There are conversations a man does not want to have.
There are conversations a man cannot afford to have.
And then there are conversations that arrive whether a man wants them or not, in a body he does not own, with a weapon that has chosen him for reasons he does not yet understand, and the only choice left to him is whether he listens with his back straight or his back bent.
The edge of Cedric's bed held me.
The sword went across my knees.
My back stayed straight.
"Talk," I said.
—
The sword did not talk immediately.
This was, as later chapters would confirm, characteristic. Nihil enjoyed silence the way certain old men enjoyed the breath before a punchline — the silence was part of the show. The not-color along the crack in the blade pulsed once, slowly, and the pulse moved into my hand and out the other side, and the sword *considered* me with the leisure of a thing that had nothing in the world to do but consider.
*You are tense,* Nihil said.
"I have been awake for thirty-six hours, I have inherited a body that was scheduled to die forty-seven different ways, my father is a Monarch who has been grieving in a locked room for four years and just told me my dead sister would have approved of cruelty, and a sword in my basement just informed me it has been waiting a thousand years for me to feed it. Yes. I am tense."
A pause.
*Fair,* Nihil said.
The waiting continued.
*Ask,* the sword said.
"Sera."
The not-color pulsed.
It pulsed harder than it had pulsed for anything yet — three times, fast — and the pulse traveled into my hand and into the bones of my arm and into the chest cavity where the cracked core sat, and the core gave a small lurch of recognition the way a man's stomach lurched at a name he had not said out loud in a long time.
*Ah,* Nihil said. *Yes. Her.*
The voice had changed.
Not by much. Not enough that someone listening from the outside would have noticed. But the patient amusement had thinned, the way a mask thinned when the man behind it stopped bothering to keep it on, and what was underneath was older and more careful and considerably less amused than the surface had been letting on.
*I cannot tell you everything,* Nihil said.
"Why not."
*Because you would do something stupid before sunrise. Because I have been awake in this stone for a thousand years and I have learned to recognize the face of a man who is about to put his sword into the wrong throat, and you, stranger, have that face. I will tell you what you can hold. I will tell you no more than that. We will revisit this conversation when you are older.*
"I am twenty-two."
*You are seventeen,* Nihil said, *in a body that has been seventeen for one day. The mathematics of your age has become a personal problem. The mathematics of your readiness has not. You are not ready. So I will tell you the small pieces, and you will be unsatisfied, and you will live.*
That sat.
It did not sit well.
Two years of being unsatisfied by the wiki's blind spots had taught me one kind of frustration, but the wiki had been a fan-edited document by people doing their best in their spare time. Being unsatisfied by a sentient sword that *knew* and *would not say* was a different animal. Cedric's anger — the borrowed thing, the cold reflex that had moved through me at dinner and was learning to be recognized and shut down — surfaced again, and the catch this time was faster.
"Tell me what I can hold."
*Three things,* Nihil said. *Listen.*
The not-color went still.
The sword was preparing. Not the words. The *spaces* between them. The pauses Nihil left in the conversation were not empty. They were rooms he was inviting me to walk through.
*One,* Nihil said.
*Your sister was real.*
No response.
The thing that had been not-articulated since the Duke's voice last night said *your sister* did not get articulated now. The Ledger had returned no data. The wiki had returned no data. The game had returned no data. There had been, in the four hours since the dinner, a small and ungenerous part of me that had been hoping — coward that I was, gamer that I was, planner that I was — that *your sister* had been a Duke's manipulation. A test. A line he had dropped to see what Cedric did with it.
It had not been.
The portrait in the locked room had been real.
The list with five lines and a blank fifth one had been real.
The chair beside the bed had been real.
And the sword on my lap had just confirmed, in a voice that did not bother to soften the confirmation, that the child who had slept in that bed had existed.
An exhale.
*Two,* Nihil said.
*She is not, at present, entirely gone.*
My eyes went to the blade.
"Define."
*I cannot.*
"Define," I said again, evenly.
*I am older than your family,* Nihil said. *I am older than your script. I have, in the long centuries of this room, learned to feel certain things — the shape of certain absences, the place where certain children should be and are not. There is a place in this world where your sister should be. There is no child in that place. But the place is not empty. Something stayed.*
"Something."
*Something small. Something fond. Something that has, occasionally, in the last four years, reached. Not far. Not often. The reaches are very tired. But the reaches are there.*
My eyes closed.
They opened.
"Where."
*I cannot tell you that either,* Nihil said. *Not because I will not. Because I do not know. I know the shape of the absence. I do not know the address. The address is somewhere your family does not have a map for.*
No response.
The third thing, when it came, was the one that had not been expected.
*Three,* Nihil said.
*Your father knew exactly what he was doing.*
The room went still.
There had been bracing for this. The bracing had started in the moment the Duke had said *your sister* and the casualness of the line had registered, with the cold clarity of a man who had survived his mother for twenty years, that *casualness* had been the worst part. Casual men did not casually mention dead daughters. Casual mentions were the *least* casual thing a careful man ever did.
But there was a difference between bracing for a thing and hearing the thing said.
"What did he do," I said.
The sword paused.
The pause was long enough to require a check of the door — automatic, a habit of the previous body or the new one, the boundary unclear — and the chambers were sealed. The corridor was empty.
*I will not tell you that today,* Nihil said.
Cedric's anger moved again.
The catch came again. Easier this time, and the muscle of the catch was developing the way a muscle developed under repeated work, and the development got noted the way everything else in this body got noted — as an outside observation about a piece of equipment I had been issued.
The thinking-about-it would happen later.
"When," I said.
*When you can hear it without doing something irretrievable. We will talk about him again. Many times. For now: he knew. He chose. The choice was deliberate. The consequence is the body you are presently sitting in. Do with that what you can carry for now.*
"That is not nothing."
*That,* Nihil said, *is everything except the part that would get you killed.*
The sword stayed across my knees for a long time after that.
The candle on the desk burned down a quarter-inch.
No movement.
The three pieces ran through my head — the shape of them, the gaps between them. *She was real. She is not entirely gone. He knew what he was doing.* The first piece was a confirmation. The second piece was a mystery the room could not solve. The third piece was a death sentence, mine or someone else's, depending on what came next.
Four thousand hours of game knowledge.
Seven endings, memorized.
Forty-seven death flags, memorized.
In not one of those four thousand hours had preparation been made for the possibility that the man I was supposed to call father had killed his own ten-year-old daughter and used the corpse for something.
The Ledger pulsed in the corner of my vision.
It did not get looked at.
"Sword," I said.
*Mm.*
"How did you know."
*That she was real?*
"That she was. That she stayed. That he chose."
*I sat in a basement for a thousand years,* Nihil said, *with my ears against the bones of this house. The bones of this house have a great deal to say. Mostly they say nothing. Occasionally, when something terrible happens above me, they tell me. Four years ago, the bones of this house screamed. They screamed for nine minutes. Then they stopped. They have not been quite the same since.*
The follow-up question did not get asked.
It did not need to.
I had paid the rent and not the consultation.
I knew what nine minutes meant.
—
The knock came at the door at half past nine.
My body had not moved in two hours.
I rose, sheathed Nihil at my hip, smoothed the front of my coat, and crossed to the door with the expression that had been practiced in three mirrors. Bored. Slightly displeased. The expression of a man who considered being knocked on a small concession he was making to the world.
The door opened.
It was not a servant.
It was Ren.
His face was familiar from the wiki. The wiki had given him two lines of description — *commoner attendant assigned to the Valdrake heir at the entrance of the academic year, killed in Arc 5* — and a single screenshot of him cowering in a cutscene background. The face in front of me was the face from the screenshot. Brown hair badly cut. Brown eyes. A scattering of pale freckles across the bridge of a nose that had been broken once and set badly. Sixteen years old. Holding a wooden tray.
He bowed so deeply he almost dropped the tray.
"Y-Young Master Cedric. Forgive the late hour. The Duke — the Duke instructs you to receive the courier who arrives in the eastern courtyard at the third bell. The courier carries correspondence that the Duke wishes you to read in his absence. The Duke — " he swallowed. "The Duke also instructs me to inform you that I have been assigned to your personal attendance. For the duration of your academy enrollment. I — I will be your attendant. Effective immediately."
My eyes went to him.
None of what I felt landed on my face.
The wiki had said Ren would be assigned to Cedric on the morning of academy departure. *Three weeks from today,* not *tonight.* The original Cedric had not received Ren until the carriages were loading. Ren had not survived the first three weeks of the academic year in any route. The original Cedric had bullied him for a month and then forgotten about him.
Ren was here now.
Three weeks early.
The Ledger pulsed.
[Schedule deviation logged.]
[Source: not Kael.]
[NDI: 3%.]
[Note: The system did not write this change. Something else did.]
The panel closed.
Ren — small, terrified, brown-eyed, fourteen-year-old-Hana-sized in the doorway of a room he was not allowed to enter — stood waiting, and the only thing that did not require a decision yet was the one available.
"Set the tray down," I said.
He set the tray down on the table by the door.
He bowed.
"The third bell," I said. "Eastern courtyard. The courier."
"Yes, Young Master."
"Who is the courier from."
He swallowed.
"I — the Duke did not specify, Young Master. The seal on the message bag was not from any of the seven Houses. The kitchen runner who took the courier's coat reported — " he hesitated. "Reported that the seal was unusual. The runner is not certain what it was. The seal was burned into the leather rather than pressed."
My body went very still.
The seal was known.
The wiki had a paragraph on it. The dataminers had recovered an icon for it. It had appeared in exactly one route, and it had appeared once, and it had been the trigger for the dungeon break that killed forty-three students in the first chapter of the second arc.
The seal was a hand.
The hand was on fire.
The hand was the calling card of the Cult of the Abyss.
[The Villain's Ledger]
[Scenario Alert: Unscheduled.]
[The third bell will ring in eleven minutes.]
[Death Flag #12 — *The Dungeon Break* — has activated.]
[Status: Approximately six months ahead of canonical schedule.]
[Recommendation: Run.]
[Note: The system understands you will not run. The system would like to note that it tried.]
No movement for a count of three.
Three weeks until the academy. The first death flag was supposed to be the entrance exam. The second was supposed to be Liora's duel challenge. The dungeon break was supposed to be in *Arc 1's climax,* roughly three months after the academy began, after Nihil had been bonded properly and Null Touch trained and at least an E-rank core to draw on.
The dungeon break was here now.
The dungeon break was tonight.
The dungeon break had been scheduled for an estate that had not been left yet, in a season the game had never coded for, with a body that was running on F-rank fumes and a sword that was at one percent of its bond and a system that was, for the first time since I had arrived, telling me to *run.*
Behind me, on the bed where the sword had been left, Nihil made a low sound.
*Ohh,* he said.
*Already?*
The door closed on Ren, gently.
The room got crossed.
Nihil got picked up.
The candle on the desk burned down toward the brass tray where Valeria Embercrown's letter had burned to ash this afternoon, and a clarity that arrived without permission surfaced: the letter had not been a coincidence. The letter had said *I know you went into the room.* The letter had said *burn this.* The letter had said nothing else. The letter had been sent by a girl who, in the game, did not begin her real political activity until the second semester of the academic year.
Valeria had known.
Valeria had known before *I* had known.
Which meant Valeria had been watching this house.
Which meant Valeria had also seen the courier coming.
The strap of Nihil's belt-loop got tightened. The candle got checked. The window took me, and the eastern courtyard below — torchlight, two figures, a horse, a leather bag with a seal burned into it that could not be seen from this distance but did not need to be — was already populated. The courier was already there.
The third bell had not rung yet.
Ten minutes.
The window closed.
The turn.
The walk toward the door began.
In the back of my head, very quietly, the patient hungry old voice of the sword on my hip said the only thing it had said all night that almost made me smile.
*Well,* Nihil said.
*This is faster than I expected. Let's see how badly you die.*