Chương 409: Chapter 404 - A Glasswright's sin

Villain. Scarlett had been labelled one. She had fought under that title, and against it. But it was never a word she gave much weight. To the system, it seemed like nothing more than a tag on a shelf — neat, convenient, and largely divorced from any real meaning. Still, standing before this man, she wondered if that was what she was meant to see. The pyre's flames painted Jahror's face in uneven light, smoke curling lazily through the air.

"Unmake?" Scarlett asked.

"Unmake," Jahror repeated, lowering his head slightly.

"And what does that entail?"

"Destruction. Death. Despair." Scarlett regarded him.

"Bleak words for a man who just honoured the dead."

"Evil words," he said with an unchanged expression.

"The words of a madman."

"You recognise that, yet still speak them?"

"You may run if you wish." He gestured faintly towards the darkening horizon.

"You should." Scarlett followed the motion, looking over the silent homes and hollow streets, towards the distant outline of Vairenne's spire, glowing like a translucent spear of light. Then she turned back.

"May I ask one more question?" He didn't refuse, though his gaze shifted to the pyre, watching the flames consume what remained.

"Do you consider yourself a villain?" His brows lifted a fraction.

"…I have abandoned all titles. If they decide I am darkness worse than evil, then perhaps, to the people of Vairenne, that is what I will be. To the rest—to those who lived—I could perhaps have been their salvation."

"Then, is your goal revenge? For their deaths, or for what caused them? Are those in the city responsible?" Scarlett asked. She hadn't spent enough time among the city's people to judge for sure, but she at least suspected that cruelty wasn't absent from them.

"Revenge is meaningless," Jahror said, shaking his head slowly.

"Even if it were not, I would not be the one to carry it out. It is simply time."

"What does that mean?" He didn't answer. Scarlett continued to study him. There had to be a reason this Echo constructed this place in particular, and why it seemed to place importance on him. She wouldn't have been surprised if the city concealed arcane secrets capable of shattering the understanding of the most accomplished mages back home, yet all of that had just struck her as scenery. Beautiful perhaps, but ultimately hollow. Jahror didn't give her that same empty feeling.

"I am curious how you intend to 'unmake' Vairenne," she said.

"I mean no offence, but you do not appear to possess the means to accomplish such a feat." He turned his head slightly, glancing at her. Scarlett allowed a small sphere of crimson flame to bloom above her fingers, heat warping the air between them.

"What would you do if I were to stop you now, having heard your intentions?"

"I would be stopped. Or you would fail."

"I do not believe we would fail."

"Then I would be stopped." He said it with such complete detachment that Scarlett couldn't help raising a brow. She let her flame die with a thought.

"I see." She turned to look at Rosa, who met her gaze with a subtle tilt of her head, as if asking what Scarlett wanted to do. After a moment's thought, Scarlett turned back to Jahror.

"What would you say to accepting our help in achieving your goal?" He stared at her.

"Why would you help?"

"I hold no particular affection for Vairenne. Its fate is of little consequence to me. You, on the other hand, interest me."

"You would condemn millions out of curiosity?"

"Does that disturb you?" Despite the potentially troubling nature of the city and its people, she wasn't particularly eager to take part in any form of massacre. That said, this world's end seemed to already be set in stone, and she wasn't above playing along for the time being. Jahror's gaze lingered on her, flicked briefly to Rosa, then returned to the pyre, resting on the flames. Finally, he turned away, his robes swaying behind him.

"Come with me." Scarlett and Rosa exchanged looks, then followed. He led them through empty streets and past abandoned homes, towards the settlement's edge, where the land rose into a jagged slope of stone and a natural cleft yawned in the mountainside like an open wound. He picked up a small, crystal-like torch near the entrance. Light flared within it, but he tucked it away when he saw Scarlett conjure several floating flames to light their path.

The cave walls were lined with dull, transparent crystals embedded in the rock, leached of all colour. After a few minutes, the passage opened into a wider chamber. Sconces were set into the walls, and as Jahror approached, each flickered to life in slow succession until the room glowed with a steady amber light. Scarlett let her own flames fade and surveyed the space.

The chamber was sparse, with only a few smooth stone crates stacked against one wall, a bedroll and blanket laid beside them, and several small pouches arranged neatly near a cluster of differently coloured crystals. She assumed they were the same type of reagents he had used for his magic earlier. Jahror crossed to the corner, drew several pouches from his robes, and added them to the others. Then he opened one of the crates, rummaged briefly, and removed two folded blankets.

Returning, he offered them to Scarlett and Rosa.

"It gets cold." Scarlett looked at the blanket extended towards her. The fabric was surprisingly fine and clean, but… The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. A quiet laugh escaped Rosa. Jahror's eyes shifted to her.

"Scarlett's not much for layering," Rosa said, tilting her head towards Scarlett, who wore a sleeveless crimson dress that, admittedly, looked rather out of place in their current setting.

"She's got this obsession with always heating the air around her." The man considered Scarlett.

"I won't say no to one, though," Rosa added, taking a blanket and draping it loosely over her shoulders like a cloak.

"Comfort never hurts." Scarlett glanced at her. She usually took the effort to extend her pyrokinesis-born warmth to others as well, so she wasn't entirely sure why Rosa bothered with the blanket. Then again, there were a lot of things about the woman that baffled her. She turned back to Jahror.

"So, can I assume you are willing to cooperate with us?"

"I won't deny you the chance to witness Vairenne's unmaking if that is your wish," he said.

"But I do not require your help."

"You say that without knowing what knowledge or help we might offer," Scarlett replied.

"I do not need it."

"And why is that?" He held her gaze.

"…You have come to learn it, haven't you?" Scarlett paused.

"Learn what?"

"My Stillwork." Her brow furrowed.

"What makes you think that?"

"You said you were from somewhere far away." Jahror's voice was quiet but certain.

"You are not. There is nothing left but Vairenne. The Failing has taken it all. I do not know where you are truly from, but it is not from beyond this horizon."

"Wait — what do you mean, the Failing has taken it all?" Rosa asked.

"The people, or…everything?" Jahror inclined his head.

"Everything."

"I thought you said it was a disease."

"It is. One that consumes everything without Quintessence."

"Then how could it have taken the entire world?"

"Vairenne's perfection drained it," he said.

"The city fed on the world's Quintessence to sustain its illusion of purity. The more they refined themselves, the more the land hollowed."

"Until there were none left," Scarlett guessed.

"Yes."

"Is that why you wish to destroy the city? I thought you said it was not revenge."

"It is not. And I said only that it was time." Jahror paused, a faint flicker of reflection in his eyes.

"… Vairenne is a corpse painted in light. It has lived within a fantasy, but its end came long ago. I am merely its reckoning." Scarlett watched him closely. So this was essentially already a dying world. One where those who claimed to perfect it had bled it dry, too proud to care about the consequences.

She wasn't quite sure that justified the genocide of an entire city, even if they were the ones responsible—that was a moral quagmire she honestly didn't want to explore too much—but she could at least understand the almost nihilistic detachment in Jahror's voice better now.

"I will concede that your assumption about us is correct," she said, "but I am curious how that led you to conclude that I came here for your 'Stillwork'." She still wasn't entirely sure what that was, though she'd heard the term in the city from that arrogant shopkeeper. She assumed it was some sort of technique for manipulating mana. The corner of Jahror's mouth drew into a faint frown.

"Because you are the only one I have seen besides myself capable of using it. I do not take that to be a coincidence." Scarlett tilted her head.

"I…see." She also doubted that was a coincidence. The system—and by extension, The Other—was responsible, after all.

"To be clear," she said, "what is a Stillwork?" Jahror's frown remained as he watched her, as though weighing how to answer. Eventually, his expression eased.

"Stillwork is the shaping of Quintessence towards stillness. The discipline of refining the flow until it moves without movement and changes without change. It is how the people of Vairenne believe they perfect themselves." He pulled out a shard of dull crystal from his robe and turned it slowly between his fingers.

"To them, motion within Quintessence is impurity. Turbulence. The raw current of the world must be stilled, polished, and sealed until only clarity remains. They spend centuries sanding away every imperfection." The shard caught the chamber's glow, scattering fractured light across his hand.

"They call that purity." A faint crack split the air. The shard shattered, then crumbled to fine grey dust in his palm.

"But Stillwork was never that. It was only the means. What they pursued through it was their choice." Scarlett watched the dust fall.

"Then your Stillwork differs from theirs?"

"It does."

"And you say only I can use it as you do?"

"Yes." She glanced towards Rosa.

"Not her?" He shook his head.

"No. It would destroy her." Rosa blinked.

"Destroy me?" Scarlett turned back to him.

"What makes me different?" He met her eyes.

"You are broken." Scarlett raised a brow.

"Broken?" What was that supposed to mean? He nodded.

"As I am." She considered that. Maybe he suffered from something similar to her [Third-rate Mana Veins], and that's what made him impure? Could his Stillwork be something that required flawed mana veins to work? After a moment, Jahror lifted a hand and gestured to himself.

"I was once known as Jahror, the Glasswright. The First Glasswright. That title placed me among the artisans of the Hall of Stillness, where the masters of Vairenne gathered to perfect the shaping of Quintessence." Scarlett frowned slightly as he watched her reaction.

"We believed our Stillwork would redefine the world," he continued.

"The lattice above the city was our creation. We thought we could bind harmony into air, soil — into every trembling strand of existence. End decay. Forge an age without flaw. And for a time, we succeeded. Vairenne grew brighter with each century. Our people, purer. Yet the rest of the world dimmed." His gaze grew distant, even as he looked directly at her.

"It was not sudden. We do not even know when the Failing began. We did not care to look. Perfection demanded sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the impure was only natural. By the time I realised we were the cause, it was…"

"Too late?" Rosa offered softly. He looked at her.

"…No. It was not. I knew how to stop it. It would have required power, but the Stillwake needed was something I had discovered long before."

"Oh."

"You chose not to use it?" Scarlett asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I lacked the courage," he said evenly.

"That Stillwake was the antithesis of everything we believed. Even in my doubt, I pursued perfection. I told myself there would be time — that another century of refinement would reveal a better answer. It did not. And then it was too late. Now there is nothing left to save. Even Ravenn has succumbed to the Failing. There is nothing left to preserve." Scarlett thought back to the pyre.

"How recently did you choose to act?" Jahror's lips thinned.

"Too recently. Too late." She studied him.

"Then…you were not 'impure' before?" He shook his head.

"I was not."

"Was it something you did to yourself?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because my Stillwork does not accept the whole." Scarlett crossed her arms.

"But someone 'broken' is acceptable?" The man nodded.

"How does that differ from simply being impure?"

"Impurity is merely imperfection of Quintessence," he said.

"A Stillwork corrects this by refining the vessels of the body, strengthening their walls through repetition and precision. Every fracture, every impedance, is polished away until the current runs flawless. But the vessel's original form cannot be altered. Its inherent limits remain." He exhaled slowly.

"The Stillwork I discovered rejects that path. It does not polish. It shatters — and remakes."

"Does that mean it would allow even impure vessels to grow?" Scarlett asked.

"It would." That sounded precisely like what she needed. It also sounded far too convenient.

"I assume there is a cost," she said.

"And I assume it relates to what it means to be broken. What is it?" Jahror was silent for several seconds. Finally, he traced a finger through the air, leaving a faint shimmer that flickered once before fading.

"It differs, and it is difficult to explain in words. Demonstrating it is no longer something I can easily do." His hand fell to his side as his eyes fixed on Scarlett.

"You do not understand the meaning intuitively?" She shook her head.

"Several interpretations come to mind."

"It's not exactly the most descriptive word," Rosa added, fingers brushing her chest unconsciously.

"By most standards, I'm probably more broken than Scarlett. It's odd that I don't qualify." Jahror looked between them.

"…I speak of a shattering of the mind. Of the self. Of will. Of something. Ordinary minds resist fracture, and my Stillwork kills them for it. Those already broken do not resist, for they are already fractured. You will know if you are broken."

"That is not enough to—" Scarlett began, then stopped. Her mouth closed, brow tightening. It had just clicked. A shattering of the self. What did that mean for someone whose self was already fundamentally changed? She had lived as two identities in one for a long time now. An uncertain amalgam of Amy Bernal and Scarlett Hartford. If that dysfunctional state wasn't inherently broken, what was? The question then was how that brokenness came into play here.

"Scarlett?" Rosa asked quietly.

"Did you figure it out?" Scarlett glanced at her for a moment before nodding.

"I believe I have." She turned back to Jahror, meeting his gaze. She tapped a finger thoughtfully against her forearm.

"I was going to ask what I might offer you in exchange for learning this technique," she said, "but I suspect you already intended to teach me regardless. Otherwise, you would not be telling me this." Jahror remained silent, but ultimately, he inclined his head in slow acknowledgement. Scarlett's lips curved faintly.

"Very well. How do we begin?"