Reality Fracture Replaces Elder Dragons with Elder Sphinxes

Last updated on August 31, 2026

Enlightened Confidant | Illustration by Denman Rooke

Last Friday, Wizards released the “Planeswalker’s Guide to Reality Fracture” and revealed that the schools of Hexhaven, the Echoverse counterpart to Strixhaven, are lead not by elder dragons but elder sphinxes, one of which is pictured in Enlightened Confidant:

Pictured above is Denzilore Fatehold, dean of Fatehold, the college dedicated to the use of divination and study to record “future history” and alter the present to match.

Kwia Vigorbloom | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

We also got detailed art of Kwia Vigorbloom, dean of the green-white school of Vigorbloom that teaches invasive healing (you will be healed, regardless of how you feel) and merges human life and plant matter.

Though the other sphinxes aren’t pictured, we learned about them and their schools:

• Aerid Konstrari leads the Konstrari school of puppeteers, which teaches students to craft and control puppetbeasts, artificial constructs that can be quite large (Craterclaw Colossus is a puppetbeast).
• Uldaros Theorix teaches Theorix students reality-warping magics reliant on geometric shapes to redraw the boundaries of reality, though the creation of reality is outside their power.
• Ingris Stingerquill’s students learn poetry, song, and composition to channel aggressive magics that attack their enemy’s body and mind at the same time. Stingerquill students are often the first Hexhaven students in battle, as fits their Rakdos () color identity.

Will the Elder Sphinxes Get Cards?

Absolutely. For one, MaRo’s Realty Fracture teaser included the type line “Legendary Creature – Elder Sphinx,” but even without that, such prominent creatures would receive legendary printings.

Given that these are deans of the two-colored schools, they’ll be two-color commanders. The question is how they stack up to the elder dragons, all five of which were some of the most hyped commanders from Secrets of Strixhaven.

Part of that hype came from the elder dragons adding familiar, powerful abilities to instants and sorceries; if Jace is as unimaginative with their powers as their name, the sphinxes might get similar abilities, in which case I could see them rivaling the elder dragons. If they get totally unique abilities, I find it hard to imagine they can top the wow factor of mechanics like storm and affinity in a new context.

Why Did Jace Create Elder Sphinxes, Not Dragons?

Illustration by Zara Alfonso

The Echoverse is Jace’s attempt to reimagine a perfect Multiverse in which the Eldrazi never threatened Zendikar, Bolas never invaded Ravnica, and New Phyrexia never existed to invade the Multiverse in the first place, but it’s a shoddy copy. The Planeswalker’s Guide revealed that when the Meditation Realm collapsed at the end of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, the mind mage was fractured into multiple selves; the guide is narrated by the part of Jace that was the Guildpact, imprisoned for seeing the flaws of the Echoverse, who hopes the information will allow the reader to overcome The Theorist, the dominant version of Jace described as “an amalgamation of our worse traits magnified, without any of the empathy that made us a leader.”

The Echoverse is faulty because it “was corrupted by the worst parts of our nature,” an unstable vision of what could have been colored by Jace’s biases and perspectives. This is evident in many ways; for example, Hexhaven is dotted with mage-rings like those on Vryn, Jace’s home, and the faceless guards of Hexhaven bear more than a passing resemblance to the bullies who tormented Jace before his spark ignited:

Hexhaven Guard I Illustration by Chris Rallis

The sphinxes themselves are undoubtedly manifestations of Jace’s relationship with Alhammarret, a powerful sphinx on Vryn who was Jace’s mentor and tormentor, teaching him mind-magic while continuously controlling Jace. Freeing himself from Alhammarret resulted in Jace losing his memory of his childhood for most of the story, until the events of Ixalan block. His creation of the sphinxes represents Jace’s, or at least The Theorist’s, absolute corruption and continues the themes of Secrets of Strixhaven.

Jace’s previous encounters with sphinxes have gone poorly; Alhammarret and Azor, founder of Ravnica’s Guildpact and namesake of the Azorius, were egomaniacs who warped the fate of planes around their desires, assuming they knew better than the planes’ denizens or simply uncaring about those less intelligent than them. That Jace is now conducts himself like this is reflected in the elder sphinxes. Additionally, SOS’s story, particularly scenes centered on Chandra and Ajani, considered the traumas of being a planeswalker and the heavy burdens the now-fragmented members of the Gatewatch carry after fighting eldrazi and Bolas and Phyrexians. Reality Fracture likely continues this theme, with Hexhaven and the Echoverse as a whole being a physical manifestation of Jace’s traumas, past and present, and his defeat paralleling him making peace with a tumultuous past.