When Allen woke again, the first thing he felt was cold.
Not the kind of cold that seeps in from outside, but a cold inside his body. As if his blood hadn't fully started flowing yet and was huddled up against his bones, refusing to move. He was lying on his side on a very hard bench, with a thin felt blanket spread beneath him. His right shoulder had been immobilized with strips of cloth, bound so tightly that the slightest movement made it go numb. He lifted his left hand and found he could move his fingers, though they were still a little stiff. The back of his hand was one big bruise; he had no idea when he'd hit it.
He slowly opened his eyes.
It was the same great hall. Just as high, just as empty. He was lying near the left side of the hall with a very thick stone pillar behind him, carved with the same demonic runes he couldn't read, a dark red light creeping slowly along their grooves like blood flowing through very narrow vessels. The candles were the same candles, burning quietly, not flickering or wavering. That smell of old wood mixed with cold iron hung in the air, stronger than last time.
He remembered that man. The man who called himself the Demon King.
Allen's heart tightened, and he propped himself on his left hand to sit up. His right shoulder was strapped in place, and his body tipped sideways, nearly sending him rolling off the bench. He clenched his teeth, hooked his left hand over the edge of the bench, and slowly pushed his upper body up. The back of his neck was sore, as if someone had held him down while he slept all night. He looked down at himself. He was still wearing the dark gray long-sleeved shirt from the plane, the collar a little stretched, and on one cuff there was a small bloodstain that had already turned black. Was that his own blood? He didn't remember bleeding.
"You're awake."
The voice came from far ahead of him. Allen's head jerked up.
In the deepest part of the hall, in that mass of darkness he hadn't been able to see clearly before, there had been something all along. A throne. A towering seat forged from some kind of black rock and dark metal, standing there all alone. Its back was so tall it looked like a small staircase, its top lost in the darkness. The man sat on the throne with one leg crossed over the other, an elbow propped on the armrest, his fingers resting lightly against his chin. His whole body seemed to have grown into the darkness; only his face was traced with a very faint outline by the candlelight.
Allen swallowed, his throat so dry it hurt. He wanted to say something, but he opened his mouth several times without knowing which sentence to start with. Who am I? Why am I here? What exactly are you? The questions collided in his head into one snarl, like yarn a cat had batted into a tangle.
But the man spoke first.
"You saw it on the plane, didn't you." His voice wasn't loud, yet it was strikingly clear in the empty hall, each word seeming to travel straight from somewhere far away to Allen's ears. It wasn't a question. It was a statement. As if he were remarking on something he'd known for a long time.
Allen looked at him and slowly nodded. He really had seen it. The red eye in the clouds, the lightning hanging upside down in the sky, the split-open sky, the clouds churning like entrails. And that immense silhouette wrapped in darkness. Back then he hadn't known what it was. Now he did.
"All of that had to do with you?" Allen asked. His voice was dry and rasping, as if he hadn't spoken in a very long time, but it held fairly steady.
The Demon King didn't answer directly. He lowered the hand at his chin and leaned forward slightly, and his whole outline emerged a little from the darkness. At last Allen could see his upper body clearly. A long black robe with a high collar and narrow cuffs, and over it a long coat of the same color, its edges embroidered with very dark silver patterns, as if some ancient design had been swallowed into the black cloth. His hair was black, blacker than his clothes, sliding down from his shoulders with a few strands falling beside his face. In the candlelight those red eyes looked very dark, like coals gone cold, yet there was still warmth within them.
"The Interstice doesn't appear easily," the Demon King said. "Much less does it appear for no reason, right in front of that plane of yours. That you survived at all already puts you ahead of those people."
Those people. Allen's heart sank. He thought of those points of light, the passengers swept into the current of light along with him, drifting away one by one as if asleep. He closed his eyes for a moment and didn't dare press further. He was afraid of hearing something he couldn't bear.
"You mean that storm wasn't an accident?" Allen asked.
"An accident?" The Demon King softly repeated the word, as though tasting something very unfamiliar. Then he smiled. The smile was faint, like a hairline crack in ice, there and gone in an instant. "There are no accidents in this world. Only threads you people cannot see."
Allen frowned. He thought of the movies he used to watch, where the villains always loved saying cryptic things like that, lines that sounded deep but actually said nothing. But when this man said such things, his tone was far too matter-of-fact, as if he were explaining common knowledge. That "I can't be bothered to explain it to you" feeling was more unsettling than any threat.
"Why am I here?" Allen switched to the most direct question he had.
The Demon King leaned back into the throne, and his presence sank back into stillness. He looked at Allen for a while, as if judging whether he was worth telling the truth. Then he raised his right hand and tapped the air lightly with a finger. Before Allen could react, the air in front of him suddenly grew heavy, as if an invisible hand were pressing on his forehead. The back of his head pushed against the stone pillar, and the world before his eyes seemed to be shoved aside, swaying in a daze.
He saw some images.
They were very blurry, like old photographs sunk underwater. He saw a boy running down an alley, saw a gray-blue sea, saw a man standing far off with his back to him. The images flashed by very fast, as fast as someone flipping through a book. He couldn't catch hold of a single one, yet each one made his chest tighten. Some of the people in them looked like him, and some looked like someone else. Finally, all the images stopped on a pair of eyes. Red, directly in front of him, quietly watching him.
"Now you understand." The Demon King's voice came from beyond the images, very soft, yet like a needle that pierced every one of them.
Allen snapped back to himself, his forehead drenched in sweat. He was panting, and he found he was still leaning against the pillar, his fingers clenched in the blanket beneath him so hard his knuckles had gone white. He looked up at the Demon King. The man was still sitting on the throne, as if he hadn't done anything at all.
"What... exactly are you?" Allen's voice was shaking. He didn't know why he was so rattled. Those images were too strange, like memories, and yet not his memories. But every single frame felt so familiar it made him want to throw up.
"I am you," the Demon King said.
Allen was stunned. He heard his breath stop for a beat, then quicken. He wanted to laugh, wanted to snap "You're insane." But that face, those eyes, that silhouette surfacing from the darkness all landed like a dull punch to his stomach. He opened his mouth and managed to squeeze out only a single word: "What..."
"I am you, as you exist in another world." The Demon King slowly rose to his feet. He descended from the throne step by step, the hem of his black garment trailing behind him, like night pouring down from a high dais. His expression was calm, so calm it frightened Allen. It was like looking into a mirror, and the mirror held a version of himself he didn't recognize at all.
"The same soul exists in different forms in different worlds." The Demon King walked up to Allen and stopped. He was a little taller than Allen, and his shadow fell over him like a wall. "You are me. To be precise, you are my counterpart."
Allen tilted his head back to look at him. They were so close, close enough that he could see there wasn't a trace of stubble on the other man's jaw, and the faint blue veins under his skin. Close enough that in those dark red eyes he could see the reflection of his own face, disheveled and damp with sweat.
"I don't believe it," Allen said. His voice wasn't loud, but it was hard, as if dug out of the bottom of his throat with the last of his strength.
The Demon King looked down at him, showing neither disappointment nor anger. He even smiled again, that same faint smile with nothing behind it.
"You don't need to believe it," he said. "You only need to stay here. Time will tell you the rest."
With that, he turned and walked back. His footsteps rang out again in the empty hall, one after another. Allen leaned against the pillar and watched him walk back to the throne, watched that mass of darkness swallow him up again, leaving only a very faint outline that seemed almost like an illusion.
"How long are you going to keep me locked up?" Allen shouted at the darkness. His voice bounced around the hall a few times and was quickly swallowed.
In the darkness, the man seemed to smile again.
"Until you no longer want to escape," he said.