The woman in the white dress didn't attack. She didn't scream. She simply stood in the knee-deep mud of the 39th year, holding her dried lavender, her eyes tracing the jagged scars of the trench as if they were a garden path.
Arthur's breath hitched, a sharp, cold pain blooming in his chest that had nothing to do with his sinus infection.
"General?" Kael's voice sounded muffled, like he was underwater. "Who is that? Is she... an Auditor?"
"No," Arthur whispered, his voice cracking. "She's a Legacy Liability."
The 85% shadow of the year began to ripple. The mud didn't just stay mud; it began to turn into black, viscous ink that rose up the walls of the trench, forming the shapes of high-back chairs and long dining tables. The battlefield was being overwritten by a memory—a glitch in the Afterveil's chronological order.
[WARNING: TEMPORAL OVERLAP DETECTED]
[TRIAL 38 IS LEAKING INTO TRIAL 37]
[STABILITY: 12% AND DROPPING]
"Arthur," the woman said. Her voice was thin, like wind through a keyhole. "The tea is cold."
Arthur took a step forward, his hand instinctively reaching for the silver thimble in his pocket. "Mother, I... I have a meeting. I'll be there in ten minutes."
He froze. He hadn't said those words in thirty-eight years, yet they slid off his tongue with the greasy ease of a practiced lie.
Suddenly, the sky above the trench split open. It wasn't a god descending this time. It was a System Correction Bolt—a jagged spear of white logic sent by the Ten Legends to "clean" the glitched trial. They didn't care about Arthur's mother; they wanted to delete the anomaly.
"Kael! Get down!" Arthur roared.
The bolt struck the woman in the white dress. She didn't shatter. She absorbed it.
The dried lavender in her hand flared with a violet light so intense it blinded the "Market Insight" HUD. The 85% shadow of the trial didn't just fight the light; it fed it.
"Oh," the woman said, looking at her glowing hands with a mild, confused interest. "That's much warmer."
[SYSTEM ERROR: ANOMALY HAS CONSUMED THE CORRECTION]
[ANOMALY RANK: UNKNOWN]
[THREAT LEVEL: EMOTIONAL]
The Baron Vane, still face-down in the mud, looked up and saw the woman. Sensing a chance to regain his dignity, he scrambled for his diamond rapier. "I don't know what kind of trick this is, Wu, but I'll cut through this ghost and take your head!"
Vane lunged at the woman.
Arthur didn't move to stop him. He knew something Vane didn't: you cannot stab a regret.
As the diamond blade passed through the woman's chest, it didn't draw blood. It drew Silence. The sound of the wind, the rain, and Vane's own breathing vanished. The Baron froze mid-air, his face contorting in a silent scream as his "Soul-Seconds" didn't just tick down—they became Negative.
"You're late for dinner, too," the woman whispered to Vane.
The Baron vanished. Not erased, not killed—he simply ceased to have ever been part of the trial. His diamond rapier clattered to the mud, now nothing more than a piece of worthless glass.
Arthur stood trembling. He realized the unpredictability of the Afterveil: his trauma wasn't just a hurdle for him to jump; it was a Predatory Virus that was starting to eat the System itself.
"General," Kael whispered, crawling toward him. "We have to go. The gate to the 38th is opening, but... it's not a gate anymore. It's a mouth."
The trench was dissolving. The mud was turning into the hardwood floors of Arthur's childhood home. The smell of sulfur was being replaced by the scent of lavender and old paper.
Arthur looked at the woman—the manifestation of his mother. She held out her hand.
"Arthur," she said, her eyes vacant yet piercing. "Did you finish your work? Is the company safe now?"
Arthur looked at his hands. They were stained with the black ink of his sins and the mud of a war he had funded. He looked at the woman who had died while he was looking at a stock ticker.
"No, Mother," Arthur said, his voice finally steadying into a dark, resolute calm. "The company is bankrupt. And I'm finally coming home to sign the papers."
He didn't run away from her. He walked toward her, grabbing Kael by the collar and dragging him along.
"Kael, listen to me," Arthur hissed as the world turned into a silent, sun-drenched hallway. "Don't speak. Don't look at the clocks. If you hear a phone ringing, don't answer it. This isn't a trial of strength. It's a trial of Listening."
[TRIAL 37: ABORTED]
[TRIAL 38: THE SILENT KITCHEN]
[RATIO: 0/100 — TOTAL DARKNESS]
The door at the end of the hall swung open. There was no monster. There was only a wooden chair, a cooling cup of tea, and the sound of a clock ticking... one... two... three...
The 38th Year had begun. And for the first time in the history of the Afterveil, the "Sovereign" had no plan.