Jian Yue pinched the bridge of his nose. He moved slowly and sat beside him. "How do I address you, Ascended?" Jian Yue began with the introduction.
"Mo Fei."
"Mo Fei..." Jian Yue repeated the name on his tongue. "It means ’To fly,’ and it could also mean ’There is Nothing that is Not’, are you both?" He had a small grin.
Mo Fei just blinked. "Cut it out; just tell about yourself."
"I’m the ascended of the ’Warden of Silence,’ Jian Yue." He introduced himself, "A seventh Ordinal of my authority."
"How can you throw papers? Or simply it means words have no voice," Mo Fei said flatly.
"Words have more than that. Now listen quietly." Jian Yue’s expression was grim.
He leaned close; his voice went louder. "There are several things," Jian Yue began, his fingers crossed together. The candle’s unmoving flame now flickered as if creating suspense. Mo Fei’s ears perked up in focus.
"You ascend through sleep in the world one, and through self-inflicted death in other worlds, but if you are killed by another ascended or an entity..." Jian Yue stopped, he didn’t need to say the next words.
Mo Fei inhaled a long breath. He realized how stupid he was while escaping monsters. That was a horror; bravery could have cost him his life.
The fight with Kholkis and the Suture Worm, he had thought that it didn’t matter if he had died there. He’d just ascend.
Mo Fei’s mouth went dry. He gulped slowly; bravery faltered. That thought of not dying made him reckless. The fear of death was almost gone, but it returned slowly when he knew now he had been a step away from becoming just a weightless body.
"Why?" The word scraped out of Mo Fei’s throat. "Who built it?"
Jian Yue’s gaze grew distant. "We don’t know who was the creator, but he had access of your authority, alongside three others." Jian Yue raised his hand, and a long scroll appeared, the laces made of swishy silk, and it opened.
"World 0... Our home. It was the world where the oldest Ascenders called ’The Sundering’ lived. Now we call them the chosen ones."
He gestured vaguely around them, at the very air. "What you are seeing right now is not the world 0. What it actually is, is a mystery."
Han let out a soft, shattered breath. Elara wrapped her arms around herself. Grig’s fists were clenched. They had heard about other worlds, but never seen them.
"The ’Authorities’ you can choose," Jian Yue continued, his voice low and relentless, "are the shackles placed upon the corpse. We complete our Descent, becomes stronger. Then... it catches the attention of the higher Ordinal Ascenders."
Jian Yue popped his knuckles before speaking further. "And they hunt them down for their own descent." He finished his words, looking at them.
Mo Fei’s body went cold. He narrowed his eyes, was he between a war of ascenders? "What is Ordinal and Descent?"
"That’s still something we don’t understand. Ordinal is gap between Godhood and while Descent means the count of ritual." Jian Yue sighed, his own knowledge failing against the cosmos.
Mo Fei nodded and stared at the sigil on his wrist. "Then the creator is...?"
"A corpse," Jian Yue dropped the shocking truth, his voice hollow. "His Authority has shattered. Only the tools remain, like that Glaive and the Ji Yu feathers." He leaned forward, his final words falling into the utter silence. "We have been trying to get back world 0, but..."
The flame of the candle finally went out. Everything turned dark, Jian Yue snapped his head toward the door.
"Someone is here!" he shouted. The candle was not just there for flame. "Escape from the backyard gate!"
Grig, Elara, and Han sensed the emergency and pushed themselves up. Grig carried Mo Fei on his back as they moved toward the backyard.
Jian Yue stood there and began chanting.
"The Honorable Ruler of the Absence. The Creator of Silence. The Lord of the Unwritten Ends. The Reader above Cosmos. I held the glimpse of your authority, your devotee has requested." Just in that moment, after he finished chanting.
The main door dissolved, and someone passed through it. A man who wore light blue and white robes emerged. The light outlined his features. His lips moved as he spoke.
"No one is here, how... peculiar." The man’s eyes passed through every object and landed on the extinguished candle. His eyes held disappointment when he saw nobody there.
The flame had died. In the perfect darkness that followed, the pursuers’ scent cut through the stale air with a touch of gold.
Jian Yue was nowhere to be seen; he had disappeared already.
Then, with a sound like tearing parchment, the front door simply unwove itself. Just in that moment. The man’s body fell on the ground with a crushing thud, his body feeling no air around him. The silence got heavier, and the pressure in the air began crushing his bones.
An unknown force caught him off guard.
"Wha—t!?" His senses went dull now. He crouched on the ground, forcing himself to go out. His face was tainted humiliation.
"A-A Warden was here! You son of a–" He cursed under his breath, his voice muffled and venomous. The crushing force instantly stopped as he escaped the house. The man gasped.
"I’m going to kill him, I’M GOING TO KILL THAT PIECE OF SHIT!" He stood up with trembling legs and coughed, only to fall back again by the same force.
Then a loud laugh followed. The man looked, only to see Xue Lan standing ten paces away. "Hahah—what happened little brother. That’s so ungraceful, Yin." Xue Lan said in a teasing tone, then turned to walk away.
Yin’s face turned slightly red in embarrassment. He went silent, cursing in his mind. He remained glued to the ground. "You are leaving just like that, without even helping me."
"I’m sure you can move in a few minutes," Xue Lan wheezed and spoke again, "Beside that, it’d be interesting sight if the guards see their almighty Royal Guard on his knees, hahah."
"You sent me purposely, didn’t you? Ahh, I hate you brother."
Meanwhile,
The group had escaped, running toward the outskirts of Trasia. Jian Yue appeared next to them.
Grig glanced at him, his voice hitching from sprinting. "Jian Yue. What were you waiting for?"
"Making an escape, whoever was there can’t move freely for the next eight minutes and six seconds." Jian Yue assured, and then their shoulders dropped in relief.
Han observed Jian Yue’s face. "I still wonder why you are helping us. I can’t think of any reasons."
Jian Yue breathed softly before answering. "Because I’m an ascended too. This year, four had already died, and now three remain, including Mo Fei." He looked forward. "One refused to join, second one joined someone else."
Time passed. They finally reached the end of Trasia.
"So Mo Fei... Tell me your prospects." Jian Yue’s question made Mo Fei think. A few seconds later he answered.
"I won’t ascend unprepared."
"Then... Why don’t you join us?"
"I will join." Mo Fei said bluntly. "I won’t find any other better option... but the wounds..."
"Yes, you aren’t high an Ordinal ascended. I have better medicines." Jian Yue gave him a small, warm smile.
Mo Fei clung to Grig’s back, a world that was a lurching silent film. He saw Jian Yue’s lips moving in response, but heard only the bumping of his heartbeat.
"It’s getting worse..." Mo Fei muttered.
"We will reach somewhere," Grig heard and gave him hope.
Jian Yue’s wary eyes looked at Mo Fei. "You are one of us now. Welcome to the Epilogue."
"Epilogue?" Mo Fei raised his brows.
Jian Yue chuckled slightly. "Just our little resistance. Just a bad name for a worse plan, a little group of ascenders."
After what felt like hours, the terrain began to change. The imperial stonework gave way to the skeletal remains of a forest, trees petrified into grotesque, frozen statues.
A village came into their view... Not even a village. It was more like a village that had been turned into graveyard.
"Vraalk," Grig whispered, the word a puff of frost in the air. His footsteps went slower and finally stopped.
Below them in a shallow valley lay a collection of perhaps two dozen stone huts, their roofs caved in by snow and time. A low wall meant for keeping wolves away was broken, scattered in different places. No smoke rose from any chimney. No light glowed in any window. Only the relentless wind howled through the ruins.
Elara’s hand went to her mouth. Han’s stoic face cracked, revealing a deep, weary sorrow. That was the fate of a village powered by an unruly dictator.
"Empty," Grig muttered, his voice thick. "I thought they had been taken as slaves." Grig took a shuddering step forward, then another, descending into the slope towards the stone huts.
Jian Yue didn’t stop him. His expression unreadable. "A village that had tried to resist a dictator would meet its end," he murmured quietly, more to Mo Fei than anyone. "Some don’t even try, they did."
Grig moved through the ruins and stopped before a hut identical to others. Its door hung off one hinge. He pushed it open. The mouldy wood groaned in protest.
He went into the darkness.
Mo Fei from Grig’s back saw a shattered table. A child’s broken toy was scattered around. His eyes found a toy horse, half-buried in debris near the wall... At the ground a hearth full of ash, and it was not of furniture but... of humans... yes, burnt alive. The bones beside it proved that.
Grig stood at the center of the room, his shoulders trembling twice, but no sound came.
"Put me down," Mo Fei rasped.
Grig gently lowered him to lean against the doorframe. Mo Fei stared at the big man, who walked to the hearth and knelt, brushing the ash with his fingers. Grig pressed his lips together. He picked up the toy horse, cradling it in his palm, his thumb stroking the rough wood.
"My son... Kael," the words came torn from somewhere deep and broken. He tried to keep his voice steady but failed. "He was carving this from his mother’s name-day." He looked around the dead space; his eyes found Han, Elara, and Jian Yue at the doorway. "She was... she healed villagers. She argued and fought back. The Overseer’s men... they called her a void-spawn sympathizer, she was just like you, Mo Fei, an ascended... but–"
He didn’t need to finish.
"I was out to get food. It was already the season where we got almost nothing to eat," Grig continued, his voice flattening into a monotone of pure grief. "By the time I returned... I was caught by them."
Han stepped into the hut, placing a weathered hand on Grig’s shoulder. "The Overseer isn’t concerned about cravings, son, or wife. I understand you, but..."
"I know, but he had no reason to do that," Grig said. He closed his fist around the wooden horse, then carefully placed it in a pouch at his belt.
"A cruelty doesn’t carve meaning," Han stated.
"It’s been nearly a month," Grig stood, the grief hardening into something else. He turned to Mo Fei. "You asked me why I trusted you. In the snow with the Kholkis."
Mo Fei nodded weakly.
"Because you didn’t run. When you could have. You turned and fought the beast. For us. You gave me a reason to stop being a weight and start being a human, instead of a lone swan..." Grig turned toward the wall, his eyes turning watery.
"Cassia told me how you can shape heaven in a terrible world. She didn’t run and never cried in desperation either. I’m ashamed of how easily I gave up, but you reminded me." He looked at the ruins of his home, then back at the group.
"This is my freedom. It’s not a place. It’s knowing what I’m fighting for. It’s knowing the face of the thing that did this...the rotten self centered empire."
Mo Fei’s heart tightened. He couldn’t say anything, he had nothing to say.
Grig walked to the door, his back straight. "Where will you stay, Jian Yue. Is it far?"
"Half a day’s travel. Through the Glacial Vein’s upper passes, near the Cathedral of Flesh... It will be unpleasant."
"Anywhere is better than here," Grig’s eyes scanned the place.
"So will you come with us?" Mo Fei asked, his voice surprisingly gentler than usual.
Grig shook his head. "I’d have loved to, but I want to stay here. Farewell." Grig’s voice was quieter; Han had to explain that to Mo Fei.
Elara, however, emphasized his loss. She was speechless by that, though she had faced it before: the grief that caused her heart to be sensitive.
"This is your freedom, but thanks for everything I guess." Mo Fei whispered quietly. He had believed that they’d be just dead weights before. He didn’t know how and why.
Grig nodded. "No, you did everything. I never imagined I’d walk in an open field again."
"You were our strength," Han gave him a nod, keeping his solemn expression.
"Don’t worry about me, it’s more than comfortable enough."
With these final words of Grig. They left ’Vraalk’ behind, a monument to silence more profound than any shallow heart.