Chapter 353: It Was There the Whole Time

Chapter 352 — The Second Life

Undertow is stretched to its limit.

The chain locked to Veric’s shield disappears into the water and runs to Rhayne, who’s trying to find footing while the pull of the ducts drags her legs the other way. Veric reels it in with both hands, putting almost all his weight on his good leg, but the other one still gives every time he has to push.

Rhayne manages to lift her face.

"I’m fine!"

She isn’t.

I trigger Pressure Step three times.

The first burst detonates against the surface and throws me up before the current can grab my legs. The second one carries me over one of the worst stretches of the flow, and the third launches me across to Veric, dropping me beside him.

I grab Undertow’s chain.

"Pull!"

We both haul at the same time.

Rhayne slides against the water, coughing when a wave hits her face. She reaches one of the stone bases and immediately throws the Battle Ribbon around the nearest column. The ribbon takes two turns, three, then goes taut until her body stops being carried.

Veric keeps Undertow locked on for a few seconds.

"You anchored?"

Rhayne tugs the Ribbon to test it.

"Yes."

Only then does he release the chain and pull back his shield.

The water keeps rising and we haven’t solved a single thing.

"Second attempt," I say. "Go."

We return to the positions we worked out.

This time I take the Central Sea with eighteen coins. Rhayne takes North with nineteen, Veric East with twenty, Freya South with twenty-one, while Zhang Xi stays at Deep with forty-five.

The new interpretation still makes sense in my head.

Physical age isn’t everything. Time accumulated in Thirstfall carries weight too. That’s what the amethysts and the seventh shell seem to be saying.

I reach the child statue with the water already at my stomach. Around us, the constant noise of the floodgates makes it hard to talk without shouting. Our clothes are heavy, the floor is harder and harder to feel under my boots, and anything loose has started sliding slowly toward the ducts.

I check the eighteen coins.

Rhayne confirms nineteen.

Veric, twenty.

Freya, twenty-one.

Zhang Xi, forty-five.

There’s no room for automatic confidence after the first failure. We check again before we close the chains.

The OXI starts draining the moment Zhang Xi completes the last link, and the blue glow runs through the rings at our waists. The gates keep feeding the gallery while I pour the eighteen coins into the child’s vessel.

I pull the oar.

Nothing indicates success or failure.

Rhayne goes next. She still has one end of the Battle Ribbon fixed to the column, leaving only enough slack to reach the North statue. She sets nineteen coins, checks them with her fingers before lowering the spear, and immediately returns to the safest position the ribbon allows.

Veric does the same with twenty.

Freya puts in twenty-one.

The water is close to Rhayne’s chest when Zhang Xi finishes counting the forty-five coins in front of Deep.

I raise my voice before she can touch the statue’s spear.

"Wait."

Zhang Xi stops.

I look at the five stone gates standing open around the room. The Brinekin came out of those on the first failure, and nothing is moving in the dark chambers now.

"There shouldn’t be more monsters. All five chambers are already open."

Veric works out the rest.

"But something else could happen if we’re wrong."

"Probably."

I look at Rhayne.

"Anchor the Battle Ribbon properly. No slack this time."

She does it, winding another section of the ribbon around the column and running one more loop around her own waist. It won’t stop the water from rising, but at least it makes it harder for the current to drag her straight into a duct.

Freya keeps a hand on the spear of her own statue while she watches Zhang Xi.

"Ready?"

I take a breath.

"Pull."

Zhang Xi brings the lever down.

For a moment, the gallery stays exactly the same.

Then something enormous moves behind the walls.

The rumble comes from below, deep enough to feel through my boots. The five open gates shake and new inner slabs of stone start rising inside them.

There aren’t Brinekin behind them.

There’s water.

The flow explodes into the gallery.

"Shit!"

The difference is immediate. Water that had been climbing steadily is now rising fast enough for me to watch the line advance up my clothes. The impact from the side almost takes my feet out from under me, and Rhayne disappears to the chin before the Battle Ribbon stops her body from moving.

We failed again.

The chains keep draining OXI while the punishment stacks up, but I can’t go back to the riddle yet. First we have to survive the reset.

The statues start to return. The oar rises on its own and the four spears follow in sequence, grinding against the inner mechanisms until they’re back in their original positions. Finally the glow in the chains dies and the rings open around our waists.

The OXI drain stops.

The water doesn’t.

The coins also stay in the vessels of their respective statues.

"Dryden!" Freya shouts. "We don’t have time for a third bad theory!"

"I noticed!"

The water is at Rhayne’s neck. She has to tilt her face up every time a wave passes, and the Battle Ribbon stays completely taut between her body and the column. Veric moves as far toward her as his leg allows, Undertow ready, while Zhang Xi tries to keep her balance near Deep.

I look at the five sculptures again.

The genealogy isn’t wrong.

It’s still impossible to make the five true clues coexist any other way.

Deep.

South.

East.

North.

Central.

So we got the way we applied that lineage to people wrong.

Again.

The seventh shell surfaces in my head.

’The weight of experience is greater than all the seas.’

Experience.

On the second attempt I read that as time lived beyond ordinary age. That’s why Rhayne went from seventeen to nineteen, Veric to twenty, Freya to twenty-one, and Zhang Xi to forty-five.

And I stayed at eighteen.

’At least not in this timeline... Could it...? No. I went back in time. Those ten years don’t exist anymore.’

I thought that.

Considered it.

Threw it out.

Now the Ferryman’s Toll has just rejected everything.

My eyes go to the shell we identified as false.

The Central Sea is the father of the Deep Sea.

A child being the father of the old man.

When we solved the genealogy, that was the proof that West was lying. It still is. But maybe the lie carries another function. Maybe it has been showing us from the start that someone younger can carry more experience than someone old.

The amethyst in the child’s crown.

The Sage archetype.

The seventh shell.

My chest tightens before I even finish the thought.

"Son of a bitch..."

Veric hears it.

"You got it?"

I’m still looking at the child statue, but I don’t see Rhayne in that position anymore.

I see myself.

Eighteen years old.

A body that came back.

A life that doesn’t exist for this world anymore, but is still whole inside my head. I remember the people, the deaths, the choices, and every year that carried me to the moment I regressed.

The dungeon isn’t asking how long this body has existed.

It’s weighing what we carry.

And I carry two lives.

"The second life counts."

Freya frowns, water at her chest.

"What?"

There’s no time to explain.

I run the numbers.

My first existence reached twenty-eight years before the regression. Then I came back and lived those first eighteen again.

For the world, ten of those years disappeared.

For me, they happened.

The Ferryman’s Toll isn’t asking the calendar.

Forty-six.

I look at Deep.

I’m the oldest person in this room.

"Change positions! Rhayne, Central! Veric, North! Freya, East! Zhang Xi, South!"

Veric looks at the last statue and works out which position is left.

"And you?"

"Deep. Forty-six."

Nobody asks for an explanation.

Rhayne goes under first.

Her face disappears beneath the water when the current wins a few centimeters of tension from the Battle Ribbon. The ribbon holds her body, but she doesn’t have the height to keep her mouth above the surface anymore.

Veric fires Undertow.

The chain crosses the gallery and the hook catches a section of the Battle Ribbon near her body. He reels in, bringing Rhayne up and back against the column until her face reappears.

She drags in air, coughing.

"Move!" Veric shouts.

The statues are free again, but the coins from the second attempt are exactly where they were put.

Central has eighteen.

North, nineteen.

East, twenty.

South, twenty-one.

Deep, forty-five.

The final distribution means nobody has to carry those piles to another statue. The seas are still tied to the same positions. We only need to correct the amounts for whoever takes each one now.

"Don’t move coins between statues!" I shout. "Just add what’s missing!"

At Central, Rhayne needs nineteen.

One more coin.

At North, Veric needs twenty.

One more.

Freya takes East with twenty-one.

Another one.

Deep already has forty-five waiting for me.

I need forty-six.

One more.

The problem is Zhang Xi.

The South statue only has the twenty-one coins from Freya’s attempt. Zhang needs forty-five.

"Zhang! South needs twenty-four more!"

She nods and immediately changes route toward the matching pillar.

Now comes the hard part.

Getting there.

Pressure Step takes me off the floor again.

I fire one burst with the water near my chest and ride it toward the next. The current hits my legs from the side and knocks me off line halfway across, but I reach a column and get my balance back before continuing.

Behind me, Veric still has Undertow tied to Rhayne.

She releases the Battle Ribbon from the first column and throws the ribbon toward another one closer to the Central statue. The tip takes a firm turn, and Rhayne starts hauling her own body through the water while Veric reels Undertow in from behind, giving her a second safety line in case the ribbon slips.

Freya uses Permafrost far more sparingly. Small masses of ice form near her legs, making footholds that last a few seconds before cracking under the flow. She moves from one to the next, conserving what little control she has left after the fight and the effort before it.

Zhang Xi has the worst job after Rhayne. She has to reach the South pillar, collect twenty-four extra coins, and get back to the fourth statue while the water is already making every step more expensive.

She ties her tunic at the waist and moves sideways, using the pillars to break the force of the current against her body. When she reaches the South niche, she starts gathering the coins in handfuls, tucking them into a fold of her own clothing so the water can’t take them.

Veric tries to move toward her.

The wounded leg buckles on the first step.

"Stay with Rhayne!" Zhang shouts.

He stays.

I make it to Deep.

Zhang Xi’s forty-five coins are still in the vessel, exactly where she left them.

Perfect.

I only need one more.

The water is against my chest when I reach the pillar niche and search through the remaining coins. My fingers are cold and starting to lose precision. I take one, nearly let it slip, close my fist, and go back to the vessel.

Forty-six.

The number looks absurd next to an eighteen-year-old body.

But I can remember every year that makes it possible.

I look at Rhayne.

She’s under again.

Undertow stays taut while Veric pulls, but the water goes over her head now even when she manages to set her feet. The Battle Ribbon is the only thing keeping her body from being carried sideways toward the ducts.

’One minute.’

Maybe less.

We don’t get another attempt.

"Chains! Now!"

Rhayne reaches Central. She adds the nineteenth coin and finds the ring almost without being able to see. Veric brings North up to twenty and closes his chain. Freya adds the twenty-first to East before doing the same.

Zhang Xi comes up on the far side, still holding the extra coins against her body. She reaches South, pours the twenty-four into the vessel where twenty-one are already waiting, and runs her fingers over the pile, confirming the total of forty-five before locking her own chain.

I close Deep.

When the fifth link completes, OXI starts leaving my channels again.

The gates don’t slow down.

The water keeps rising.

Rhayne no longer has a stable band of air above her head.

I have to trust that Veric can bring her up at the right moments.

"Rhayne first!"

Veric reels Undertow in and her face breaks the surface. Rhayne pulls in air, coughing, reaches the child statue, and puts her hands on the oar. The nineteen coins are already in the vessel.

She pulls.

The mechanism advances.

Veric is second.

Twenty coins at North.

He keeps Undertow tied to Rhayne while he works with practically one hand, lowering the spear and immediately grabbing the shield’s chain again.

Freya pulls third.

Twenty-one coins at East.

The water is at the base of her neck and washing away the dried blood still left under her nose.

Zhang Xi has to be fourth.

Forty-five at South.

She gets to the lever with the water high on her chest, wraps an arm around the pedestal so she won’t lose her balance, and checks the vessel quickly. A wave hits from the side and some of the coins slide over each other, but none leave the pan.

Zhang pulls.

Four.

Only me left.

The water reaches my neck as I turn toward Deep.

Forty-six coins are in the vessel.

The pan is down.

All I have to do is pull the last spear.

I move.

The current takes me before I get there. It carries my body sideways off the line to the statue until the chain at my waist runs out and snaps taut, and it holds me there, at the far end of my own tether, with the water pinning me against it.

A few centimeters short.

I try to find footing on the floor, but the force of the ducts drags my legs sideways. I fire a Pressure Step under my foot and drive my body up, looking for reach over the current.

The water hits my hip the instant I rise.

The pressure blows out under me.

My body snaps back against the tension of the chain at my waist.

Across the gallery, Undertow disappears under the surface.

Rhayne hasn’t come back up.

I stretch my arm out again.

My fingertips pass close to the spear.

They don’t touch.

The noise of the water swallows almost everything, and the gallery seems to have shrunk down to the few centimeters between my hand and the stone shaft. Behind me, Veric hauls on Undertow with his body angled back, trying to hold Rhayne where he can still recover her, while Freya and Zhang Xi shout something I can’t make out anymore.

I try again.

The chain at my waist locks.

The spear stays out of reach.

And Rhayne stays under the water.