Zekai opened his eyes.
White. No floor under him, no ceiling above — just that same endless nothing he'd stood in once before, the space where he'd first met the Fool.
He checked himself over, hands, chest, legs. Whole. Untouched.
"...Huh?"
That masked bastard was standing right over me with a burning sword. How the hell did I end up back here?
He turned in a slow circle, scanning the white for any trace of the one person who owed him an explanation.
"Ten minutes." His voice hardened. "Ten minutes to charge that power and this is what I get — jammed halfway through a fight." He raised his voice into the void. "Where the hell are you?!"
"Hey, Fool. Show your face."
He half expected silence. Zero had never struck him as the type to run from anything, but after everything that had happened, nothing would have surprised him.
Then the answer came — not a voice. A screen.
Zzzzsup!
[ ARCANA SEQUENCE — LOCKED ]
Repeated Grave Resonance detected.
Continued synchronization with Grave Energy
will interfere with your designated Source.
Further convergence is strongly discouraged.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Something clicked into place.
"So that's it." A short, humorless breath. "Arcana and Grave Energy don't mix. That's why I locked up back there — my own power was fighting itself."
Another screen bled into view, crimson this time, cutting through the white like a wound.
Zzzzsup!
[ ADAPTATION LOGGED ]
Grave Energy Resistance: Calibrating → Adapted
Interference Threshold: Raised
Synchronization Conflict: Resolved (Partial)
"Ah." A short nod. "Better."
Zzzzsup!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ARCANA INTERFACE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Authority Title: The Fool
Authority Level: 32
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Authority Bearer: Zekai Krystan
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HP: 100%
AP: 100%
STR: 15 AGI: 17 DEX: 16 VIT: 14
PER: 19 WIL: 25
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. Authorities 2. Armament 3. Arcana Path
2. Unbroken Ledger 5. Condition 6. Records
7. Observation
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He leaned in and read it top to bottom.
"So this is what I actually am now. On paper, at least."
"Hey, Zero." He said it flat, no heat behind it — just tired. "I'm your authority bearer. That's the deal, right? From the start, you needed a puppet to pull strings for whatever game you're running."
"I'm not that."
Nothing answered him. That silence told him everything he needed. He let it go.
His eyes moved back over the interface, scanning every locked tab, every category still sitting dark.
"There's a lot buried in here." He turned the number over in his head. Level 32. Stats sitting low across the board — strength, agility, all of it barely past baseline.
Makes sense. Fresh awakening. This is the floor, not the ceiling.
The twenty-one statues hadn't bowed to him. Not yet. Zero hadn't handed him the rest of the Arcana — he'd only claimed the right to come back for them, one Authority at a time, the same way he'd earned the Fool's.
I need more than this. Every single thing standing in my way — I have to be strong enough to go through it, not around it.
Then the pressure in the white space spiked, and the whole void shuddered like something had struck it from outside.
"...Wake up, Mr. Zekai..."
A voice. Familiar. Reaching him through the white like it was calling from somewhere very far away.
"I'm here for you..."
"So..."
"...please wake up."
Everything stopped.
Zekai's crimson eye snapped open — back in his real body, back in the ruins of Chamber Twelve.
Dark pupils reflected the sea of molten fire falling toward him.
For one impossible second—
Everything went silent.
The roar of the flames. Sebastian's ragged breathing. The fanatic's laughter. Even Zekai's own heartbeat.
All of it slowed to nothing. His fingers twitched. His body moved before his mind caught up.
The burning blade crashed into the floor.
BOOOOOOM!!
Reinforced tile blew apart, magma carving a deep trench through the ruined chamber.
It hit nothing.
The fanatic's grin died on his face.
"...No!" His eyes tore around the room. "He's gone?!"
A calm voice answered from behind him.
"I'm over here."
He spun. Several meters off, Zekai stood on his own feet — clothes torn, blood still soaking his chest.
Upright anyway.
His own face looked more lost than the fanatic's.
"..."
"What—"
He scanned the wreckage. Broken walls. Ceiling caved in three different places. Sebastian bleeding against the far corner. Iris out cold near the shattered doorway.
"...What just happened to me?" His voice came out distant, like a man surfacing from a dream he hadn't finished dreaming.
Then—
Zzzzsup!
A crimson screen flickered to life in front of his eyes. Unlike before, it didn't fracture apart. It held steady.
[ ARCANA STATUS ]
REBOOTED
Limited Control Authority Activated
He blinked. "...Rebooted?"
Before the thought settled, the windows dissolved one after another, leaving nothing but the ruined chamber in front of him. No further explanation offered.
For one strange second, the whole room looked different.
The blood on the floor read unnaturally vivid. Every crack in the concrete stood out sharp enough to trace with a finger. Even the dust drifting through the air seemed to follow its own distinct path, like he could track each particle if he wanted to.
His body felt light. Not stronger — lighter. The exhaustion dragging on every muscle hadn't left him, but it had stopped calling the shots.
His breathing slowed. His thoughts went quiet — not empty. Calm. His body simply stopped fighting itself.
The panic and confusion that had owned him since the palace collapsed backward into something he couldn't name yet. Certainty, maybe. Terrifying in how sure it felt.
What is happening to me. Every time — that Fool changes something else.
The fanatic roared. "I DON'T CARE WHAT THAT IS! Magma Severance!"
The blade swept horizontal, wide and burning. Zekai didn't react. He simply stepped.
One small motion. The edge missed him by centimeters.
Another swing. Another step.
Missed.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Every strike landed exactly where he wasn't anymore.
The fanatic's breath turned ragged, sweat cutting through the cracks in his mask. His attacks started losing shape — the clean arcs of molten steel widening into something sloppier, angrier.
Harder. Faster. Nothing landed.
"...No." Something in the fanatic's certainty was giving way. That's impossible. He shouldn't move like this. The prophecy never said anything about this. So what the hell woke up in him—
"...You're predicting me."
Zekai frowned. "I don't know how." His eyes tracked the blade. "My body's already doing it without me."
He couldn't explain it any better than that. His body moved first. His mind caught up after. Some new instinct had opened up inside him without asking permission.
The fanatic screamed and unloaded dozens of blazing arcs at once, the whole chamber turning into a storm of molten wreckage.
Zekai moved through it — not teleporting, just placing every step exactly where the danger wasn't. Between the collapsing beams. Around every wave of fire. Through every explosion without a single burn on his skin.
Sebastian stared, disbelieving. "...Impossible." His breath caught. "He's not faster than the blade. He's just standing wherever the blade already isn't."
Every movement landed in the one gap that existed. Not once did he hesitate. Not once did he stumble.
Each perfect step stripped another layer off the fanatic's confidence.
"What ARE you?!"
Zekai didn't answer. He vanished from view instead.
"Where—?!"
A hand lifted Iris gently off the floor. He carried her without effort, crossed the room in a breath, and set her down carefully past the doorway, clear of the collapsing chamber.
Her eyes fluttered open, vision swimming through blood and exhaustion. Through the haze she saw him standing there.
Alive.
For one fragile second she wondered if her own illusion had somehow followed her out of unconsciousness.
"...You—" Barely a whisper. Disbelief slowly softened into relief.
"...You actually got back up."
Before she could say anything else, the dark pulled her back under.
He reappeared beside Sebastian a heartbeat later.
The captain fought to stand, pain tearing through every bone in his body.
"...Leave me. We have to stop—"
"No." Zekai steadied him without effort. "We're leaving."
Sebastian's fingers closed around his sleeve. "...Listen to me." He pointed weakly toward the shattered outer wall.
"There's another one out there. The one who sealed the Chief."
Zekai looked past the wreckage. A distant shape stood among the rubble — long rifle, crystal pendants swinging faintly at his belt.
"...Who is he?"
Sebastian swallowed blood before answering. "Never confirmed his real name. Investigators just called him the Relic Collector." Every word cost him something to force out.
"A-Grade Grave Master. There's only a handful of those on the whole continent. Aldric's one. He's the other." A breath. "He doesn't kill. He collects."
"Grade only measures the ceiling — what a person could theoretically reach." His voice dropped lower. "Most A-Grades spend their whole lives a fraction of the way there." A pause. "Aldric's spent twenty years pushing his all the way to the edge of it."
"A-Grade Grave Master." Zekai's gaze shifted toward the crystal pendants.
"Those pendants are prisons. If one of those rounds touches you, don't let him retrieve it."
Zekai's eyes narrowed. "...Why?"
Sebastian's expression hardened. "Because whatever gets sealed inside them doesn't come back."
The fanatic surged forward again, screaming. "LOOK AT ME!"
Zekai set Sebastian down against the corridor wall. "I'll be right back."
He turned. The blade reached him. He shifted sideways at the last possible instant, his left hand closing around the attacker's ankle.
"..."
The fanatic's eyes went wide. "Wha—"
One motion. His whole body lifted off the ground.
BOOOOOOM!
He tore straight through the shattered wall, concrete exploding outward, his body vanishing into the smoke beyond it.
The distant shooter watched him fly through the air, and for the first time, something shifted in his expression.
One eyebrow lifted. "You're not supposed to exist."
Zekai stepped through the ruined opening, breathing steady, heartbeat quiet in his own ears.
He still didn't understand what had just happened to him.
He only knew one thing.
Nobody else was left standing to protect them.
For the first time since he'd woken up, Zekai looked straight at the man holding the pendant rifle.
Neither of them moved. Neither spoke.
The battlefield behind him suddenly felt very far away.
His eyes drifted to the crystal pendants hanging off the rifle. Tiny prisons, each one holding something that shouldn't have fit inside glass that small.
His gaze caught on the one filled with swirling dark.
It almost felt alive. Like it was quietly waiting for something.
Across the ruins, the Relic Collector studied him back — not his face, not his wounds.
His crimson eye.
Nothing on the man's face gave anything away, but something behind that single emerald eye sharpened with real interest.
For several long seconds, neither of them was entirely sure which one of them was the hunter.
The man's faint smile faded. He reached for another round, calm.
His fingers stopped.
One pendant trembled — not from movement. From recognition.
Inside the crystal, a tiny wolf lifted its head.
Another followed. The trapped raven cracked open one glowing eye.
Neither creature moved beyond that. Neither made a sound.
Both of them stared straight at Zekai.
The Relic Collector noticed. For the first time, his faint smile disappeared.
"..."
He said nothing. He loaded the round into his rifle without a word, his emerald eye never once leaving the young man standing in the ruins.
For the first time since this operation began, the Relic Collector wasn't looking at a target.
He was looking at an anomaly.
✦ End of Chapter 39 — Arcana Sequence ✦