CHAPTER 111: AFTERMATH DELIBERATIONS

I would like to preface this particular moment in my life by saying, in all honesty, that I had finally, irrevocably, and without the faintest shred of irony, lost my mind.

That was the only explanation left. No other justification could account for the fact that I was still alive, standing among fire-gutted ruins with half the district caving in behind me, soot on my tongue, blood in my hair, and a man in a spotless white cloak perched atop a crumbling building like he’d just strolled out of an opera performance.

Not a speck of ash touched him. Not a single ember dared sully the theatrical drapery of his garment. He might as well have been carved from marble, a living statue installed for my humiliation, and then—because the gods cannot resist putting me in my place—he offered me tea.

Yes. Tea.

Not survival tips. Not a hand outstretched to pull me free of rubble. Not even the common courtesy of a "Well done on not being bisected by a vampiric queen." Tea.

I was left staring up at him in all my bedraggled glory, every muscle screaming in complaint, clothes scorched and torn, my pen shaking loosely in my grip. I must have looked like the very picture of divine comedy: a scarecrow propped up after a hurricane, glaring into the face of some smug deity.

"Tea," I repeated blankly, because my brain had given up trying to filter thought from speech. "That’s what you open with? Not ’good evening,’ not ’congratulations on surviving what should have been a massacre,’ but ’tea?’"

The man tilted his hooded head slightly, like he was pondering the weight of my complaint. Then he spread his hands—not that I could see them clearly beneath the cloak, but I could feel the movement, sense the shift in the air as though reality itself bent to indulge his theatrics.

"My dear boy," he said, his voice a rich, velvety soprano that practically hummed with performance, "tea is civilization distilled into liquid. It is the universal balm, the beginning and end of diplomacy. Battles have been halted for less. Why should you not consider tea in your moment of greatest triumph?"

"Triumph?" I barked, coughing on smoke. "I got slapped through a cabbage cart! That’s not triumph. That’s humiliation garnished with fiber."

I swear I heard him chuckle under that hood, a soft ripple of amusement that made my skin prickle. It wasn’t just the sound—it was the pressure it carried, the way the very air vibrated around him.

This wasn’t laughter; this was the suggestion of laughter, magnified into presence, designed to crawl under my skin and whisper that I was prey pretending at predator.

And then, as I was recovering from the indignity of his impeccable timing, I noticed it. The glint of white on his arm, half hidden beneath the drape of his cloak.

A band. Just like mine.

My breath caught. For a single, dizzy heartbeat, I thought the world had gone mad—because no, no one this dangerous could be wearing the same mark as me, the symbol of an "unregistered mage."

It was supposed to be a joke, a death sentence, a scrap of cloth you wore until someone official crushed you beneath their heel.

But this man... this impossible man stood cloaked in power, his very presence suffocating, and yet he bore the same white band as me, as though we were equals.

The lie was so brazen I nearly laughed.

Except the puzzle pieces clicked together then.

Rodrick’s whispered warnings back at the boathouse. His hushed words about the three factions: the cult, the lady, and the man in white that moved between them, the third faction.

This had to be him.

Of course it did. Because why not? Why wouldn’t I stagger half-dead into the lap of the one figure every sane competitor prayed never to meet?

I wet my lips, the taste of soot bitter on my tongue, and forced my voice to work. "You. You’re him. The leader of the third faction."

He gave a grand, sweeping gesture with one hand, as if conducting an invisible orchestra. "Am I? Or am I merely a weary traveler with a fondness for theatrics and good company?"

"Oh, don’t give me that," I snapped, though my voice cracked embarrassingly near the end. "That armband is faker than my last apology letter. Nobody hides behind weakness unless they’ve got something to bury."

He tilted his head, his hood shifting just enough that I swore I glimpsed a flash of a smile. "Clever boy. Though cleverness can be dangerous when wielded without restraint."

"Believe me," I muttered, "restraint has never been the problem."

He laughed again, indulgent, as if I were a child making bold proclamations about slaying dragons with a wooden sword.

And then, as if this theater weren’t absurd enough already, he perked up with sudden cheer, like a host remembering he had a gift for a reluctant guest.

"Oh, I nearly forgot," he said, reaching into the folds of his cloak with slow, deliberate grace. "A token, if you will. Something of a... keepsake."

Every hair on my body stood on end. My grip tightened on the pen. Because nothing good came from cloaked strangers handing out gifts. Absolutely nothing.

And then I saw what gleamed in his palm. Silver. Round. Familiar.

It was a stopwatch. My heart stopped.

It wasn’t just any stopwatch—it was Vincent’s stopwatch.

The world tilted, spinning on an axis I couldn’t comprehend, as the object of too many nightmares and memories was flicked through the air toward me with casual disdain. My hand shot up on instinct, fingers closing clumsily around it, the weight cold and heavy against my skin.

I nearly dropped it twice before managing to hold it still, twisting it around with trembling fingers, feeling every ridge, every groove.

My voice came out a rasp. "How... how the hell do you have this?"

The man in white chuckled again, and gods help me, I hated that sound now more than the lady’s mocking laughter. It was rich, patient, and utterly unwilling to explain itself. "Oh, details, details. What matters is possession. And possession, as the saying goes, is nine-tenths of the law."

I stared at him, shaking, fury and disbelief warring in my chest. "That doesn’t even answer the question!"

"Nor does it need to," he replied smoothly. "Your mind will gnaw on it regardless. Consider it... motivation."

I opened my mouth to spit another retort, but then—

I heard it. Crying. Soft. Fragile. So utterly human it cut through the smoke and fire like a knife through silk.

My head snapped toward the sound, all thoughts of silver and cloaks vanishing in an instant. Instead I thought of Rodrick and the others. Saints, I had nearly forgotten everything in the wake of this absurd figure.

I bolted, lungs burning, legs stumbling over broken stone as I chased the sound through the rubble. The square was an inferno, streets cracked and warped, walls caving inward as the city bled ash and flame. And there, through the smoke, I saw a figure on their knees, shoulders shaking.

Nara.

"Nara?" My voice cracked as I scrambled closer, my heart hammering. "Saints, it’s you—what the hell are you doing here?"

She lifted her head, eyes bloodshot and streaked with soot, lips trembling as she clutched her torn sleeve. "Fitch—he had me locked in the cellar, chained like an animal, that bastard," she rasped, voice hoarse from smoke or screaming.

I knelt beside her, gripping her shoulders, words spilling out in a frantic mess. "Fitch? Where is he now?"

She coughed, wincing slightly. "He fled. Took off with the lady as soon as the chaos began. Gave me a chance to break free."

That was when Rodrick stumbled through the haze, coughing, bandages soaked red, his face drawn tight.

"They made it out before the building collapsed," he rasped. "Most of them anyway. Dunny too. There’s still a few injured, but the knight’s already helping them."

And speak of devil, because out of the smoke lumbered the naked knight, four unconscious bodies draped across his shoulders like bundles of firewood. He moved without struggle, as though carrying half a battalion was no more trouble than toting groceries.

"Where’s Salem?" I pressed, my chest tightening.

The knight grunted. "Set em’ down with the others. Don’t worry. He’s safe."

I exhaled, a ragged laugh tearing loose from my chest, relief flooding me until my limbs shook with it.

My eyes swept across the wreckage, over the jagged rubble and fractured stone, over the hollow spaces where buildings had once stood. Flames licked and guttered along collapsed beams, the smoke rising in lazy coils like it had nowhere urgent to be.

Bodies—too many of them—lay strewn across the square. Not corpses, not yet, but twisted in agony, competitors who had been dragged, willingly or not, into the Lady’s cruel game.

I caught sight of one man clutching a broken arm bent the wrong way, another curled on the ground sobbing into his sleeve, a woman with her leg pinned beneath stone screaming hoarsely for someone, anyone, to pull her free.

Their faces blurred into one another in my mind, but the sound—that cacophony of groans and cries, that grim chorus of the wounded—settled deep into my chest like a stone.

And then—I heard whistling.

A long, low note that curled through the ruins like smoke.