Chương 190: Chapter 49: Welcome to the Game

As the second month of summer drew to a close, and the university lay submerged in the golden, near-deserted lethargy of the recess, Selena resumed her private lessons with Valerian. The jester had structured the advanced year around three pillars, and in their sessions on spoken offensive echo, he no longer focused on simple manipulation of phenomena or elementary creation. Now he dedicated himself to teaching her stealth, the subtle, lethal art of a Resonant who operates in the shadows.

He taught her to understand sound, and with that understanding, how to erase the sound of her own footsteps, how to stifle the echo of a sigh or the snap of a twig. There were hours left entirely alone in the Titardes Forest, listening to the wind, listening to nothingness, until comprehension blossomed within her. He showed her how to move without being seen, merging with patterns of light and dark, how to minimize her presence until she became little more than a disquieting breeze.

After all, as Selena recalled with a shiver, the Red Resonant had always been, in essence, an assassin, an artist of the silent end. One day, Valerian set the final test to certify her mastery in this discipline: she had to hunt him using her newly learned stealth. —Surprise me, Crimson —he had said with his satisfied cat smile— Touch my shoulder, leave an invisible note in my pocket, make me know you were there without me noticing until it is far too late.

Selena attempted it time and time again with a determination that soon soured into growing frustration. The first time, she shadowed him through the trees near his tower, moving with the patience of a stalker. Valerian, however, stopped abruptly, turned directly toward her hiding spot among the bushes, and said, as if commenting on the weather: —The birds went quiet in a very specific manner three minutes ago, little calamity. Try with less tension in your shoulders.

The second time, she planned a bolder approach: entering through the window of his tower office while he was away. She climbed carefully, nudging the louver with a subtle movement to unlock it... only to find, resting against the sill, a small portable slate. Upon it, written in Valerian's theatrical, disorderly script, it read:"I was expecting you with tea. A pity you chose the back entrance."

Turning around, she saw him sitting at the table, calmly sipping from a cup with a smile that failed to reach his silver eyes. The third attempt took place in an urban setting. She followed him through the narrow, winding streets of Kaelburg, relying on the bustle and the shadow of the alleys. She waited at a crossroads he frequently used, but Valerian never appeared along that route.

When she finally spotted him emerging from another street, he looked directly up toward the window where she was concealed, far too high for a casual hideout, and shouted in a cheerful voice that cut through the murmur of the street: —I know you are watching me from above! I am waiting for you down here, if you dare descend! It was exhausting. It felt as though the jester possessed a sixth sense for her attempts, as if the very air whispered her intentions to him.

The first days of the new month arrived, and Selena was on the verge of quitting. She had not attempted to surprise him in over a week, convinced it was an impossible task designed more to humiliate her than to teach her. Thus, time slipped through her fingers as she threw herself into other subjects with an almost evasive fervor.

One night, while returning to the Cloister of the Forest, she spotted the jester heading toward the hedge maze in the ornamental garden, the one whose signs warned that entrance was permitted only with explicit authorization. Driven by curiosity rather than the challenge, she shadowed him at a distance, employing all her stealth to avoid detection. She watched him venture into the heart of the maze and sit upon the stone bench at its center. You might be reading a stolen copy.

Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. There, under the pale light of the full moon, Valerian made no theatrical gestures. He simply gazed up at the sky, and in the silver gleam on his cheeks, Selena distinguished the tracks of silent tears. She understood instantly: the jester was weeping for his lost son, for the stolen life that always weighed heavily upon his shadow. In that moment, any intention of exploiting his vulnerability to win the challenge vanished.

She abandoned the opportunity, retreating in silence, leaving him alone with his grief. And so, the second week of the month passed. She had officially abandoned the active pursuit, but almost without realizing it, she had grown accustomed to observing him. She did so whenever she could, even occasionally neglecting her language studies, her practice of the flowing style, or outings with Maya and Ren. She began mapping the jester's routines, not to strike, but to understand.

She discovered that although he often secluded himself in his tower during the afternoons, it was not a fixed rule. The location where he was most likely to be found was the forest clearing near the tower. There he sat in complete solitude, sometimes humming ancient, broken melodies, other times in absolute silence. He ate simple food purchased from the street carts circulating around the university, methodically avoiding the main dining hall.

When he visited the library, he did not even descend into the stack floors; he merely requested the exact title from the librarian and carried it elsewhere to read. That "elsewhere" was curious: a luxurious inn in Kaelburg that featured a small classical music ensemble. There he sat in a corner, reading dense tomes while court lutes and recorders played softly. His most erratic days were the most revealing.

Sometimes he went running through the university grounds while drinking alcohol directly from a bottle for no apparent reason at times stopping after a single gulp, at others emptying it completely before collapsing, drunk and laughing, onto a bench.

He possessed other peculiar, sadistic hobbies, such as watching from above as students tripped; during this recess period, with fewer available targets, he laughed openly whenever one of his invisible threads, so fine they were nearly imperceptible, tripped up an unsuspecting courier or intern. Until the day arrived. It was a moonless night, a blanket of black velvet studded with cold stars.

Selena knew from her observations that the jester would not sleep in his tower that night; in fact, he only did so if he needed to oversee the university for some reason. His pattern would lead him deep into the woods, to a rocky promontory that offered a clear view of the starry sky. There he sometimes went to "converse with the stars," as he mockingly put it. Selena made her way there before him, taking an alternate path. She steeped herself in stealth, not as a fleeting effort, but as a state of being.

She had meticulously prepared her shoes days prior, inscribing upon the soles in her own blood a complex pattern carrying a low vital-time cost: a written-touch spell to completely eliminate the noise of her footsteps for an hour. At least thirty minutes of the effect remained. She watched Valerian arrive at the clearing with his swaying, careless gait. He sat upon the flat rock, looked up at the starlit sky, and pulled out a small steel flask.

Selena, from her hiding spot among the roots of an ancient tree, did not move. She merely observed. He tipped the bottle back for a long swig, then another, and another. At least twenty minutes passed in a silence broken only by the sigh of the wind through the leaves. Slowly, Valerian's eyelids began to grow heavy. The alcohol, combined perhaps with genuine fatigue or the lingering sorrow he always carried, took its toll. His eyes closed, opened heavily, and closed once more. This was the moment.

Selena slid forward, emerging from her hiding place with the fluidity of a shadow detaching itself from the ground. She advanced toward him, every step entirely soundless, every movement calculated not to disturb the air around her. When she was just a few paces away, still behind his back, she uttered a word, a silent word. It was a spoken sound-suppression spell, directed not at an object, but at the bubble of space surrounding them.

Instantly, the world within a radius of several meters plunged into an absolute, unnatural silence; neither the wind, nor the rustle of her clothes, nor the beating of her own heart echoed there. She closed in from behind until she stood inches from his neck. With her index finger, which she had previously dipped into a small vial of ink, she wrote with swift, sure strokes upon the pale skin of his nape, just above the collar of his robe:"Welcome to the game, Red Resonant."

Then, without a backward glance, without waiting for him to react, without claiming victory or uttering a word of triumph, she withdrew. She stepped back into the shadows and merged once more into the darkness of the forest, leaving Valerian, perhaps asleep, perhaps not, with an invisible, indelible mark upon his skin, and the certainty that, at last, the student had managed to touch the master on his own ground.