Chapter 168: A King’s Regret (1)

When Misha could see again, she was standing on Floor Twelve’s ruined ceremonial road.

The change was so abrupt that she needed a moment to understand where she was. Hushers knelt in silent rows on either side of the road, their empty faces lowered and their hands clasped before them. The Bell House waited beneath the gray sky, its ancient bell motionless within the open tower.

Nothing had changed, yet everything felt smaller.

After witnessing entire worlds suspended in endless darkness, Floor Twelve no longer seemed like a realm. It was a preserved fragment, a tomb built around one unfinished journey and forced to repeat it for strangers. Even the Bell House, which had loomed over the survivors like the promise of salvation, now looked pitifully small beneath that lifeless sky.

Misha stared at it, still trying to fit what she had witnessed into any reasonable corner of her mind. She had seen a kingdom grow, a royal family’s internal conflicts, and a world fail beneath powers vast enough to treat civilizations as pieces on a board. Her thoughts had not caught up with any of it.

"What the hell did I just watch?"

No one answered.

The two immense figures were gone, along with the worlds that had hung around them like lanterns in a dark hall. The funeral procession had vanished as well. Only the preserved ruin remained, silent and gray, as though the vision had never happened.

Then Misha noticed someone standing beside her.

Russel appeared neither as the young prince who had returned from Nareth with a screaming parrot nor as the dying king laid upon his bed. He looked somewhere near the prime of his reign, broad-shouldered and straight-backed, with his long crimson hair tied loosely at the nape in a low ponytail that rested over one shoulder. Faint traces of gray threaded through the red, as though his soul could not decide which age best represented him, while his face remained one Misha now knew far too well.

He turned and discovered her watching him. His composure broke for the first time, and his eyes widened. "You can see me?"

Misha blinked at him. "That’s your first concern?"

Russel continued staring. One hand lowered slowly at his side, and suspicion sharpened his expression. He looked less like a confused ghost and more like a king deciding whether the strange woman before him represented a threat.

She cleared her throat and gestured to herself. "My name is Misha. I’m a ..." She hesitated, because explaining the Soulbinder class to a dead monarch inside a memory dream seemed like the sort of conversation that should have come with instructions. "I’m a Gravekeeper. Sometimes I can see and speak to souls."

’Souls I have contracts with,’ she added in her thoughts.

Russel studied her for another moment, then inclined his head. "A seer of the dead."

"Close enough."

He placed one hand against his chest and bowed with the graceful precision of someone who had performed the gesture before thousands of courts. "I am Russel Theodoric Evander Auguste de Vaudremont."

Misha pressed her lips together to keep herself from reacting. ’No wonder he let the queen handle so much paperwork. Imagine signing that every time someone wanted permission to repair a bridge.’

Russel’s eyebrow rose. "Is something amusing?"

"No." Misha arranged her face into an expression of grave respect. "You simply have a very... complete name."

"A king’s name carries his lineage."

"Yours carries the entire family tree."

Russel stared at her, apparently uncertain whether he had been insulted. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, though he concealed it by turning toward the Bell House.

His introduction made something else click into place.

Misha looked down at her hands. This was no ordinary dream. Normal dreams did not come with coherent dynastic histories, foreign customs, automatic translation, and enough cosmic exposition to cause a week-long headache. Dead kings certainly did not introduce themselves with names long enough to require a second line on official forms.

Either her Soulbinder class had developed a new function while she was unconscious, or someone had interfered.

Someone with Administrator-level access. Someone who had already demonstrated an unhealthy willingness to meddle with souls.

’Caleb.’ Misha narrowed her eyes. ’If I wake up with a new soul in my inventory, I’m going to strangle him.’

It was not proof, not yet. Russel’s soul might have reacted to hers because of her class, or the vision might have been some hidden resonance caused by standing near an unbound soul. There were too many possibilities and too few useful answers, so she pushed the matter aside.

’Wake up first, check the system, confirm whether I gained anything, then complain.’

Russel had begun walking toward the Bell House. Misha followed, partly because she had nowhere else to go and partly because standing alone among kneeling Hushers felt deeply unpleasant.

"I became accustomed to this," he said.

She glanced at the kneeling Hushers. "That does not make it less horrible."

"No."

They walked in silence for a time.

Misha looked toward the Bell House. "How many times?"

Russel knew what she meant. "I stopped counting."

"How long ago?"

"Long enough that the first hundred repetitions became indistinguishable from the hundred that followed." His expression did not change, but weariness entered his voice. "Each time, strangers entered the Walls of Death. Each time, they lifted my body and attempted to finish my journey."

Misha grimaced. "That’s cruel."

His mouth curved faintly, though no amusement reached his eyes. "The Tower has never asked whether I approve."

"Yeah, it has that habit."

Russel did not appear to be in a hurry as they continued their walk, and the Bell House never seemed to draw closer no matter how far they walked. Misha suspected the road would allow them to arrive only when the conversation was finished.

After several moments, Russel spoke again. "You were different."

Misha immediately narrowed her eyes. "That usually means something terrible is about to happen to me."

Russel laughed, actually laughed.

The sound startled her more than anything else had. For the first time since she entered the memory, he did not sound like a legendary king, a doomed ruler, or a soul trapped within a funeral rite. He sounded like a normal man with no crown weighing on his head, and no one left to impress.

"No," he said, his gaze softening. "I meant that when one of your people could no longer walk, you turned back."

Misha’s mouth tightened. She thought of Luka on the road, his sword shaking in his hands while he begged them to leave before his courage failed. She remembered Dorian pulling free of his grasp, and Olivia hammering against the System Chamber moments later.

"I only did that because I still had something I could use. If Olivia hadn’t asked to come out, or if I had no possession left, I would’ve run with everyone else."

"I know." He did not sound disappointed. Russel looked toward the road behind them. "You were willing to leave him when he chose to stay. You respected his choice... until another possibility appeared." Then he looked back at her. "And you took it."

She exhaled slowly. "I’m not the sort of person who refuses to leave anyone behind... I run when I have to."

"So did I." Russel’s expression had grown serious. "A ruler who refuses to retreat eventually runs out of people to rule. Courage is not remaining after every chance of rescue has vanished. "

"Good, because I’m no ruler."

"A title does not create responsibility." He glanced toward her. "It only makes that responsibility harder to ignore."

Misha gave him a flat look. "That sounded suspiciously like something a king would say before giving me more work."

"Perhaps kings and Administrators share certain habits."

"Do not compare yourself to Caleb. I was beginning to like you."

Another quiet laugh escaped him, but it faded quickly. Russel’s attention returned to the kneeling Hushers. "Survival is not shameful, Misha. Yet neither should survival become an excuse to decide too early that another person is already dead."

She said nothing.

Russel had watched his own people face that choice again and again. He had witnessed strangers abandon one another to carry his corpse, and others throw away every life in a futile attempt to save someone beyond their reach. Whatever judgement he had formed came from more deaths than Misha wanted to imagine.

"I know the difference," he continued. "You did not turn back because you believed yourself incapable of loss. You turned back because the possibility of saving him still existed. If there was none, you would have honored that man’s choice and hated yourself for it."

She looked away. "You barely know me."

"Death makes people observant."

"Apparently it also makes them annoying."

"That depends greatly upon the person."

She almost smiled, but the weight of the memory pressed it away before it could form. They walked another few paces until she saw the kneeling Hushers watched without eyes.

Then Misha remembered something she had wanted to ask from the moment the vision ended.

"I don’t want to sound rude," she began.

He glanced at her once more. "That warning usually precedes something rude."

"Probably." She hesitated, then decided subtlety had never served her particularly well. "Did you love your queen?"

The kind slowed.

Misha already knew the answer. She had seen it in the way Russel watched Lavinia across crowded halls, in how his voice changed when he spoke to her, and in the ruin of him beside her deathbed. Still, memories could lie by omission, and she wanted to hear the answer from him.