The incorrect information in previous Chapters has been corrected. (From Chapter 244 to the latest Chapter)
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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 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 something had gone wrong at a very deep level.
Three fourteen.
The same exact moment, the third night in a row.
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Selina had already planted herself in front of Rover, her sword half-drawn. Elith dropped silk from the ceiling, blanketing every corner of the room in an instant. Rilia tensed, her wolf ears standing straight up. Even the Thunder Dragon lifted its head, a low growl rumbling out of its throat and shaking the whole floor.
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, like the sound of stone grinding against stone. "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 mention it, had heard Livia mention it, always with that half-respectful, half-wary tone Rover had never been able to understand. "One of the three Lamp-Bearers who bet on me."
"Correct."
"You came into my room. That breaks the law."
"Correct." Otrix answered. "And that is why you should be afraid. Not of me. Of the thing that made someone like 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.
"The other 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.
"From the moment those two words rang out, I walked through the entire dead zone." Otrix continued. "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." Otrix said. "I have buried more Survivors than the total number of people who have ever lived in this building. There are young Lamp-Bearers who think there is nothing left in this dead zone that could make me blink."
He 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 sentence, not through the words themselves, 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 held her breath for a second.
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"What is the name?" Rover asked. "[Mirror]?"
"No." Otrix said. "[Mirror] is just the bell. Say it and the bell rings. I came to tell you who heard the bell."
He raised a hand, and in the space between him and Rover, the fog coiled into a blurred shape, 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 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 now he is the one who wants to bring humanity back here."
Rover didn’t understand.
But he understood enough to know he shouldn’t press. Because Otrix had just said one sentence containing more information than everything Rover had learned in two hundred and forty-five days, and if he tried to pry it all out right now, he would only receive fragments with no frame to fit them into.
"Sit down." Rover said. "If you’re going to tell it, tell it all."
Otrix did not sit.
He turned his head, the cold visor sweeping across each person in the room, Selina, Elith, Rilia, Monica, and finally coming to rest on Nanoe.
"Not in front of them."
Selina immediately laid a hand on the hilt of her sword. Nanoe did not move, but her gaze sharpened.
"My people," Rover said, his voice flat, "hear everything I hear."
"Not this." Otrix said. And in his voice there was not the slightest room for negotiation. "What I’m about to say, boy, is something where merely knowing it is enough to turn an ordinary Survivor into a target. Three Lamp-Bearers bet on you. No one bet on them." He jerked his head toward the women. "If you want to keep them safe, then keep them out of this. That’s not advice. That’s the price for me to open my mouth."
The room went still.
Rover looked at Otrix for a long time.
Then he turned to Nanoe.
She had already understood, she always understood before he could speak. In her eyes there was something that flickered past, not anger, but a cold wariness directed at the black armor standing in the middle of the room. But she only gave a slight nod.
"We’ll be in the next room." Nanoe said. She stood, and as she passed by Rover, she paused for half a second, just long enough to say one quiet sentence only he could hear. "If he lies to you, I’ll know. Tell me back every word."
Then she led the others out of the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her.
Only Rover and Otrix remained.
Otrix waited until the sound of the door had fully closed.
Then, something that had not happened in two hundred years happened: a Lamp-Bearer sat down in a chair in a Survivor’s room.
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"[Mirror] is not a combat skill." Otrix said. "It never was. You used it to copy abilities, to grow stronger, to survive, and you thought that was its purpose. It isn’t. That is only what a child does with a key: use it to scratch his back."
"[Mirror] is a key." He went on. "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, a parallel world, and herd every last one of the monsters inside. Lock them away. Give this world back to the living."
Rover sat still.
In his mind, one piece dropped into its correct place. The mirror world. The Thousand-Faced Wraith living inside it. The faces packed together beneath its skin.
"The first one to hold the key tried." Otrix said. "He built the cage. But he wasn’t strong enough to hold its boundary. A cage needs a core, a consciousness standing at the center, keeping the walls from collapsing. He volunteered to be that core. And the cage, full of monsters, ate him from the inside. One at a time. Every one it swallowed to hold the walls, it wore as another face."
"Now he is no longer human. He is the wall. He is the cage. And he speaks to you through mirrors."
"The Thousand-Faced Wraith." Rover said quietly.
"You have met him." Otrix did not ask it as a question. "Good. Then you understand why he helps you. Why he gives you everything he has. He is not kind to you, boy. He is recruiting his replacement for the shift."
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Rover felt the back of his neck go cold.
Every word the Thousand-Faced Wraith had said, across so many Chapters, so many nights, now returned to his mind with an entirely new layer of meaning. Someday you will thank me. You are worth the investment. I need you to grow. Not a villain toying with him. A prisoner who had endured four hundred years, searching for someone strong enough to take his place, so that he could finally die.
"Who is the second one?" Rover asked.
Otrix looked at him for a long time.
"You’re sure you want to hear it."
"Speak."
"The second one to hold the key," Otrix said, "was your father."
The room fell dead silent.
Rover did not move. He heard water dripping somewhere in the kitchen. He heard Nanoe’s breathing stop. He heard his own heart beat, once, twice.
"My father." He said, his voice stripped of all inflection.
"He was the only one in the two hundred years after the Thousand-Faced Wraith who nearly built the cage." Otrix said. "He had [Mirror]. He had the power. And he was wise enough to see the mistake of the one before him, he knew that if he made himself the core, he too would be swallowed. So he did not finish the cage. He stopped halfway."
"But he did not leave empty-handed. With half a cage and all of his power, he drove back the entire horde of monsters, pushed them out of this world, drove them all the way to the Event Horizon, a chaotic region of space at the edge of everything. He bought humanity two hundred years."
"Then he vanished. And he left behind exactly one thing."
Otrix looked straight into Rover’s eyes.
"You."
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Rover sat a long time without speaking.
In two hundred and forty-five days, he had never truly thought about his parents. Not because he had forgotten. But because for him, those two words had never held any content. He had lived twenty-five years in another world, and in those twenty-five years, he had never once been able to say the word "father" or "mother" to anyone. It was an emptiness he had learned not to touch.
Now Otrix had just placed a name, a face, a shape into that emptiness.
My father held the same key I hold.
My father knew how to use [Mirror].
My father knew what the crack was. My father knew its price. My father had stood in the exact place I am standing, and my father had found a path without being swallowed.
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.
"Adriel." Rover said, pulling himself back. "You said he wants to bring humanity back. Why is that a bad thing?"
Otrix rose from the chair.
"Because to bring humanity back, the cage must never be finished." He said. "Think about it, boy. If you finish the cage, if you lock all the monsters in here, then the new world out there, the place humanity fled to, becomes a permanent safe fortress. No one needs to come back. No one needs to fight. Mankind will go on living in the new place and leave this old world behind as a sealed prison."
"Adriel does not accept that. He believes fleeing is cowardice. He believes humanity must return, must take this place back in blood. So he does not want the cage. He wants the door, the door your father used to push the monsters away, and he wants to open it again. Both directions."
"He thinks he is a hero." Otrix walked toward the door. "That is why he is more dangerous than anything you have ever faced. Monsters only want to eat you. The Thousand-Faced Wraith only wants to replace you. But Adriel wants to save you, and he is willing to burn everything you love to do it."
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Rover called after him.
"Otrix."
The black armor stopped at the threshold, not turning its head.
"The three of you bet on me when I had nothing." Rover said. "You. Livia. Leng Yan. I am starting to think that when people far stronger than me put everything they have on an unknown horse, that is not a gamble. That is a sacrifice. Why?"
Otrix was silent for a moment.
"We did not bet on you, boy." He said at last. "Not yet. You have done nothing to make us believe."
"We bet on your father."
"He was the only one in two hundred years who nearly built the cage. When he vanished, he left you behind. So we placed our bet. Not on Rover. On his son. We bet that what runs in you also ran in him. That you would finish what he left undone."
Otrix stepped into the fog.
"As for Leng Yan..." His voice grew fainter. "She is the only one of the three who bet on you, not your father. I don’t understand why. Perhaps you should go ask her yourself."
The black armor dissolved into the gray-white.
The door closed.
Rover stood in the middle of the room for a long time.
They didn’t bet on me. They bet on a dead man I have never even met.
That should have made him angry.
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 came to his side. "What are you thinking?"
Rover looked into the large mirror hanging on the living room wall.
In the mirror, he was looking back at himself too.
Half a beat slower.
"I’m thinking," he said, "that there is someone in this building who has met my father."