Chapter 165: Shard of Lu Xiye

I waited a few seconds. The hall had gone quiet around us, and the revived soldiers were still sitting on the floor in clumps, speaking in low voices. My mouth was dry. I had been turning the sentence over in my head for a while, and I finally decided to say it.

"Why don’t we just use the portal that you use for the people that complete the tasks and are then allowed to go home?"

Culex snorted. "Do you really believe in that?"

"..."

I did not answer. Of course, I did not believe in it. Nobody who had lived in this palace for more than a week believed in it. A door that only opened for people who had killed a Beast nine times out of ten sleeps, and sent them home with their memories wiped.

I had asked the question anyway, because I needed to hear him say it out loud. But still... a small, stubborn part of me had wanted him to say yes.

I let the silence sit for a moment and then said the next thing before I could lose my nerve. "Also, I would need your Sovereign rank Gift."

I was expecting a smack from him. I had seen what one slap did to Quinn. My shoulders went tight and I kept my eyes on his hand.

Instead, Culex nodded.

He nodded as if I had asked him to pass the salt. Then he held out one open palm, and something formed above it. It looked like a broken piece of crystal, no longer than my hand, with a jagged edge where it had snapped from something larger.

"This is the Shard of Saint Lu Xiye."

The Shard was neon blue in color. It gave off a faint, cold light, but the light was not the part that held my eyes.

It seemed to have an immense hunger stored inside itself.

I could feel it from where I stood, a pulling sensation at the back of my skull, as though the thing were slowly breathing in. Deep within the crystal, there was a thread of crimson, and the hunger was in the crimson.

I looked at it for a long second. Then I reached out and grabbed it from his hands.

It was heavier than it looked, and it was cold. The edge bit into my palm, and I did not let go.

[You Have Acquired A New Gift!]

[Shard of Lu Xiye]

[Description: Marked By Blood]

[Rank: Sovereign]

My thoughts scattered. He had given it to me.

The Sovereign Gift that Ouroboros had asked for, the one I had spent a long time planning to take off a dead man’s body, and he had put it in my hand without a word.

There was no price, no condition, no threat. I did not know whether to be grateful or afraid, and I found I was both.

"I could monitor the whole palace," King Culex said. "So I kind of knew about all these things." He half-explained it, and then he stopped as if that was all the explanation I deserved. His red eyes, with that small ball turning slowly inside them, did not leave my face.

I could only nod.

’All of it,’ I thought. ’The rumor, Quinn, Rashford, the plan. Every stage.’

It should have terrified me. I felt the cold of it crawl up my back, and then I understood that it explained how he had known my name.

I turned and walked toward the throne room.

It was empty now.

The survivors and the revived had gone down the staircase to wait, and the hall where the king had hovered over his blood was just a round room with a round black table, eight chairs and a pale throne on a short stair.

The huge gates stood open. I pulled them shut behind me, one at a time. They groaned on their hinges, and the sound rolled around the room and died.

Then I was alone.

My legs gave a little. I let them. I sat down on the floor with the Shard in my lap, and I breathed for a minute.

I found a candle. It had been left on the round table by someone, probably for the councilor’s meetings, and it was half burnt and crooked. I set it on the floor in front of me.

I brought my index finger and thumb close to the wick and rubbed my spiritual power between them, slowly and with care, because I did not have much of it left.

The wick caught.

The flame stood up small and pale. I set the Shard of Lu Xiye close to the candle, and the crimson thread inside it flickered once, as if it had noticed the fire.

I closed my eyes and began to chant.

"The Supreme Angel of Fate;

You Are The Grace of Destiny;

The Spirit of Time;

I, Edmund Rhys, your servant present to you his sacrifice."

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the floor was gone. I felt it leave. I was being lifted, slowly, by something that did not touch me, and my stomach dropped as if I were on a swing. I kept my eyes shut as long as I could stand it.

When I opened them, the throne room had been replaced.

I was in an infinite, silent void of deep indigo and gold. There was no floor under me and no ceiling above me, and the silence was so complete that I could hear my own pulse.

All around me, glowing clockwork gears floated in the dark. They were made of pure starlight. Some were frozen in place, and others turned in reverse, grinding backward against the flow of something I could not see. A huge gear drifted past me, close enough to touch, and its teeth were etched with tiny numbers that kept changing.

And there were threads.

Trillions of them, glowing silver and gold, stretched infinitely across the domain. They crossed and tangled and ran off into the dark in every direction.

At the center of it all sat a grand, angelic throne of crystallized time. It was made of something that looked like frozen water, and inside it I could see moments hanging in the glass: a door opening, a sword falling, a child laughing, all stopped halfway.

On the throne sat Ouroboros.

However, I could not see him. Only a light was visible to my mortal eyes, a bright, shapeless glow that hurt to look at and would not let me look away. There were no features in it.

"My servant, aye?" Ouroboros chuckled.