Chapter 247:
Rover was silent.
"A hundred and twenty-seven people." She went on. "You’re thinking that if you’d been weaker, they wouldn’t have gotten greedy. That if your room hadn’t been so juicy, that boy would never have grabbed a wooden spear and charged a Fallen Angel."
Rover turned his head to look at her.
Selina was still gazing into the fog.
"I used to be a sword hanging on someone else’s wall." She said, her voice level. "Before you restored me, before all of this, I belonged to someone else. He wasn’t strong. He was weak, and a coward. And because he was weak, he used me stupidly. He threw me into battles that couldn’t be won to rob things that weren’t worth robbing. The people who died because of him, I can’t count them."
She turned her head, and for the first time in the conversation, she looked straight into Rover’s eyes.
"The weak kill more people than the strong, Rover. Because the weak have to gamble. The weak have to be greedy. The weak have to push others out in front so they can live. That boy with the wooden spear didn’t die because you’re strong. He died because he was weak, and because the weak always believe that one gamble will change their lives."
"You’re strong, so you were able to hold the door. Forty-one people live because you’re strong, they didn’t die because you’re strong."
Rover didn’t answer right away.
He looked down into the fog, where the boy with the wooden spear and a hundred and twenty-six others were lying somewhere below.
"Do you believe what you just said?" He asked quietly.
Selina was silent for a moment.
"Not entirely." She admitted. "But I believe it enough to not want you carrying that burden. Because if you start hesitating before becoming stronger, if you start thinking ’should I get stronger, since when I’m stronger people die’, then that will be the most dangerous thing in this room. More dangerous than any monster out there."
She stood up, brushing the concrete dust off her pants.
"A doorkeeper isn’t allowed to hesitate over whether he should be strong enough to keep the door." She said. "If you want to cry for a hundred and twenty-seven people, then cry. But once you’re done crying, keep leveling up. That’s the only way that next time the number won’t be a hundred and twenty-seven, but zero."
She walked toward the rooftop door.
"Selina." Rover called.
She stopped.
"Thank you."
Selina didn’t turn her head. But her shoulders sagged slightly, and in her voice there was something that rarely appeared, not the habitual laziness, but a tenderness very carefully hidden.
"I’m your sword, Rover." She said. "A sword isn’t there for you to cut yourself with."
Then she went down, leaving him alone with the fog.
________________________________________
That night, Nanoe opened the leather-bound notebook.
There are laws in the dead zone older than the System itself.
One of them is: a Lamp-Bearer does not step into a Survivor’s room.
Not because they can’t. A Lamp-Bearer could tear the door of Room 2705 apart as easily as a person tears a wet sheet of paper. It’s because the balance of the dead zone is held together by one very strict division: Survivors play the game, Lamp-Bearers place bets on the game, and the two sides do not touch each other. A Lamp-Bearer setting foot in a Survivor’s room is like a gambler reaching into the board to nudge a piece back into place. It breaks the game.
So when the door of Room 2705 opened on its own at fourteen minutes past three in the morning, no one knocking, no one touching it, and an old suit of black armor stepped across the threshold, Rover knew that something had gone wrong at a very deep level.
Three fourteen.
The same exact moment, two nights in a row.
Selina had already planted herself in front of Rover, her sword half-drawn. Elith dropped silk down from the ceiling, blanketing every corner of the room. Rilia tensed, her wolf ears standing straight up. Even the Thunder Dragon lifted its head, a low growl rumbling out of its throat.
But the black armor only stood at the threshold.
It came no farther.
"I did not come to fight." Otrix said. His voice rang out from behind the helmet, hoarse, slow, even. "If I wanted your lives, I would not have knocked. I would not have needed to."
Rover laid a hand on Selina’s shoulder and pressed down gently.
She didn’t sheathe her sword, but she lowered it.
"Otrix." Rover said. He recognized this armor. He had heard John, had heard Livia mention it many times, always with a tone Rover couldn’t quite understand, half-respectful, half-wary. "A Lamp-Bearer who bet on me."
"One of three." Otrix answered.
"You came into my room. That breaks the law."
"Correct." Otrix said. "And that is why you should be afraid. Not of me. Of the thing that made me willing to break the law."
He took a single step inside. Just one. Then he stopped, as though he himself would not allow himself to go any farther.
"Last night." Otrix said. "Someone spoke a name in the chat window of this building."
Rover did not answer. But he saw Nanoe, standing in the corner of the room, lean forward slightly.
"Two words." Otrix continued. "From the moment those two words rang out, I walked through the entire dead zone. I went to the place where the fog has not stirred in two hundred years. And tonight, the fog there is moving."
He raised his head, and through the narrow slit of the visor, Rover saw a cold glint of light.
"Do you know what I am, boy?"
Rover shook his head.
"I once stood alone and held back a wave of Angel-tier monsters for forty days, no food, no sleep, not one step back. I have buried more Survivors than the number of people who have ever lived in this building. Livia calls me the oldest of those who place bets. There are young Lamp-Bearers who think there is nothing left in this dead zone that could make me blink."
Otrix was silent for a beat.
"Tonight, when I heard the fog in that place stir, I took a step back."
The whole room went still.
Rover understood the weight of that. Not through the words, but through the way the others in the room reacted. Selina, who feared nothing, had sheathed her sword completely, yet her hand still rested on the hilt. Nanoe had stopped breathing for a second.
"What is the name?" Rover asked. "[Mirror]?"
"No." Otrix said. "[Mirror] is just the bell. Say it and the bell rings. I came here to tell you who heard the bell."
He raised a hand, and in the air between him and Rover, the fog coiled into a blurred shape, not clear, just a tall figure in a cloak, six thin streaks of light behind its back like bones.
"His name is Adriel."
Rover frowned. The name was unfamiliar. But at some very deep level, deeper than memory, it stirred something, a chill with no source, like when you hear the name of a disease your ancestors died of.
"Who is he?"
Otrix was silent for a long time.
Then he spoke, and for the first time, his voice dropped so low it was nearly inaudible.
"He is the one who brought humanity to a new world. And he is the one who wants to bring humanity back here."
________________________________________
Rover didn’t understand.
But he understood enough to know he shouldn’t ask more right now. Because Otrix had just said one sentence containing more information than everything he’d learned in two hundred and forty-three days, and if he tried to ask it all out, he would only receive fragments he had no frame to fit together.
"Why are you telling me?" Rover asked a different question. "You’re one who bet on me. What do you gain by warning the horse you’ve backed?"
Otrix looked at him.
"Good question." He said. "You asked the exact question Livia would ask."
He turned, facing the door. But before stepping out, he stopped, and did not turn his head.
"I bet on you when you had nothing yet. Livia bet her freedom. Leng Yan bet her very self." Otrix said. "Do you know why three people like us would place such insane stakes on an unknown Survivor, just because he has [Mirror]?"
Rover did not answer.
"Because [Mirror] is not a combat skill." Otrix said. "It never was. It is a key. The one who created it created it for exactly one purpose, so that someone, one day, could use it to build a cage large enough to lock every last one of the monsters inside, and give this world back to the living."
"The first one to hold that key tried. He failed. The cage swallowed him. Now he is the fog, and he speaks to you through mirrors."
Rover went rigid.
The Thousand-Faced Wraith.
"Your father was the second." Otrix said. "He failed too. But he didn’t let the cage swallow him. He drove the monsters back all the way to the Event Horizon, then vanished, leaving you behind."
"And Adriel..." Otrix opened the door. "Adriel does not want the cage built. Adriel wants the door opened. Because if the monsters are all locked in here, then the new world out there, the world humanity fled to, becomes their prison forever, and he doesn’t want humanity to hide. He wants humanity to return, to take this place back, to fight."
"He thinks he is a hero."
Otrix stepped over the threshold, out into the hallway.
"That is why he is more dangerous than anything you have ever faced. Monsters want to eat you. The Thousand-Faced Wraith wants to replace you. But Adriel..." Otrix paused. "Adriel wants to save you. And he is willing to burn everything you love to do it."
Rover called after him.
"Otrix."
The black armor stopped in the middle of the fog, not turning its head.
"Leng Yan." Rover said. "She put her very self on my betting table. Livia bet her freedom. What did you bet?"
Otrix was silent for a long time.
Then he said, his voice dropping low: "What are you asking for?"
"Because the three of you bet on me when I had nothing." Rover said. "And Otrix, I’m starting to think that when someone far stronger than me puts everything they have on an unknown horse, that isn’t a gamble. That’s a sacrifice. People don’t sacrifice for a stake. People sacrifice because they believe in something."
"What do you believe in?"
The fog coiled around the black armor.
"Your father." Otrix said at last. "We don’t believe in you, boy. Not yet. You’ve done nothing to make us believe. We believe in your father. He was the only one in two hundred years who nearly built the cage. And when he vanished, he left behind exactly one thing."
"You."
"So we placed our bet. Not on Rover. On his son. We bet that what runs in you also ran in him. We bet that you’ll do what he couldn’t."
Otrix began to walk away.
"As for Leng Yan..." His voice grew fainter in the fog. "She bet on you, not your father. She’s the only one of the three who did. I don’t understand why. Perhaps you should go ask her yourself."
The black armor dissolved into the gray-white.
Rover stood in the doorway a long time after he had vanished.
’They didn’t bet on me.’
’They bet on a dead man I have never even met.’
That should have made him angry. It should have.
But instead, he only felt a strange weight pressing down on his shoulders, the weight of carrying a name he had never been called by, of bearing an expectation he had never agreed to accept.
"Rover."
Nanoe stood behind him.
"Close the door." She said quietly. "The fog is cold."
Rover closed the door.
________________________________________
Room 2705 sank into silence for a long time.
Rover stood alone in the middle of the living room, saying nothing, trying to rearrange everything in his head. His father. The cage. The key. Someone named Adriel who wanted to open the door his father had closed.
Too much.
The bedroom door opened slightly. Nanoe stepped out, the others following behind, all their eyes turning toward him, waiting, searching, but no one asked.
Nanoe came to his side, laid a hand on his arm.
"What did he say?"
Rover was silent.
This was the moment he had to decide. Otrix had said it plainly: merely knowing was enough to turn a person into a target. Three Lamp-Bearers had bet on him. No one had bet on Nanoe, on Selina, on Elith.
If he told them the true nature of [Mirror], that it was a key to build a cage imprisoning an entire world, then he would have just painted a target on the back of every person in this room.
’Otrix is right.’ Rover thought. ’There are some things where the fewer people who know, the safer they are.’
"He told me about my father." Rover said. It was the truth, just not the whole truth. "My father was once a strong Survivor. He left coordinates in this badge. Adriel is an old enemy of his, and now he’s taken an interest in me."
Nanoe looked at him.
She knew he was hiding something. She always knew. That very thin, very strong thread in her soul, where the System had carved the two words Tenant, still kept the question "What else are you hiding from me?" from traveling all the way up to the tip of her tongue.
But this time, for the first time, she understood why he was hiding it.
Not because he didn’t trust her.
But because he was trying to keep her outside of something so large that even Otrix had to send her out of the room before he dared speak its name.
She gave his arm a gentle squeeze.
"All right." She said quietly. "The day you’re ready, I’ll be here."
Rover looked at her, and in his heart, one single thing clung tightly to him, one thing larger than the cage, larger than Adriel:
’My father was the second one to hold the key.’
’My father failed. But my father didn’t let it swallow him.’
’My father knew how to use [Mirror].’
For the first time in his life, Rover had a question he truly wanted to find the answer to, not to survive, not to grow stronger, but for a reason so simple and so human that it surprised even himself.
He wanted to know who his father was.
________________________________________
Far away, in the fog, at the place where the gray stone-paved path had cracked apart two nights before, the man in the tall pointed hat stood by the tea table.
The pocket watch still lay open on the table.
Its second hand, after four hundred years of standing still, was now running, slow, heavy, each tick sounding like a small hammer tapping against the silence.
The Arbiter watched it run.
He no longer tried to stop it.
"Otrix has told the boy." He said quietly, to no one at all. "Faster than I thought. That old man was always soft-hearted."
In the fog behind him, another figure stood there. Slender. Motionless. Impossible to see clearly, not because the fog concealed it, but because the viewer’s eye kept sliding off, unable to hold it in memory.
That figure said nothing.
The Arbiter lifted the teacup, and this time, nothing interrupted him. He took a sip, slowly, savoring it.
"The boy wants to know about his father." He went on, setting the cup down. "Good. A child searching for his father will go very far, and endure a great deal, without anyone having to force him."
He snapped the watch lid shut.
Click.
But this time, even with the lid closed, the ticking of the second hand still echoed out from within, steady, unceasing.
The Arbiter looked at the watch in his hand for a long time.
Then, beneath the fog veiling his face, the corner of his mouth curved up.
Not satisfied.
Not tired.
This time, it was almost a real smile, the smile of someone who had waited a very, very long time, and finally heard the footsteps of the one he was waiting for ring out at the end of the hallway.
"Come home, son."
And in the fog, the slender figure standing behind him, the thing no gaze could hold in memory, tilted its head slightly, listening, like a mother hearing her child’s voice from very far away.