Chapter 170: Correction (1)

Russel woke to white.

It was not light. Light came from somewhere, cast shadows, warmed skin, and gave shape to the things it touched. This whiteness had no source and permitted no shadow. It extended in every direction without seam or horizon, a perfect absence painted the color of snow.

Russel remained where he was and took stock of himself. His coat had been restored, the fabric clean and whole despite the state in which he had died.

He remembered the Bell House, the impossible gray System window that had offered him a contract, and that strange woman calling herself Misha, the Gravekeeper. He also remembered the sensation of being pulled somewhere beyond the Floor that had imprisoned him for longer than he cared to measure.

Now he stood here.

"Hm. Is this supposed to be the inside of her Soul Inventory?"

His voice traveled outward. Before its last echo faded, an answer descended from above.

[You stand within Master’s Observation Vestibule nya.]

Russel raised his head and saw a black cat floating several paces above him.

Two tails swayed lazily behind it, small wings extended from its back with none of the urgency flight normally required. A single horn rose from its head, while blue light gleamed faintly from a jewel set into the collar around its neck.

Russel stared upward. The cat returned his scrutiny with the cool displeasure of a ruler discovering an unannounced guest in the throne room.

Several breaths passed before Russel spoke. "You."

The creature’s ears twitched. [My name is King nya. You shall address me as one.]

"Then I greet you as an equal in former station, King." Russel inclined his head, granting the creature the courtesy he would have offered a foreign sovereign. "I am Russel Theodoric Evander Auguste de Vaudremont."

[I know who you are nya.]

King descended until paws hovered level with Russel’s chest. The motion possessed none of an animal’s uncertainty. He settled into the air as though upon an invisible throne, forelegs held before him and wings folded neatly against his sides.

[You carried a crown over one kingdom and died with it nya. I ruled beyond the limits of a single world and my death proved less permanent than yours. Do not mistake our shared title for equal stature.]

The arrogance might have offended another king, but Russel had known too many monarchs who demanded reverence to be troubled by one who apparently believed he deserved it.

"Then I am honored that so exalted sovereign has descended to receive me."

King’s golden eyes narrowed. His tails paused in their motion as he weighed the words for mockery. Russel allowed him to find precisely as much as he wished.

[You possessed better manners than the others who pass through here nya.]

"That sounds like a condemnation of the others rather than praise for me."

[It was both nya.]

Russel’s gaze moved over the creature more carefully. No ordinary beast carried itself with such deliberate command. He knew the difference better than most; his own blood allowed him to exchange human skin for fur. The body before him might belong to King, but it did not encompass him.

The collar was another matter. Its workmanship was too precise to be ornamental. Fine symbols circled the dark band, appearing and disappearing beneath the fur as the blue jewel pulsed. Russel sensed power within it, but the power did not flow naturally through the cat’s body. It closed around him.

"This is not the shape into which you were born," Russel said.

King’s wings drew closer to his sides. [What persuades you of that nya?]

"I have worn more than one shape since childhood. A body leaves certain habits upon those born to it." Russel gestured toward King’s floating paws. "You wear that one well, but you do not think like a creature accustomed to looking upward."

King considered him in silence. His left tail made a single approving sweep. [Your perception does not shame your crown. And yes, this is not my first body, nor my greatest nya.]

Russel glanced at the collar again but did not ask about it. A sovereign forced into diminished form would choose the hour of that confession himself, if he chose it at all. Russel had endured enough curious ambassadors to know when inquiry became insult.

Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back. "You named this place an Observation Vestibule. What is observed here?"

[You, for the moment.]

"By whom?"

[At present, by me nya. Soon, by the one responsible for your irregular recruitment.]

King lifted one paw. The whiteness beside him darkened into a translucent pane filled with unfamiliar writing. The symbols translated themselves as Russel read them.

「 〔SOUL CLASSIFICATION REVIEW〕

Name: Russel Theodoric Evander Auguste de Vaudremont

Current State: Contracted Constellation Soul

Class: NONE

Awakening Record: NONE

Tower Trial Record: NONE 」

Russel studied the window without speaking. Three absences had been arranged beneath his name as if they were charges placed before a tribunal.

King’s voice acquired the patient gravity of a ruler explaining law to a newly appointed minister. [Every living being properly admitted into a Tower is permitted to awaken nya. Those who endure and complete the required trial receive a Class. But you... you did not arrive as the living do.]

The white space changed around them. A funeral bell emerged from the emptiness, enormous and translucent. Cracks split its dark metal, while ancient symbols crawled over its surface like half-healed scars. Threads of violet-black light passed through those fractures and disappeared into a knot at the bell’s center.

Russel recognized the object at once. Even as an image, it carried the same oppressive pull that had bound him to Floor twelve.

King drifted beside the apparition. [You were dead before the Tower preserved the fragment of your world. Your soul should have passed beyond the reach of an ordinary Floor, yet the bell held it nya.]

"The Qorcovane’s curse... and Uiylin’s counter-rite."

[Partly nya.]

The image roasted, revealing a pale vein within the bell’s metal. Unlike the surrounding material, it reflected no light.

[One of the materials used to make the bell should never have existed in your world nya. Manacite–or, as people here preferred to call it, mana stone.]

King made no effort to elaborate it, and Russel did not demand an answer the sovereign had already chosen to withhold. Instead, he watched the pale substance sink back beneath the spectral metal.

The scene changed again. For a moment, Floor Twelve appeared beneath their feet: the Walls of Death, the ceremonial road, and the Bell House under its unchanging sky. Threads of authority bound each ruin to the others. Russel saw his own soul caught among them, not as man but as a golden shape stretched through the entire Floor.

King studied the image with visible distaste. [When the Origin preserved your world, you were already tangled in four powers: the Qorcovane’s curse, the unfinished rite, the Manacite, and the authority maintaining the Floor. The Tower preserved the structure with you inside it nya.]

"You call the Tower the Origin."

King turned his head. [I called the power which performed the preservation the Origin nya. They are not the same.]

That was all King intended to grant him. He swept one tail through the image, and Floor Twelve dissolved into white particles.

[Had you arrived in the proper manner, a trial designed around your abilities, and latent potential would be given to you . That did not occur nya. You remained unawakened because you had already become part of the Floor before its laws finished recognizing you as an individual... that’s if you were alive.]

Russel looked once more at the window bearing his absent Class. "If I was never given a trial, why conduct this review now?"

[Because Master removed you from the structure. You are no longer part of Floor Twelve nya. You are a contracted soul, and a soul must possess a place within his sister’s Constellation Chambers nya. So first, the irregularities in your existence must be corrected.]

King folded his forelegs again. His gaze shifted toward the empty horizon, and irritation tightened the angle of his ears.

[The one responsible for that correction has chosen to involve himself personally nya.]

Russel followed his gaze. "The current sovereign of this domain?"

King’s tails lashed once. [The current custodian has collected several titles. Sovereign is not one I grant him nya.]

Before Russel could respond, a dark line appeared in the whiteness. It stretched from above to below like ink drawn down untouched parchment, then widened into a doorway filled with quiet darkness.

Pressure entered the vestibule before the man did.

It did not strike Russel like the presence of the Qorcovane, which had crushed thought beneath the enormity of its malice. This force was disciplined. Every fragment had been drawn inward and held under such careful control that Russel sensed its scale only through the effort required to conceal it.

A man stepped through the doorway.

Long white hair fell beyond his shoulders, clean and slightly curled against a fitted black coat. Gold traced the high collar and cuffs, while small red stones caught the colorless light. Glasses framed his crimson eyes, its fine chain disappearing beneath the fold of his collar.

Russel had faced men who looked human while carrying foreign souls, beasts given courtly shapes, and ancient creatures fond of borrowing mortal skin. He recognized the discrepancy immediately.

Not human.