The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs had many interrogation rooms.
This wasn't one of them. Not anymore.
Quiet. Clean. Warm light spilled down from the ceiling, nothing like the cold metallic glare that had filled Chamber Twelve. No restraints on the table. No Grave Lens. No weapon aimed anywhere near him.
Just silence.
Zekai sat still in his chair, fresh white bandages wrapped around both forearms and his shoulder, the last of them disappearing beneath a clean Bureau-issued shirt that covered part of his chest. Someone had actually treated his wounds properly this time.
For the first time since he'd walked into this building, nobody in the room looked at him like a threat that needed containing.
Across the table sat Sebastian, healed but not fully — the Bureau's potions had closed the worst of it overnight, knitting torn muscle and cracked bone back into something functional, but a faint stiffness still lived in the way he held his neck, and the last of the bruising hadn't finished fading from his jaw. Healers could only push the body so fast before it started rejecting the help.
Between them, a small metal stand held a single crystal pendant upright.
Inside the crystal, a tiny Aldric Marune sat cross-legged on the transparent floor. Miniature. Sealed away from the world. And somehow still carrying more authority in that small space than either man sitting outside it.
—
A soft knock preceded the door. A young woman in Bureau blues stepped in carrying a tray — two cups, steam curling faint off the surface — and set them down without a word, one in front of Zekai, one in front of Sebastian. She bowed slightly and left as quietly as she'd come.
Zekai stared down at the cup. He didn't reach for it.
Sebastian noticed. A tired half-smile crossed his face. "It's just coffee."
Zekai's eyes flicked up, unreadable.
"We're not in the habit of poisoning the people we need answers from." Sebastian lifted his own cup and took a slow sip, deliberate, holding eye contact the whole time. "See? Still breathing."
A long beat. Then Zekai picked up the cup and drank.
Several minutes passed without another word. Only the wall clock ticked through the silence.
Then Aldric opened his eyes.
"...Let's start again."
Zekai lifted his gaze to the crystal. The tiny figure rose to his feet, hands folding neatly behind his back.
"This time," he said, glancing briefly at Sebastian, "without the Captain trying to shove anything else inside you."
Sebastian sighed. "...Fair."
Zekai looked at him. "That would be preferable."
Sebastian didn't argue the point. "I earned that one."
Quiet settled again before Aldric spoke.
"Tell me what kind of reality the forty-five of you walked into."
The question sat there, heavy. Zekai lowered his eyes, and the moment he reached for an answer the memories came flooding back — not gently, more like broken glass dragged across an old wound.
"...There was fog." His voice came out low. "Out of nowhere. We were standing at the intersection, and then we couldn't see each other anymore."
His fingers curled slowly.
"It got thicker. Everything vanished into it. Then there was white light."
Not bright. Absolute.
"So much light I couldn't even tell if my eyes were open."
For a second the room around him disappeared, replaced by white. Then dark swallowed all of it.
"When I opened my eyes again, we weren't in Greyhaven."
He swallowed hard.
"It looked—" He searched for the word. "—wrong. The sky wasn't broken. It just wasn't there."
His breathing slowed.
"The buildings were still standing, but they looked abandoned by reality itself. No life anywhere. No wind. No birds. No sound at all. It didn't feel like some other world."
A pause.
"It felt like the place where worlds go after they die."
Neither Aldric nor Sebastian interrupted.
"We wandered for a while, trying to figure out where we'd ended up. Then—" His jaw tightened. "—we ran into something."
A memory surfaced. A colossal shape. Eyes older than any civilization he could name. A body that refused to make sense to human eyes.
"It wasn't human. It wasn't an animal. It wasn't... anything I have ever known."
Sebastian watched him carefully. "You fought it?"
"...Yeah. We didn't have a choice." His voice dropped lower. "It wasn't trying to kill us. It wanted something else."
Aldric leaned in. "What?"
Zekai's jaw locked. "It stole something." He hesitated. "Something we both cared about."
Aldric's eyes sharpened. "What treasure."
"Memories. It stole our memories."
Silence.
"My brother — Aron." He looked away. "He forgot me."
The words landed heavier out loud than they had inside his own head.
"He looked at me... like we'd never met." For the first time his voice nearly cracked. "I watched someone who mattered to me forget I ever existed."
The room went quiet again. Neither man reacted with much visible emotion — not because they lacked any, but because in this line of work, they'd both already seen enough impossible tragedy to know when to stay still and let a person finish.
Aldric kept going. "Did the creature identify itself?"
"No."
"Did it carry Grave Energy?"
"I don't know. Didn't feel like yours does."
Aldric nodded slowly.
"Before this — had you ever encountered Grave Energy in any form?"
"No." Immediate.
Sebastian finally spoke up. "That's the part that doesn't add up."
He eased back carefully, one hand drifting to his neck brace without thinking.
"Without Grave Resonance... nobody should've crossed into a Reality Layer. Our people carry it. They're trained for exactly this."
"He looked to Zekai. 'But the other forty-three — civilians. No resonance. Neither did you.'"
"So how did forty-five people transition together at all?"
The wall clock's ticking suddenly felt loud enough to fill the whole room.
Nobody had an answer ready.
Aldric folded his arms. "'When the return happened, forty-two bodies fell out of the sky.' His voice stayed level. 'Not intact. In pieces. One came down alive — barely.'"
His eyes fixed on Zekai. "Did you encounter anything capable of that?"
Silence.
"...Zekai."
He stared at the table.
"I—" His thoughts scrambled and came up empty. "I don't know." His eyes shut. "The next thing I remember is everyone already falling. I never saw what did it."
Silence again.
Aldric studied him for a beat too long. Not a rehearsed lie — that much was clear. But not the complete truth either.
"...Something triggered it."
Sebastian glanced over. "What?"
"The transition." Quiet. "It wasn't random. Something set it off. Forced reality to reconnect on its own."
A black cube. Jagged. Cracked. Cold to the touch even in memory.
It flashed through Zekai's mind for less than a second. His hand twitched on the table. He buried the thought before it reached his face.
I can't tell them... Not yet.
Sebastian shook his head. "No. That's impossible. We can stabilize an existing fracture. Enter an active layer. Track a residual opening." He leaned back. "But force a transition — forty-five people at once, zero resonance among them?" Another shake of his head. "No. Nobody can trigger that."
Silence.
Then—
"...Maybe."
Sebastian looked at the pendant.
The tiny figure inside hadn't moved.
"Maybe there's a chance."
"Based on what?" Sebastian asked.
"Our entire profession," Aldric answered without hesitation. "We spend every day cataloguing things that shouldn't exist. Creatures that break biology. Places that break geometry. Events that break time itself." His gaze settled back on Zekai. "And now a man who survived something forty-three others didn't."
He folded his hands.
"I stopped calling things impossible... a long time ago."
"That's the entire reason this Bureau exists."
Sebastian said nothing. He couldn't — some quiet, unwelcome thought had already started taking root in the back of his mind.
Could something actually force a transition like that?
No. Not even the Bureau can do that. His jaw tightened. But Zekai shouldn't have survived either, and here he is.
Aldric never looked away from him — not accusing, not trusting either. Just watching. Investigating.
Then he asked the question Zekai had been dreading since the moment he'd walked through the door.
"...Aron."
Everything in Zekai went still.
Aldric caught it instantly.
"Tell me exactly what happened between you two."
The room felt smaller all at once.
Zekai's heartbeat thudded loud enough to hear.
Once. Twice. A third time.
Aldric kept his voice level. "You said the creature stole memories. Connections. You came back." A beat. "Aron didn't."
Silence. The tiny figure inside the crystal stepped closer to the wall of his prison.
"I don't believe you did anything to him."
A pause.
"But belief isn't evidence." His eyes never left Zekai's face. "Did you kill Aron?"
The chair shifted, barely. His breathing turned uneven.
The room waited. Even the clock seemed to tick louder.
The answer came before he could stop it.
"No." His voice hardened. "I didn't kill him."
Silence held.
"I'm sure—" His throat worked. For the first time since the questioning started, something in him cracked open.
"I'm sure he's still alive." Absolute certainty in every word. "I can feel it."
The memory surfaced again — Aron's face through the collapsing layer.
Why are you crying?
That question still hurt exactly as much now as it had the first time.
"We got separated. I don't know how. I don't know where he ended up." His fists closed slowly. "But whatever happened to him — I'm bringing him back."
"Even if I have to cross that world again."
No hesitation in it. No uncertainty. Just conviction, plain and unbending.
"I don't know what I did." That last part barely made it out of him.
Aldric saw it clearly. The guilt sitting behind his eyes wasn't the guilt of a killer. It was something else entirely — the guilt of a man convinced he'd already failed at the one thing that mattered.
Aldric let the silence sit a while longer, already forming the next question, when Sebastian raised a hand.
"...Chief." Aldric glanced over. "That's enough for today. He won't give you anything else."
The crystal stayed quiet a moment. Then Aldric nodded once.
"...Very well."
The questioning ended there.
A soft knock broke the stillness. The door opened. A Bureau officer stepped in and bowed slightly.
"Mr. Zekai. If you'll come with me."
Zekai stood. Before he reached the door, he glanced back once at the pendant. The tiny figure inside just watched him go.
Without another word, he followed the officer out. The door clicked shut behind him.
Silence again. Sebastian let out a slow breath.
"...We both know he's not that kind of person."
Aldric didn't answer right away.
Sebastian looked at the pendant. "He isn't guilty. Not of killing them. Not when he talks about Aron."
Still no immediate response. Aldric's eyes stayed on the closed door.
"He knows more about the transition than he's telling us." A pause. "And he's sitting on it."
Sebastian rubbed at his forehead. "Yeah. He definitely knows more about whatever's happening inside him too." He leaned forward. "And whatever actually happened to Aron — he's holding part of that back as well."
"What do we even call what he is?" Sebastian asked. "He doesn't file under any Order we have."
Aldric didn't look away from the closed door. "...Order X." A beat. "Null Anomaly. Not measured by Grave standards." A pause. "Not meant to be."
Aldric said nothing for a moment. Sebastian glanced at the sealed door.
"We can't just let him walk out of here." His voice cooled. "This is already national news. We can't afford to gamble on him."
Aldric slowly folded his arms. "...I have another option."
Sebastian's eyes widened. For a second he thought he'd misheard.
"...Chief." His voice dropped. "What are you planning?"
Inside the crystal, Aldric's expression shifted — the smallest trace of a smile.
"Something the Bureau's never done before."
"...Because we've never had someone like him before."
Quiet settled back over the room.
Outside, Greyhaven kept moving through its day like nothing had happened.
Inside the Bureau, the real investigation into the Fool had only just started.
✦ End of Chapter 44 — The Questions That Remained ✦