Because she didn’t know how else to express that, she bowed. “Thank you,” she said at last.
Lindon was staring at her again, but at least it was at her face this time. “This may sound terrible, but have we met before? If I’ve forgotten you, I apologize, but you seem familiar to me.”
Jai Chen had heard about him from her brother, but she’d never seen him in her life. “Maybe I look like…” She cut herself off before realizing what she’d been about to say.
“No, I’ve never seen his face,” Lindon said. He shook his head. “Anyway, if you’ll excuse me.” He gave a little smile, bobbed his head, and started to walk out.
Without knowing why, Jai Chen spoke to his retreating back. “Um…did you kill young master Kral?”
He stopped, hitching up his pack. The heavy monster in the other room growled again.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Jai Chen,” Lindon said, without turning around. “If I’ve done anything wrong, or if you need her help again…” He patted the sleeping woman on his shoulder. “…then you can find me at the Arelius family. I’m sorry for disturbing your night.”
He walked out, pausing briefly in the dusty wreckage of what once had been the door to her room. A moment later, he opened the front door, and she got a glimpse of the outside world through the hole in her bedroom wall.
A Jai clan warrior in blue held a spear at Lindon’s chest, while an elder to the left looked nervous.
Lindon turned his head, meeting the elder’s eyes, and the old man flinched visibly. Jai Chen could understand; if his eyes had turned black and red again, the elder could be forgiven for thinking he was a death Remnant in human skin.
Then Lindon dipped into a bow, his pack bobbing behind him. “Thank you for your patience,” he said, and walked away.
A giant turtle followed him, big as a horse, munching on a chair as it left—a couple of painted legs disappeared into its lips as it rounded a corner. The doorway was already damaged where the sacred beast passed through earlier, and the frame shattered further this time.
Smoke rose from the giant turtle’s shell, and the cracks between the plates smoldered red. The sacred beast growled in Lindon’s wake, snorting black fire at the elder on the outside. The old man yelped and hopped back in time to avoid burning his toes.
After a moment of debate, the Jai clan members shut the remainder of the front door without asking her a word.
Jai Chen sat down on the edge of her bed, stunned. So much had happened in such a short time that she felt like she’d been slapped in the face. Now that she thought of it, she had been slapped in the face.
But she could move again.
Ordinarily, she had to be careful when she opened her wardrobe, so she didn’t strain herself. Now, she opened and closed the door. Open and closed. Open and closed.
Her brother found her half an hour later, standing on her own two feet and opening and closing her wardrobe.
His mask had torn, exposing the lower half of his face. His skin was pale and tinged with blue, his jaw swollen and misshapen, and light leaked from between his lips as he spoke. “What did they do to you?”
He sounded ready to find someone to murder.
Jai Long was standing in the ashes of what had once been her doorway. She must have looked insane, standing in her bedclothes with her wardrobe door in one hand.
And tears were running down her cheeks. Her eyes were swollen, her nose stuffed, and she’d been sobbing. When had she started crying?
Jai Long walked over to her, gently guiding her closer to bed, but she pushed back against him. He noticed her strength and his eyes widened between the remaining strips of his mask. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded, and her spirit shivered at the touch of his scan.
Her voice was quivering, and she was still uncertain about many of the details.
But she told him.
Jai Daishou woke on a crumbling, icy cliff inside a pile of moon-white Remnant parts. They were already dissolving in streams of essence, so he must look like he was bathed in stars.
Which was no comfort to a man who had just died.
His limbs trembled as he hauled his way to his feet, his joints screaming like he’d packed them with broken glass. Every breath was agony, and his vision blurred.
He pushed the palm of his hand against his aching head, trying to shake loose his memory.
An image snapped into place: Eithan Arelius, standing over him with face bloody, hair blowing in the wind, scissors held against Jai Daishou’s throat.
Snip.
Pain, blood, absolute exhaustion…and something breaking in his soul.
He ran a thumb over the fresh, tender scar on his throat and shivered despite decades of self-control. Without his good fortune years ago, he would have lost his life tonight.
The Underlord plunged his awareness into his spirit, looking for a black-and-red ornate box that usually floated above his core. The Heartguard Chest was a spiritual object, a treasure he’d plundered from an ancient clan of Soulsmiths, but it had an invaluable function.
It contained enough blood and life madra to save you from death once. And only once. He’d thought it might prolong his lifespan for a few months, when time eventually claimed its due.
Sure enough, the box was open, and the Chest itself melting away to nothing. Jai Daishou had spent months filling it with a decoy Remnant, one convincing enough to fool—it seemed—even Eithan Arelius himself.
He coughed heavily into his hand, the force rattling his bones, and he was surprised when he didn’t find blood in his palm. Even with the healing of the Heartguard Chest, his body was finished. He was held together by little more than hope and wishes.
If he lived out the year, it would be because the heavens smiled on him.
He cycled what little madra remained, his channels burning, his core throbbing like a bruised muscle. He needed his remaining elders to find him alive.
Before Eithan Arelius did.
Because Jai Daishou was the only one in the Empire to know the truth about the Arelius family Underlord. Pure madra. He’d always thought of Eithan as nothing but an overgrown child, and he was more right than he could have known.
He wouldn’t die until he could plant that knowledge like a dagger in Eithan’s heart.
Iteration 216: Limit
Iteration 217 Harrow
TERMINATED
As Harrow and Limit dissolved and crumbled away into the void, Suriel witnessed once again the death of an Iteration.
The endless darkness of empty space had peeled away first, like black wallpaper peeling away…only to reveal an even deeper hole. The void surrounded them, infinite nothing dotted with swirling balls of color, like a rainbow of fireflies dancing in the night.
The planet itself faded away like a ghost, leaving fragments: pieces of the planet with a strong enough identity to hold together even in the chaos of the void. There, a disc of earth holding a forest spun into the distance, its trees frozen in a wind that no longer blew.
Time worked strangely in the void. Fragments tended to either live the same moments in a loop or to freeze entirely, waiting to join back into an Iteration. Fragments with inhabitants crawled along, their time drifting slowly forward, but the inhabitants tended not to fare well.
She had sent Ozriel’s population shelter straight to Pioneer 8089. With a population of over thirteen million, they had good odds of surviving until their world stabilized into a true Iteration.