If it wasn’t already 100% confirmed that Reality Fracture was about alternate versions of the Magic: The Gathering characters we know and love, I’d say this makes it more or less official. We’d already seen a glimpse of an alternate, white-aligned Liliana at the end of the Lorwyn story.
Now the first Secrets of Strixhaven story reveals a Ral Zarek serving as a Silverquill professor, who is very different to the lightning-harnessing guildmaster we previously knew.
While this ‘Professor Zarek’ still hails from Ravnica, he comes from the Orzhov guild not Izzet, meaning we should anticipate a black and white Ral planeswalker card in the near future. It’s fun that this alternate universe Wario-Ral has assumed the color identity of his husband Tomik, but unfortunately it seems like he’s now evil. He’s using students to help him do crimes and then leaving them for dead, which is not the behaviour of a good mentor.
The story article, titled Off the Record, has some sneaky references to the regular Ral, like a smile that’s described as “lightning-quick”. But it’s pretty clearly not him. He’s described as a law mage instead of a storm mage, and when he planeswalks at the end of the tale, rather than a burst of electricity, he vanishes “in a swirl of shadow dotted with bursts of light.”
Interestingly, the art for this story has Ral doing almost exactly the same pose as the first Ral Zarek card from Dragon’s Maze. My guess is that’s no accident, and we’ll see the same for new versions of other existing characters. It’s a fun easter egg for established players who know to look for it.
It’s pretty clear that Jace’s shenanigans have caused some multiversal mess-ups, and it seems like alt-universe variants of well-known characters will be the theme of the mysterious Reality Fracture set. If March of the Machine was Magic’s Infinity War then Reality Fracture looks likely to be its Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Reality Fracture arrives on October 2, 2026 according to the MTG release schedule, but between Liliana and Ral we’ve already seen plenty of teasers, all taking place on Strixhaven. That might herald an alt-universe character card appearing in Secrets of Strixhaven, or perhaps Wizards is just hyping up the upcoming plotline. Remember how random Phyrexians would show up in other sets in the run-up to All Will Be One?
Are you looking forward to Reality Fracture or are the Universes Beyond sets coming up later in the year more your cup of tea? Let us know over at the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
