stop Jace.

While the white Liliana doesn’t have a card yet, she’s not the only alternate planeswalker to visit the halls of Strixhaven University – a very different Ral Zarek is there too. While he didn’t appear at all in the main story for Secrets of Strixhaven, he did get a side story. In the multiverse we know, Ral is a Ravnican who is also the guildmaster of the Izzet League, but this Ral is an Orzhov lawyer. He also claims some responsibility for the destabilization of the snarls, but he doesn’t explain how.

So, like Liliana he’s pretty mysterious. And that doesn’t just extend to his different color identity and what role he played in the events of Secrets of Strixhaven. If you look closely at Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer’s textbox, you’ll see a strange watermark. You’d think as an Orzhov lawyer and a Silverquill visiting professor, he’d have one of their symbols. But he doesn’t, he has one that has never appeared on a card before.

This watermark closely resembles one of Jace’s medallions, all but confirming that this alternate Ral was on Arcavios helping Jace to destabilize both the snarls and the archaics.

WHAT CAN PLANAR CHAOS TELL US ABOUT THE DESIGN OF THIS KIND OF SET?

This isn’t the first time we’ve had a set where the story was about alternate realities. We also saw this in Time Spiral Block. That block’s story was about how a series of cataclysms on the plane of Dominaria had caused the temporal fabric of the plane to become incredibly unstable. 

One of the consequences of this was the plane’s temporal fabric splintering into thousands of alternate realities. These alternate realities were the focus of Planar Chaos, which was released in 2007. To reflect that the timeline was different, the set featured dozens of color-shifted versions of the game’s characters.

For example, in the main story Crovax got cursed and became a Phyrexian vampire and ruler of Rath. However, in the alternate reality we saw in Planar Chaos, it was another member of the Weatherlight crew – Mirri – who ended up getting cursed instead. As such, we saw alternate versions of both of them. We saw what might have happened to Crovax if he had never been cursed, while also getting a cursed version of Mirri.

I think it’s virtually guaranteed that we’re going to see similar treatments in Reality Fracture. At the very least, we’re going to get alternate reality versions of planeswalkers. In fact, as I noted above,  we already got one in Secrets of Strixhaven in the form of Ral Zarek, Guest Lecturer.

I’m sure we’ll see many similar cards in Reality Fracture. A white-aligned Liliana is virtually guaranteed, and I think many of the game’s most prominent planeswalkers will be getting a similar treatment. I’m sure we’ll also see alternate versions of some other notable non-planeswalker Legendaries too.

Planar Chaos also had dozens of alternate reality versions of cards that had identical text boxes to their iconic forebears but were in a different color.  These “color-shifted” cards had special frames.

The most notable examples of this are Damnation, which debuted as a color-shifted Wrath of God, and Simian Spirit Guide, which was a color-shifted Elvish Spirit Guide.

I think there’s a very good chance we see color shifted cards like these coming from this alternate reality. The fact that Jace’s home base seems to be an alternate Strixhaven has me thinking that there’s a very good chance that this alternate university focuses on the allied color pairs, as opposed to the enemy ones. This could open the door to multicolored color-shifted cards, something we didn’t see in Planar Chaos.

Whatever the case, I think it’s very likely we see new color-shifted cards. Wizards of the Coast and players alike love callbacks to Magic’s long history, and this is the first time in two decades where it actually makes sense to do color-shifted cards.

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So, those are my thoughts about what we might see in Reality Fracture. What do you think we’ll see? Let me know over on X or Bluesky.