Chapter 368: Authority (3)

Ordinarily, the System only announced that a reward would be granted. It never specified what that reward would be or when it would arrive. This time was different. It offered a choice.

Ketal did not feel surprised. He understood what the System meant now, enough to read the intent behind its light. He closed the window for the moment. Footfalls, hundreds of them, came up fast, gathering from every street until the sound filled the ruined capital like rain.

“Ooh!”

“Chieftain!”

The barbarians ran to him in a torn, triumphant swarm, bodies striped with cuts that already paled and sealed. They had been fighting the Twisted’s apostles, a battle of iron and teeth that shook the ground.

Then, in the middle of it, the apostles had simply turned to dust and blew apart. Even the dullest among them understood what that absence meant: their king had defeated the enemy that anchored them.

Hekate pushed to the front, eyes bright as coals. “Chieftain! Chieftain, did you win?”

“I told you not to call me—” He let the correction fall. “Yes. I won. The Twisted is dead. There are no Primarchs left in this world.”

A roar lifted. “Ooooh!”

“As expected of our chieftain!”

“

Wahahaha!

”

Joy broke over the city like surf. The feeling ran through bodies and out into the cold until even the snow seemed to shift its weight.

Ketal let out a breath. He wanted to sit longer and let his bones remember stillness. However, he did not have that luxury. If he left the barbarians in this high state without a task, they would test the world until it snapped in their hands. He had to lead them out.

“Time to go back,” he said. “Follow me.”

He spoke as a king, and reverence filled their eyes; reverence was a kind of obedience, and for the moment it would do. Their answer shook the street.

“Yes!”

Ketal led them beyond the imperial walls. Far off, Helia started forward to join them, but he halted her with a glance and a small shake of the head. She stopped where she stood. He took the barbarians north and west, back to the rim of the White Snowfield.

When they had reached the border, he gave his order. “Go on. Return.”

“No!”

“Chieftain, come with us!”

“We don’t want to go back without you!”

They pleaded and clung and tried to pull him by the arm as if force could make the answer they wanted become the truth. In the past, Ketal might have rapped their heads and thrown them off like unruly boys. This time, he did not. He spoke quietly instead.

“I will follow soon. Go ahead. There is work I still have to do.”

“Really?”

“You will come for real?”

“Not forever, but I will stay for a time. Go back with an easy mind.”

They hesitated, then nodded in rough unison.

“All right, chieftain. We will wait!!”

“If you don’t come, we’ll come drag you!”

Grumbling with reluctant acceptance, they filed into the White Snowfield. When the last back disappeared into the pale, Ketal set his hand against the invisible seam between snow and Mortal Realm and felt where the two joined.

Long ago, the seal that split the Mortal Realm from the Demon Realm had been set here. It was failing. Through cracks that should not have existed, a cold that belonged to no weather crept outward and stung his palm.

“How long will it hold?” he asked the Abomination.

“Not long,” it answered. “You dragged the barbarians out and forced the seal to break with your weight. The Twisted came in its own way and strained it further. It will not collapse at once, but it will not last. Perhaps a thousand years.”

“A thousand years...,” Ketal repeated.

Long, if one chose to call it long. Short, if one chose to call it short. When the thousandth year came to its close, the seal would fail, and what had been confined within would spill forth once more.

Can the gods raise the veil a second time?

he wondered.

He doubted it. The seal had demanded the labor of gods and demons and the Oldest Ones. Now the demons were near extinction, and the Primarchs were gone. To recreate what once was would be beyond anyone’s reach.

That left the cleanest solution: kill everything inside. In the time given, he could do it. Before a thousand years had passed, he could scour the White Snowfield of every living thing. He had the will and, now, the means.

However, he did not want to. He was still an outsider. He had no wish to hunt down all who lived quietly behind that line simply because their existence ran against his taste. Whatever their direction, they, too, were miracles his world had never known.

More than that, such a choice would require slaughtering the barbarians. They had thrown their lives on his word and called him king. Cutting them down for the sake of order was not a choice he would make.

“So,” he said at last, “I will make a seal.”

***

He stood with one hand resting on the border, letting the thought unfold to its end. He wondered how he had come to this world, though the method still escaped him. He could only guess at the cost—and that guess was everything. To cross into this place, he had surrendered all that he once was, leaving nothing behind but the will that carried him here.

I cannot remember who I was,

he thought.

Knowledge survived—what he had learned in books and through trial, the skills that lived in the same place as habit. The person who had carried those things—family, temper, even his name—had vanished from his memory without a footprint to follow. One fact remained clear when he looked backward.

He had wished for fantasy. That was all.

To buy his passage, he had paid with everything but that wish. In exchange, he had received one authority at the start: to overlay the world he had lived in upon this one, to enforce Earth’s order until everything here became a daydream without weight.

He had received one other thing as well.

[Quest #791 Complete.]

[Select the reward you desire.]

The Quests that appeared before him had never come from a distant master. They were his own creation, born of will rather than command. They could be called a kind of authority, and the description would not be wrong. Their purpose remained clear and unchanging—to shape the world into the form he desired.

Within the White Snowfield, the Quests guided him toward the fantasy world he had begged for—how to step out, how to escape the place that tried to grind meaning out of him. Outside, they urged him to remove what would trample that fantasy underfoot.

Quests never appeared for matters that had nothing to do with the Demon Realms. Even when the Demon King descended and the Mortal Realm teetered, the System offered no task. That, too, had been a possible ending he desired.

The rewards built the world he wanted. He could not speak to the detail of it, but he suspected each reward tilted things a touch at a time until the stream ran in the bed he chose. It resembled changing the world itself, but there was no contradiction. He stood

above

; if he could overlay a world, then he could alter this one in accordance with his desire.

Now the System had offered him a choice. He already knew what he would pick.

I wish

, he said within himself.

Let the beings of the Demon Realms never again cross into the Outside. Let the failing veil be remade, and let it bind them forever within.

That was his request. A low hum stirred at the edge of hearing, a vibration so faint it felt more sensed than heard. The System moved in answer to his silent prayer, responding with a precision beyond comprehension. Within him, the Abomination recoiled, shrinking back as though it had glimpsed something too vast and terrible to behold without harm.

“This...,” it whispered.

A power beyond the Abomination’s ability to guess unfolded. It felt like order rather than force. In an instant, it spread and began rebuilding the seal from root to crown. The Abomination saw the truth of Ketal’s intent.

“You mean to separate the realms for all time,” it said.

“Yes,” he said. “But it is not enough.”

A veil could stand only if it had a keeper. The previous keeper lay dead by his hand.

He turned to the creature that had nested inside him and asked, “Do you mean to stay bound to me?”

“Of course not. I am bound because I have no way to leave. If I could go, I would go at once.”

“Then I will give you a choice.”

“A choice?”

“It’s simple,” he said. “Stay with me, or become the doorkeeper and remain here in the White Snowfield.”

The Abomination hesitated, as if such a possibility itself felt foreign.

“Is that possible?”

“Probably. It should cause no trouble. Do as you please.”

The Abomination fell silent for a few moments. When it spoke again, its voice held wry amusement. “You intend to wander the Mortal Realm.”

“That is likely.”

“Watching that does not interest me. Playing with the White Serpent in there would be more fun.”

“Then it is decided.”

As he spoke, the Abomination that had been tucked within him pulled free. It took on a shape and slipped into the White Snowfield like breath returning to lungs.

Before it vanished, it left him a quiet parting. “Being trapped inside you was truly awful. No matter how I shouted, you could not answer.”

“I am sorry for that,” he said.

“And yet not all of it was bad. Watching a mad creature walk the world had its pleasures. Looking back, it was an experience I will never have again. That gives it value.”

It paused at the threshold and added, as if it could not help itself.

“One last thing. Think of this as a final piece of advice from the being that lived in you for so long,” it said. “Do not fix meanings. Do not carry value like a burden. Do not doubt yourself. Enjoy what comes. You think too much. It is your only flaw.”

With that, it was gone.

Ketal stood still for a time and then laughed under his breath. “I will try.”

The seal set hard, welded now to a doorkeeper who wanted the post. The breath of alien cold that had leaked out went quiet.

Helia, who had watched in silence from a distance, came to him at last. “Is it... finished?”

“It is finished,” he said. “Nothing from the Inside will come out again.”

“At last...” Her relief rose like the first light at dawn. She clapped her hands once and could not keep the smile from her face. “We did it! Let’s go back. We have to tell everyone! The Mortal Realm will be peaceful from now on. There is nothing left that can threaten us.”

She spoke of festivals that would last for months. Ketal shook his head.

“Unfortunately, I have to go inside for a while.”

“What? Why?”

“I need to see how the seal behaves.” He looked up into the pale. “More than that, the barbarians staked their lives on me. I owe them my presence.”

He owed them an answer for their faith.

“About a year,” he said. “I will stay that long, then return here.”

He would come back to a world made perfect, seamless, the fantasy he wanted and would not apologize for wanting.

He looked at Helia. “May I ask you for something?”

“A favor?” she said.

“Yes. When I return in a year, will you welcome me?”

“What?”

The request sounded strange even as it left his mouth. He meant it. He was, in the end, an outsider. He could desire and beg for fantasy, but he did not know whether fantasy would ever desire him back.

This world,

he thought.

Will it reject me? Will it push me away and deny me? Am I a piece forced into the wrong puzzle?

The unease had never left him. That was why he asked.

“When I come back, welcome me,” he said. “Accept that I am allowed to be here. Grant me that permission. If you do, I will be grateful.”

Something settled in Helia’s face. She nodded once, firm as a promise.

“I will,” she said. “I will make sure of it.”

“That is enough.” He smiled. “Then, for a time, farewell. Helia. And you as well, fantasy world.”

With that, Ketal stepped into the White Snowfield. Helia watched until his back vanished into the pale and then whispered, “Return in peace. In a year... then.”

She stood awhile, thinking. She made up her mind, nodded to herself, and moved quickly.

“Time is shorter than I would like,” she said, and set about preparing whatever she intended to prepare.

***

Time passed. The Mortal Realm held steady. The gods who had returned helped repair what needed to be repaired and even tidied the wreck of the dead Empire. The Empire, never deeply entwined with daily life, left less of a hole than anyone had expected; few felt more than a shift in the wind.

Even so, enough had happened that the months ran by. A year, counting by the sun, came and went.

Helia went to the White Snowfield’s border to meet him. She did not go alone.

“Mm... Ketal,” Arkemis complained, rubbing her eyes. “Leaving without saying anything to me was cruel.”

“Arkemis,” said the High Elf Queen with a long-suffering look. “Perhaps accomplish your own wish first, and then scold him. You still have not done it.”

“It is harder than I thought, Karin. You could help me a little.”

The air shivered. The Tower Master’s voice came from within a curtain of wards. “I will manage. Cursed contamination—still not gone even after a year.”

“Are you well enough, Tower Master?” Helia asked him.

“Well enough.”

Swordmaster Maximus stood near Kain and said, “So you are his master.”

“Please...,” Kain murmured, dragging a hand down his face. “Spare me.”

“Should I even be here?” Hayes whispered, pale, a follower of Kalosia adrift among greater powers.

“I do not know,” said Cassan Hark, thief, while Alexandro Tyranus, a paladin, made a sign of blessing he had not made since he was young.

Others gathered as well—all the beings of that imagined world who had once shared ties with Ketal now stood together.

Serena gazed out across the White Snowfield, her voice quiet yet certain as she spoke. “He is coming.”

Every gaze followed hers. A barbarian stepped out of the cold with ashen hair lifting in the wind.

Arkemis’s smile shone. “Ketal!”

“Arkemis,” he said, startled.

He had not expected a crowd. There were more than a hundred at a glance, and all of them were faces he knew. He looked to Helia in confusion. She spoke calmly.

“I asked after those who matter to you and sent word,” she said. “I asked them if they would come when you returned, to meet you here. I did not pressure anyone. They all said yes.”

Ketal did not answer. She continued.

“You seemed afraid we would reject you. I do not call that fear excessive. You are, undeniably, strange.” A small smile touched her mouth. “But you moved in this world by your own will.”

Their answer to that will stood before him now. Every person who had woven even a thread of connection with him had come to welcome him back. The miracles he had begged for since the day he arrived extended their hands.

Ketal could not speak. The first time he left the White Snowfield, no one waited for him. The first beings of fantasy he met—the elves—rejected him at the door. This second time, everyone he had come to know was here, and among them he saw those same elves. Their queen from that first meeting, Marseria, stepped forward.

“It has been a long time,” she said. “Welcome.”

“Yes...”

Ketal had not shed a single tear since his arrival in this world, yet now he felt the edge of it close. Joy welled up from within him like heat rising beneath a frozen lake, melting through the cold and spreading gently until it filled him completely. He did not hold it back. He let it warm him.

“Ketal. Come,” Arkemis said, reaching out a hand with a small, bright smile. He did not answer immediately. He waited until he could trust his voice.

“I am back,” he said.

He took her hand. With the world’s welcome around him, the outsider stepped back among them.

The End