CHAPTER 112: LEAD THE WAY

I spun on instinct, heart slamming against my ribs, half expecting Fitch to come sauntering back with some smug remark about timing.

But no. Of course not.

It was him again. The man in white, strolling casually through the rubble.

The anger came suddenly, like a dam bursting after too many cracks had spread across its surface. My chest was already burning from smoke, my legs trembling from exhaustion, but the moment that lazy whistle curled through the ruins and I saw him strolling forward as if this were nothing more than a moonlit promenade, something inside me snapped.

"You," I hissed, stumbling to a stop in front of him, jabbing the air with my pen like an accusation, "you did this!"

The man in white tilted his head with the same insufferable calm as before, the hood shifting like fabric stirred by a breath of wind. No flinch, no defense, no denial. He stood, still as a statue, and waited until the silence made itself unbearable before responding.

"Did I?" he said at last, voice lilting, smooth, as if we were discussing the weather. "You’ll find there is very little I need to do, boy. The Lady herself was quite intent on destroying you all. That charming little Queen-Class invocation of hers? Ah, now that would have erased this entire district, leveled the walls to dust, crushed the very stones beneath your boots. A shame, truly. The architecture has such character."

He gestured vaguely at the smoking ruin, as though mourning an opera house instead of an apocalyptic battleground.

My mouth opened, ready to scream again, but the words caught in my throat. Because damn it all, he wasn’t lying.

I’d felt it. That spell she had begun weaving, that raw suffocating gravity in the air, the way my thoughts had come apart like threads tugged by invisible claws... If he hadn’t intervened—though gods knew how—none of us would have been here. Not Rodrick, not the knight, not Nara. Not even me.

My anger wavered, twisted into something uglier: reluctant recognition, the sickly sting of knowing his venom carried a truth I hated to admit.

I sagged back a step, pressing my hand over my face, dragging my palm down until I felt my own blood and soot smear across my skin. "Fine. Fine," I muttered, voice ragged, forcing myself to calm even as my insides screamed. "You didn’t kill us. Congratulations. Saints above, what a low bar."

The man laughed then. Not cruelly, not kindly. Just... as if the whole mess had been an elaborate card trick and I was the bumbling audience member who’d nearly fainted at the reveal.

It grated on me, set my teeth on edge, and yet there was something intoxicating in it too. Dangerous people always laugh like the world is a board game only they knew the rules to.

"Come now," he said lightly, as though we were old acquaintances discussing after-dinner plans. "Best not to linger among the ashes. There are safer walls, warmer fires, stronger roofs than these half-collapsed bones. My base is not far. You and your companions would do well to rest there before the games resume."

The word base caught in my ears like a hook. Not home. Not camp. Base. As though we were all pieces on a board and he’d already decided which box to slot us into.

Before I could respond, before I could ask what fresh nightmare awaited behind whatever roof he was offering, a sharp, hoarse gasp cut through the smoke behind us.

I froze. I knew that sound.

"Salem," I whispered, spinning on my heel.

Without thought, I bounded through the haze, stones crunching under my boots, Rodrick shouting faintly behind me. My heart hammered as I pushed aside the curtain of smoke—and there he was.

Salem, on his knees, body wracked with coughs that sounded like claws raking his throat. He retched into the dirt, shoulders trembling, pale as ash under the moonlight.

"Salem!" I dropped to a crouch, hand already reaching toward him, panic rising like bile. "Gods, are you—"

But he raised his hand, fingers trembling, palm open as if to ward me off. His breaths came shallow, ragged, but then he nodded his head and forced a small, reassuring smile, thin as paper but there all the same.

"I’m fine," he whispered, his voice broken but steady enough to silence me.

I froze there, half-kneeling, the instinct to reach for him clawing at my ribs, but something in his eyes told me to stop. Then that small smile vanished, snuffed out like a candle in wind, his face draining of all softness.

His gaze had shifted. Not to me, not to Rodrick, not to the ruin around us. No. His eyes were locked, unblinking, frozen upon the figure in white standing calmly behind me.

The air changed. I felt it in my spine, like the way a room shifts after an unbearable secret had been revealed. Salem’s stare was sharp enough to cut, the man in white’s presence heavy enough to smother, and yet neither moved, neither spoke.

They simply stared, a silence thicker than smoke stretching on and on until it felt like a noose tightening around my neck.

"Well," I muttered finally, because someone had to break it before I went mad. "That’s not ominous at all."

Neither of them blinked. I sighed, dragged a hand down my face again, and pushed myself to my feet. "Right. Well, if you two are done having a staring contest for the soul of humanity, I’m going to go help the knight look for any more survivors before this place finishes caving in. Rodrick, come on."

Rodrick nodded weakly, relief flickering across his exhausted features, and together we left Salem and the man to their silent duel.

Time passed strangely after that. Slow, sticky, as though the ruins themselves were reluctant to give up their wounded. The knight moved like a machine, bare skin smeared with soot and blood, carrying bodies across his shoulders with a grace that would have been comical in any other circumstance.

Rodrick staggered at my side, pale but steady, and I forced myself to keep moving, to keep lifting stones, to keep calling names, until one by one we gathered them all—the injured, the shaken, the half-conscious and the sobbing.

The square became a ragged circle of survivors, a pathetic collection of soot-stained faces and trembling hands, huddled against the smoldering walls.

That was when the man in white made his move.

He stepped forward, cloak untouched, voice rising just enough to claim the silence without shattering it. "You’ve endured much tonight," he said, as if he hadn’t been watching from the sidelines while our blood painted the stones. "And endured well. But this is not the end. You know it as surely as I. The tournament is no mere game. A war is coming, and no wall, no Crown, no Church will shield you from its teeth."

His gaze swept over us—or perhaps I only imagined it under that impenetrable hood—but I felt it all the same, a weight pressing down on my shoulders, pushing into my bones. And behind him... Saints, behind him I felt something. Not seen, not heard. Felt. A presence, a resonance, a kind of valence that made the air buzz in my lungs, as though the shadows themselves bent toward him.

"Those who wish to live," he continued, "should walk with me now. My base offers shelter, and more than shelter: purpose. The choice, as always, is yours."

My stomach twisted. My mind spun, reeling faster than dice tossed across a crooked gambler’s table."

The perks? Shelter, safety, information, maybe even a reprieve from whatever nightmare the Lady would be brewing. A chance to understand this so-called third faction, to use his shadow as a shield.

The risks? Walking into his base would be like walking into a wolf’s den with a ribbon around my neck. His laughter made it clear—everything to him was a game. And worse, I had no idea what piece he thought I was supposed to play.

But then again, what choice did I really have?

The city was empty, the air thick with smoke, the promise of war curling on the horizon. Rodrick’s words whispered back to me: three factions, and we were all pawns until we chose a side.

I glanced down at my ring.

Two-hundred and six left.

That number seemed to stare back at me, cold and accusing. I closed my fist, exhaled slowly, and nodded once, reluctant but firm.

"Fine," I said, my voice rough but steady. "Lead the way."

The man in white did not gloat. He did not grin. He merely turned, his cloak swirling like a curtain closing on the last act of a play, and began to walk.

And like fools, like survivors clinging to whatever scraps remained, we gathered what strength we had left and stalked after him into the morning light, toward whatever awaited us next.