Zekai hung suspended in the chains, feet dangling clear of the ground, arms pinned back until every breath felt like an invisible fist closing around his lungs.
He'd stopped fighting the restraints. Something closer to understanding than surrender.
'I can't win.'
The thought arrived without panic, and that absence scared him most. Every fight before this one had come with an answer somewhere in it — a weakness, an opening, some crack he could work his fingers into.
These six had none.
Jerom watched from the stone platform without shifting his weight. Hella lifted one hand and the chains answered on cue, black links climbing out of the stone to wrap tighter around him. Ossian stood off to the side, his skeletal weapon resting loose across one shoulder. Fenros crouched nearby, eyes tracking the rise and fall of Zekai's chest. Nihil held his ancient Grimoire open. Astrael stayed silent at the back of the group.
Six presences, six different kinds of wrong. And Zekai already knew none of them had been trying.
His confidence lay in pieces. Something stubborn in him refused to go quiet anyway.
He lifted his head. "Let me ask you something."
Hella glanced his way.
His voice came out ragged. "You always need six people to deal with one human?"
A thin smile touched her mouth. "Still trying to bait us?"
"Trying to understand."
His eyes moved down the line. "Six of you." He landed on Jerom. "One of you alone could kill me."
Nihil next. "Another can erase things from existence like they never happened."
Astrael. "Another rejects whatever I try to do."
Ossian. "That one seems to already know where I'm going to die."
Fenros. "And that thing—" the creature's eyes cut toward him "—learns something new about me every second I keep moving."
Last, Hella. "And you're making sure I never get within reach of the one weapon that actually matters."
A weak smile tugged at his mouth. "So why haven't you just killed me already?"
For the first time, glances passed between the six of them.
Jerom's gaze didn't waver. "Because your death isn't the point right now."
His smile fell away. "Then what is?"
Jerom said nothing. The silence answered on its own.
Zekai read it clean. They don't know either. Or maybe they did, and whatever stood above them had simply given an order to keep him breathing.
That thought crawled under his skin worse than any of their raw strength had.
Hella raised her hand again. The chains cinched down.
His body jerked. "Enough questions."
A black hand tore out of the dark behind him and seized his shoulder. A second closed under his ribs. A third wrapped around his wrist.
His eyes went wide. "Wait—"
They pulled. Pain lanced through his frame, his spine bowing under the force.
Hella's face didn't change. "You misunderstand, little Fool." The chains bit tighter around his arms. "I'm not trying to break your sword."
Her gaze cut to Null Drakular. "I'm making sure you never touch it again."
The shadow-hands dragged the blade further from him.
His chest went hollow. "No."
The sword scraped across stone.
"No, no—" He twisted hard against the chains. "Don't touch it."
She pulled again. The blade slid another meter.
His breath came fast and shallow. "Stop!" The chains tightened around his throat, and he screamed — the sound tearing across the battlefield.
Then nothing.
He froze. His own voice had vanished mid-scream.
Nihil had already written something in the Grimoire. The whole world had gone soundless. No wind. No footsteps. No chains creaking. Not even the sound of his own breathing.
He stared at Nihil.
The blue-haired Witness looked down at the open page. His finger traced a single word.
Sound.
The ink settled into the paper. Then the word itself blinked out of reality.
Zekai's mouth kept moving. Nothing came out. He erased sound. His thoughts raced ahead of the panic. Not blocked.
Erased outright — not blocked, not muted, gone.
Nihil turned to a fresh page. His eyes settled on Null Drakular.
He raised his hand and wrote: NULL DRAKULAR.
The ink hit the page. Nothing happened.
He paused, studied the blank space, glanced at the sword.
Wrote it again: NULL DRAKULAR.
Still nothing. The Grimoire trembled once in his grip.
Something shifted in Nihil's expression — subtle, but Zekai caught it anyway.
The first real emotion he'd shown all fight. Disbelief.
Nihil reached toward the blade. The instant his fingers brushed the hilt, nothing happened at all. Null Drakular didn't vanish. Didn't crack. Didn't even acknowledge the touch.
He withdrew his hand, slow. "...Impossible." No sound carried the words, but Zekai read them clean off his lips.
Nihil stared at the sword like he'd just run headfirst into a question reality itself refused to answer.
Then sound rushed back in all at once. Zekai sucked in a breath, the sudden return of his own heartbeat nearly enough to make him dizzy.
Nihil shut the Grimoire. "I can't erase it."
Zekai blinked. "What?"
Nihil looked to Jerom. "That weapon carries a resistance I've never come across before."
Jerom's eyes narrowed. "Can you destroy it?"
"No."
"Something that doesn't register in reality at all—" a pause "—it means it's Originless."
A small smile broke across Zekai's mouth — the first one he'd meant in minutes.
He looked at Hella. "So even you don't fully understand my sword."
Her expression went dark. "No." She wrenched the chains.
His smile died. "We're simply preventing an inconvenience."
The chains ripped him downward. His body hit stone hard, pain tearing through his shoulder — and before Frost Heal could even start, a shadow fell over him.
Fenros.
Zekai barely rolled clear. A fist crashed into the spot his skull had just vacated, cratering the ground.
He scrambled back on his hands. Fenros followed. A second punch — he ducked. A third — he sidestepped. A fourth—
He caught it on his forearm and the impact threw him several meters, his body rolling across broken stone.
Too fast to keep up with. He forced himself upright anyway.
Fenros was already there. A knee buried itself in his stomach, folding him in half. A hand closed on the back of his skull and drove him into the ground.
CRACK.
His vision swam white at the edges. He forced a breath through it. "Frost Heal."
Cold spread through his frame. The damage sealed shut — ribs snapping back into line, breath steadying under the burn.
He stared at his hands. Again. He stood.
Fenros attacked. He dodged, barely — a fist clipping past his cheek. He stepped back. Another swing, he ducked under it. Another, he twisted clear.
For a few seconds he survived on instinct alone.
Then Fenros stopped.
He stopped too.
Fenros's eyes crawled over him — his feet, his shoulders, the shake in his hands, the rhythm of his breath.
His jaw tightened. 'It's studying me.'
Fenros stepped in. Zekai moved first this time.
Left — Fenros matched him.
Right — blocked.
He faked high, dropped low. Fenros's hand closed around his wrist before the strike even landed.
His eyes went wide. 'Already?'
Fenros slammed him back into the ground. He coughed blood, and the grip released.
He rolled clear and stood, pulse hammering. 'It learned my rhythm.'
He stared Fenros down. 'Every time I repeat a movement, it gets easier for it to read the next one.'
His eyes flicked toward Null Drakular. Still out of reach. He couldn't overpower Fenros. Couldn't predict the rest of them. His Authority still hadn't answered him.
'So what am I supposed to do?'
A strange thought cut through the panic, unbidden.
'If I can't predict them—'
He stared at Fenros.
'—maybe they shouldn't be able to predict me either.'
Fenros lunged.
This time, Zekai didn't consciously choose where to move.
His body shifted before his mind caught up to a decision — one step leading into another, his foot landing somewhere he hadn't actually aimed for.
Fenros's fist passed a hair from his face.
He blinked. 'What?'
Another swing came. He leaned back on reflex, and the fist cut past his nose closer than he'd meant to allow, further than he'd meant to lean.
He stepped sideways, and the ground seemed to tilt under that single footstep. For one flickering instant he saw something that shouldn't have been possible.
His own body, standing two full steps from where he actually was.
The image dissolved. He went rigid.
'What was that.'
Fenros attacked again. He moved on pure instinct, and the creature's claws swept clean through empty air.
He stared at the gap between them, heart stuttering. I didn't dodge that on purpose.
He looked down at his own hand. His fingers wouldn't stop shaking.
The strike had missed clean. A faint shimmer passed through the air beside him, like reality itself had paused half a second to decide which version of Zekai actually belonged in that spot.
His eyes went wide.
Then the system window flared into view, letters glitching violently.
[FOOL AUTHORITY — CRITICAL RESPONSE]
The message stuttered.
[SURVIVAL THRESHOLD EXCEEDED.]
Another line bled through.
[PATH EVOLUTION DETECTED.]
He stared at it, breath caught in his throat. The words fractured again, letters scattering before they pulled themselves back together.
[THE FOOL HAS DISCOVERED—]
The sentence broke apart mid-word, scattering, then reassembling one final time.
[POSSIBILITY.]
✦ End of Chapter 66 — The First Possibility ✦