Chapter 494: Not A Prophecy

Bruce, Kael, and Theron walked back to the portal exit slowly.

The Library was still quiet around them. Still deep and vast in its unbounded space. Bruce felt, walking through it, the specific weight of having read what he had just read.

He had known, in the abstract, that the climb ahead of him was difficult. He had not known, until today, that he was the seventh case in an unbroken pattern of failure and death.

That was, that was harder to hold than he had expected.

At the portal, he stopped for a moment before pressing his hand to the reader.

He looked at Kael and Theron.

“I am not sure I am going to succeed in this.”

Both of them looked at him.

“Six cases before me. Three killed by Sisel Marn. One killed by Ashen Carr’s predecessors. Two who lived only because they stopped climbing. Zero who reached SS. I am going to try to reach SSS. That is beyond anything anyone in my category has ever done.”

“Yes,” Kael said.

“I want you both to know that. Because if I fail, you will still be here. Elenora’s sponsorship covers the party for the two months of the term. After that, if I am gone, you will have to decide whether to continue on your own or to align with someone else. I want you to think about that possibility. I want you to be ready for it.”

Theron, very quietly, said, “Are you saying goodbye?”

“No. I am saying, I want you to know what I know. So that if the worst happens, you are not surprised, and you have already thought about what you will do.”

Kael was quiet for a long moment.

Then he said, “Bruce. You are the seventh case. And you are the first of the seventh cases who came in already at a very high rank in the physical realm, with cultivation and experience the other six did not have.

“You are the first case that is an Ascendant at all. The other six were native souls who awakened here.

“You are the first case that has taken alpha kills in your first week.

“You are, by every measure the previous cases can be compared to, a fundamentally different kind of case than they were.”

“That is true.”

“Then the pattern of failure that includes them does not automatically include you.

“You may fail. Or you may not. But the past is not the future in this.

“The seventh case gets to be a different case than the first six.”

Bruce looked at him.

He had not thought of it that way.

Reading the chapter, he had focused on the pattern. Kael was pointing out, correctly, that the pattern was made of specific souls with specific circumstances, and that Bruce’s circumstances were different in ways that mattered.

He was, his cultivation background, his existing rank in another realm, his experience, his party, significantly more prepared to be the seventh case than any of the previous six had been to be the second through sixth.

The pattern of failure was not a prophecy.

It was a history of specific failures.

The future was still open.

“Thank you,” Bruce said.

Kael nodded once.

Theron said, quieter, “And you have us. The previous cases either had no party or lost their parties. You have us. We are staying. We are not going to be recruited away, and we are not going to leave when things get hard. Whatever happens, you have us.”

Bruce looked at Theron.

The young man, the tax clerk, the reaper of things that should be reaped, looked back at him with the calm, steady expression of someone who had made a decision a long time ago and was simply confirming it now.

“Thank you, Theron.”

“Do not thank me yet. Thank me when we all make it out of this.”

“When we all make it out of this.”

They pressed the reader.

They stepped through the portal.

They came out into the main hall of the Library, and the older soul at the entrance nodded to them as they passed. They walked out through the low, broad building into the softening evening light of the central outer district.

…

They ate at the old soul’s again.

Bruce did not tell the old soul what he had read. He did not need to.

The old soul saw the three of them come in and, in the small tilt of their head, read that Bruce had spent the day in the Library and had learned things that had changed the shape of him.

The old soul served them dinner without asking what they wanted.

Bruce ate slowly.

Toward the end of the meal, Bruce said, “Wren Ollan.”

The old soul looked up from their pot.

They had not been called by that name in his hearing before. Bruce had never known their name. He had called them the old soul in his own mind for a week.

“Yes,” they said.

“I read your name today.”

“I know.”

“I am case seven.”

“You are case seven.”

“And you knew when I first came into your kitchen.”

“I suspected on the first day. I was certain on the third.”

Bruce nodded.

“Why did you not tell me?”

The old soul was quiet for a long moment.

“Because you had to make the choice to accept sponsorship yourself, from your own reading of the situation. Not because I told you the previous six had died without it.

“If I had told you the full pattern in the first meeting, you would have accepted Elenora’s sponsorship out of fear. That would have been a bad start.

“You would have carried that fear into every interaction with her, and eventually the fear would have distorted the relationship.”

“So you gave me the pieces to figure it out myself.”

“I gave you the pieces to figure it out yourself. You did. That is a stronger foundation than fear.”

“You have done this before.”

“I have done a version of this before. Case four, seventy years ago, Nyra Vos.

“I met her when she was a young awakened newcomer, and I told her more than I told you, because I had not yet learned the lesson about fear.

“She accepted sponsorship from a Spire noble, not from Elenora. Elenora was not yet on the Nonagon at the time, and the Spire noble was a bad choice.

“She died within a year.

“I have thought about her often.

“I did better with you.”

“Thank you.”

“Do not thank me. I owed Nyra Vos a better mentor. You are the beneficiary of the lesson she gave me.

“If you succeed, you will owe her the same debt.”

Bruce sat with this.

“I will pay it,” he said quietly.

“I know you will.”

The old soul went back to their pot.

Bruce finished his dinner in silence. Kael and Theron did the same.

When they paid and stood to leave, the old soul said, “Bruce.”

“Yes.”

“You are going to reach SSS.”

Bruce paused.

“You believe that.”

“I do. I have not believed it about any of the previous six. I believe it about you.

“This is not, this is not certainty. It is my professional assessment as someone who has watched five souls fail in this position and one succeed by not trying, and who is now watching you and can tell that you are a different case.”

“Why?”

“Because you asked me why I did not tell you sooner, and you accepted the answer without needing me to justify it further.

“That is a soul who understands how difficult decisions have to be made. You will need that quality at every rank from here to SSS.

“You have it.

“I believe in you.”

Bruce looked at the old soul for a long moment.

He did not have a response that would improve on this.

“Thank you, Wren.”

“Mm.”

The old soul turned back to their pot.

Bruce, Kael, and Theron stepped out into the deep blue evening.

…

They walked back to the rooming house in silence.

At the door, Kael stopped.

“Bruce.”

“Yes.”

“We are going to make it out of this.”

Bruce looked at him.

“I hope so.”

“We are.”

“Okay.”

They went inside.

They went upstairs.

They went into their small, quiet room.

They settled in for the night.

Bruce sat on his pallet for a long time before sleep.

He thought about Elenora, waiting for the seventh case for many years, and offering the sponsorship with a specific hope.

He thought about Wren Ollan, having failed Nyra Vos and then having spent seventy years learning how to give better counsel.

He thought about the six previous cases whose names he now carried in his memory.

He thought about Sophie, so far away, holding his still hand.

He thought about the Codex.

He thought about the SSS he was climbing toward.

He sent the thread thought.

I am all right. I am case seven. I did not know that before today. I know it now. I have friends and I have a sponsor and I have an old cook who believes in me. I miss you. I am building. The climb is longer than I thought. But I am building.

The thread hummed thin between the realms.

He did not know if it reached her.

He sent it anyway.

He slept.

The ninth day was done.

Tomorrow he would return to the Deepwood, and hunt, and continue the climb.

But the shape of the climb had changed today.

He now knew what he was climbing against, a specific documented pattern of failure across two centuries.

He now knew who was watching him, a Nonagon member who had been preparing for a soul like him for many years.

He now knew that the old soul was, in a specific and quiet way, family, another soul of his kind, who had chosen a different path and lived, and who was now helping him choose his own path with hope.

He now knew that the Codex was waiting for him at the top of the climb.

And he now knew that the climb was, in some sense, bigger than himself, that whether he succeeded or failed would shape what happened to case eight and case nine and every case after him.

He was, tonight, part of a longer story than he had known he was joining.

He slept deeply, and Xiltra moved through its own night, and somewhere in a quiet room in the Spire district, a woman with silver-white hair was probably reading a report from Caelen that mentioned the sponsored party had spent the day at the Library.

She probably knew exactly what that meant.

And she was probably sitting with her own hopes about the seventh case she had waited so long to sponsor.

The climb continued.