Chapter 154: The Unsealed King

The gate to Floor 2 opened onto a hall made entirely of mirrors, and in every mirror a man with Jace's face was already smiling.

The corridor ran straight up into the dark for a hundred miles. Its walls were glass, its floor was glass, and its ceiling was a distant sheet of white fire. Ten thousand reflections walked along the edges of it, and every one of them wore a black coat and held its hands open like a man about to be handed a crown.

[HIGHER ROOK TOWER: FLOOR 2]

[THE HALL OF THE UNSEALED]

[FLOOR GUARDIAN: THE UNSEALED KING]

[LEVEL: 999]

[WARNING: GUARDIAN HAS ALL SIX COMBAT SKILLS ACTIVE]

[HEALTH: 330/520. CHARGE: 105/220. CORRUPTION: 89%]

[SIX SEALED COMBAT SKILLS: REMAIN SEALED]

The rest platform had given Jace ten minutes. It had given him back his legs and nothing else. Selene had stood beside him through all of it, turning the dead noon-sun sword in her hands.

"Floor 2 is not a fight," she said. "It is an argument. The Authority builds a copy of every climber as they would have been if no one had ever stopped them. Then it asks which of you deserves the next stair."

"I have been stopped four times this week."

"Then you will lose badly."

[TRIAL KNUCKLE: RECHARGED. ONE BREAKER WAVE STORED]

[CONDITION MET: ROOK TRIAL BOSS DEFEATED]

Jace flexed his fists. The gauntlets hummed. He stepped through the gate with eleven people behind him, and the glass answered.

The Unsealed King stepped out of the center mirror like a man leaving a warm bath. He wore the same face, the same scar through the left eyebrow, and a crown of cracked golden code that floated an inch above his hair. His eyes were completely calm.

"Hello," said the King. "You look tired."

"I have had a week."

"I have had a century," the King said. "Static Step."

He vanished.

Forty reflections along the wall lit up at once, and the King appeared in all of them, one hand in each. Forty Unsealed Kings struck the party from forty angles in the same instant. Alexander's sword shattered in his hand. Scarlett's guard folded. Caleb's boundary line snapped.

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"Breach Sight," said the nearest King, looking at Penelope, and every weakness in her stance lit up like a bruise. "Rule Fracture."

Her spear turned to sand.

[RULE FRACTURE: UNSEALED KING]

[PARTY WEAPONS FRACTURED: 9 OF 11]

Jace moved. He was too slow.

The King's fist caught him under the ribs and carried him through three mirrors. Glass exploded in a long bright arc.

[HEALTH: 330 -> 316]

He hit the floor and rolled. The King walked toward him through the falling shards. "Error Mark," he said, and a black seal burned onto Jace's chest. "Reality Anchor." The hall locked. Every reflection stopped moving. "Older Law Perception. I know what you are, and I know what you were before the System named you. It is not enough."

[ERROR MARK: ATTACHED]

[REALITY ANCHOR: HALL LOCKED]

[PARTY MEMBERS CANNOT STRIKE THE GUARDIAN]

[FLOOR 2 RULE: ONLY A REFLECTION CAN STRIKE A REFLECTION]

"Of course," Jace said again, and spat blood.

Alexander tried to cut the King from behind. The blade passed through him like smoke. Selene threw the noon-sun sword and it hung in the air a foot from the King's throat, locked in place.

"Don't," the King said gently. "None of you can touch me. It is only you and me. That is the point."

Jace stood. The seal on his chest glowed, and beneath it, six locked doors pulsed inside him in time with the King's heartbeat. Each skill he could not use belonged to the man in front of him. Each one fit in the King's hands like it had never been taken.

"You are better at being me than I am," Jace said.

"Yes."

"You have never lost anything."

"No."

"That is why you are going to lose."

The King tilted his head. "Why?"

Jace opened a door inside his chest.

[MUTUAL SHELTER: ACTIVATED]

[DISTANCE: 500 MILES. LINK STABLE]

[PARTICIPANTS: 14]

Fourteen blue doors bloomed around him. They stretched down the hall, each one a person he had refused to leave behind. Hazel's voice came through them, flat and amused. Liam's came after, loud as ever. Emma was shouting at someone about hydration. Zoey said one word, "Anchored," and Seraphina's golden window flickered open in the glass.

"They are not in the tower," the King said. "They cannot be here."

"They do not have to be."

The first door took the King's next blow, a Static Step barrage that would have cut Jace in half, and it spread the damage across fourteen people five hundred miles away. Jace felt a thousand knives of pain divided by fourteen, and what reached him was a bruise.

[HEALTH: 316 -> 304]

[SEAL OF ROOK: TARGET HAS NO SINGLE OWNER]

[MUTUAL SHELTER: NOT COPYABLE]

The King's calm face cracked for the first time.

"That is not a skill," he said.

"No," Jace said. "That is a family."

He grabbed the Gravity Chain and swung it around the crown of cracked code. The chain hooked the King's gravity and pulled him off his feet.

[GRAVITY CHAIN: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 105 -> 100]

The King threw Static Step in all forty reflections at once. Jace let the chain drag him through every one of them in a single rope of motion, past the Error Mark and the Reality Anchor, and slammed into the King with his gauntlets raised.

"Rule Fracture!" the King snapped.

"Remember your name," Jace said, and fired the pulse into his own double.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: SURGICAL APPLICATION]

[TARGET: UNSEALED KING]

[COMMAND: NAME]

[CHARGE COST: 3]

[CHARGE: 100 -> 97]

The King flinched. For one second, the golden crown went dark. "I do not have a name," he said, and then, very quietly, "I am Jace."

"I know," Jace said. "So am I."

He punched.

The Breaker Wave left the gauntlets in a white ring wider than the hall. It tore through the King's chest, tore through the crown, and rolled out down a hundred miles of glass. Every mirror along the corridor cracked. Every reflection stopped.

[HEALTH: 304 -> 291]

[UNSEALED KING: DEFEATED]

The King sat down on the floor with a hole in his chest where the Breaker Wave had gone through. He did not bleed. Golden code ran out of him like sand out of a broken clock.

"Floor 2 is yours," he said. "Congratulations."

"You are not going to say anything about the six skills?"

"I am the six skills." The King looked up at him with a ghost of a smile. "You will get us back. Just not here."

He dissolved into dust.

[FLOOR GUARDIAN: DEFEATED]

[SIX SEALED COMBAT SKILLS: RESONANCE DETECTED]

[TEAM-COMBINATION PROFICIENCY: INCREASED]

The mirrors around them stopped cracking and began to hum. The glass trembled. A white door appeared at the end of the hall, and Jace took one step toward it before he realized the party was not behind him.

Eleven reflections stepped out of the glass, one for each member of the party.

Alexander's reflection drew a sword of red light. Scarlett's lit her blade white. Penelope's opened a ledger that read the party's names out loud. Caleb's painted a boundary around the door, and Selene's raised a noon sun the size of a moon.

[FLOOR 2 PHASE TWO: THE REFLECTED RAID]

[GUARDIANS: 11]

[LEVEL: 999 EACH]

[ALL SKILLS ACTIVE]

The real party stood behind Jace, stripped of their weapons, bleeding, and slowly realizing the same thing at the same time.

"Tell me your family can lend us weapons too," Scarlett said.

Health: 291/520.

Charge: 97/220.